What Shade of Green is Honey?

[Saiseiki]

I was thinking about descriptions, and this popped into my head.  What shade of green is honey?  Is it like GREEN, almost neon-like?  Can it shade to amber, with a green undertone/tinge?  Could someone who is "a honey-blond" have hair that is a mixture of traditional blond and green?

Anyway, thought I'd ask the staff and more experienced players what they visualized with that most Zalanthan peculiarity.

[Lizzie]

I've always considered it an amber-green color.  Somewhere between Lemon Mint and Lemon Pepper in the Pittsburg paint chart: https://www.materials-world.com/paint-colors/pittsburgh_paints/pittsburgh-paint-02.htm

[NinjaFruitSalad]

Honey? Green?  What??   

I've never thought of honey as having anything to do with the shade of green whatsoever. I've only ever seen it as golden, amber, yellowish, or brown...

I don't know. I'm not seeing it. Maybe you are talking about a very unique type of honey?

[Barsook]

Kank honey is green, isn't it?

[Hauwke]

That is correct.

[X-D]

no kanks...no kank honey....

I always thought of it as a very pale green...like your average green LED.

[Kyviantre]

I always saw it as a sort of slightly yellow-ish bright grass green.  Much greener than chartreuse, a bit yellowy-er than lime, but that sort of vividity.

There are a number of honey-coloured items IG, don't have access to any fulldescs to hand, but for example:

a soft, heavy skirt of bright honey-green

Suggests it is quite a vivacious tone, rather than a pale colour.

I think if someone has 'honey-blond' hair, they are obviously going on real-world 'honey-blond', and haven't realised that honey in Zalanthas is...well, green!  If someone -says- they have honey-blond hair, I will go "Ahhh, green", but if their desc says honey-blond, I assume yellow+ignorance - it is the difference between players trying to describe specific colours, and characters acting ICly.  If that makes sense?

I'd -suggest-, if you want green hair, I'd make it clear and say 'honey-green', at least in your fulldesc.  To avoid confusion either way.

[Lizzie]

I always saw it as a sort of slightly yellow-ish bright grass green.  Much greener than chartreuse, a bit yellowy-er than lime, but that sort of vividity.

There are a number of honey-coloured items IG, don't have access to any fulldescs to hand, but for example:

a soft, heavy skirt of bright honey-green

Suggests it is quite a vivacious tone, rather than a pale colour.

I think if someone has 'honey-blond' hair, they are obviously going on real-world 'honey-blond', and haven't realised that honey in Zalanthas is...well, green!  If someone -says- they have honey-blond hair, I will go "Ahhh, green", but if their desc says honey-blond, I assume yellow+ignorance - it is the difference between players trying to describe specific colours, and characters acting ICly.  If that makes sense?

I'd -suggest-, if you want green hair, I'd make it clear and say 'honey-green', at least in your fulldesc.  To avoid confusion either way.

And if someone's desc says "a gentle honey hue to their hair" or "tresses of shimmering honey ripple down her neck" I'll roleplay my character seeing it as green.


To NinjaFruitSalad: in the world of Zalanthas, honey is a pale shade of green, and it was formed via some manner or another by kanks, which were similar to giant ants and used as mounts. Kank honey existed at least until 2 years ago (my character found some hidden somewhere). It may or may not exist even still, but its existence is legendary.

[Saiseiki]

I've always considered it an amber-green color.  Somewhere between Lemon Mint and Lemon Pepper in the Pittsburg paint chart: https://www.materials-world.com/paint-colors/pittsburgh_paints/pittsburgh-paint-02.htm

This was a hugely helpful visual, Lizzie.  Thanks!

And thanks to everyone who illuminated my ignorance. =)

Kyviantre, it was indeed a clothing item that got me started on this.  There may not be kanks in the world anymore, but apparently it's deeply embedded enough in the (IC? OOC?) lore that it's still used as a descriptor for readily-viewable and available items.

[Saiseiki]

Honey? Green?  What??   

I've never thought of honey as having anything to do with the shade of green whatsoever. I've only ever seen it as golden, amber, yellowish, or brown...

I don't know. I'm not seeing it. Maybe you are talking about a very unique type of honey?

Yeah, it wasn't the most intuitive thing for me, either.  Looong before my time:

Kank
(Animal Life)
Kanks were a type of large insectoid creatures, now extinct, that were commonly used as beasts of burden for riding and packing. Physically, they resembled giant ants, and were known for their strength, speed, and stamina for their size, compared to other mounts. They were easily domesticated and used not only for transportation, but also for food and their green honey. A mysterious plague struck the kank population and spread rapidly, eradicating all of them within the span of a few years. No kanks are known to remain alive in the Known World at this time.

Again, thanks y'all.

[NinjaFruitSalad]

It would have been helpful to specify it was kank honey we were talking about, from the very beginning...

