Editing Illumian (section)

===Arts & Crafts===
Illumians appreciate and savor life’s luxuries—from the taste of spicy food to the poetry of an ancient epic to the glitter of a jeweled pendant—but their enjoyment of these pleasures is ancillary to a more prosaic purpose. An illumian cares more about the nourishment of the food, the magic lore embedded within the epic poem, and the portable wealth of the pendant.

Illumians create art for three reasons: to inspire their fellows, to pass along information, and to show off their skill as artists.

Stylistically, illumians favor a sort of idealized realism in their art. Portraiture is particularly common, whether in the form of a marble bust, an oil painting, or a chalk drawing in a sketchbook or historical tome. Many illumian cabals have a “hall of revered destinies” in their fortresses, full of marble busts and oil paintings of champions and historical figures important to the cabal.

The wall frescoes that commonly decorate a cabal’s interior walls feature group portraits of illumians important to the cabal, as well as battle scenes that depict illumians slaying monsters and defeating foes. Both the portraits and the battle scenes are highly posed, with the more important illumians occupying higher positions in the painting. Traditional illumian paintings never depict anyone looking down on the central illumian—their eyes are always lower than the sigils that surround the illumian’s head.

Another stylistic conceit common in illumian art is the sigils themselves, which are an exception to the illumian tendency toward realism. Traditional illumian portraits don’t show the actual sigils that float around the head of a particular illumian. Instead, the artist paints the name of the subject (in Illumian) where the sigils would ordinarily float. Sculptors employ a similar technique, but the limitations of the medium mean that they rely on illusion magic to create the floating names.

Even illumian jewelry and decorative arts follow the trend toward realism. Illumian handcrafts are intended to represent a specifi c creature or object: a necklace that looks like a serpent, a ruby pendant that looks like a drop of blood on an open palm, and so on. Embroidery and other decorations on clothes likewise depict real objects. The edge of a cloak, for example, likely bears an embroidered feather or vein pattern, not a simple stripe or abstract design.