[center][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/19806d5a-6377-446d-b646-84d6154ed104.png[/img][/center] [sup]This post is mostly in elvish. Apologies in advance to Kho.[/sup] [hider=Status Report] [code]++Stellar Engine++ Operational Status: Nominal Collector Count: 6000 Power Generation: 300 GW Collector Output: 50 MW each Collectors Needed for Total Star Coverage: 5.58E16 Dependent Systems: *Teknall's Workshop *Goliath *Shard conduit ++Teknall's Workshop++ Operational Status: Nominal Might Output: 8/Turn Might Reserved by Workshop: 13 Total Might Available to Teknall: 26.5 Freepoints Available to Teknall: 1 Manufacturing Outputs: *Stellar Engine Collectors, 2000/Turn[/code] [/hider] The Workshop was always busy, manufacturing Collectors for the Stellar Engine and running maintenance on itself. With a steady supply of power, unlimited matter, and divine engineering, it could run ceaselessly for the next trillion years without slowing. But beyond being a factory, it was also a space for prototyping and experimentation. Teknall emerged into the Workshop, put his hands on his hips and gazed around. The first place he went to was to the manufacturing line, where he began tinkering with the forge mixing the alloys and the devices for shaping the metal. Since his last visit, he had figured out a few optimisations to the metalworking components of the manufacturing process. After a few hours, he had managed to apply these optimisations and double the production rate of Stellar Engine Collectors. But those manufacturing improvements was the least significant thing he planned to do at this time. Teknall had two novel materials he had obtained and needed to experiment with to discern their nature, for he suspected that they might be of great use to him. First, he took out of his pocket a small glass vial containing a brightly glowing fluid. Despite its small size, its light was sufficient to illuminate half of the Workshop, attesting to the power contained within. This was [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/3390441]Liquid Light[/url], which Astarte had tasked Teknall with deconstructing and analysing. That request had been issued long ago, and Teknall had been otherwise occupied for much of that time, but now he had a need and was adequately equipped to study the Liquid Light. It was the same substance which illuminated some of the passageways and halls in the Celestial Citadel, and which Vestec had finely distributed amongst every mortal alive some time ago. This stuff which Astarte could produce obviously contained enormous magical potential; the trick would be harnessing that potential. Teknall set the vial down on a workbench and brought his eyes down to be level with it. The fluid within was opaque, and turbulent currents stirred it around even long after the vial had stopped moving. The light, he realised, was not pure white, but instead a mixture of colours, their distribution randomised by turbulent noise. The most noticeable colour was lavender, which Teknall remembered was a colour Astarte often wore, but there seemed to be trace quantities of other colours too. First, Teknall put a thin sheet of pure gold, a fairly inert surface, onto a workbench. Then, carefully, Teknall opened the vial and used a pipette to extract the tiniest drop he could. He closed the vial, then dropped that drop onto the gold. The tiny drop wriggled and bounced, driven by some internal energy, until it faded. Whether it had evaporated or dissipated or spent its energy, Teknall could not tell, but for whatever reason, liquid light was stable while stored, at least in bulk, but isolated quantities of it tended to be unstable. Liquid light also contained an inherent restlessness, which drove the turbulence of the fluid and the motion of the droplet. The liquid light would likely be highly reactive given a receptive object to react with. What left him intrigued, though, was where the liquid light went when it vanished. Did it evaporate or disperse into some less dense form? Was it converted into radiation of some sort? Or did it truly vanish, disappearing without a trace? Teknall wanted to test this. He constructed a completely sealed hemispherical dome. He then coated that dome in a layer of photodiodes and a layer of magic transducers- an electrical device which exploited the natural magical affinity of some elements, such as orichalcum, to convert magical activity into an electric signal. These he connected to an oscilloscope to read the outputs. Into this dome Teknall placed another fraction of a drop of liquid light, then watched the oscilloscope signals. The signals started strong, stayed that way for a few moments, then fell away to nothingness as the drop of liquid light vanished. It appeared that the liquid light had truly vanished, but Teknall wanted to test for remains. He attached a pump to the opening of the dome and extracted all that was contained within, compressing it to a tiny point. This compaction did not cause any liquid light to condense. Running it through a standard battery of spectroscopies revealed nothing but the air of the Workshop was left inside the dome, and the magical activity had faded to close to background levels, although a residual amount of magical energy remained. It appeared that when the liquid light evaporated, it was gone for good. A distinguishing feature of the liquid light was the light it emitted. Thus, Teknall's next tests would focus on the light. He enclosed the vial in an opaque material, leaving just a single pinhole open for the light to escape through. Teknall then took a diffraction grating, placed it in the beam of light, and observed the spectrum the diffraction