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Inner Sea Gods lists Pharasma's colors as blue & white. Yet every piece of art I can find for Pharasma or her followers is in purple, black, and red. The only thing I can find is the holy symbol itself.
I'm making a Redeemer of Pharasma in heavy armor, and want to pin down the colors for the armor. Can someone show the proper shade of blue, or tell me why her followers don't wear her colors?
I thought I remembered reading that her colors are purple and grey.
The wiki lists blue and white as well. I will check a few books once I get home.
Creative Director
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Pharasma's colors are blue and white—blue being the color of her flesh (although this color has often drifted more toward gray in print, alas), and white being the color of bones. Those colors are primarily manifest in her symbol, but a deity's sacred colors don't HAVE to be all over the deity themselves.
Likewise, followers of a deity aren't limited to those colors. You can certainly cloak up in blue and white, but you don't have to.
For example, Merisiel worships Calistria, but she doesn't dress in yellow and black. She just wears a yellow and black ribbon on her belt.
EDIT: Yeah, I guess Pharasma's skin is officially ash. She's one of my homebrew deities and she had blue skin there—turns out sometimes when art comes in different things have to chagne.
Her sacred colors are still blue and white, though.
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Blued steel breastplate/armor with white cloth elements / skirts billowing out from beneath could be cool. (or even armor dyed / painted blue, for an even more vibrant look)
On the other hand, armor painted bone-white (perhaps even with some ridges to suggest a ribcage / skeleton motif?), and with flowing blue skirts / scarves / tabards / whatever coming from beneath it (representing the waters of the river of life), could be cool, too.
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It's sort of interesting to think of a Goddess as having a skin color, as though they had a physical body and preferred to appear in one way. Like I know we have to draw Pharasma for the art, but I always figured that all the deities wore a number of guises, particularly the ones who were not mortals any time recently.
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Creative Director
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It's sort of interesting to think of a Goddess as having a skin color, as though they had a physical body and preferred to appear in one way. Like I know we have to draw Pharasma for the art, but I always figured that all the deities wore a number of guises, particularly the ones who were not mortals any time recently.
That's the idea with the deities in our setting. They DO have a physical body and prefer to appear in that way.
While the deities do serve a role in the world as being mysterious divine patrons, they're also, essentially, NPCs in the setting, and as such their appearances are as important for representation and branding and recognizably as are our Iconic characters.
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Aren't some of Golarion's deities (e.g. Sarenrae) worshiped on a bunch of planets, some of which have never had humans on them? Do these people find out "what a human looks like" because all the depictions of Sarenrae don't look like any of the locals?
Like did the Lashunta, on encountering images of Sarenrae (which they might have done before Golarion did, since Castovel is the 2nd planet from the sun so they get to bask in her glory earlier) think "huh, she doesn't have antennae, that's weird"?
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Creative Director
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Aren't some of Golarion's deities (e.g. Sarenrae) worshiped on a bunch of planets, some of which have never had humans on them? Do these people find out "what a human looks like" because all the depictions of Sarenrae don't look like any of the locals?
Like did the Lashunta, on encountering images of Sarenrae (which they might have done before Golarion did, since Castovel is the 2nd planet from the sun so they get to bask in her glory earlier) think "huh, she doesn't have antennae, that's weird"?
Yes, but we don't do much with those planets at all, so it's not really an issue.
Whether or not the Lashunta thought it was weird Sarenrae had no antennae is no different than if the first human worshipers found it strange that Desna had pointed ears.
Furthermore, there's more than one sun deity. It could be that the lashuntas worshiped a different sun deity, if at all. Or they worshiped Sarenrae and depicted her as a lashunta. If she appeared to them she could certianly appear as a lashunta, yeah... but we wouldn't introduce her from the start to you readers in that way, and we didn't. Now that you've had over a decade to get used to Sarenrae's appearance, we can potentially do something to change that for a corner case, but she'd still stay Sarenrae.
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Sure, Pharasmin colors are white and blue, but that's not the end of it, not by a long shot.
Paraphrasing Inner Sea Gods, p.121, Pharasma, Clothing:
Many traditionalists and ascetics wear only black for formal outfits, sometimes with silver details and with small holy water vials. A more recent current doesn't focus only on death and goes all out with fanciful silver, gray, purple and iridescent blue garb, each unique to the priest as each thread of fate is different from all others. The two currents have strong opinions regarding their choice in aesthetics, but they don't physically clash over it.
So, redeemer of Pharasma, heavy armor - if you go traditionalist you could wear burnished iron/steel armor with black robes and tiny holy water ampoules here and there, plus if you feel like silver trims and perhaps a silver spiral brooch, and of course an iridescent blue religious symbol at your neck. If instead you're new wave and want to celebrate all aspects of Pharasma, you could silver your armor (and maybe etch it, filigree it, or work some motif into the metal) and wear a lot of purple and iridescent blue with it - you need practical clothing to adventure, but other than that you should design your garb to match your personality, background, vocation... skirts, baggy trousers, skinny trousers, tall or low boots, bandoliers, satchels, overcoats, cloaks, epaulets, high collars, gloves - you can exercise your creativity as much as you want, thistledown.
Most of all have fun.