Alchemy

Alchemy is the art of combining alchemically active substances to make potions, oils and other consumables.

Alchemists quickly realized that they could refine a single ingredient into a preparation with interesting, but quite weak, properties, and alchemically active substances are still initially discovered by doing this. Things got interesting when an enterprising alchemist managed to combine two ingredients, one of Chaos and one of Order to get a much more potent effect of Creation. After some head scratching the alchemist concluded that they somehow managed to access a higher order effect that didn’t express at the lowest level, and began experimenting, eventually refining the Alchemical Principles.

Using Alchemicals

Anyone can use most alchemicals with 5 seconds appropriate roleplay (drink potion, apply blade oil, etc). Some higher order alchemicals may have Advanced Alchemist Only or Creator Only on the label. Any character with Sense Magic can detect an alchemical substance on sight, including any food or drink that’s been alchemically treated, but not identify the exact substance.

The Trader and Alchemy skills give the ability to recognize commonly known alchemicals based on their external characteristics. The Alchemy skill also allows a character to identify unknown alchemicals with appropriate investigative roleplay, destroying the alchemical.

Making Alchemicals

To prepare an alchemical the alchemist decides their ingredients and puts them together with at least a minute of roleplay. This will then produce an alchemical according to the alchemical principles. Basic ingredients can be bought from the task force stores, but any advanced ingredients need to be provided specially. They can also specify what ingredient they’d like to manifest, or block manifestation of ingredients. If the effect that would manifest is outside of their skill range, they learn the order of the effect that would have manifested but the alchemical is too unstable and fizzles away. If the recipe can’t manifest any effect an inert alchemical will be produced.

If an alchemist is making an alchemical they know, and it’s entirely within their skill level, they can make a batch of alchemicals at the same time.

While only one alchemist is in charge of making the alchemical, others can participate. While they will make no difference to the alchemical made, when creating a new recipe having extra participants may give some extra insight into the ingredients used. How much information depends on how ambitious the recipe is, and how much is already known about the ingredients. Close observation of fallout is especially likely to yield insight; the alchemist can choose to use unstable procedures and deliberately cause fallout if they wish to take advantage of this.

Any number of ingredients used beyond the alchemist’s skill level will cause fallout. Only as much fallout can be caused as the alchemist can safely use ingredients, or the alchemy is cancelled.

Alchemists can make recipes they’ve made before and are entirely within their skill level in downtime, but can attempt to make recipes they’ve not made before or use a number of ingredients beyond their skill level in uptime only.

Alchemists can experiment with recipes they’ve never tried before a limited number of times per interactive. When an alchemist makes something for the first time, they should write it down (and check with the ref they’ve got it down right) so they can show this if they want to make it again. An alchemist can teach another by letting them copy the recipe, but if they do, get a ref to check the recipe.

Alchemical Principles

Principle of Partial composition

Alchemical ingredients contain elements isolated as partials. Each partial has an order and element. For a partial to have an effect on the the alchemical it must be activated by combining a sufficient number of the same element at the same order. It seems that first order partials can be activated with a single ingredient while at least two different ingredients of the same element are necessary to activate a second order partial.

Principle of Negation

An active partial will negate expression of any amount of same order partials of the opposite element.

Principle of Least Expression

The lowest order active partials that are not negated will express in a preparation. If there are multiple active un-negated partials in that order, they all express.

Principle of Singular Manifestation

Only one of the expressed ingredients can manifest in to an effect. The alchemist can encourage a single ingredient to manifest, or choose a number of ingredients to block manifestation of. If the encouraged ingredient can manifest, it will, otherwise a random expressed ingredient that isn’t blocked will manifest. If no ingredients can manifest, an inert alchemical is produced.

Consuming Souls

It’s known that souls can be consumed by an alchemical process, but most who have done so haven’t been very forthcoming with their research, for obvious reasons. Rumour has it that a soul’s sentient nature means it can be shaped by the alchemist in to almost any alchemical behaviour possible; this flexibility may be why they’re particularly effective in improvised alchemy. A willing possessor of a soul must be present for the alchemist to draw upon. An alchemist can consume their own soul. Using multiple souls in the creation of a single alchemical appears to suffer diminishing returns on effectiveness. Consuming someone’s soul kills them instantly.

Side Effects

Alchemy almost always has side effects. The side effects seem to apply to the administrator of the alchemical regardless of how it’s administered; it seems the act of imposing an effect on the world through alchemy is what causes side effects, rather than any physiological process.