grating produced. The spectrum covered the entire rainbow. It was very pure white light which Teknall measured, with no discontinuities or characteristic frequencies in the spectrum. Intriguingly the spectrum contained only light from the visible part of the spectrum, with no wavelengths beyond violet or below red. Within the visible spectrum, the intensity profile was purely uniform, with only minor fluctuations occurring as random noise. But Teknall was dissatisfied with this spectrum, for it failed to explain the colours he observed, if only fleetingly. He carefully analysed the fluctuations in the intensity, check the statistics to ensure that those fluctuations were indeed random noise and not an actual pattern. His numbers were strongly indicating random noise, meaning that he was no closer to an answer. Then realisation struck Teknall. What he had seen in the vial were [i]colours[/i], not wavelengths of light. It was exactly like Ilunabar's Beyond Colours, which appeared to have colour but could not be deconstructed into component photons. But that still left the challenge of separating these colours for quantification. Conventional optics would not work. Perhaps a magically birefringent might. Teknall synthesised a clear crystal containing an anisotropic complex of orichalcum and cut it into a prism. This prism he placed in front of the Liquid Light, and he observed the spectrum it produced. And it did produce an interesting spectrum. A pattern of lights danced across the board. However, the lights were all the same white light with hints of colour that entered the prism. It was not the spectrum he had been looking for, but it was fascinating nonetheless. This magic spectrum would be a very useful diagnostic tool. To better read the spectrum Teknall made a flat plate of photodiodes and magic transducers, like he had for the dome, and set it up to receive the spectrum. Unlike the dome, he separated the sensors into a grid array, such that the data could be spatially resolved. Then Teknall took from his pocket the imitation of the Universal Blueprint and laid it on an adjacent table. He looked to the section on magic and traced his finger along interweaving the lines of text and drawing. Atsarte's writings on how her magic would work were vague, at least for a fundamental operating principle of the Universe. 'Energy' which had nothing to do with real energy, the flow of soul and will and magical power. It was very similar to the schematics Ilunabar had made of Pictaraika. He felt, however, that he had a vague idea of what was going on. But Astarte's magic was not independent. Just as Logos' four fundamental forces were interrelated, so were the three magical paradigms, although the nature of the interaction differed. Logos' fundamental forces all operated on the same deeper fundamental principles, and as such worked together in harmony. The three magical paradigms, however, were all of different authorships, yet they overlapped significantly in many points, so the rules had conflicted with each other back in creation until some kind of equilibrium had been established. This equilibrium was not without faults, and these faults could be exploited, as Toun had done with his siphons. But generally it meant that wherever two or more magical paradigms applied, the rules governing the interaction would be some hybrid of those paradigms. Such connections and rules were not simple for Teknall to trace. In many cases, the rules were either hideously complicated or poorly defined, and the interrelations were nigh-innumerable. But he put the effort in, and after a long while- had it been hours? Days? Years? There was no way to tell time within the Workshop- of studying, calculating, sketching and modelling, Teknall believed he had figured out enough about magic to interpret the spectra, and another battery of diagnostic tests which should tell him what he needed to know about the Liquid Light. So to his vial of Liquid Light he applied electromagnetic fields, exposed it to light and sunlight (for the latter he had to take it outside the Workshop), performed simple occult and arcane rituals next to it, all while inspecting the spectra produced. Teknall then built a small circular particle accelerator and fed it a drop of Liquid Light, examining the spectra of the decomposition products as the centripetal forces ripped the droplet apart. He then made a chromatograph with a magically-active column and performed chromatography on another droplet of Liquid Light, further deducing its component parts. And he used a very carefully measured drop of the Liquid Light in a simple diagnostic arcane ritual. The results were illuminating. While Teknall couldn't positively identify every component of the Liquid Light definitively from these tests, he could identify most of it. Astartean magic did not have particles like regular physics, but it did have some loose abstractions of interactions and energies and types which could be tentatively called concepts. And the concepts which Teknall identified had to do with power, amplification, will and whimsy. Power: the Liquid Light contained a huge amount of magical energy. This energy was not easily quantifiable like regular energy, and defied conservation of energy, but energy was the best word for it. The Liquid Light contained the impetus to perform great magical feats. Amplification: Not only did the Liquid Light contain magical power, but it reacted strongly with any other magic nearby. Any magic it came into contact with became stronger, leaving the system with much more magical energy than it had started with. Will: The effects of the Liquid Light could be directed, although this component