Thorendor, B1: Laboratory Supply 1
You walk into a large storeroom where most of the bulk alchemical ingredients are located. Master Arasemis makes you and the other students keep the supplies clean, stocked, and well organized.
Map
Plants 1
Oak Gall
These are hard, bulbous, growths that can be found on many types of oak tree branches, caused by gall wasp hatchlings in leaf buds. The galls are used to make brown and black dyes and inks, and for dying shroud eggs that cause sleep.
Aethermint
An intensely minty oil can be produced from the leaves of the aethermint plant. A bundle of common herbs can be dried and dipped into this oil and spread on the floors of dwellings to be crushed underfoot. The scent that rises calms dizziness, unease, halted breathing, and racing heart.
Plants 2
Willow Bark
The medicinal uses of the willow tree was among the first lessons on healing that Master Arasemis taught you and the other students. A wrap of willow leaves, solin, and honey can help heal wounds, a method of Gallerlander origin. Powdered willow bark can be ingested in small amounts to treat pain, fever, swelling, blood clots, and headache.
Tinkerskard
Lace-like, white leaves of the tinkerskard plant that grow only in the Narendra Mountains, the mountains of Merbredel, on Torxil Island, and the Fargeau Mountains. The leaves taste terribly bitter but quickly disappear on the tongue. They are ground into a powder and mixed with water to make a salve to more quickly relieve snow blindness. The powder is also mixed with sugar and melted to make bittersweet candy. Naren-Dra origin.
Minerals 1
Smoke Quartz
These are hazy brown or black crystals that release glass-flaked smoke when broken open. When carefully powdered, smoke quartz can be used as an obscurant or a weapon that lacerates the eyes, nose, mouth, and lungs. One example of this is ditch fume. Smoke quartz is fire and heat resistant, but you’re not aware of any goods made from it given the hazards of the crystals.
Smoke quartz is abundant in places were silic-bearing stone and wood was burned in the same place, such as during forest fires. The old Nalembalen Forest became an excellent place to harvest this mineral after it was razed by the Frontier Corps. In Almeria, smoke quartz is considered one of the oldest substances used in classical alchemy. But its use and methods of refinement was later shunned and forgotten for ages.
Meteoric Iron
A natural but very rare alloy that is extremely heavy, hard, dense, smooth or pocked, and very difficult to work. It is rust and corrosion resistant, and defeats common iron. The content of meteoric iron varies widely, but most contain iron (80%) and wist (20%) with other trace metals. Rarely, meteoric iron contains portions of a substance Master Arasemis has not yet identified but that he describes as a dry stickiness when it comes into contact with iron tools.
Meteoric iron is found worldwide on the surface of the ground or at large meteor impact sites, which you don’t quite understand but that Arasemis describes as when fiery stones dive down from the heavens into the earth. One such place he says is Metiori Island in Rugenhav, where it was long revered as “skystones” by the early Raffen natives.
Unlike other Old World tribes who believed meteors were an evil sign, and thus an object to be avoided, the Raffen were the first to fashion meteoric iron by cold-hammering. The most famous meteoric object is the grotesque Iron Crown still worn by Rugen emperors today.
Colonists later adopted the Raffen belief that meteors held special powers bestowed by the stars onto the wearer, especially clarity of thought. Weapons and armor could be fashioned with hotter, treated furnaces but the expense of working meteoric iron and its rarity has prevented significant production. Arasemis said it remains a novelty for most people, but he believes advanced metallurgy could be developed or discovered to unlock its true potential as a metal of warfare.
Closet
You step into a long, narrow room lined with shelving from floor to ceiling. The shelves are stuffed with alchemical flasks, jars, boxes, bags, and other containers of every shape and size. The room is dark, lit by a single candle set on a crate near the door. It smells like a dusty cornucopia of peculiar odors, indistinct and yet jarring. You wonder if a few bottles have had their stoppers tipped out somewhere in the back. You step forward, squinting at the script and symbols on the bottles’ labels.
Serpent Varnish
You have never used this oily brown liquid, but Master Arasemis has explained that it is used to coat the tiny inner reservoir holes and etched veins of glyphblades, which help keep substances absorbed by the blade until metallic vibration triggers release of substances. This absorption is referred to as the blade being charged, and the vibration typically comes from crossing swords with an adversary. Arasemis said the original glyphblades probably required occasional reapplication of serpent varnish, depending on how often and which types of substances were absorbed by the blade for battle.
