Tosgivite Dye-Making

Dye making in Tosgiv society is one of the single most prestigious craftsman/merchant caste trades that can be done. The colored fabrics are so critical to Tosgiv culture and society that masterworks are extremely valuable and each noble house tends to have their own family of live in dye-makers that work for them.

The process for Tosgivite Dye-Craft is deceptively simple to learn, but difficult to master. Dyemakers use natural plants, animals, and objects crushed and mixed with water, milk, and blood to create a potent array of dyes of all colors. Flowers for vibrant colors, coals and manure for darker colors, and animals for anything in between. While a novice can manage basic shades and colors, a true master can paint a picture on a cloth that could pass for the real landscape around it. A single work can take hundreds of hours and most true masters will charge exorbitant rates for even the most basic of their crafts. The only array dye-makers do not charge for is when called upon to provide aid to the military and their camouflage, as these requests often allow them to experiment with new color-schemes, environments, and techniques to make a realistic depiction of the world.

Each family in Tosgiv society will often have their own set of colored blankets. At the lowest caste, this blanket is a multi-purpose tool, with many day-to-day uses. At the highest level, dozens of blankets are owned by the nobility and each one has a single use that it is employed in. When one is damaged, repairs are made in the lower castes, while higher castes donate them to the resource-recycling trade that goes on between the cities, often taking other blankets for themselves to be repaired and added to their vast repertoires.

There is no greater shame to a dye-maker in Tosgiv society than to insult his work. For those who are not highly skilled, an insult from someone better is more of an encouragement to learn, but if someone of a lower status insults your craft it is considered a grave insult. Often times these lead to feuds between merchant families that require grand reparations, as word of mouth is the only way to advertise this business. A single chance is offered, in most cases, for the insulter to retract his words. If he does not, the one insulted may attempt to prove the other wrong by creating a work to compare against the insulter. A group of elders from both collective neighborhoods will then judge their work against the lower caste. If the lower dye-maker produces a work that is superior in the eyes of the elders, however, then there is great shame and possibly ruin for the business of the other dyemaker. In this way, a particularly skilled and shrewd Dye-maker could rise quickly through the ranks, but his name would be steeped in controversy.