Skin Tone

Skin tone is one of the first things one can notice about another to get a clue of their ancestry in real life, and is something that is very easy to recognize from a distance. Humans in real life, as well as in Mortal Online, have a very wide range of skin tones ranging from extremely dark to extremely light—and at the moment admixture doesn't play a role.

Humans

Due to the very wide range of human skin tones possible, as well as all of the ethnic groups that may technically exist between two opposites, I think that a mathematical system that averages each ¼ of ancestry makes the most sense, and would be the easiest way to do it. In this idea, each ¼ of ancestry would have a ‘weighting’ for the darkest and lightest column, with 8 columns available to each character:

Sidoian

  • Darkest: 1

  • Lightest: 8

Sarducaan

  • Darkest: 6

  • Lightest: 13

Khurite:

  • Darkest: 7

  • Lightest: 14

Tindremene:

  • Darkest: 10

  • Lightest: 17

Kallard:

  • Darkest: 13

  • Lightest: 20

To show an example of how this system would solve the challenge of 'What would an extremely mixed character look like?':

A player chooses a character that is ½ Sidoian, ¼ Sarducaan, ¼ Tindremene.

  • Their ancestral darkest tones would be 1 (Sidoian) + 1 (Sidoian)+ 6 (Sarducaan) + 10 (Tindremene)—these numbers would average out to 4.5, which would round up to 5.

  • Their ancestral lightest tones would be 8 (Sidoian) + 8 (Sidoian) + 13 (Sarducaan) + 17 (Tindremene) — these numbers would average out to 11.5, which would round up to 12.

Result: They have a range just slightly darker than a Sarducaan, at 5-12, meaning they have the columns 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

It creates a quick, predictable, and simple way to allow a range that accounts for each part of a human character’s ancestry.

Humans, unlike any other race aside from Thursar, have all undertones (rows) underneath their enabled columns available—but not all columns.

Thursar

Thursar were a little challenging to figure out, but referencing what Risar looked like in MO1 and MO2 helped. Risar are very grey, but there's something about the interaction between Risar and Human bloodlines that creates a more yellowish tone, so I stuck with that theme but kept some undertone variation. Risar are also somewhat Medium-Gray, so I figured it'd make sense that the darkest Thursar aren't extremely dark, and the palest Thursar aren't extremely pale.

The Human ancestry would influence which 8 columns the Thursar have access to, from Sidoians having a weighting of 1-8, to Kallards having a weighting of 5-12.

To balance out their lack of range, Thursar players would have a wider variety of undertone (row) selections than other races.

Alvarin

The Alvarin presented a unique challenge because of how the Veela have very pale reds and yellows, while the Sheevra have very dark to quite light blues and grays. With a lot of thought, I came up with the idea of Alvarin having 'mixed tones' that only show up in Alvarin of mixed ancestry, but not in full-blooded Sheevra or Veela.

Unlike Humans and Thursar, due to the limited amount of ancestry for an Alvarin these options don't require any calculations and would be simple to add by enabling/disabling rows.

Full-Blooded Veela

Full-Blooded Veela ranges would emphasize those reds and yellows that Veela are capable of having now, with just a bit more variety.

¾ Veela | ¼ Sheevra

The range for this mixture includes the very last two rows for Veela, allowing some 3/4 Veela to appear identical to full-blooded Veela. However, they wouldn’t be able to have the more pinkish tones found only in full-blooded Veela. The bottom two rows would be two 'mixed' tones that only appear in mixed Alvarin, meaning a 3/4 Veela could also look entirely distinct from Veela.

Half Veela | Half Sheevra

Neither Veela nor Sheevra—but also both—these Alvarin have tones between the two. Between Yellow and Blue are Green, so it felt like a natural admixture to bring in considering they should look distinct from them both, while having qualities of both. The darkest green clearly favors the Sheevra side, while the lightest yellow clearly favors the Veela side.

¾ Sheevra / ¼ Veela

Similar to the ¾ Veela, two of these rows are available to full-blooded Sheevra, while the other two are available only to Alvarin of mixed heritage.

Full-Blooded Sheevra

The range of options available to a full-blooded Sheevra. I re-added the green-blues and greenish tones that were seen in early MO1, which naturally worked for the ¾ Sheevra option drifting towards the yellower tones of Veela.

Oghmir

Considering the wide range of Oghmir skin tones, I did similarly to the Alvarin—but thought it might be interesting if mixed Oghmir had more grayish tones than both Blainn and Huergar.

Full-Blooded Blainn

Full-blooded Blainn have very pale colors, with their darkest tones not all that dark.

¾ Blainn | ¼ Huergar

Blainn with one grandparent of Huergar ancestry would gain some more medium grayish tones.

Half Blainn | Half Huergar

Half Blainn Half Huergar characters would have grayish stone-like tones.

¾ Huergar | ¼ Blainn

Huergar characters with one Blainn grandparent would have access to some of those more stone-like tones, but would also have warmer tones.

Full-Blooded Huergar

Full-blooded Huergar have much more vivid red options available to them, giving them the possibility to have a very distinct appearance.