Sit for a Portrait

Who paints

Sable is the limner: the elf who sets up by the window in the tavern while the light lasts and takes likenesses for coin. They've never painted their own. They keep long hours, by the window through the day and by the fire late, and when they're out their easel is folded against the wall.

Your first portrait isn't Sable's job. Give a character a name and the house paints their first portrait for nothing, without being asked, whenever the house has the paint for it. Sable is for every one after that: a new hat, a new look, or because you'd like to be seen differently.

Before you sit

• Your character needs a name. Sable paints a name, not a stranger, so give them one in the looking glass first.
• Say yes to Google's AI. The painting is done by Google's image model, working from your character, so you're asked once whether that's all right. You can change your answer any time on your account page, under Portraits painted by Google's AI. Until it's a yes, nobody paints you: not Sable, and not the house.
• Dress first. Sable paints exactly what you have on at the moment you sit, from your hat down to your boots. If you want the good cloak in the picture, put it on before you go over.

The sitting

Every sitting is both pictures: your face for the room, and the whole of you, head to foot. They only have to look at you once.

1. Find Sable and press them. Pick Sit for a portrait.
2. Who they see. Your name, your class, the things they'll paint from (age, build, people, bearing) and what you have on. If any of it's not quite you, That is not quite me takes you to the looking glass in your personal space, to change your character or your clothes. That leaves the tavern.
3. Frame and ground. The frame round your likeness and the ground behind you, once Sable has the wood and the colour for them. Choosing one sets the likeness you already have in it straight away. Leave both alone if you like.
4. The fee. Paid in coppers, or with a sitting you traded Sable supplies for. Press Sit and they start.

While you wait

It takes a minute or two, longer if the light is bad. You don't need to stand there: Leave them to it and get on with your evening. When they're done, a notification says Sable has finished, and the picture is already on you.

The likeness and the full-length portrait are one painting. Your face in the room is set into the house's round medallion, cut from a full-length painting of you, so the two always show the same person.

If it doesn't turn out

If they ruin it, you get your coppers back. Each picture gets several tries. If one still won't come right, it's refunded on its own: you keep the one that worked and get back what the other cost. A sitting you traded for is owed again if both are ruined.

If it came out, but it isn't you — the wrong hair, the wrong coat — go to the looking glass, put it right, and sit again. Sable paints from the glass every time, never from the last picture.

Trading Sable supplies

Once you've brought Sable the wood and the colour they asked for, they buy those things from you from then on: dry boards, ochre, beetle shell and silk off the cellar. Press Sable and pick Sell painting supplies. Sell them for coppers, or hand them over toward a sitting as you find them: two boards, an ochre, a beetle shell and a silk make one, owed until you next sit. Once Sable has all of one kind they need, they take no more of it toward the sitting; sell the rest. The Mercer doesn't buy the boards, ochre or silk any more; he still takes beetle shell.