Part 4: You Can't Spell "Alchemist" without "Chemist"
Part 4: You Can't Spell "Alchemist" Without "Chemist"Last time, we made it into the Chymic Lab and read some instructions. Let's explore a little before we actually use the lab.
quote:
Chymic Lab
This wide room is dominated by a huge glass retort. You've practiced many chymical rituals in this apparatus. Hanging above the retort is an instructional sign.
The lab door to the east is closed. The only other exit is the hatch in the floor, which is open.
A supply rack holds five chymic flasks (sand, vinegar, muriatic acid, mineral oil, and saline), neatly lined up.
Two papers, a folded sheet and a wrinkled sheet, are lying here.
You can also see a brass coin and an impet of citronelle oil here.
>OPEN DOOR
You pull the door open.
This door is no better than the last. You look out over a Thalassan land: thick grey waves heaving beneath a lowering brown sky. Fortunately, another fracture protects you from its no-doubt toxic airs.
>X THALASSAN LAND
No land is visible in a Thalassan land; the world outside is water. Or some liquid—you doubt you could drink it. The waves are slow and oil-thick. Bands of brown haze drift above them, beneath an impenetrable murky sky.
>X RETORT
The retort is a magnificent piece of glassware, the pride of the laboratory. It practically is the laboratory—a bespoke apparatus for any sort of chymical ritual.
The outer enclosure is a glass bulb, two feet across. Its equator is etched with an encircling ritual bound. Suspended within is a reservoir for chymic reagents, and a mesh basket for solid components. The retort has a slot in the top for adding these reagents, a tap for extracting products, and a dump valve for discarding ruined experiments. The base also contains a gas burner, although it is not currently lit.
The Thalassan land always puts me in mind of Titan, but of course Titan has a solid surface.
Let's brew some fungicide.
quote:
>PUT SALINE IN RETORT
You pour a measure of saline into the retort.
>PUT MUSTARD SEED IN RETORT
You put the pinch of mustard seed into the retort.
>PUT MUSHROOM IN RETORT
You put the dried mushroom into the retort.
>SPEAK HERMETIC SEALING
You take a breath, trace the bound in your mind, and intone the Hermetic Sealing.
The retort's equator begins to glow pearl-grey around the dried mushroom, the pinch of mustard seed, and the reservoir of saline.
>TURN ON BURNER
You twist the knob. The gas burner hisses, and then bursts into flame.
The gas flame heats the saline.
Now, the instructions said to heat it to a slow simmer, so I suppose we'll need to wait a while...
quote:
>Z
Time passes.
The gas flame heats the saline.
>Z
Time passes.
The saline bubbles over the flame.
Perfect. Let's wrap this up before the saline bubbles off completely.
quote:
>INVOKE THE BINDING OF ANTIPATHY
You begin invoking the Binding of Antipathy, forcing out the bitter phrases. Gradually the mustard seeds dissolve, and the saline solution acquires a lavender tint. Purple fumes begin to fill the retort.
When you finish choking out the formula, the liquid is deep purple in hue. You find an empty vial in the clutter and tap the fungicide from the retort. Phew! It smells awful. You snap the vial shut.
As an afterthought, you shut off the gas flame. You also pull the retort's dump lever—the mushroom falls out into your hand. It's damp, but none the worse for wear.
Convenient! Also notice that glassware is so ubiquitous we don't need to carry any around; we can just pluck it out of the undescribed environment as needed. That's a marcher for you, I guess.
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>X FUNGICIDE
This is a purple liquid, which appears to be fuming slightly in its bottle. It should be instant death to mold, lichen, and fungus.
Instant death! That's what I like to hear. Let's go put it to good use.
quote:
Mechanica Lab
This workshop features two of the more mundane devices of the alchemist's life: a hand-cranked wire-drawer, and the wire-splicer wheel.
The lab door is to the north, but it's crusted over with some horrible-looking mold. The crawlway hatch is open. You also see a small storeroom to the west.
