Aetrimonde

I’ve got a post in the works covering Aetrimonde’s alchemy subsystem used for making potions, elixirs, and volatile chemicals, but as a prelude to that, I want to discuss what alchemy actually is in this setting, starting with a single application: Alchemical Metals!

Origins of Alchemy

The original discoverers of alchemy were the goblins of Gobol Karn, in the Age of Myth. Parts of the science of alchemy (and science it is) spread to other cultures, although the goblins kept the most powerful uses of alchemy a tightly-guarded secret, one that adventurers still risk their lives attempting to retrieve from the ruins of Gobol Karn.

Alchemy is, at its core, the science of imbuing magical energies into physical matter. This is not the same as enchanting a magical item, which anchors a magical spell to an object but leaves the object itself largely unchanged. Alchemy alters substances, not objects, and the changes it imparts are inherent and permanent, often changing materials in truly wondrous ways.

One aspect of alchemy that the goblins traded away was the ability to enhance mundane materials using alchemical formulas. Applied to organic materials, the difference is one of degree, and the process is adjustable: wood, leather, fabric, rubber, and other substances can be treated to make them tougher, lighter, fireproof, or any number of other desirable qualities.

The alchemical treatment process works much differently for metals (and some gems and other minerals). For every elementally-pure metal, there is but a single alchemical formula that produces anything but an explosion or a cloud of noxious fumes. And the alchemical metals produced by these treatments, while they do have altered physical properties, are more interesting for their magical properties…

Each alchemical metal interacts with magical energies in a defined and quantifiable way. Alchemical quicksilver absorbs magic, alchemical lead dampens it, and so on. Once these properties were noticed, they became the basis of the magical half of Aetrimonde’s industrial revolution: it became possible to create magical effects by channeling magical power through a device made from alchemical metals in a proper configuration. Designing such a device remains difficult, especially when the desired effect is complex or subtle, but once an engineer arrives at a working design, it can be assembled from a blueprint by even semi-skilled craftsmen.

The Prime Alchemical Metals

Alchemists initially discovered the appropriate treatments for seven metals (copper, iron, silver, gold, tin, lead, and quicksilver), and for centuries it was believed that these were the extent of the alchemical metals. The magical properties of alchemical lead were discovered first, and experimentation led to the discovery of the properties of the other six; the sheer usefulness of these seven magical properties led to renewed interest in alchemical transmutation and the discovery of further alchemical metals, but these seven remain the most commonly made and used.

Thaumodynamic Theory

Magic, as practiced by mortals, is notoriously difficult to quantify. So much about magic is subjective, influenced by a practicioner’s worldview and mental state, that magic works differently for each user in all but the most fundamental ways. Scholars who study the fundamentals of magic describe it as a series of “stylized facts” based on qualitative, not quantitative, observations:

• Magic is an energy, like heat.
• Living beings attract small amounts of magic.
• Certain patterns of thought, belief, and behavior attract larger amounts of magic.
• Magic seeks equilibrium. Where magic is more concentrated than in the surrounding area, it seeks to flow outward.
• Magic clings to creatures and objects, flowing away more slowly than it does from thin air.
• When magic flows, there is resistance. This resistance causes some of the flowing magic to decay into other kinds of energy.
• The manner in which magic flows (the path of the flow, and its proximity to other magical flows and charges) influences what kind of energy it decays into.
• A spell is a pattern of thought, belief, or behavior that causes magic to flow in such a way that its decay into other energy produces a consistent effect.

There are two technical terms useful in discussing alchemical metals: thaumic charge refers to the amount of magical energy held within an object, and thaumic current refers to the rate at which magic flows through an object. Ordinary materials can hold relatively little thaumic charge and carry little thaumic current; alchemical metals are orders of magnitude better.

Substance	Magical Property	Altered Physical Properties
Alchemical Copper	Equilibrates thaumic and electrical currents.	Increased ductility, able to be drawn into fine wires.
Alchemical Iron	Equilibrates thaumic and electrical charges.	Increased hardness, on par with high-carbon steel.
Alchemical Silver	Equilibrates thaumic current and thermal flux.	Increased thermal conductivity, rapidly taking on the temperature of its surroundings.
Alchemical Gold	Equilibrates thaumic charge and heat.	Increased specific heat, absorbing more heat but warming more slowly.
Alchemical Tin	Equilibrates thaumic current and velocity.	Increased reflectivity, on par with silver.
Alchemical Lead	Acts as a thaumic insulator.	Increased density and malleability.
Alchemical Quicksilver	Acts as a thaumic capacitor.	Increased viscosity.

