The Updates

Alchemy

What Is It?

If a man had the right paraphenalia, this could be a profitable fact. Because in their pure form the Powers have... well... power. A phial of pure Fire, a drop of pure Ocean, a puff of pure Sky: all are deeply powerful magical artefacts with many, many uses.

It's possible that in the Dreamtime and maybe even at the start of the First Age these pure essences of Power still laid about the landscape ripe for the using, but it's very evident that this is no longer the case. A handful of earth from the ground does not pulse with magical energy. If you light a candle, the flame does nothing except burn your finger if you put it too close. And alchemists know the reason why.

They're no longer pure.

All the pure samples of essence have been used up. All that's left are diluted and impure mixtures. But with the right equipment, the right recipes and a healthy disregard for your own personal safety, they can be purified, distilled and made into the essence of a Power, a substance that's veritably pulsing with arcane power.

Being an Alchemist

There's also the fact that while alchemy isn't actively illegal in Horizon, you do require a licence to produce or possess Essence. (Though you don't, for some reason, need a licence to possess a magical item produced using Essence.) To get one, you need to apply at the Ministry of Public Works. An Alchemist's Licence requires a lot of things of you.

• It allows the Watchdogs to search your house without a warrant.
• It requires you to fill out a form providing the Ministry of Public Works with details of every Essence you make, including where you got the ingredients from.
• The Ministry of Public works can require you to perform tasks for them in an emergency.
• It requires you to pay a regular Alchemist's Insurance, to help finance the repairs for the damage done to the city by meddling alchemists. This is a Significant purchase per turn.

As a result, the only people who own such licences are people whose professional work involves alchemy: instructors at the Imperial University, government-sponsored advisors, and the like. Alchemy is, in general, performed in back alleys, basements and other places where the Watchdogs aren't going to notice.

Obtaining Essences

Obviously, for more complicated applications of essences you're going to need a purer sample. For these purposes, there are three grades of Essence: Coarse, Fine and Pure.

Coarse is perhaps an inaccurate term for the stuff. It still requires a great deal of time and effort to make, and it's still extremely, extremely pure. A single sample of Coarse essence can go for a guilder or two (a Notable purchase).
Fine essence, on the other hand, is far more potent. It is still not entirely pure, but we really are talking only about trace elements here. A sample can fetch as much as a hundred Guilders (a Major purchase).
Truly pure essence is the stuff of legends. The appearance of a truly pure sample is major news around the world; the means to produce it was lost with the Emperor (though countless charlatans claim to be able to make it). Certainly there is nowhere that a pure sample is publically known to exist. If some did indeed come onto the market it'd go to the highest bidder, which may well turn out to be a country (at least a Staggering purchase).

Essence is most definitely not sold over-the-counter: if you spend a turnsheet action, you will be able to find somebody willing to sell you a Coarse-grade essence. Finding someone willing to sell you a Fine essence requires much more time and effort.

For similar reason, just being an alchemist doesn't automatically mean that you can sell the stuff. Like we say, nobody sells Essence over the counter. You need to find a buyer yourself. If you meet somebody in session who's willing to pay for the stuff, then selling it to them is only a housekeeping action and doesn't need to be detailed. Otherwise, it takes a Turnsheet action spent hanging around a drizzly alley at night to find someone who wants to buy your stuff. The GMs do not guarantee that the man you sell your goods to will then vanish into the sea of Unnamed NPCs and be forgotten about, either. Selling dodgy (and possibly explosive) wares is like that.

Making Essences

Most crucially, you can only spend one turnsheet action per turn distilling an Essence in this way. Doing alchemy is a long, difficult process and demands all your spare time: if you divide your attention between two different projects you'll soon find yourself knee-deep in foaming green sludge as shards of the glass that used to be a beaker rain down around you.

Apprentice alchemists require five turnsheet actions to produce one sample of Coarse essence.
Journeyman alchemists require four turnsheet actions to get one sample of Coarse essence or six to get one sample of Fine essence.
Master alchemists need four turnsheet actions to get one sample of Coarse essence, or five to get one sample of Fine essence.

Fortunately, there are ways to make the process go faster:

• If you have an Alchemist's Lab, then it takes you one less turn to produce Fine essence.

• If you (or one of your apprentices) specialises in the kind of essence you are making, it will take you one less turn to produce it.

• It's widely acknowledged that if you can get really good-quality ingredients, the process of producing the substance is substantially shortened. It's assumed that all alchemists don't automatically know where to get such quality goods; you'll have to find out during the process of the game.