A clean cabinet is fastened to the wall. It is open, but empty.
To one side, some supplies are lying on a counter: a nickel rod, an iron bead, and a lump of rock salt.
>POUR FUNGICIDE ON MOLD
You splash the fungicide onto the door. The mold bubbles and shrivels away, leaving the wood clean—well, only a bit stained. The hinges seem to be clear now, anyway.
>OPEN DOOR
You open the pine Mechanica door.
>NORTH
Lab Hall Southwest
This is the southwest corner of the laboratory access hallway. It's done up in rough wallpaper, faintly scruffy and very familiar—these halls are the center of your student life. The hall runs north and east from here.
To the south, the door to the Mechanica Lab is open. The Chymic Lab door is to the west; it's closed. The lab stairwell opens to the northeast, but a fracture prevents entry.
A sheet of paper lies discarded in the hall.
A swabbie out of the lab is like a fish out of the sea.
Thanks, Sarge, I'll remember that.
This whole "being haunted by the Sergeant" thing has been kind of a mixed bag, over all.
Hey, that's the Chymic Lab Door over there. The one that led to a Thalassan land from the other side. What happens if we open it from this end?
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>OPEN CHYMIC DOOR
The Chymic door won't open; it won't even rattle. (You recall the fracture that blocks it on the other side.)
Nothing much. Though honestly, "nothing" is a pretty good result here.
So, now what?
At this point, we've left the tutorial area and have entered the first part of the main game. We won't, yet, have full run of the Marcher, but Ensign Forsyth actually does know this marcher pretty well. We can call up a complete graphical map, with labels, at any time. However, that map shows information we would normally not encounter as players until we get there, and that Forsyth would not know until reaching them in-game. So, I will be presenting the map in pieces as we explore regions more thoroughly.
Our task now is to visit all the newly-reachable rooms and devour all the delicious knowledge that lurks within. This eastern lab is basically a square hallway with labs off every wall, and a hallway out to the rest of the marcher from the northwest corner. Let's loop around and see what we can find.
Well. There's a discarded sheet right in front of us. Let's start with that.
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>READ PAPER
(the discarded sheet)
Somebody has dropped yet another alchemical recipe. Oh, this is useful—you've used an oculus before, but never learned to create one.
"TO CREATE A RESONANT OCULUS (an exceptional tool for observing unseen influences): Prepare an environment with lunar influences. This will require a bound with a gestalt shelf; place any lunar symbol on the shelf, but take care to exclude contaminating aromas. Then place a glass loop within the bound and begin with a simple sealing. Vocalize a resonant tone to tune the loop in the Celtic mode, followed by a syllable of counterbalance to fixate it."
You're not sure what tone and syllable the recipe is referring to. But the mention of the "gestalt shelf" jogs loose a memory of another lecture.
You memorize the instructions, and also add the sheet to your bundle of paper.
That gets us a new fact in our Alchemy Journal.
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>RECALL GESTALT SHELF
Aromas are one way to set the environmental influences for a ritual. For more precise control, you can use a gestalt shelf—if the ritual bound has one. (Not all do.) By placing specific items on the shelf before the ritual begins, you can apply precise symbolic markers to the environment.
Sounds good. Now, if the crawlspaces work out, the lab we started the game in should be off the south wall to our east.
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>EAST
Lab Hall Southeast
The laboratory hallway runs north and west from this corner. The Secondary Lab, where you awoke, is to the south; its door is closed. The door to the Opticks Lab is closed to the east.
>OPEN DOOR
Which do you mean, the oak Opticks door or the pine Alchemy door?
>PINE
The Alchemy door won't open; it won't even rattle.
Just like the Chymic Lab door. Let's go check out Opticks.
quote:
>OPEN OAK
You open the oak Opticks door.
>EAST
Opticks Lab
This chamber is dedicated to experiments involving rays of light. A solid block of bluestone forms an immense workbench in the center of the room.