was weak so direction is tentative at best. When placed into a spell, the Liquid Light conformed to the spell and enhanced it. Theoretically, if absorbed by a living soul, then if the Liquid Light could be contained then it could be controlled and used to cast magic. Whimsy: Astartean Magic was made as a care-free addition to the universe, producing wild and whimsical results without the slightest regard to physical laws. The Liquid Light reflected that trait. It moved randomly when allowed. It was chaotic and difficult to constrain. Theoretically, use by a mortal would be dangerous and risk nasty side-effects. When Liquid Light is in use, physics got second priority. In short, Liquid Light was a magical catalyst of enormous power. One drop could bend physics to the will of a magical spell. Teknall held the glowing bottle up gingerly, mildly awed at the power between his fingertips. It would serve his purposes nicely. And if he could get more, even better. That still didn't answer the question of where the colours came from. Neither conventional nor magical optics had served to isolate those colours. He would need something which interacted with the perception of light, rather than the photons from which light was made. But what did he have which could do that? Eyes could identify the colours. Teknall sat and looked at the bottle of Liquid Light. In it he saw the lavender light clearly. There were also flashes of brown, faint but just visible. He thought he saw some cyan in there too, but it was really difficult to distinguish and identify whether it was a permanent feature or a stochastic fluctuation. While eyes could see colour, they were only really useful for qualitative analysis, with very limited quantitative ability. While his divine Perception could easily quantify the energy and wavelength of a photon and their amount, he lacked such abilities for these perceived colours. Some kind of optics would still be necessary. Teknall's own library of materials would be useless for the task, so he thought of Ilunabar, who used such perceived colours regularly. Surely something of Ilunabaric origin would be able to manipulate these colours. Teknall reached into his pocket and pulled out the mirror Ilunabar had given him. An idea struck him. This mirror was Ilunabaric in origin. If he were to modify it from a mirror into a diffraction grating, then it might have the ability to isolate perceived colours. It was a simple task for Teknall to etch a diffraction grating along a narrow strip on the bottom edge of the mirror. However, when used light was still separated into a conventional spectrum. This irritating Teknall slightly, but he was not too surprised. The mirror had expended all its Ilunabaric energy when he had stepped through it, such that it was a mundane mirror at this point. Its power would need to be restored. A quick trip through a rift in space took Teknall from his Workshop to the Purger in the bottom of Pictaraika, holding the mirror in his hand. This place of unnatural black and whites, magical mirrors, and ethereal dream energies made Teknall slightly uneasy, for he was far out of his element. He walked gingerly, afraid to disturb anything. His head flicked side to side, looking and watching. How had Ilunabar done it? She had waved around the mirror in the air, to capture some of the strange white glow in it. There was probably slightly more nuance in what she did, but that was the main part. To compensate for the vagueness of the method, Teknall needed to find a dense patch of this energy. So he searched. Around him was a landscape of solid black silhouettes against a sheer white sky, interspersed with a mysterious white fog and glimmers of mirrors. Teknall walked between the eerie shadow trees, towards a notably dense patch of the fog. Then, between the trees of this still landscape, Teknall thought he saw movement. It was just a blur, and when Teknall turned to look it was gone. But then he caught a figure out of the corner of his eye. Its form was strangely organic, yet he could not pin down its shape, and when he turned to look it was not there. Then, hidden behind a tree, he thought he saw some kind of shadowy appendage, but like a dream it vanished as soon as he focused on it. Dreams. Of course. This place was the Purger, the barrier between reality and the Raka. It made sense that nightmares might creep through. It calmed Teknall slightly to know that it wasn't real, but he hurried onward nonetheless. Reaching the fog patch, Teknall inserted the mirror and waved it around, stirring the energies and capturing some of it within the mirror, which briefly glowed a faint white. Teknall took one last look at the black forest behind him. It was devoid of movement, with no sign of the nightmare. Alone, Teknall then returned to his Workshop. The environment of the Workshop was comforting. It had colour. It obeyed physics. It had the movement of machines giving it some sense of life. Its trees were real and green. And it was his domain. Now with his dream-infused diffraction grating, Teknall returned to his experimenting. He placed the mirror such that its diffraction grating lay in the path of the beam of light from the enclosed Liquid Light. And the spectrum was like no spectrum Teknall had ever seen, for it was utterly non-physical in nature. The spectrum was made from lines of different colours. These colours had nothing to do with the wavelengths of light, but they were obviously colours. The brightest colour was lavender. With lesser intensities were the colours brown, cyan, black and red. There were even fainter lines for other colours too, but those were the most significant. The black surprised Teknall