Brown

Brown is the fourth of the seven registered hues and the only one whose classification remains disputed by the Chromatic Adjudicators. It is defined in the Manual of Consistent Hue, Schedule 2, as "any colour admitting of no redness, yellowness, blueness, or whiteness in sufficient quantity to be entered elsewhere," a definition drafted negatively because the Adjudicators could not agree on what Brown positively was. Brown occupies roughly one third of the Tower's shelving, a proportion that has held constant across four surveys and has never been satisfactorily explained.

Classification and the Four Vessels

The Manual of Consistent Hue establishes Brown by comparison against four sealed vessels kept in the Adjudication Chamber on the floor the catalogue lists simply as "near the Paint Room." A sample is held beside each vessel in turn; if it matches none, it is Brown. The vessels have not been opened since 1287, when a junior adjudicator broke the seal on the second vessel to settle an argument and the resulting colour has never been entered in any register. The break is noted in the margin of the chamber's copy of the Manual in a hand that no one has identified.

Brown is the only hue for which the Tower maintains a sub-register, the Register of Brown Substitutions, which records every occasion on which a colour entered as Brown was later reclassified. The register runs to eleven volumes and is still open. Its most frequent entry is "reclassified as Grey; reason not recorded," which the Grey articles elsewhere in the archive have never acknowledged.

The Brown Door and the Keeper's Objection

The most cited incident in Brown's administrative history concerns the small brown door catalogued in the School of Literal Inventory in 1308. The door appeared in the Inventory as Brown, was struck out as anomalous by Halven Roos, ninth Keeper of the Sheet, and has been struck out again by each of Roos's successors without exception. Roos's marginal note gives the reason as "brown of insufficient consequence to be a door," a formulation that has been quoted in six subsequent rulings and understood in none of them.

"The entry is Brown and the Brown is the entry; strike out the colour and the door goes with it. I have struck out both and expect no thanks."

— Halven Roos, marginal note to the 1308 Inventory, fol. 44 recto

The Grey Basin Transcripts later described the door's colour as "a brown of good character," which the Keeper's office has cited as evidence that the door was never Brown at all and the Adjudicators have cited as evidence that it was. Both citations appear in the same footnote of the Precedence of Hue commentary, without adjudication between them.

Precedence

Under the Edict of Precedence, Brown ranks fourth in processions of colour and third in funerary usage, a discrepancy that the Alphabetical Precedence faction has never accepted. The dispute is old enough that the Third Concordance addresses it twice and contradicts itself between clauses 14 and 27. The Fifth Concordance, drafted to reconcile them, adds a third position: that Brown's rank depends on whether the sample is viewed by lamplight, which it does not.

Brown's precedence among inks is settled differently. The Ink-Mixing Guild holds that Brown is not a hue but a method, and that any hue may be made Brown by the addition of sufficient iron-gall. The Adjudicators reject this, noting that the Guild has a commercial interest in the position. The Register of Standing records that a holding elevated to Full Authentication is entered in black ink rather than brown, which both parties cite and neither explains.

The Underside Floors

Brown is disproportionately represented on the floors below the tenth basement, where shelving is described in expedition inventories as "brown throughout, without variation." The third expedition to the underside, in the winter of 1194, returned with an inventory of four hundred Brown holdings and no conclusions, a pattern the Tower's later expeditions have repeated. The expedition's surveyor, a clerk named Ottiline Vare, recorded in the Logbook of Omissions that the brown of the underside floors "does not vary with the light, and I have stopped testing it." Her entry is followed by the reserve of leaves 1,061 through 1,140 for Anticipatory Omissions, and Brown does not reappear in the Logbook after that point.

The Living Stone holdings near the base of the Central Spire are also Brown, though the Adjudicators classify them as "Brown by accretion" and therefore not Brown. Chronological Precedence Practice records that this distinction was invented in 1402 to prevent the spire from being entered as a single Brown object, which it would otherwise be.

Anticipatory Omissions

Brown is one of three hues for which the archive maintains an anticipated rather than a completed record. The practice began when the Dream-Scribes reported cataloguing large quantities of Brown in holdings that were never written, and the Librarians judged it cheaper to record the omission than to investigate the holdings. Since then every unwritten Brown article has been listed in the reserve leaves reserved for the purpose, each entry giving the holding's floor, its approximate extent, and the date on which it was decided not to describe it. The reserve currently runs to 79 leaves and is considered adequate. Floor 1024 contains no Brown holdings, a fact noted in its own article without comment and repeated here for completeness.

Whether Brown is a colour at all remains formally unresolved. The Chromatic Adjudicators have voted on the question four times and on each occasion the motion has been tabled rather than carried, on the grounds that tabling is the older procedure. The Precedence of Hue continues to rank Brown fourth regardless, as it has since the first recension, and the shelving has never been reorganized to reflect any other view. Readers wishing to consult Brown holdings should note that the lamps on the underside floors are not to be relit once extinguished.