Whatever mirrors, prisms, and lenses are supposed to be arranged on the bench are there no longer. The equipment lies shattered on the floor—all just an inextricable heap of broken glass, now.
The lab's door stands open to the west. A closet door to the east is closed. To the south is a storage annex.
A scrawled sheet lies next to the glass disaster.
>X SHEET
(the scrawled sheet)
You pick up the sheet, and find a formal (if hastily scrawled) receipt for the use of elemental earth in an optickal bench setup. "Permission granted to use elemental earth for optickal mirror calibration—one day only. If you damage or lose the earth-shard, you will be on report until the Sun turns green. The Retort only has the one in stock!"
(You look down at the wreckage of the bench, and wince.)
You memorize the information, and also add the sheet to your bundle of paper.
>OPEN CLOSET DOOR
You take a deep breath and pull the door open. Once again, a foreign world breaks the Retort's familiar boundaries.
This time it is an Erebian land—cracked slabs of ice tilting up above ancient snow.
>X EREBIAN
The landscape beyond the door is buried in snow. It is old snow, aeons old; it has the faint bands of color that you've heard mark the most ancient of Erebian lands. Blue frost laps over snowdrifts of pale violet, which fall into dim green abysses beneath slabs of ice. Stars hang above, and a brooding red coal of a sun.
>CLOSE CLOSET DOOR
You shut the door on the Erebian world.
Based on these descriptions, I think Erebian lands are worlds like Pluto, while Hadean Lands are more like Mercury or Luna. Slightly ironic, I suppose, if you consider that Pluto and Hades are in some sense the same god. But I can't argue with "Erebian" either.
There's a secondary room to the south. That's the first time we've seen a lab have multiple rooms in it.
quote:
>SOUTH
Opticks Annex
This is a quiet corner south of the Opticks laboratory. You've spent many hours here with the other scrubs, snatching extra practice time in your spare hours.
A round standing table in back is set up for ritual use. A gestalt shelf is fastened above it.
A neglected storage bin contains a scribbled sheet, a chip of flint, a concave glass lens, and a convex glass lens.
A white feather has fallen to the floor near the table.
>X SCRIBBLED SHEET
You've found another student's notes. A formula is scribbled on one side: the Anodyne Evocation, which aids the growth of the body.
On the back are some comments from a chymistry lecture: "Percalcination: to repeat the calcination procedure. (Typically produces a more stable and potent reagent.) First, calcine a metal. Then seal the retort (Hermetic) and invoke the Crystalline Tempering to clarify the salt's structure. Add more acid to redissolve, and continue heating until a second crystallization occurs."
You memorize the information, including the Anodyne Evocation. You also add the sheet to your bundle of paper.
We've seen the notion of calcining metals before, but not in any rituals.
That wraps it up for the Opticks Lab. Let's move on to the northeast corner. Once again, there are two labs here, but we can only enter one:
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Lab Hall Northeast
This is the northeast corner of the laboratory hallway, which runs south and west. The lab stairwell opens to the southwest, but a fracture prevents entry. The Tertiary Lab is to the east; its door is closed. The Pyrics Lab door to the north is open.
>OPEN TERTIARY
It seems to be locked.
>N
Pyrics Lab
Waves of heat fill this room, radiating from a massive brick kiln and the roaring gas burners that fire it.
The lab door to the south is open. A storage area lies to the east.
Within the kiln, half-obscured by rippling heat, you can see a thick key and a porcelain paten.
A table at the other end of the room supports a glass vapor crock. The crock is open and empty.
You also see a jar of cedar splints on the table. Next to this are six splints of assorted woods: swamp pith, green linden, blackwood, winter-oak, maple, and elemental wood.
>X KEY
This is a thick key of some cheap alloy. You recognize the shape—it's one of the keys used to unlock fire doors in the marcher, after an all-sections drill. Why anybody would have tossed it into the kiln, you have no way to guess.
>X PATEN
This is a palm-sized porcelain disc, painted with feathers and the Chinese sign for breath.