somewhat. How could light possibly be black? It made no sense. But at the same time, this whole thing with perceived colours and dream energies and stuff was nonsensical, which made the colour black one of the least of the mysteries. Now that Teknall had a spectrum of colours, and could quantify the intensity of each colour, he just needed to interpret it. Nothing in his calculations of Astartean magic indicated anything about such colours, which meant that these colours probably indicated some other property of the Liquid Light. The biggest clue was that the major colour was lavender, and that colour was Astarte's preferred colour. It was the colour of her hair and her clothes, so why not her magic? Teknall's divine power had a characteristic colour- gold. Toun's characteristic colour for his divine power was red, the colour of the ink he used to write on the Codex. Jvan's colour was carmine. Vestec had the distinguishing feature of being characterised by every single colour simultaneously. And Astarte's signature colour was lavender. But there was more to the Liquid Light than that. There were other colours too, and the meaning of those was less clear. But continuing on the idea of signature colours, Teknall remembered Astarte's Avatar, who appeared exactly like Astarte but brown instead of lavender. So perhaps these colours were linked to lesser parts of Astarte. Teknall guessed that if Astarte ever made a second Avatar, it would be either cyan, black or red in appearance. If he was right, then that would suggest that these colours represented fragments of Astarte, the meaning of which could be interpreted by someone with more knowledge about colours, like Ilunabar. If he was wrong, then he'd need a new theory. Teknall ran a few more tests on the Liquid Light, and found that the colour spectrum was unchanged by whatever manipulations he performed on the Liquid Light. This further implied that the colours were some kind of signature, a byproduct of being produced by Astarte, and not of material impact on the properties of the Liquid Light. Finally, Teknall was satisfied with his knowledge of the Liquid Light. He stowed the glowing vial back in his apron pocket. [hr] No sooner had Teknall put away the Liquid Light than Teknall withdrew his next subject from his pocket, the large orb of Arksynth he had received from Lifprasil, still wrapped in plastic. Arksynth, an incredibly diverse material. Its potential for differentiation was virtually unlimited, with applications almost as diverse as Jvan's direct handiwork, and all this was accessible by mortal means. Teknall had observed how the Xerxeans and the Cosmic Knights used Arksynth, and saw how the right application of some seemingly random ingredients and a bit of physical treatment could produce fantastic results. Pure alcohol. Latex. Armour. Vitamins. Fur. It seemed that just about anything could be made using Arksynth. But this was the problem. The reaction conditions were seemingly random. While there were few stimuli which did not elicit some response, there was no obvious pattern, which would make producing the desired response incredibly difficult. Combinatorial chemistry and blind chance was an option, but it would be a last resort. There had to be a smarter way. Some kind of pattern had to exist. Before Teknall started studying the Arksynth, he set up a few culture vats with water, bubbling oxygen, and organic matter from the plantation, and into those vats he placed chunks of Arksynth. Over time they would grow, and he would have more stem Arksynth to use. Teknall then took a very fine and sharp scalpel, and with very steady hands used the scalpel to collect a few individual cells of stem Arksynth. With his godly Perception, Teknall needed no microscope to observe the cells and their sub-cellular structures. It took him no time at all to discern the ancestors from which this tissue had been made. The Arks and demons. But he had figured that out the moment he had got his hands on the stuff. What he was yet to figure out was the third influence, an influence subtle, immaterial, but pervasive. Teknall transferred the cells to a glass plate and used the scalpel to isolate a single cell. Then, with a fine-needled syringe, he injected the cell with water forcing it to lyse, smearing its component biomolecules throughout the droplet of water. And Teknall studied and catalogued every molecule from that cell of Arksynth, every signaller and receiver, every protein, every enzyme, every nucleotide, everything, but he found no trace of that third influence. Evidently, that third influence only existed within living Arksynth. So Teknall extended his study to living Arksynth. Arksynth was made from living tissue, so many of its interactions would be dictated by biochemical processes. These biochemical processes may be strongly influenced by the Other and the occult, but they would be biochemical processes all the same. Teknall began applying stimuli. He started with a few of the recipes he had seen others use, and as he worked on those recipes he very carefully observed the passage of every molecule within the stem Arksynth. He used the Cosmic Knight recipe for producing carbon fibre sheets, and that worked successfully. But the recipes from Xerxes did not quite work. The recipe which should have produced ethanol and methanol instead created isopropyl alcohol, and the recipe which should have produced latex made rubber. The differences were peculiar. Teknall was positive that he had followed the recipes exactly. To be sure that it wasn't the environment he even left the Workshop and reattempted the synthesis on Galbar, but to the same results. The remaining possibility