Around the year 8579 in D’ni history, a group of painters who shared a desire to write their own ages became frustrated by the fact that they were not allowed to do so. They felt that worlds could be much more beautiful and creative than those being written by the guild of writers. These painters eventually asked the guild of writers to create an age just for them. They wanted an age that would have all of the plants and materials needed to produce pigments that would supply them with colors more rich than those found in the caves of D’ni. The writers and the city council agreed to create this artist’s age and worked with the painters to write a world that would give them an endless array of colors. Of course, this age would also serve the purpose of making it easier to hide the books that the painters were writing and experimenting with and was the real motive for asking that the age be written.
The age was covered by a color shifting fungus. The artists could go to the age, find the colors that they were in need of and scrape the fungus away from the ground. One separated from the organism, the clumps of fungus would retain their color. The D’ni would then dry this fungus and grind it into a fine powder which would then be added to an oil medium to make paint. The artists perfected the craft of producing pigments and mastered the art of stimulating the fungus to fine tune the colors it produced.
The artists continued to master the craft of writing as well. They became worried, however, as the sheer volume of books that they were creating made them more and more difficult to hide. They feared that being discovered would mean the end of their world, and of the safety that its separation from D’ni provided. They soon realized, by watching their paintings being constantly sold in D’ni and hung in homes and public places, that the perfect place to hide their writing was under these works. Nobody would think twice about a store of paintings on the age. They began to research and design ways to accomplish on canvas what had always been done in books. The would need new materials to produce such an effect and getting them would not be easy. However, the painters had friends in the writer’s guild who shared their vision of a more creative writing, even if they knew that the rules and guidelines for writing ages were there for good reason. These friends agreed to help the painters to secretly expand upon the artist’s age and create new ages with properties and materials that would aid the painters in the production of their theorized types of ink and paper.
As the painters inhabited this world and carried on their craft of producing rich pigments and paintings, they were secretly perfecting their new kind of writing paper as well as their new kind of ink. What they arrived at was a type of canvas made from the special paper used for descriptive books as well as a modified form of the ink used to write them. This new ink could be made latent with the application of certain chemicals. Using this ink, the painters would write entire descriptive/linking books onto their special canvas. Devices were built to reduce the scale of their writing so that incredible amounts of text could be contained on a standard sized canvas. Once the writing was complete, the canvas would be coated with a gesso that would bleach out the ink so that it and the linking panel could not be seen, although it would not harm its functionality. This served to hide the writing should these paintings ever be stripped or the canvas otherwise exposed. Though latent, the panel would still provide a link if touched. The standard paint used by these artists was improved upon to provide greater insulation over the linking panel. Although this paint was of superior quality and smoother consistency, it was still only an oil-based paint and had little to do with the piece’s linking ability. Using this medium, the canvas would then be painted with an image of the age that it linked to. Once the canvas was painted, the oil and other additives would bond with the layer of gesso and the underlying writing. When dry, the paint could not be removed from the canvas without also removing the writing underneath, thus rendering the link unusable. Only the great master painters would be allowed to produce these paintings. When they were finished, a special symbol would be applied to the piece. They could then link into one of their own worlds, through their painting…
The painters were not madmen. They understood that poor writing could produce unstable ages that would be dangerous. Because of this, they took great pride in learning and understanding the art of writing. Their contacts in the Guild of Writers would quietly teach them the art, and the painters understood the limits. Just as the painters had friends who were writers, they also had help from the Guild of Maintainers. These friends would often test their worlds for them and insure that they would be safe for visitors. The painters knew that any tragedies caused by their worlds would only serve to undo their closely guarded secret. The quality of their work was paramount.
As repayment to their friends in the guilds and to others who helped them to establish the artist’s age, link-paintings were created especially for them. These people took the paintings back to D’ni and hung them in their homes, linking through them at their leisure. They were so enthralled by the beauty and originality of these worlds that they could not help but share them with select people whom they were sure they could trust. Eventually, a secretive ring of commissioned link-paintings were being sold through the artist’s age and they became increasingly expensive. The fact that they were painted by the elite of the master artists seemed to account for their value to those unaware of their special properties. The symbol found on the paintings became indicative of a level of quality available to only the highest ranking members of D’ni society.
Of course, the knowledge of these paintings eventually leaked out of this group and became hearsay in the streets of D’ni. Over time, stories of incredible paintings that you could link into became widely known and the search for a magical paint that gave the images their power became obsession. This paint was, of course, never found and attempts at dismantling the paintings layer by layer and softening the paint to find its recipe resulted only in destroyed pieces of art. Once the paint had dried and fused with the gesso layer, it could not be removed without also lifting some of the latent writing and linking panel which would render the link unusable. Throughout the rest of D’ni history, the paintings continued to be produced and were always shrouded in a sense of mystery, but the story of their linking powers fell to myth. The works changed hands through the years and were auctioned away at estate sales. To this day, the paintings can occasionally be found in homes all across the city as well as in galleries and public buildings. However, the secret of how to use these paintings has been lost and proof of their process was never found.