Common Applications

The prime alchemical metals form the basis of many magical devices.

• Rods of alchemical iron and copper can convert lightning strikes into thaumic charge and current.
• Running a thaumic current through a strip of alchemical silver will cause heat to move along the strip in the direction of the current, causing one end to grow cold and the other warm. Likewise, charging alchemical gold with thaumic potential will cause it to grow warm, and placing alchemical gold in a fire will generate magical potential.
• Alchemical tin can be caused to move (more precisely, it can be made to experience force) by running thaumic current through it in the direction of desired movement.
• A vessel of alchemical quicksilver encased in alchemical lead provides efficient storage for thaumic charge.

Secondary Alchemical Metals

Other alchemical metals have more esoteric magical properties. Most simply equilibrate between different kinds of energy, such as alchemical bismuth, which if properly used equilibrates thaumic current and visible light (although it also appears capable of equilibrating thaumic current with an as-yet undiscovered kind of energy).

Some alchemical metals have as-yet unknown magical properties, including alchemical nickel, aluminium, and tungsten. Alchemical aluminium and alchemical tungsten are still prized, under their classical names of mithril and adamantine,¹ for their extraordinary physical properties, as are some other alchemical metals with unknown magical properties.

Finally, there are some metals for which the appropriate alchemical treatment has not yet been discovered, like cobalt, oranite, and stygiite. While there are almost certainly alchemical variants of these metals, alchemists have observed that alchemical treatments grow exponentially more energy-intensive for heavier elements, and experimentation with alchemical treatments for heavy metals has the potential to be incredibly explosive. It is difficult to secure funding for such experiments, and there are rumors that these experiments are being purposefully suppressed after some unspecified disaster involving alchemical oranite.

Alchemical Alloys

It was originally believed that alchemical metals could not be alloyed: attempts to create alchemical bronze by combining alchemical copper and tin led to highly energetic explosions, as did attempts at other alchemical alloys. The actual treatment necessary to produce alchemical bronze (which exhibits a mixture of the properties of alchemical copper and tin, at lower intensities) is a hybrid of the treatments for copper and tin, and must be applied to a molten mixture of copper and tin mixed at a very precise ratio. Since the process is so finicky, and there are few applications for alchemical bronze that could not be better served by separate components of alchemical copper and tin, research into other alchemical alloys has stalled.

Other Alchemical Minerals

While alchemical metals display the most striking magical properties, some other minerals have their own, less impressive properties when alchemically treated. Of these, the most notable is alchemical silicon, which displays the novel but poorly understood property of resisting thaumic currents differently depending on its thaumic charge. This property had few applications, rendering alchemical silicon a mere novelty, until it was incorporated into the design of the original golem noofactors. How it actually contributes to the function of a noofactor is unclear, but golem designers have reverse-engineered principles that guide their use of alchemical silicon wafers to construct increasingly sophisticated golem minds.

Certain gemstones containing metallic trace elements, like ruby, sapphire, and emerald, can be given a form of alchemical treatment, although whether this causes them to develop the magical properties associated with their metallic components varies on a stone-by-stone basis, and the derived properties are rarely as potent as in the pure metal. Before the invention of the lead-mercury thaumic battery, alchemically treated gemstones were useful for storing thaumic charge, but they are now considered inefficient and old-fashioned.

Up Next

I’ll be following this post up with another, focused on the more traditional application of alchemy to making potions that heal and chemicals that explode, before we get into the actual rules for using alchemy as an Aetrimonde character.

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1. The treatments to produce mithril and adamantine were discovered by the dwarves of Gjalerbron in the Age of Legends, and became lost during the Collapse. The secret of mithril has since been rediscovered, and has spread to non-dwarven alchemists; the secret of adamantine remains lost. All modern adamantine is made by melting down adamantine from the Age of Legends, which many dwarves find abhorrent. ↩︎