was that the Arksynth Teknall had was subtly different to the Arksynth Tauga had. Perhaps it had mutated at some point in the past. If mutations were common, it would make studying the material difficult. But Teknall realised that he was actually quite lucky. The differences between the expected and actual outcomes were small yet significant. If he were to compare the two different strains of Arksynth, then he could greatly improve his understanding of the substance, and help isolate some of the invariants in the material. The best place to get a sample of Xerxian Arksynth would be from Xerxes itself. So Teknall made a quick and stealthy trip to Xerxes. He found a city coated in ash and filled with dilapidated buildings. The majority of the population had been converted to dagons, with the remainder being the mortals he had saved in the Rotfly watch. All were preparing for war, but not in the usual way. Instead, he found them laying traps, digging tunnels, preparing ambushes. This plan Tauga had pulled together, circumventing Teknall's curse on the city and making full use of what little advantages remained, was impressive. Lifprasil's army would encounter a tough battle. Teknall did not hang around looking, though. Unseen, and nigh undetectable, Teknall scooped out a slice of Arksynth from one of the vats in the watch complex, then returned to his Workshop with the sample. Teknall put most of the new stem Arksynth into a fresh culture vat, keeping just enough to test the same three recipes as before. The recipes for alcohol and latex worked as expected, and the recipe for carbon fibre instead produced pellets of graphite. Then Teknall began comparing the data. He catalogued differences in the proteome and genome. He mapped out the cascade of reactions which occurred on applying each stimulus. From this analysis Teknall was able to assign, at least approximately, what parts of the Arksynth performed what functions, and had figured out the mutations which had occurred between the two strains. But he was still nowhere near being able to predict the Arksynth's behaviour. This was where having two similar yet distinct strains was lucky. While finding a recipe to perform a particular function from scratch would be extremely difficult, it should be relatively simple to modify an existing recipe to produce a slightly different response. And by tracking the changes in recipe needed to match the outcomes of the two different strains Teknall would be much better informed about how the Arksynth behaved. So Teknall experimented, making incremental modifications to the stimuli applied, in dose, kind and order. The variables involved were still many, but not as infinite as starting from nothing. And as Teknall tinkered and tested, he found that his intuition and first guesses, more often than not, led to positive developments. With each modification, Teknall carefully catalogued the full sequence of biochemical reactions occurring within the Arksynth, as he had earlier. He noted many things, such as what doses caused the equilibria to tip, how selective the receptors were, and so on. And he noted anomalies too, where reaction pathways diverged from the physical and into the occult or the processes of the Other. It took less time than expected for Teknall to develop the modified recipes to produce the desired products. And while his understanding was growing, he had identified a fundamental barrier to further understanding. His comprehension of both the occult and the Other were lacking compared to his comprehension of physics and chemistry, which was a problem since all those processes were intertwined within the Arksynth. Fortunately, most of what he needed to know was buried within the Universal Blueprint. Teknall went back to his imitation of the Universal Blueprint and studied it again. He looked to Mammon's occult and inspected it in depth. He had already done some preliminary tracing of the submaterium connections back when he devised an antidote for Xerxes' blood rain, but the knowledge he would need to understand the Arksynth was much deeper in the web of text and symbols. The main reason for that was that Arksynth was not purely occult in functioning, containing many non-magical components. Thus there was often no direct submaterial link to trace, meaning he would need to find secondary connections and loose ends in the occult to find how it might interface with the Arksynth. Mammon's occult, while esoteric and convoluted, still followed fairly conventional logic. Jvan's Other, on the other hand, thrived on an explicit lack of logic. The processes of the Other were driven by paradoxes and mathematical singularities which should have resulted in their total non-existence. He had reverse engineered Other-mediated processes before, namely the Needle Fae, but to reconstruct it from the ground up was another matter entirely. The Other was an aberration, blatantly disregarding all good logic and reason, yet still producing a functional result. It was just as well that most of the Other was sealed away in the Gap; even without the Hells of Time the Other could still wreak havoc on the Universe by its mere presence. Despite all this, the Other was surprisingly useful. By breaking free of physics and logic the Other was capable of mediating processes which would have been simply impossible otherwise, or providing powerful shortcuts to otherwise difficult or energetically expensive mechanisms. As Teknall studied, he realised just how broadly Other processes influenced the functioning of the Arksynth. It had taken a long time for Teknall to comprehend Astarte's magic. Teknall was able to understand Mammon's occult in slightly less time, for