Painters are minerals shaped like parallelepipeds with smooth, shiny surfaces. They have a special property that allows them to form rainbows out of thin air, thus explaining their name.[1]
A pair of ships floating on a rainbow created by a Painter.
Despite normally being intangible constructs of light, the rainbows formed by Painters exhibit peculiar properties: they behave like a liquid fluid instead, allowing vessels to sail through their surface akin to a sea current. Drag is also virtually nonexistent, meaning objects can keep moving through the rainbow's pathway with little pushback. The people of Elbaph use painters primarily to form rainbow sea routes for traversal between their island's regions.[1]
According to Stansen, painters are unusable without the presence of sunlight, making them difficult to use in Elbaph's dark and snowy Underworld.[2]
Trivia[]
These objects may be a reference to the supposed mineral sunstone, believed during the Middle Ages to have been used by past Vikings for navigation.
The rainbows formed by a painter appear to be inspired by the legend of the Bifröst, a rainbow bridge from Norse Mythology said to connect Earth to Asgard, the realm of Gods.
Conceptually, painters function similarly to milky dials, as they can both produce a tangible pathway made from otherwise intangible material.