Alchemical preparations work via elemental manipulation that stresses the body. Using more than one alchemical per encounter will cause side effects. For each alchemical that a character uses over their limit the character will incur an overdose effect that must be resolved by seeing a ref.

Frequent overuse of alchemicals will result in more severe side effects than usual. Frequent use of the same type of alchemical can result in addiction, and eventually a lasting personality change in line with the alchemical’s side effects. This is especially true if alchemicals are overused in stressful circumstances.

Known Recipes

Except for minor mood enhancers, there are the following known recipes that can be created with basic ingredients.

Name	Ingredients (Manifested)	Order	Type	Effect	Side Effect
Stabilising Salve	Purple	1	Salve	After smearing this on your hand, you may call CURE 1 at touch range on 2 dying targets within 10 seconds.	EFFECT: Compassion.
Potion of Health	Halite Amanita	2	Potion	CURE 4 on the imbiber.	EFFECT: Confidence.
Helping Hand	Halite Amanita	2	Potion	Imbiber can call ranged CURE 2.	EFFECT: You feel very protective of others.
Phosphorous Oil	Red Phosphorus	1	Weapon Oil	Next hit with weapon causes DOUBLE	EFFECT: Vigilance
Igneous Oil	Taste of Success Guarana Root Red Phosphorus Halite	2	Weapon Oil	Next hit with weapon causes TRIPLE	EFFECT: You are acutely aware that violence is a simple solution to most problems.
Drachma’s Sting	Taste of Success Guarana Root Red Phosphorus Halite	2	Ingested poison	Causes a WOUND when consumed.	EFFECT: Devious and ambitious.

Example 1

Charlie the Alchemist decides that the Igneous Oil recipe is inefficient and wants to improve upon it. Guarana Root and Taste of Success are the only ingredients they know that combine to make a second order Destruction effect, so starts with them, encouraging the Taste of Success to try to make a TRIPLE weapon oil.

There are two matching second order partials, so by the Principle of Partial Composition they activate and could express at the culmination of the preparation to make a second order Destruction effect. So far so good. However, the Guarana Root and Taste of Success also have first order partials. Since a first order partial only needs one ingredient, they both activate as well. The preparation now has three active partials: first order Chaos, first order Creation and second order Destruction. Unfortunately, by the Principle of Least Expression, only the lowest order active, un-negated partials express. Because Charlie encouraged the Taste of Success to manifest, they end up with a potion that causes the drinker to feel restlessness. Not the desired outcome.

Charlie needs to eliminate the undesired first order partials for the second order partial to express. For this they apply the Principle of Negation to try to eliminate the Creation and Chaos partials in the first order. Only Halite has a first order partial of Order, so they try adding that. In this recipe the second order Destruction, and three first order partials activate and the second order Creation does not, because it is second order and the recipe doesn’t have two ingredients with that partial. The Order and Chaos first order partials negate each other, leaving only the Creation first order partial and Destruction second order partial. The first order partial expresses and manifests to create a (remarkably inefficient) potion that causes the drinker to feel Vitality.

Charlie needs to negate the final first order partial, which is Creation. They know of only one ingredient that has a first order Destruction partial - Red Phosphorus. They resignedly put in Red Phosphorus, exactly recreating the Igneous Oil recipe. It seems they will need to find more ingredients with different properties if they want to make Igneous Oil more efficiently.

Example 2

Eve has managed to obtain some of a new unknown alchemical ingredient and wants to make something out of it. She begins by preparing it by itself, creating an alchemical that causes the imbiber to feel Truthful, indicating that the first order partial is Order. She then gets some assistants to participate, and tries to find the second order partial by mixing the ingredient with Halite and Taste of Success, hoping that it has a second order partial of either Creation or Destruction, and that this will cause it to express. Eve deliberately uses unsafe procedures in the hope that more instability might yield insight to her assistants, and chooses to cause two fallout. The attending ref draws the fallout, calling MASS MAGIC TRIPLE, WIDE EFFECT: Anger. The first order partials of Chaos, Order, Order all cancel out, but nothing expresses at the second order. Unfortunate, but they’ve at least learned by elimination that the second order partial, assuming it exists, is either Order or Chaos. The ref whispers to an assistant that while getting a face full of magic damage they observed a flash of what appeared to be a second order Chaos effect, but not enough to express. Eve knows of no other ingredients with second order Chaos at this time, so she notes this down for later experimentation, then turns to face some (now very angry...) fellow agents who were caught in the fallout...