it was a rigidly defined system. But it took much longer for Teknall to understand the Other in even a rudimentary manner, overlayed with approximations and simplifications to help ease comprehension. And while his newfound understanding of the Other was crude, it was sufficient for his purposes. As Teknall was compiling this information and figuring out how it connected to the Arksynth, an anomaly in one of the Arksynth vats caught his attention. The stem Arksynth had to consume biological matter in order to grow. But this vat of stem Arksynth, for whatever reason, was consuming not just the plant matter it was fed but also the metal walls of the vat. Quickly Teknall hurried over to the vat, which was half as tall as he was. He reached in with his hands and scooped out the mass of wrinkled grey tissue, water streaming off it. Simultaneously one of the robotic worker arms of the Workshop brought over a ceramic vat, into which Teknall deposited the Arksynth. The Arksynth did not start eating the walls of its new contained, so Teknall transferred over the water, food feed and oxygen line to the new vat. Teknall took a small sample with his scalpel and inspected it. The stem Arksynth very slowly began eating the stainless steel of the scalpel, but that didn't concern Teknall. It was still stem Arksynth, but it appeared that some vastly improbable mutation had allowed this particular batch to digest metal as well as biomatter. The metal was stored within the Arksynth cells, but were not integrated into any of the functional organelles, so could likely be expelled if given the right stimulus. What were the odds of such a mutation occurring? While this mutation could be useful, if it occurred in any other vats it might become problematic. But even with the clashing mechanisms within the Arksynth such a mutation remained very unlikely. It had been sheer chance that this had occurred. Chance. Could that be the third influence? Chance? As Teknall reflected on his experimentation on the Arksynth, with his new understanding of the underlying physical principles, he realised that the probability of him having found the correct recipes as easily as he did was also very low. And wasn't he lucky to have found two distinctly different yet comparable strains of Arksynth? But no physical or Other process could manipulate probability like that, and while a few occult rituals could grant good or bad luck they were complicated, overt and definitely not present in the Arksynth. But what else could manipulate chance? Teknall went back to the vat of Arksynth and inspected the Arksynth as a whole. He peered closely into the bulk material with his divine sense. And with his keen senses, he managed to find just a trace of something he hadn;t noticed before. And he reeled back in shock. Vakalron. Vakalron was in the Arksynth. [i]Vakalron was in the Arksytnh.[/i] The divine signature, as faint as it was, was not simply Vakalron's influence or essence, but his presence, although in some unconscious and delocalised sense. He hadn't seen Vakalron for a long time. The last he had seen of him was his trail on Ilunabar's moon. Vakalron had been conspicuously absent. And now Teknall knew where he was. What in the Hells of Time was Vakalron doing in the Arksynth? And why had Jvan put Vakalron in there? Knowing of Jvan's methods, mental images came to Teknall's mind of how Vakalron may have been converted from a god into a lump of tissue, and Teknall became nauseous and started trembling. The mere thought of a god being butchered up made him sick in the stomach. How could she?! Jvan probably had a good reason. It had better be a damn good reason, because that was not okay. Inconveniently, Jvan was still slumbering, and Teknall didn't want half-truths from Chiral Phi, so answers would have to wait. In disgust, Teknall put the lid onto the vat and left it. He gathered up the samples of Arksynth he had been experimenting with and put them in a box. He considered disposing of the samples, but with Vakalron in them he wasn't comfortable with doing that. Then Teknall sat down, rubbed his eyes, and tried to think of what to do next. [hr] Thinking about the Arksynth or Jvan right now would be fruitless. Teknall put such thoughts aside for a time when Jvan wasn't comatose. But he still needed something to occupy his mind. He came up with an idea. He had just acquired a vast amount of knowledge about magic, and it would be little use to just set it aside and not use it. There was so much potential in magic. So much versatility. He could rise far above the restrictions of physics should he apply it. It would provide an advantage comparable to the Orb, yet could also be used for countless other applications too. The trick would be to find a way to harness magic. While Teknall could directly cast spells in his generic capacity as a god, he would never be good enough at it for it to be a worthwhile investment. But he didn't need to weave the magic directly. He could manipulate the materials which in turn produced the magical effect. That would be completely within his abilities. He had exercised this kind of magic first when he created the cure for the blood rain. Then he had traced the submaterium connections, as dictated within the Codex, from memory, to the extent necessary to produce the desired results. That had been a simple and direct application of the occult, distilled into liquid within a bottle. With his recently expanded knowledge of the functioning of magic, and practice in dealing with magical materials, Teknall was now ready to refine this practice into an art. Teknall started by copying out Mammon's Occult, Belruarc's Magic and Astarte's Magic from his