Empire of Alchemy

Alchemy

• Fundamentally, alchemy is the use of the natural world’s ingredients to bend it to a person’s will. This includes health, destruction, metals, and many others. The prevailing idea is that nothing is impossible, we just need to find the right combinations.

• Potions are made for different aims: Anti-depressants, health potions, bombs, shake for light, fire starting, curing diseases, growing plants (although that one might just be water), more difficult to define purposes (A potion that makes someone less noticeable)

  • Naturally, the more useful potions are also the most difficult to get right

• Potion recipes and ingredients are very particular, esoteric, and take a lot of practice to get right

• Everything can be used in potions, possibly as substitutes for other ingredients if necessary

• Everyone be looking to create those illustrious Panacea/Panaceas

  • “We haven’t tried pouring every potion into a pot and having every sick person drink out of it, but I think some ideas are best left to others.”

  • Eternal life

  • Superhuman abilities

    • Potions that actually enhance abilities are still limited by real physiology and have side effects

  • Supernatural control

    • Of both people and the world

  • A cure for all disease

  • The all-metal

    • A speculative metal that transcends every property depending on how it is treated and can be produced in abundance

  • Soul expulsion

    • A more controversial one, it is speculated to, when crafted, extract the soul from one’s body

• Certain recipes are illegal to use and share, like addictive or dangerous substances

• Most major suppliers of potions colour code them for convenience, but most of them will naturally be either pale coloured or completely clear in some cases

• Old people whine a lot about the days back when potions weren’t as necessary and all-pervasive

Potion Types

Sliding scale of alive stuff to not alive stuff

• Herbology

  • Roots
  • Foliage

• Brewery

  • Health

  • Hazardous

    • Poison
    • Acids
    • Weaponry

  • NOT food, food is something entirely different. Brewed potions have to have a significant, measurable effect.

• Forgery

  • Building and making shit, not forging documents

• Metallurgy/Minerology

Ingredients

• Pot leaf

  • Known for being extremely flammable and able to be kept alight for some time
  • Very little knowledge required to be created, simply dry and cure the plant with mountain salt
  • Can get set on fire in the wild under the right conditions, some have reported pot leaf fires going for decades

• Wormwood

• Dragonswort

  • One of very few ingredients that can neutralise snake venom

Livery companies

• The prestigious and oft sought after guilds contain and represent the members of different disciplines

  • These disciplines don’t have to be alchemy related, but naturally that’s the bulk of them

• They have several wings

  • Administrative wing

    • Includes legal

  • Educational wing

  • Research wing

    • If they are high profile enough they can use the institute’s facilities

  • Charity

• Livery companies also interact with each other depending on how closely linked their trades are

• Mar Brewery Livery Company

  • Heavily intertwined with the Synthesis livery company, has a very active apprentice swapping scheme in place

Cleanup crew

• A lot of alchemy goes wrong, for evil or incompetence, causing anything from earth-shattering explosions to infecting people with irritating illnesses
• As such, the crew is trained to clean up any number of disasters that may occur as a result of poor alchemy usage. An ether wash is often the first step as it reliably dulls the effects of fire and cleans away infections from surfaces. It stings like hell if you ARE infected but maybe you shouldn’t have gotten sick lmao.

Places

• The industrious Anglica

  • “The Jewel of The Isles” as it’s known due to its large pearl-like geographic appearance between the thinner Gallus and Barbaricum

  • The Alchemaic Institute

    • Nobody thinks Alchemaic is a real word

  • The state government works much like Venice’s, with the elected Grand Orator of Anglia (doge) and the oligarchy of powerful individuals, deeply rooted in science and technology experts

  • If you have an apothecary/potion bottlry/etc and are licensed by the government, then you get access to the mains and get a free aqueduct built for your business

• The cultured Gallus

  • Much of their land is uninhabitable swampland, this is partly the reason why they are so obsessed with prestige and image

    • Have to break that stereotype of swamp = low brow

  • Divided into a loose confederation of warlords

• The hardy Barbaricum

  • A strong working class population
  • Marxist themes prevalent throughout their society
  • Organised into worker communities that come together to vote and elect people

• Rembracht

  • Prominent research city in Anglica

Schools of Alchemy

• Herbology

  • Growin’

• Transmutation

  • Metal transformin’

• Brewery

  • Potion processin’

• Synthesis

  • Potion creatin’

• Excision

  • Medical applicatin’
  • Originally the study of substance removal from the body, back when it was believed that all illness and all negative effects were due to “bad stuff”

• Mixology

  • Potion mixin’
  • Careful not to mix it up with the identically named study of mixing drinks
  • Practitioners are affectionately called “Salt Miners” because that’s basically the baseline to all their ingredients

• And each of these have both a research and applied sub-discipline

New Light Astrology Society

• • At its core is the belief that star signs can predict the future, and that its charismatic leader has mastered this art and can teach people (for a price, of course)

  • Picks up steam over the course of the story

  • Gains steam not just because of its spiritual beliefs but also its political aims

    • Shaking up the current government and allowing its citizens more say
    • Every fuckup by the government gains the cult more momentum

  • The leader Dom is trying to get the immortality potion

    • Initially they had been generous donors of the Laz project, and were outraged when funding was suddenly frozen
    • Threatened the city council that he would take it over if they didn’t acquiesce. The great revolution throughout the course of the story is just Dom manipulating them into putting back the funding.