According to the scribbling on the bottle tag, serpent varnish is produced by boiling water (40%), turpentine (40%), starved carbun (10%), and fysic acid (10%) until nearly evaporated, then gently boiling again with a mix of spirit of iron (50%) and fulminating silver (50%) before distilling to obtain the varnish. You imagine that the varnish must be at least mildly impact-sensitive due to the fulminating silver content.
Royal Water
This is a fuming acid made from combining spirit of niter (25%) and spirit of salt (75%). It is one of the few substances capable of dissolving gold and anchiclade. Some alchemists call it goldsmiter for this reason. Dissolving the gold produces auric acid and murian air, while dissolving the anchiclade produces bessic acid. You recognize it as one of many ingredients used by Marlan to create his Banebrand alchemical sword using alterlocum and glading.
Nightshade Oil
This is a thick, black, and intensely-bitter smelling liquid obtained from distilling the purple flowers of nightshade. Ingestion causes vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, intense headache, and hallucinations. A small pure dose is lethal. The Order of the Candlestone has long used this oil as a pure poison and as an ingredient in other poisons, such as miasma tincture.
Adder Blood
You recognize the label symbols as the blood of Black Forest adders. This thick liquid, and especially adder venom, serves as an antivenom for black adder bites. The blood and venom were famously used by the Hral natives as ingredients in furywine, which was believed to provide a sharpening of hearing, dry mouth, temporary blindness, and sometimes a frenzy followed by death. Master Arasemis says the full list of furywine ingredients have been lost of history, but there is a lesser furywine mixture that you remember he demonstrated on Fetzer.
Arasemis says the Hrals probably added other ingredients to the original furywine reduce the blindness and lethality of the mixture, but he says others speculate that the lost ingredients conveyed additional aptitudes. He said the Brintilian colonists found small clay amphorae full of adder blood when conquering parts of Hralandia. And you remember Rildning’s fateful encounter with the black adders himself.
Gode Acid
You recall from Master Arasemis’s lessons that gode acid is a mixture of bear fat (50%), vole gems (25%), and wireworm juice (25%) that easily removes gode metal from ores. It is a mild acid, mostly harmless to the touch. However, without a stopper, gode acid will evaporate from its container, mix with common air, and create dead air that will cause suffocation if not properly ventilated.
Phlogiston
This is an important acid used in slurry barrels for the glading and alterlocum processing of flaming weapons, similar to ancient glyphblades. You learned from Marlan that phlogiston is produced by mixing fysic acid (70%) and royal water (30%), which consumes the trace impurities in the metal of a sword, typically steel, and replaces them with components drawn from a sachet of specially-selected metals and stones that are gradually dissolved in the barrel. The sachet that Marlan used contained brassember (50%), corbalt (10%), sulfur (25%), ardnamur (5%), and napthar seed paste (10%). The vapors of phlogiston are harmless if the room is reasonably ventilated.
Marlan said this prized item was unknown to the ancients, having only been created during the Alliance Age to craft swords that could challenge the original glyphblades. This is why phlogiston is also called the alterlocum elixir of flame. You look longingly at the flask, thinking about Fetzer’s repeated demands that all the students should be given alchemical swords. In the candlelight, the phlogiston seems to glow with a certain potential.
Toad Skin Vinegar
This is among the first alchemical things you learned to craft under Master Arasemis. It is a pungent, acidic ingredient, very important for throatspines shroud eggs. It is produced by distilling a heap of fresh toad skins in spirit of salt, then collecting the clear distillate. You did not particularly enjoy the messy, slimy tediousness of that lesson.
Earth Nut Oil
Master Arasemis has taught you and the other students how to find earth nuts in the forests surrounding Thorendor Castle. They are hard tubers that are dug up, pressed into a mash, then distilled to obtain the translucent brown oil. You have learned to use it as an ingestible or inhalable poison that causes blindness. It is primarily used in shroud alchemy and candle alchemy. The fumes created by the distillation can also cause blindness, hence the oil is very dangerous to produce if you’re not wearing your Naren-Dra mask.
Fysic Acid
A clear, pungent, very strong acid. Vapors are typically harmless but the liquid is extremely corrosive to skin, most metals and minerals. Partially melts and seals the surface of wood, so the acid will not burn through it.
© 1998-2023 Christopher C. Fuchs. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s owner is strictly prohibited.