Alchemical Procedures | A L C R Y S T

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Alchemical Procedures

Jul 29, 2015 21:09:43 GMT -6 Word Count:

Post by Brady on Jul 29, 2015 21:09:43 GMT -6

Alchemical Procedures

Alchemists toil over their cauldrons, spewing steam and spraying light, each striving to draft a new discovery--at any cost. It can prove fatal to brew the unknown, crossing boundaries that warn of lethal predators beyond, but a single potion may fund a lifetime of luxury. A challenging yet lucrative occupation, the risk and effort yield wares in endless demand.

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[PTab=Ingredients]

Potions are a form of Alcrystan magic granting a wide range of effects. Most are temporary, a few are permanent, and their methods of activation fluctuate, from consumption to breaking the vial. Potions are composed of varying ingredients and are created exclusively by alchemists licensed through the Almanac.
While only human alchemists can create potions and receive ingredients through a direct system, most potions can also be used by equines if given a suitable IC explanation. For example, an exchange established through the sensory power Gustatory Level 3 Translation.
Ingredients are sorted into 3 categories of increasing rarity and difficulty to attain: organic, inorganic, and incorporeal. An ingredient's category determines how it can be acquired:

Organic. The most common category, organic ingredients consist of any living material, from plants to animal parts. They can be found in the wild or the Labyrinth and are also cultivated by farmers in the Hacienda. Ingredients produced by the Hacienda must be plants, as they follow the same system used for crops.
Inorganic. Of medium rarity, inorganic ingredients are not alive and cannot be grown, such as rocks or gems. They are only found in the wild.
Incorporeal. Rarest and key to the most desirable potions, incorporeal ingredients are intangible materials and tend to take form as highly abstract fantasy, such as the first ray of dawn's sunlight or the final breath of a dying soul. They can be acquired solely through Seraphic Cathedral blessings and infrequent staff-sanctioned events, such as through Emulation or a contest in Cathartic Arena.

Ingredients are identified by the effect they lend to the overall recipe, usually named by verbs and nouns, such as "enhance" or "presence." Potions are therefore created by their logical components. Further explanation is given in the next tab.
Some ingredients are intended specifically for veterinarians to heal tamed horses.

Alchemining

Licensed alchemists can forage for organic and inorganic ingredients, called "alchemining." A particularly dangerous endeavor, alchemining can only occur in Wryweb or Calescent, where humans are most vulnerable to wild horses and other predators. Optional safety measures include hiring mercenaries as guards, bringing tamed horses and companions, equipping your best armor and weapons, and activating other potions from your inventory.
To alchemine in any wilderness board, create a thread with the label "Alchemining" and write a 200-400 word IC post describing your character searching for ingredients. If applicable, you must include all safety measures as an OOC note in your first post, such as the assistance of a mercenary, and cannot add further precautions later. If you are accompanied by any other characters, they must also write 200-400 word IC posts depicting their character's actions during the alchemining attempt. Once finished, post in Invocation to alert staff.
Staff will post a dice roll to determine what you will receive. Dice faces 1-6 result in nothing; faces 7-9 are organic ingredients; face 10 is inorganic. If you receive nothing, your thread is then archived.
If successful, a 2nd dice is rolled to declare which specific ingredient you have earned. The dice will have an equivalent number of faces to the amount of ingredients in the corresponding organic or inorganic category, as listed in the potion book. Whichever face your dice lands upon is the ingredient you will obtain.
A final 3-sided dice roll reveals if your alchemist will encounter a predator, signified by dice face 1, or will not encounter a predator, signified by dice faces 2 and 3. After the 3rd roll, staff will post a cooldown timer for 48 hours; you cannot alchemine again until the timer expires.
You must choose a contribution for your ingredient. In your next post, supply a link to your selected contribution as an OOC note. You must also notify the chosen contribution creator by posting in their thread with a link to your alchemining thread.
If your character does not encounter a predator, you are still vulnerable to wild horse characters during the following 48 hours. Any wild horse is permitted to post within your thread once the timer is published, though hostility is not mandatory and other interactions may occur. You are only allowed the safety measures you outlined in your original post.