The process can also be slowed down. If you're sufficiently destitute not to have a room where you can stick your equipment so that nobody nudges your crucibles, then the process will take one turn more than normal, and none of the above bonuses apply. (A Lab automatically counts here as "a room to stick your equipment".)

Essence can be diluted and concentrated. If you already have two units of Coarse essence (of the same Power, naturally), and you're a Journeyman or Master alchemist, you can mix them together and concentrate the solution into a Fine essence, the process only taking one turnsheet action. Likewise, if you have a unit of Fine essence, you can dilute it down into two units of Coarse essence; but this is rather more time-consuming, taking three turnsheet actions (you need to make sure it doesn't get *too* far diluted, or you've wasted your essence). Having a specialisation in the kind of essence you're using will take a turn off the time, as per normal.

The best way to speed up the process is to collaborate with several other alchemists. If you have seveal alchemists collaborating on a project, when calculating the amount of turns needed for the project you use the highest Alchemy skill out of everybody collaborating. Then anybody in the team can put turnsheet actions into the project. Each alchemist can still only use one turnsheet action per turn on alchemy, but multiple people can use turnsheet actions on the same project.

For example, suppose a Master Alchemist and two Journeyman Alchemists are working on a sample of Fine essence. It takes Master Alchemists five turnsheet actions to produce a sample, so the team needs five turnsheet actions between them. On the first turn all three of them put an action in, and on the second turn the two Journeymen put an action in, finishing the Essence off.

By "collaborating" here we mean "putting a turnsheet action in on the first turn". So you can't just hang around being a Master Alchemist and letting other people leech off your knowledge without ever getting your hands dirty.

We will assume that everyone involved will make whatever alchemical resources they have (such as apprentices and labs) available to work on the project, unless you state otherwise (perhaps because you don't want the others to know where your lab is, for example). Note that alchemical labs will only ever reduce the time required to make the Essence by one turn, no matter how many you have involved in the project; on the flipside, having multiple labs available could be useful if a lab has to be abandoned in a hurry - for example, if you get a tipoff about an imminent Watchdog raid.

Recipes

If you're feeling rather less carefree and crazy, you might try getting an alchemist to follow a recipe that'll make it into something even cooler than the pure, distilled essence of a fundamental force of nature. Like a magic sword.

Alchemists start off knowing a certain amount of recipes for magical items:

Apprentice Alchemists start with one recipe in their chosen speciality and one other.
Journeyman Alchemists start with two recipes in their chosen speciality and two others.
Master alchemists start with two recipes in their chosen speciality and five others.

Actual recipes come in three levels of difficulty.

• Fiddly recipes can be carried out by anybody who's been taught them. Learning such a recipe requires no more than having a piece of paper with the recipe written on.

• Involved recipes are trickier: they require fine manipulation of Essences, and as such can only be carried out by a Journeyman or Master alchemist.

• Painstaking recipes are where the real effort is required, and can't be performed by anybody but a Master alchemist.

Recipes will also call for certain amounts of Essence of a certain purity. If you're really stuck for Essence, you can substitute Fine essence for Coarse essence but it won't make the item any more powerful: it'll just waste a perfectly good Fine Essence.

A couple of example recipes are:

Phoenix egg:
"The youth of today is getting crazier and crazier. I've heard that one of the bands of spring kiddies has got an alchemist working for them now. A couple came to my house, said I better give them all my drink or they'd egg me. Well, I ain't scared of a bit of yolk, so I told them where to go. Next thing I knew an egg had smashed on my window and the whole wall was on fire. They need some sense beaten into 'em, they do."

Elixir of Truth:
"ROLL UP! Roll up, ladies and gentlemen! Afraid your lovely wife is cuckolding you? Want to learn what your mates really think? Then why not try this FABulous, MARvellous potion of UTTER TRUTH! The only one of its kind, crafted by alchemists tearing SECRETS from the OCEAN ITSELF! Find out the truth! Only ten guilders to you there, sir, ten guilders is the price I ask for this POTION of ARCANE POWER! Nosir, no, Officer, it's just a novelty item, made from miscellaneous herbs and spices. Argh! No! Don't do that!"

(The man is gripped firmly by several watchdogs while their captain forces the potion down his throat.)

