Hair color and its Documentation

Something some of you short-living species might not know or fully understand is that hair color is fluid in almost every species. Have you ever talked about the hair color of your friend or family member, and told yourself "they had pretty blonde hair when they were young, but it darkened a bit through age," or something similar. Well, that's something hair does quite often. It all depends on the type of hair, and of course the person itself, but hair usually cycles through a range of colors. Sometimes those colors go from auburn to brown and then back. But sometimes they can change from black to blonde and then to red. The difference is usually minimal, so it is often not even noticed. And big color changes are rare, but sometimes hair changes a lot over the course of their life.

Different types

Across different species and ethnicities, the rate of change is very different. Here is a short and Incomplete list of some of the differences.

• Human: The lifespan of humans is not long enough for multiple cycles. Sometimes, if they have fast cycles, they can have a change or even two, but usually, they don't. They do change though, this can be seen in humans that live longer than their natural lifespan. This is most often seen in Northerners and Hearthlanders. A rule of thumb is that the further you go south, the less it occurs.
• Malen: we take Malen as a standard for these types of things, so for most of them it's pretty standard. They can change hair color but often it's only slightly.
• Snow-Malen: Snow-malen however, barely ever change a lot. A lot changes a little, like blonde hair that gets a little darker. But most of the Jhecheon malen have either white hair or black hair and will not change at all.
• Wood-Malen: Wood-malen change a lot compared to other malen. The Alta'aran and others southern clansmen are the exception, but most of the Dag'nii , Northir, and Osciria have a relatively high rate of big hair color changers.

Documentation

I have a lot of dossiers on important and less important people in this archive. And for most of them, I've listed hair color. But maybe you've spotted some kind of weird system of documentation for these hair colors. Because it is often not necessary, the documentation of changing color is not widespread. I did not invent it, that honor goes to Tyrkashiin At Matii .
Normally, if there is minimal or negligible change in hair color you would just write down the color of the hair. Otherwise, there is usually a main pattern that can be figured out. If so you will write down the pattern after an "STNDRD". So for example, a cycle of brown, black, red, black, and then blonde would be written down as. STNDRD: brown -> black -> red -> black -> blonde.
But what if one of the colors is longer than the other ones. This often happens and so there has to be a way to document this. This is just simply done by putting a 2 after the one that is longer. So for our last example. If the red is longer than the rest, then you would write it like this: brown -> black -> red2 -> black -> blonde. You can expand on that by putting a 3 after the one that's even longer than the long one. And so on.
Lastly, the hair is of course only one color at present time. So you can always put the current color above the STNDRD, marked with a CRNT. Then someone could also have two cycles that can just randomly switch. Or one that occurs only once in millennia and one that is active the rest of the time. Then you can either use two STNDRD cycles, or one STNDRD and one or multiple SEC cycles.
Admittedly, this is not a very complex way to document, but a lot of research on the consistency of color cycles went into it. But like almost everything, it can always be different than first thought, and someone could have something that is not really fit for documentation in this manner.

Why?

Actually, there is not one single reason or phenomenon that makes these changes occur. Mostly it's just genetics, but sometimes there are outside factors that are the reason for a change. Things like exposure to the sun or sometimes a curse. Fount is also known to influence hair color, making it paler. Someone who works around Wells for a long time will get pale white hair over time, but it will change back when the hair changes naturally. The funny thing about this is, that the hairs aren't all affected equally and at the same time, so at a certain point, someone with black hair will have some white locks, and some black ones.

Type

Natural

Demonstration of the process. Sometimes the hair can change as drastically as shown here.