imitation of the Universal Blueprint and onto a larger poster, where he would be able to annotate it. Behind him, robotic arms began collecting glassware and moving it into place on workbenches, and various chemical substances were ordered from the chemical reactor and the plantation. Teknall's Workshop would not be able to manufacture every substance needed, but with Teknall's big picture view he would be able to substitute most ingredients with stuff he could obtain within the Workshop, limiting the number of excursions he would need to do. Once he had his poster up, Teknall took only a moment to inspect the intricate web of magical connections and the interference between the three paradigms. Further study was of no use; he already had all the knowledge he needed, he just needed to use his hands and put it into practice. Teknall decided on the first potion he would make. Explosions were too simple and easy; there were innumerable ways to make things explode, and most of them required no magic whatsoever. Some kind of enhancement would be interesting, but with no test subjects there would be little point. So Teknall came up with a better idea, one closer to his own style. He gathered the ingredients together into a ceramic beaker. A handful of cement, thrown into the air beforehand. The root of a tree, dissolved in hydrofluoric acid and brought to the boil by a flame conjured by arcane symbols. A lock of his own hair. Then stirring in total darkness, and sealing the container under a methane atmosphere. A complicated network of Belruarcian runes were powered to supplement what submaterium connections Teknall didn't have at hand. This was possible because of the conflicting interactions between the different paradigms of magic, allowing him to, for example, 'trick' the occult ritual into believing that the root was from a Caliginous Mangrove tree, and not a regular tree in his Workshop. These shortcuts compromised potency, but made the ingredients far easier to obtain. Teknall took the sealed ceramic container out from the darkened air-tight box he had done the final step in. Being careful not to disturb it too much, Teknall carried it to a relatively empty section of the Workshop floor, walked backwards a few metres, then telekinetically popped the lid off the container. On contact with the air, a grey sludge shot up ten metres (against the weak gravity of the Workshop) before rapidly solidifying into a blobby pillar of hard, stone-like material. Teknall walked up to the pillar and tapped it, and was satisfied by its strength. The test had been a success. He called the potion Alchemist's Cement. On exposure to air, it rapidly expands, making formations like that pillar, before swiftly solidifying into a concrete-like substance. Using genuine ingredients or a greater volume would produce greater results, but this was a good start. Another improvement would be the addition of demon's blood to the recipe, which would grant the cement improved behaviours. But demon's blood was not the easiest substance to obtain. Yet Teknall realised that he had a potential source. The Arksynth was part demon. It could easily be coaxed into producing genuine demon blood. Teknall hesitated for a moment, then decided against it. Using the Arksynth with Vakalron inside it felt like desecrating a grave. He'd sort out that issue later. For now, Teknall would experiment with other potions. In a glass vial, Teknall mixed dirt from the Darkened Spires and soot made from burnt hyssop in diethyl ether under ultraviolet light. Teknall had given up on trying to use solely ingredients from his Workshop, for the occult nature of alchemy often required components from specific locations or specific precursors. He could hack together ways around those requirements, but in most cases it would be simplest for him to harvest the materials directly. After mixing, Teknall plunged the vial into a bath of liquid nitrogen. The solution changed from a cloudy black into liquid void. It began emitting fumes, and those vapours created a gaseous region of total darkness. Teknall sealed the potion, which he called Bottled Darkness, and wrapped it in foil to prevent light from degrading it. Teknall spent some time designing and creating a few more potions. A broad-spectrum sleeping potion. Cold fire. Dust of invisibility. Mirror mirage. Content with his ability to design potions, Teknall made one more. Teknall took some diamond dust, wrought iron filings, and platelets isolated from the blood of a white giant, and ground those materials between pure gold gears. He then mixed it all into liquid mercury, brought it to the boil and stirred it with a magnetised wrench while applying an alternating current. Teknall then decanted this mixture into another container and allowed it to cool to room temperature. Once the potion had cooled, Teknall moved to another workbench and, with a forceful blow from his fist, smashed a hole in the bench. Teknall then scooped out a portion of the new potion and poured it onto the hole and its debris. Before his eyes, the hole repaired itself, slowing morphing itself back into shape and reconnecting with the dropped debris. Once the potion had finished its effect, the workbench was as good as new, with no sign of the previous damage. The Panacea Mechanicus, a potion which repairs damage to an object. This version was good, but Teknall could make it more potent. Teknall made a fresh batch of the potion as before, but this time he added a few drops of his own ichor to the mercury before adding the other ingredients. The finished potion glowed gold. Teknall had a very specific use for this high-potency version of the Panacea Mechanicus. At Teknall's