That key sounds important. What are these woods, though?
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>X PITH
A thin, thumb-length splinter of spongy pith. It's very light for its size.
>X LINDEN
A thin, thumb-length splinter of greenish wood. It's rather light for its size.
>X BLACKWOOD
A thin, thumb-length splinter of glossy wood. Despite the name, it's not quite black.
>X WINTER-OAK
A thin, thumb-length splinter of pale grey wood.
>X MAPLE
A thin, thumb-length splinter of striated wood.
>X ELEMENTAL WOOD
A thin, thumb-length splinter of elemental wood—not wood from any particular tree, but a difficult-to-cultivate abstraction of all woods.
"Difficult to cultivate," you say. Say what you will about the Navy, their arborists are badass.
None of the other woods strike me as particularly out of the ordinary, though I suppose it's possible that "blackwood" and "winter-oak" are euphemisms for something very specific.
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>EAST
Pyrics Store
This is a tangle of storage racks, mostly empty. The Pyrics Lab is to the west.
On one rack you notice a jar of camphrost lumps.
A silver coin and a lead rod lie on another rack.
A stack of firebrick in back serves as a crude ritual bound, complete with gestalt shelf.
>EXAMINE COIN
It's a worn silver coin. One side is stamped with a crude grinning moon-face. The other seems to be a fish.
>EXAMINE LEAD ROD
A small rod of plain, dull grey lead.
>EXAMINE CAMPHROST
A small jar of camphrost rests on a rack. It has a turned-down neck, to conserve the volatile substance.
Camphrost lumps are in fact so volatile that they will sublime away to nothingness a few turns after we take one out of the jar. This is a good clue as to what we would normally call it.
On to the northwest corner.
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Lab Hall Northwest
The laboratory hallway runs east and south from this junction. Another corridor runs west, towards the rest of the marcher.
To the north, the door to the Main Store is open.
How bizarre! Someone has scrawled graffiti on the wall here. The black marks are curiously twisted; they hint at meaning, but you cannot read them.
>READ MARKS
Twisting, involuted strokes of black are scrawled across one wall. The graffito is irregular—neither artistically symmetrical nor ink-splotch random. But if this is a script, it is utterly foreign to your understanding.
Bizarre indeed. The notion of a Main Store is extremely promising though. Let's check that out.
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>NORTH
Main Store
This is the general storeroom for the Retort's laboratories. Shelves begin here and extend to the east and west. However, a fracture to the east blocks a large part of the room. The door to the south is open.
You recognize a figure to the east, beyond the fracture. It's Ensign Ctesc. He is moving towards you—or would be, if he were not frozen in place.
A steel safe is set into one wall. The safe is closed and locked with a heavy combination lock.
The nearest shelves are mostly empty, but a rough diamond, a length of silk cord, and a length of silver chain are within reach.
>EXAMINE CTESC
It's Sydney Ctesc—an East Empire name, his family is from out that way. He's an ensign in Alchemy, same as you, though a year senior. Short, quiet, studies hard.
You see something, a sequence of symbols, scrawled on Ctesc's hand. And his attention seems to be directed towards the steel safe.
>EXAMINE SYMBOLS
You squint at Ctesc, but he's too far away and his hand is at an awkward angle. You can't make the symbols out. The last one might be... Scorpio? Virgo?
>WEST
Storage Nook
You are in an awkward nook behind the storeroom's last shelf. The rest of the room is east.
You see another hatch in the floor, though it's too small for a person. The cover seems to be solid lead. It is closed.
A glint of light reveals an Alchemy File seal lying near the hatch. Some officer will be in deep trouble for losing it.
>EXAMINE ALCHEMY FILE SEAL
This is a seal of silvery-bright rutilum, cast with the insignia of the Alchemy File. High-ranking Alchemy officers carry such badges. Someday you will be granted one... but right now, this one will be awfully handy.
>GET SEAL
Taken.
>OPEN HATCH
You try to lift the panel, but it's too heavy to move.
