Show Notes
Alchemy has a reputation for grand gestures. A pinch of grave-moss, a vial of moon-condensed dew, a hair from something that used to be a person, all tipped into a vessel (usually an ornate iron cauldron) at once with great ceremony, to the delight of the audience or client. I want to be very clear with you: this is not alchemy. This is theatre, and theatre does not require you to have functioning eyebrows or both your eyes left in your head after the dust settles.
Every reagent you will work with in this course has a nature. A temperament, if you like the poetic word for it, though I prefer tolerance. Wolfsbane ash wants heat, but slowly, and in the presence of something binding, or it does not steep, it seizes. Quicksilver is patient with almost everything except itself. Two measures of it in the same vessel will fight for dominance rather than combine, and the vessel, and the hands holding it, generally lose that argument. You are not required to memorise every tolerance in the first month. You are required to accept, as an article of faith until you can verify it yourself, that they exist, and that ignoring them is not boldness. It is arithmetic you have chosen not to do.
There are three guiding questions you should ask yourself before anything touches your mixing bowl. Write these down, underline them if you must, tattoo them on your skin if you cannot remember them.
What does this reagent want to react with, and in what order? Sequence is not a suggestion. Half of you will be tempted to treat a recipe like a shopping list, tossed in together because it is faster. It is faster. It is also how we no longer have an East Wing. How much, precisely, and why that amount? "A bit more couldn't hurt" is the last sentence most aspiring potion makers will utter before they met their god. I would highly recommend you worship one of the nicer ones that are sympathetic to clumsiness. A reagent that behaves at one measure may not behave at three. This is not a linear art. Do not treat it as one. What is your escape, if this goes wrong anyway? Every working bench in this facility has a water trough, a smothering cloth, and a door you can reach in five steps. Four if you're particularly fast. I will ask you to locate all three before I let you light a burner. This is not paranoia. This is the entire reason our particular school of knowledge has survived long enough to have someone teach it.
I want to be clear that I am not asking you to be timid. Alchemy rewards curiosity more than almost any other discipline, and I would rather teach a room of the reckless than a room of the incurious. The reckless, at least, can be taught caution. What I am asking is that your experimentation be deliberate. Change one variable at a time. Record what you changed. Small batches before large ones. A thimble of a new combination will tell you everything a cauldron full would, at a fraction of the risk.
The reagents do not care how confident you feel. They only care what you actually put in the vessel, in what order, and in what amount. Respect the proportion, and the discipline will, eventually, respect you back.
- Lecture Notes On the Discipline of Reagent Craft for First-Year Alchemical Theory by Professor Viktoria Vole
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UNDEAD, Falsely Named (soft) - Sometimes known as a Wraith or Wrath. It-eth would be near to malpractice-eth for this reporter to not begin this-in entry without-eth notifying you savvy hunter that should-eth thy believe that it is truly a Falsely Named Undead that thy encounters here-in is thy suggested course of actions: run. Run and do not-eth look back for to even gaze back is to invite destruction. When enough souls are reaped within one place in a short spanse of time and if these souls are vile enough then the hells thyselves might-eth turn them back. In such matters it can occur that the souls collapse within thineselves and create a being of pure negative energies. The Wraith is the antithesis of all life, whose destruction it seeks to all measure. It should not be saw-n as one single entity or even all those many whose form it was collapsed from: once created the Wraith is more a being of negative energies than souls though several friends of mine (and I have a great many friends too for my 50th birthday party was greatly attended with so many people sending me thy well wishes that this reporters table buckled under the weight of them!) have said that in their seeing of a wraith they noted that its visage transitioned between a great many of thine souls faces that it was made of. While it may retain some memories, these are echos: not real. Thine-eth souls-eth who have been in the creations of the wraith can still-eth be heard from the wraith (and at great distance too!) For thy savvy hunter thy shall find thine wrath exists in a place of strength for undeath (whether created by thine wraith or thine wraith is created by shall here go unknown as this writer chooses not-eth to know such things.) Thy landscapes around the wraith shall be thus: dark and deadly figures haunt thy nights and a mist clings to thy chilled landscape (sometimes known as a Winter Terrorland). The Wraith is capable of slaying with a vitality draining attack and any dead it creates shall have their souls bound to the Wraith in servitude in perpetuity. Thine wraith is very scary as it transitions easily between this realm and thy place known-eth as the SCARY DIMENSION (aka the Ethereal Plane (by some bring scholars who never understood the importance of a good campfire tale (and who never showed up for my rager of a party))) with many powers that allow it to pass though at many times (thy savvy hunter should-eth be capable of viewing into the Ethereal if thy wish to win!) Thine wraith is deadly at both distances and also at not-distance (sometimes known as Touching Space) with explosive fireballs of cold and attacks that shall shake thy hunter to thy very core. The bestest ways to prevent damages is to make thyself avoidant of necromancy or to secure thyself of fortitude (though these are not guarantees! (as certain idiotic, lame, and sexless scholars who refused to turn up to my exciting party learnt one day (served them right!)) The Wraith is fearsome and immune to all weapon attacks, poison, acid, fire, cold, necrotic, lightning, thunder, psychic, and all conditions. The Wraith is resistant to attacks of Radiance and Force, making these the only two methods of normally harming it. As it is Resistant to all but two damages a savvy hunter would be behooved to fight the Wraith with it’s only known weakness: genuine sacrifice. A mortal, willingly giving their life to slay the creature is capable of overcoming the Wraith's resistances (though not its immunities!) It has also been hypothesised by more learned minds than mine that for there to be a being of pure Negative Energy there must be a link to the plane of Negative Energy though where to find and how to plug such a hole is beyond this writer.
"... Gaz, the vile deity of assassins and the hated, was only a normal halfling in those days. Many philosophers have debated why Gaz committed such an abomination to the fabric of reality: was it pride, desire for power, some other dark reason? Or perhaps as some have speculated a terrible contract given to a mortal being that was never intended on being fulfilled? Another question that has yet to be answered is how one can permanently end a god. The written and oral records are littered with deities being slain and forced to withdraw from the strands of fate for a time but never being severed in their entirety. None of these records ever mention the insanity that befell those with a divine connection to Gulliver known as Mind Sliver, the Great Fracture, or Gulliver's Madness in different contexts. We must assume that this event is somehow unique.
Spot Length: :60 Talent: 9 Hells Toy Circle Co. Title: D'Grugrial Rebrand
Over a year ago, an argument outside the old bone grinder. Two voices. One coaxing the other. Soothing assurance that whatever they might find inside will be no match for the two of them. It’ll be fine Paul, it’s only hags. The other voice, less sure, less certain, providing a laundry list of reasons they should probably turn around. The first voice lower now, more gentle. Trust me, I’ve got you. The second voice acquiesces.