summons, Goliath entered the Workshop. Teknall opened up Goliath and added many mechanical bulbs containing the divine Panacea Mechanicus. These bulbs could spray an aerosol of the potion onto any regions of Goliath which were damaged, and would burst if broken providing an additional boost to regeneration. This feature was only to be used if absolutely necessary, because once the Panacea was used up Teknall would have to manually make more, but it could prove extremely useful in a pinch. With the upgrades complete, Teknall sent Goliath out of the Workshop and back to burning the Acalya. Teknall had one last thing to make. Being able to make potions was one thing, but Teknall still needed to be able to carry and access them and the ingredients. His apron pocket could theoretically fulfil the role, but it was optimised for tools, not bottles or loose ingredients. So Teknall got some leather and fashioned it into a satchel, with padding where the bottles would go and rubber linings to prevent leakage. The main section was reserved for potions and empty bottles, while numerous small side pockets would hold ingredients. Like his apron pocket, this satchel had an unlimited capacity for storage. Teknall slung the strap of the satchel over his right shoulder and let the satchel hang by his left hip. Teknall adjusted it slightly until he was comfortable with it. Then Teknall opened the satchel and deposited the potions he had brewed and his leftover ingredients. Teknall was a Mason, Architect, Builder, Carpenter, Blacksmith, Inventor, and Engineer. And now, he was an Alchemist too. [hider=Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology] Alt-text: [i]Hell yeah, I'm an alchemist! Fear my alchemy powers![/i] This post is split into three parts. There is no temporal or spatial separation between the parts, but they do cover distinct things, so I separated them for ease of reading. [b]Part 1[/b] Teknall goes to his Workshop. He uses his Smithing Portfolio to give a one-off free upgrade to the manufacture of Stellar Engine Collectors. Teknall studies Astarte's Liquid Light. After a lot of science and deep study of the Universal Blueprint, Teknall identifies that the Liquid Light contains the concepts 'power', 'amplification', 'will' and 'whimsy'. The Liquid Light is an extremely potent magical catalyst, greatly amplifying any magic it is used with. The Liquid Light also has some strange colour properties, where it emits perceived colours (like the Beyond Colours) rather than colours made from photons. To help study the colours, Teknall makes a quick and quiet trip to the Purger in Pictaraika to imbue a mirror with dream energy. While there, he is pursued by a shadowy nightmare, which spooks him, but he is unharmed. The Liquid Light is coloured lavender, with a bit of brown, cyan, red and black as well. Teknall hypothesises that there is some link between these colours and Astarte herself. -1 Might to study the Liquid Light in great depth. (2/3 Might spent towards Alchemy) [b]Part 2[/b] Teknall studies the sample of Arksynth he had been given by Lifprasil. To aid his studies, he makes a quick trip to Xerxes to acquire a sample of the Arksynth used by Tauga and co., which has evolved into a separate strain of Arksynth with small differences. While there, Teknall briefly observed the recent developments in Xerxes regarding its defences. After some science, Teknall studies the occult and the Other in the Universal Blueprint to grant him better understanding of the Arksynth. Meanwhile, a chance mutation produces a strain of stem Arksynth which can digest and manipulate metal. This makes Teknall realise how improbable all his interactions with Arksynth have been, and that Chance must be an element of the Arksynth. In a shock revelation, Teknall realises that Vakalron is [i]in[/i] the Arksynth, and is appalled and disgusted. If Jvan wasn't in a coma, he'd be demanding answers from her this instant. (Teknall does not yet know that Heartworm is an independent entity, nor is he aware that Heartworm invented the Arksynth without consulting Jvan, nor is he aware of Vakalron's circumstances leading up to being turned into Arksynth) -1 Might to study Arksynth in great depth. (3/3 Might spent towards Alchemy) [b]Part 3[/b] Teknall applies his accrued knowledge of magic to claim the Alchemy Portfolio. Alchemy is a combination of occult rituals, Belruarcian magic and chemistry, used to produce potions and other substances with fantastical properties (or mundane properties, but that's boring). Teknall invents a few potions, namely Alchemist's Cement, bottled darkness, a broad-spectrum sleeping potion, cold fire, dust of invisibility, mirror mirage, and Panacea Mechanicus. Teknall realises that he can probably get genuine demon's blood from Arksynth, which would enhance many potions, but refrains from doing so because of Vakalron. Goliath receives a system which can apply divinely enhanced Panacea Mechanicus to damage, granting Goliath limited-use self-repair abilities. Teknall makes a satchel to put all his alchemy stuff in. -3 Might to claim the Alchemy Portfolio. -1 Might to install divine Panacea Mechanicus into Goliath. [/hider] [hider=Status Report] [code]++Stellar Engine++ Operational Status: Nominal Collector Count: 6000 Power Generation: 300 GW Collector Output: 50 MW each Collectors Needed for Total Star Coverage: 5.58E16 Dependent Systems: *Teknall's Workshop *Goliath *Shard conduit ++Teknall's Workshop++ Operational Status: Nominal Might Output: 8/Turn Might Reserved by Workshop: 7 Total Might Available to Teknall: 20.5 Freepoints Available to Teknall: 1 Manufacturing Outputs: *Stellar Engine Collectors, 4000/Turn[/code] [/hider]