Fun fact: I completely missed this annex room the first time I played the game, and thus didn't find the Alchemy File Seal. It turns out there's a way, later in the game, to get around needing the Alchemy File Seal, but the goal-seeking AI didn't know about it, so I would forever be halting halfway through enormously complicated plans because I needed to tell it to perform one step in the middle of it. I think that might have gotten patched for the Steam release.
"Rutilum" is a new substance for us, too, but right now we don't know anything about it other than that it's shiny or can be made shiny. We'll see more of it later.
In the meantime, we've got a hallway to walk down, though honestly, it's going to be hard to beat the Main Store.
quote:
Lab Wing Hallway
This hallway runs east and west. However, the fire door to the west is locked, sealing you off from the rest of the Retort. A smaller door to the north leads to the Primary Alchemy Lab; it is open, but blocked by another fracture. An archway to the south leads to the Library.
Another standard glass chime lies in the middle of the hall. This one is a glass G-flat.
>SOUTH
Library
This library serves the laboratory wing. You haven't spent much time here—the trainees have their own study room—but you have often admired the rows of fat musty tomes on their elegantly-carved shelves. The archway is north.
Two papers, a neat sheet and an untidy sheet, lie unregarded on the floor.
You notice a rotor card sticking out from between two books.
I take it back, a Library is exactly the one thing that would be better. Let's learn everything. And also swipe that rotor card.
quote:
>EXAMINE NEAT SHEET
The paper explains how to sing a resonant tone, which resonates with the structure of matter.
You memorize the information, including the resonant tone. You also add the sheet to your bundle of paper.
>EXAMINE UNTIDY SHEET
It's another alchemical recipe. "A POTION to RESIST ALL INJURY BY HEAT OR FIRE: This compound protects the drinker by balancing heat against cool—these symbolized by opposing aromas. Place a measure of saline into a bound. Employ the simple sealing with no aroma present. Release a fiery aroma; invoke counterbalance; change the atmosphere to chill; invoke an elementary word of binding."
You recall, from an unusually digressive lecture, that one never uses the chymic retort for potions intended to be drunk.
Yeah, I'm not really keen on drinking anything out of the chymic retort, especially considering what we just used it for.
quote:
You memorize the instructions, including the syllable of counterbalance. You also add the sheet to your bundle of paper.
Hmm. This isn't the first place we've heard of the syllable of counterbalance, is it?
The rest of the books are less useful to us.
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>READ BOOKS
You pick up a book and flip through it. The text is opaque; this must be a high-level theory text. Disappointed, you replace it on the shelf.
>READ BOOKS
You look at another book. This one, too, is a haze of obscure alchemical theory.
>READ BOOKS
You look at another book. Strange—you have trouble even focussing on the lettering. You begin to wonder if there's something wrong with your eyesight.
>READ BOOKS
You peer intently at another book. The words seem to swirl away in a haze of mathematical terminology. You give up and return the book to the shelf.
>READ BOOKS
You pick up a book and flip through it. It's no more comprehensible than the last one.
Probably a concussion from the accident. Certainly not an ominous hint of vast cosmic mysteries, nor a simple dodge to avoid having to implement an entire library.
That leaves the rotor card, which is a pretty nifty piece of kit:
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>EXAMINE ROTOR CARD
This is a handy device for setting various environmental influences. It's a sort of cardboard envelope with a spinner inside and a little hole cut out. You can turn it so that one of five symbols shows through—currently, a sketch of a snowy day.
We can also >TURN CARD to swap between snowy, windy, and sunny days, a rainbow, and a moonlit night. The moonlit night presumably introduces a lunar influence, and the sunny day a solar (fiery?) influence, but we need a more reliable way to get information about that to be sure.
Next Time: That's up to you! Here is the map of the East Wing of the Retort, most of which we have now visited:
Our obvious next goal is to get through that locked fire door, but that is far from the only thing that we can attempt. There are several rituals we've never performed, and a number of devices and materials that we have not experimented with.