Lines

• “Welcome to intro…to moss”

• “It is essential that you form an emotional bond and make the Goob feel loved before you throw it in the boiling cauldron. Be sure not to feel remorse, or the counselling will cost more than what you get for the potion.”

• “A two syllable name, are you a Barbarican?” “No, no, my parents were just high or something.”

• “I offer an option for delivery, but I find it harder to move around these days so I charge a premium. It’s the perfect setup, the richer clients are more obnoxious and I don’t have to interact with them, and my less affluent clients are much more courteous and I get the chance to talk with them.” Ebb wondered where that courtesy was when Mad talked with him.

• “There’s more to a livery company, young master Ebb, than a building with a school.”

• “I thought you were the leaders of Anglia, why can’t you just kick out the cult?” “And risk an independent city within our borders? Around the courts we call it the eggshell city, to disrupt it is to wake the giant hen…so to speak.”

• “What potion is that?” “Whiskey, strongest potion known to man. Want a try?” CLEARS THROAT “This one’s not drinking” LAUGHTER

• “Deceiving people? Sending gullible people down a path of quack science? How can you say what you’re doing is right?” “WHO CARES!? Who even fucking cares? When we discover immortality, and people have lived for tens of thousands of blissful years who will even care if ten of those were miserable? Too bad for the rest of their long, LOOONG lives they won’t know. In eight hundred years when you’re running an apothecary, will you remember how brave you were in trying to stop me? Or will you finally realise what a fucking hypocrite you are and get on with your life."
  "All the great things that alchemy has given us, that wasn’t because researchers were blindly chasing after a single potion. They were all following what they WANTED to do. All this will do is just make sure we’re stuck at this point in history forever.”

• “You can’t make ether, it’s a baseline ingredient.” “Just watch me.” Doesn’t really ‘make’ it, more produces it through reduction. Feeds different ingredients to Po to see the reaction.

• “How much did Dom say he was paying you?” “It’s the Rembracht council, and it’s not important.” “Interesting, because he’s been promising people (looks at page) 50 Guilders to anybody who can capture me. Seems like he’s screwing you because he thinks he can pull one over a Gallan.”

• “Ebb, my dear, please just concentrate for once.”

Characters

- Ebb

• Wants

• Come to terms with the loss of his mother

• Escape the shadow of the plague he unleashed on the ward

• Make a good life for himself, escape the street

- Po

• Reacts strangely to every potion

• First alchemy-created life form

• Wants

• Learn about the world and how it works

• Be more assertive and less childlike

- Mad

• Goes from stern to cheeky depending on her relationship

• Wants

• Redemption for dealing to the fringe crazies of astrologers

• Same shit when she supplied for Anglia-Barbaricum skirmishes

• Actual friends, not clients or students

- Detective Inspector Lod

- Representative for the Alchemaic Institute (RAI): Not Fom

- Deen (Learner)

• Apprentice, soon to be master, from the Mar Potion Brewery Livery Company

- Mar (Ogg)

• Wealthy benefactor for the Brewery Livery Company

- Err

• Classmate

- Dom

• Leader of New Light Astrology Society

• Infuriatingly passive-aggressively nice and ‘forgiving’ of others

• Wants:

• An immortality potion, and will stop at nothing to get it

- The Concierge

• Easy to irritate, but generally chipper

• Negatively reacts to Ebb

• Gets a crush on Po who remains oblivious

- Warlord Barren

• Upon meeting Ebb, decides to get in good with the cult and arrests him

- Lord Chancellor Fob

• Second highest post, actually runs the place because the aristocrat family is too busy to bother

Outline

- Livery setup

- Meeting Po

- Alley chat

- Famous transmutor

- Meeting Mad

- Delivery

- Getting ingredients

- False flag demonstration

- Sitting in on examination

- Going to library, ending quack

- Attack on the institute

- Rushing to Mad for medical aid

- The emergency decree meeting

- Ebb explodes

- Dom manipulates audience then Ebb

- Growing power of the cult

- Mad’s arrest

- The Mad reveal, she supplyin’

- Mad tells Ebb to take the random assortment of potions that clients ordered

- Fleeing the city

- Fireside chat

- Arrive at nearby city, full of cultists too, nowhere is safe

- Pick up repentant cultist

- Going to the Anglian government for help, unhelpful idiots, tense negotiations with Barbaricum

- Sneaking back into the city

- Going to Concierge for info about cult

- Talking to Detective Inspector Lod, his notes about the NLAS and Laz

- Going back to explosion site

- Choice between regular strength potion and half-moon-enhanced potion

- Swamps of Gallus

- Po fading

- Finding the Laz cabin

- Saving Po

- Po is a splitter

- Arrested by Warlord Barren, mirroring opening

- The Po rescue

- Splitting up, Who is Po, Ebb saving the nation

- Going to Barbaricum

- Finding the cleaning crew

- The Po kidnap

- Going to NLAS HQ for Po

- Confronting Dom

- Arrested, mirroring intro

- This time no brewery company

- Usher in the age of the supernatural

— Appendices

Shit to Fix

- Follow narrative thread and see if it makes sense

• Distill plot into each decision, does it lead into the next smoothly?

- Find cool quotes for blurb

- Mad and Ebb’s relationship

• Ebb does something extraordinary to gain her trust

• Skip forward a week or so and they’re talking or something I dunno just make them bond

- A more interesting and varied Institute

• Like a courtyard, look at university examples

- Paragraph structuring

• End every paragraph one sentence after what you think

- Work out story timeline