Editing Slobgollion

location = [[Death|Death's Country]]|related=[[The Neathbow]]|caption1=You can't see it. But perhaps this fine fellow can.}}

<blockquote>''"Perhaps you'll never pronounce it quite like a Rubbery Man, but you finally know what 'slobgollion' means. It's the colour that oozes between life and death. Most humans will never perceive it, but for the first time, you're aware when you cross the threshold. Death's Country is always right here, cloaked by a colour that no living mind can fathom."''<ref name=":2">{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Slobgollion|Slobgollion|Fallen London|}}

'''Slobgollion''' is the Rubbery name<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Slobgollion|Slobgollion|Fallen London|}} ''"Perhaps you'll never pronounce it quite like a Rubbery Man, but you finally know what 'slobgollion' means."''</ref> - or the closest approximation, anyway<ref name=":1">{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Slobgollion|Slobgollion|Fallen London|}} ''"It sounds like 'slobgollion' to me, but somehow I doubt that our friend is referring to clumps of spermaceti. If that's even the word he's attempting to pronounce, then it must mean something else."''</ref> - for a color that is simply unfathomable to humans. Existing just beyond the edge of the [[Neathbow]], it is woven into the "net-of-the-world,"<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Slobgollion|Slobgollion|Fallen London|}}''"It's that colour again – that eye-blistering, uncanny colour! Every light-beam bends, stretching into a spectrum: green, viric, blue, apocyan, and all the radiant rest. But there – right there! – somewhere between irrigo and oblivion, another colour floods through the net-of-the-world."''</ref> the veil that separates the land of the living from [[Death|Death's Country]]; this property renders the latter imperceptible to living creatures, despite the fact that Death's Country shares a physical space with the living world.<ref name=":0">{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Slobgollion|Slobgollion|Fallen London|}} ''"Most humans will never perceive it, but for the first time, you're aware when you cross the threshold. Death's Country is always right here, cloaked by a colour that no living mind can fathom."''</ref>  

==Beyond the Visible Spectrum of Forbidden Light==

[[File:Amberpurple.png|thumb|A chunk of dead amber]]<blockquote>''"Just as blue might suggest sorrow; or red, anger; or green, tranquility; so, too, does slobgollion evoke emotions. But they aren't emotions that you're shaped to experience. You lack the synapses, the glands, and the lobes that would translate the pain into something different."<ref name=":2" />''</blockquote>The fact that [[Death]] is strange in the [[Neath]] is well-documented. Many of its now-permanent residents have spent some time in a slow boat passing a dark beach on a silent river. What none will tell, however, is the tale of their journey there.<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Slobgollion|Slobgollion|Fallen London|}}''"Do you remember what it's like to die? I don't. Nobody does. We remember Death's Country, but not how we got there, and not how we got here again. The journey itself is a fog."''</ref> This journey cannot be remembered, for it passes through the slobgollion barrier that covers the net-of-the-world, and slobgollion cannot be fathomed by the human mind.<ref name=":0" />

The nonhuman mind, however, is more flexible. The [[Rubbery Men]] are known to have many organs which science has not yet described nor understood. Furthermore, they are able to transfer some portion of their experiences and emotions to humans through the trade of [[amber]].<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Slobgollion|Slobgollion|Fallen London|}}''"Amber is impressionable. That chunk experienced everything that Mr McIntosh did. It won't let you feel exactly what he felt, but your senses should be more... elastic."''</ref> While this may be a means of perceiving slobgollion, it would not be advisable to attempt such an experiment: slobgollion covers more than the net-of-the-world. Things which have known death become tainted with the color, and to perceive it at all is damaging to the human psyche thanks to its eldritch and incomprehensible nature.<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Slobgollion|Slobgollion|Fallen London|}}''"Sometimes you can still see it: before you fall asleep; on a Constable's truncheon; in a devil's grin [...] the deeper you stare into its eye-blistering abyss, the more you appreciate ''why ''it hurts. Just as blue might suggest sorrow; or red, anger; or green, tranquility; so, too, does slobgollion evoke emotions. But they aren't emotions that you're shaped to experience. You lack the synapses, the glands, and the lobes that would translate the pain into something different."''</ref> It is a mercy, then, that the inhabitants of Death's Country do not wish to be perceived by the living, and will confiscate Dead Amber on sight.<ref>{{Citation|https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Slobgollion|Slobgollion|Fallen London|}}''"Bony hands reach over your shoulder. One plucks the Chunk of Dead Amber away. You see it vanish, sucked into the slobgollion, and then the slobgollion vanishes too."''</ref>

[[File:Prism.png|thumb|The Neathbow, seen through a prism]]

Since it exists beyond the [[Neathbow]], "between irrigo and oblivion," slobgollion is comparable to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet ultraviolet] and/or [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared infrared] radiation - frequencies that exist beyond each edge of the visible (to humans) spectrum of light. The existing artwork of the Neathbow would indicate, when compared to the visible spectrum of light as seen through a prism, that slobgollion lies between [[irrigo]] and [[gant]] as a lower "frequency" more comparable to infrared.  

Some types of snakes and bats can detect infrared radiation, and a few species of fish have been reported to be able to see near-infrared light. Insects and some non-human mammals can see near-ultraviolet light, and butterflies use it to communicate. Birds take this to the next level, as they have an ''entire fourth color receptor'' for ultraviolet rays (though only some have proper UV vision). Many birds also have specific patterns in their plumage that are only visible under UV light.

 

The term "slobgollion" is used in Herman Melville's novel ''Moby Dick'' to describe the remains of a sperm whale - hence the Implacable Detective's comment about spermaceti.<ref name=":1" /> Legend has it that the term is whaler slang, but the veracity of this statement is unknown. Others propose that Melville meant to refer to (or conflate) "slumgullion," a term for meat stew, and/or "slubberdegullion," a term for a slobbering and unhygienic person.

 

 

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