[Kyviantre]

It would have been helpful to specify it was kank honey we were talking about, from the very beginning...

Only honey in Zalanthas is kank honey.  No bees!

[HeeBeeGB]

Considering Kanks are extinct, it would be nice to come up with a new source of honey. Unless we're all dealing with stockpiles of old ass Kank honey for our 'honey flavored treats/booze'.

[Kyviantre]

Considering Kanks are extinct, it would be nice to come up with a new source of honey. Unless we're all dealing with stockpiles of old ass Kank honey for our 'honey flavored treats/booze'.

Marilla, I'd assume?

[Hauwke]

But at that point it isn't honey, is it? For the sake of honesty in items, if it is sweetened with marilla sap it can't say that its coated in honey.

It's the same thing as custom crafting a sword out of only a long length of bone, and then descing it as lined with metal. It isn't and the ingredient isn't there.

[Kyviantre]

From a description, I'd agree it should be changed.  But I can see people calling it 'honey-coated' whatever and cunningly sneaking marilla in as a substitute...bit like dairy-free milk...kank-plague-free honey?

My point was more, if the 'recipe' calls for honey, but the item is non-craftable and bought from somewhere, I am ICly assuming they are substituting in marilla (just for ease of play - but I've not been in a role where honey-covered stuff was an option for a while!).  I guess we could start flagging these items to be edited by crafting staff?

[Kyviantre]

Doesn't include honey, but I did find this today when searching for something entirely different...and thought it was adjacently-relevant...so dredged it up from the past!

https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,38103.50.html

[Saiseiki]

It would have been helpful to specify it was kank honey we were talking about, from the very beginning...

Yeah... I had no idea where honey came from IG initially.

[Saiseiki]

Doesn't include honey, but I did find this today when searching for something entirely different...and thought it was adjacently-relevant...so dredged it up from the past!

https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,38103.50.html

Oooh!

[Mellifera]

Only honey in Zalanthas is kank honey.  No bees!

IIRC this isn't 100% true 

[HortaCulture]

Only honey in Zalanthas is kank honey.  No bees!

IIRC this isn't 100% true 

I might have had a PC who had reason to yell "BEES!" once....

[Kyviantre]

Only honey in Zalanthas is kank honey.  No bees!

IIRC this isn't 100% true 

I might have had a PC who had reason to yell "BEES!" once....

Who knew!  Now I want to see bees!

[Cind]

There is at least one type of hornet's nest east of Tuluk.

Traditionally, in Europe, when a couple got married, the best gift they could give them in a desperate time was a flask or bottle of honey. Honey was difficult to get for obvious reasons, and they knew even back then that honey given to a woman before intercourse gave her a better chance of having sons, because human beings in desperate times need more sons to fight. Open gender equality only really arose when our armaments became advanced enough that we didn't need this anymore. The fact that most of you probably didn't know this shows that we as probably a lot of white people posting this are in a better position in life than we were a thousand, two thousand years ago. The presence of mead (honey ale) as a staple in northern europe suggests that they were the most desperate if their main source of alcohol always contained honey. I don't consider white people that smart (read: I'm traditional white trash) if all we did with five hundred short years of brilliance was compose beautiful music that sounds like elegant war cries and some statues of muscular men, but honestly, the fact that we knew scientifically that honey help a woman and not a man have sons shows that we either knew our shit back then, or we were desperate enough to follow an oracle or seer's guidance which must have been true with how difficult honey is to obtain normally.

If you didn't know this part, the gender of the child is determined by the sperm rather than the egg. A type of honey given to the man would have been far more effective, but honey only works on the woman. It causes any caustic acids in the woman's body to disappear, making the road smoother for male sperm, which are weaker and have less of a chance to make it first to the egg than the female sperm does. That is why honey helps women have sons.

In an almost culture-less world like Zalanthas, a place too damned culture-poor to have religion (wow? that could have improved roleplay), the fact that we remember the color of our own honey suggests that either nobles have a lot and keep it for themselves (but the secret docs would have to suggest that many templars are male, as most templars come from the ranks of nobles) or that somewhere, somehow, kanks still exist, providing honey, and not being used as mounts. This was before my time, but kanks used to be such good mounts, that you only used kanks for the most part to travel, although I don't know if they made good war mounts, or were easy to ride, probably not in this theory. And then staff, or one member of staff, decided to create a disease that made kanks extinct. Something that was pretty unnecessary, as long as kanks were balanced in other ways. The only feasible solution my insane mind can come up with is that they were trying to get rid of the idea of honey, but the color itself is unique and used in higher-end clothing, so the idea of the color remains, likely due to the influence of House Kadius.

[th3kaiser]

My real takeaway here is the honey making boys thing. I'm pretty sure there's no correlation but does anyone have any studies I can take a peek at? Because I'm curious and can't find anything.