"Well, sir, it was an elixir of truth. I get them from Mad Jared, the alchemist who lives on Battleknot street, sell them on the streets for him and take a cut of the money. No sir, he has no licence. And more than twice he's stolen the reagents he needs. And you really, really could use a breath mint. I'm going to the Doghouse for this, aren't I?"

Flying Carpet:
"Those Juricans are crazy. I just came back from there, delivering some glassware to Mad Arib. No, no, that's just a name. He's an alchemist, that's why the glassware. So he thanks me, invites me in for a drink, and then offers me a lift back. But I don't see any stables near his house, and I tell him that. 'Stables?' he asks me. 'I don't need no stables.' And you'll never believe what happened next..."

Alchemical Research

To begin research on a new recipe, the first thing you need is an idea of what kind of thing it'll do and what kind of essences it will require. At this stage, you only need broad details: the cracks will be filled in for you when and only when the research is complete. The second thing you need is to spend a turnsheet action leafing through musty old tomes on alchemy and thinking about how best to craft this recipe. (If you don't have access to musty old alchemical tomes, you'll need to get it somehow. The University has plenty.)

During turnsheeting, the GMs will let you know whether you think the idea is possible or not, and which essence the recipe will require. You will then need to acquire a sample of the essence used to make your recipe and spend several turnsheet actions using it to fine-tune your recipe. Like when you're brewing Essence, you can only spend one turnsheet action per turn on researching a new recipe.

Fine-tuning takes four turnsheet actions for a Master alchemist, or six for a Journeyman. This is reduced by one if you have access to an Alchemist's Lab, and by one if one of the essences required in the recipe is your speciality. It is not affected by Apprentices.

When this is over, you will have a new recipe. Now and only now will you find out the precise details of what exactly it does.

Example: Dr. Crock, a paranoid Master Alchemist at the University, decides that he wants to develop a way to make his clothes as tough as the hills so as to deter assassins. That turn, he turnsheets:

"Begin research on an alchemical recipe which uses essence of Land to make my clothes as tough as the hills."

During turnsheeting, the GMs tell him that this recipe will require a sample of coarse Land. Unfortunately, Crock doesn't have any samples at the moment. During the meeting, he arranges to buy a sample of Coarse Land from Crazy Ahmed, a back-street alchemist. He can now begin the fine-tuning.

This would normally take four turnsheet actions, as Crock is a Master alchemist. However, he has a Lab and the Land is his speciality. So it will only require two. He spends one turnsheet action this turn and one next turn on the research, and soon finishes the recipe. The GMs tell him the details of the recipe: that it is an Involved recipe, which requires sealing the clothes in a container with the Essence, which is then kept pressurised for a week, and that the effect only lasts as long as the clothes are kept above ground.

Now that Crock has the recipe, he can use it himself or even sell it to Crazy Ahmed, who would then be able to use it himself without having to do any research.

Rumours

I heard there's a man living in the sewers who knows where there's a vial of completely pure essence of Star.

Imperialists have started using vials of Fire instead of Moltov cocktails. The effect is similar, but they make everyone in the building go beserk as well.

The secret to making Pure essences didn't die with the Emperor. One of his consorts knew. Too bad he was in the Treacherous Lands when the Empire fell. I wonder what he's doing now? Probably hiding under a rock and shaking, I'd guess.

Essence of Ocean is a truth potion. If you drink it you'll be forced to speak the truth for a whole day.

A mad alchemist once made a walking, talking, living man out of essence of purified earth. They can reproduce and there's no way to tell them apart from normal humans. Trust nobody - they're out there, biding their time until it's right to invade.

Summary

Apprentice Alchemists:

• start with one recipe in their chosen speciality and one other.
• begin the game with two samples of Coarse essence.
• can carry out Fiddly recipes.
• require five turnsheet actions to produce a sample of Coarse essence.
• cannot research new recipes.

Journeyman Alchemists:

• start with two recipes in their chosen speciality and two others.
• begin the game with four samples of Coarse essence.
• can carry out Involved or Fiddly recipes.
• require four turnsheet actions to get one sample of Coarse essence or six to get one sample of Fine essence.
• require six turnsheet actions to research a new recipe.

Master Alchemists:

• start with two recipes in their chosen speciality and five others.
• begin the game with two samples of Coarse essence and one of Fine essence.
• can carry out Fiddly, Involved or Painstaking recipes.
• require four turnsheet actions to get one sample of Coarse essence, or five to get one sample of Fine essence.
• require four turnsheet actions to research a new recipe.