If a horse posts during this 48 hour period, your ingredient will be withheld until the thread is completed. Only 1 equine character may enter each alchemining thread.
The horse must respond within 24 hours each time you reply in your alchemining thread, preventing unfair delays caused by inactivity. You must notify the equine's roleplayer by tagging their IC and OOC accounts in each reply. If they do not respond within 24 hours, you will receive the ingredient and do not need to complete the thread.
Post in Invocation to alert staff after the thread is completed or if the horse does not reply in time. They will add the ingredient to your inventory and archive your alchemining thread unless otherwise requested.
You may alchemine again after the 48 hour period passes, even if you have not yet completed your thread with a wild horse. The original ingredient from your first alchemining attempt will remain suspended until its conclusion, but you may simultaneously pursue a new ingredient in another thread.
Your character may flee and forfeit the ingredient if desired. You must realistically explain your escape in a 200-400 word IC post. Any additional characters, such as a tamed horse, must also describe their retreat with a 200-400 word IC post.
If a horse never enters your thread within the 48 hours period, then you must write a 200-400 word IC post detailing your character retrieving their ingredient, prior to posting in Invocation.

If your character does encounter a predator, you will not acquire the ingredient until you undergo a specific quest. Staff will create a new thread using both the labels "Alchemining" and "Questing," automatically generating a randomized beast from the lowest difficulty level. Although the quest requires a different thread due to limitations of the questing code, the quest is an immediate IC extension of your alchemining thread; it occurs seamlessly after your character began searching for an ingredient. Wild horses may not enter your alchemining or questing threads. You are only allowed the safety measures you outlined in your original alchemining post.
You must choose a contribution for your ingredient. In your first questing post, supply a link to your selected contribution as an OOC note.

Once the beast is defeated, you will earn 2 of the alchemined ingredient instead of 1. If you are not victorious, you will not receive any ingredients.
After the quest is completed, post in Invocation to alert staff. They will add any earned ingredients to your inventory and archive your alchemining and questing threads unless otherwise requested.
If desired, your characater may flee and forfeit the ingredient. You must realistically explain your escape in a 200-400 word IC post. Any additional characters, such as a tamed horse, must also describe their retreat with a 200-400 word IC post.
You may not create a new alchemining thread until your quest finished or forfeited and 48 hours have passed since your original alchemining thread was posted.

Farming

Organic ingredients can also be cultivated by licensed farmers.
By default, farmers are not allowed to grow ingredients. To earn the ability to farm a particular ingredient, such as "external," you must acquire its "unlock." You will earn an unlock the first time the specific ingredient is added to your inventory. Once unlocked, you may begin planting that type of ingredient.
Methods to procure a new ingredient include but are not limited to: purchasing or trading in the Black Market with any character already in possession of the new ingredient, receiving from another farmer or alchemist, alchemining, or stealing.
Unlocks must be attained publicly, whether IC or OOC, although discussion may occur privately. When sowing ingredient crops, its acquirement thread will serve as proof for your unlock.
You must choose a contribution when planting ingredients.

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[PTab=Experimenting]

There are 2 factors influencing a potion's rarity: how difficult it is to acquire its ingredients and how difficult it is to learn its recipe. Each potion has a unique recipe that must be discovered through either experimentation or alternative methods, such as purchasing from another alchemist.
All possible potions and ingredients can be found in the potion book.
If desired, you may publish your known recipes by posting in Invocation and requesting staff add the recipe to the potion book for public knowledge.
To experiment, create a thread labeled "Experimenting" in the Experimentation sub-board. Using a 200-400 word IC post, describe your character attempting to brew a potion. Include an OOC note at the bottom of your post listing the actual recipe you are testing and optionally naming which potion you are aiming to produce; it is not necessary to intend a particular potion. Your recipe must include the ingredients you are using, their quantity, and the order they are added, such as: Ingredient + [2] Ingredient + Ingredient + [3] Ingredient. If applicable, you must declare if you are not experimenting but rather creating a potion from a recipe you have already discovered. If you choose to inject additional content for your personal reference, it must be distinctly separate from your IC post and OOC recipe and can occur in multiple posts if preferred.
Only the head administrator has access to each potion's hidden recipe. To prevent unfair advantage, the head administrator's characters may never experiment. However, they may create potions from recipes they justly acquired, such as purchasing from another roleplayer's character.
Experimentation is private, rendering your threads completely invisible and inaccessible to anyone apart from yourself and the head administrator. All alchemists are able to post in the board but will only see their own threads. It is optional to utilize a contribution for your ingredients; if used, it is not mandatory to select the same contributions chosen when originally acquiring the ingredients.
Once finished, post in Invocation to alert the head administrator. Other members will be unable to access your experiment, even if they click the direct link to your experiment thread. Your experiment may have any of the following outcomes:

If your ingredients, quantities, and order are all incorrect, it will result in a "toxic potion." Consuming a toxic potion will cause extensive damage, requiring healing through Delphic Provenance, Torrid Cauldron, or a veterinarian. The character's "ailment" field in their mini-profile will be updated with "Toxic Potion Poisoning," characterized by nausea, sharp stomach pain, a dizzying migraine sensitive to light and sound, and severe burns in your mouth and throat.
If your ingredients are correct but both their quantities and order are incorrect, it will result in a "neutralized potion." This potion is useless and does not cause any effect; therefore, it is not added to your inventory. Their primary purpose is to provide hints for alchemists who are bordering success.
If your ingredients and 1 of the other components are correct but the 3rd component is incorrect, it will result in a "weak potion." These have similar but milder effects compared to their standard counterparts. The potion book lists the weak version of each potion in their individual entries.
If your ingredients, quantities, and order are all correct, you will receive the "full potion."
You will receive the highest resulting potion. For example, if your experiment matches both a weak and neutralized potion, only the weak potion will be reported. If there are multiple potion results of the same level, such as numerous weak potions, then they are all posted and you may select which will be added to your inventory.

The used ingredients will be removed from your inventory; if you received a toxic, weak, or full potion, it will be added.
Experimentation includes the labels "Toxic," "Neutralized," "Weak," and "Full." These labels are optional and intended as supplementary tools for organization. Click on a label to sort the board by threads with the selected label applied. If desired, you may create personal threads, such as directories of known recipes, records of failed experiments to aid in deductive reasoning, or lists of other characters you suspect have discovered recipes.

Construction Sentences

Recipes are derived from ingredients named by their grammatical designation. Each recipe represents the effect of the potion, called a "construction sentence." The following is an example illustrating how alchemists can form an educated guess toward an unknown recipe by building potential construction sentences. This example is uncommonly lengthy and convoluted, mimicking the complexity of a Rarity Tier 9 potion:

The hypothetical potion spawns a wave of fire when its vial is broken, engulfing everyone in the thread and severely burning any exposed flesh.
To begin identifying viable ingredients, first write what the potion aims to do, thus drafting its first conceivable construction sentence. For example, one possible construction sentence is:

"[Create] the [undesirable] [presence] of fire, made by [intense] [heat], in the [surrounding area], and thus [nullify] everyone's [positive] [health]."

Each emphasized word substitutes a corresponding ingredient, as surmised by their name and synonyms in the potion book. The words of the construction sentence are then dissected to analyze which ingredients might be suitable.
There are multiple potential construction sentences for every recipe and each one can be satisfied by an array of ingredients. Therefore, composing your construction sentence is only an approximation, but it secures a preliminary foundation to then test different variations and narrow your options until you find the true sentence made by the head administrator.
The following list theorizes plausible ingredients for the components of the above construction sentence example. The direct ingredients are the most obvious and basic choices; the indirect ingredients are tricky alternatives that might also suffice:

Create.

Direct: "Formation."

Undesirable.

Direct: "Negative."
Indirect: "Reversal" and "positive" paired to indicate "the opposite of positive."

Presence.

Direct: "Presence."
Indirect: "External" and "formation" paired to indicate "the external existence of something."

Intense.

Direct: "Enhance."
Indirect: "Reversal" and "decrease" paired to indicate "the opposite of decreased."

Heat.

Direct: "Temperature."

Surrounding area.

Direct: "Nature."
Indirect: "External" and "presence" paired to indicate "the external location."

Nullify.

Direct: "Nullify."
Indirect: "Negative" and "evolve" paired to indicate "the unfavorable transformation of."

Positive.

Direct: "Positive."
Indirect: "Nullify" and "negative" paired to indicate "cancel the bad."

Health.

Direct: "Regeneration."
Indirect: "Capability," "sensory", and "external" merged to indicate "the ability to feel their external body," meaning the character's burnt skin and damaged nerves.

Thus, one of several recipes that might craft this potion is:

Formation + Reversal + Positive + Presence + Enhance + Temperature + Nature + Nullify + Positive + Regeneration.

Although a tedious and often frustrating process, outlining likely construction sentences and scrutinizing their related ingredients will become easier with experience and through repeated trials.
When you successfully create a full potion, the head administrator will also post the recipe's true construction sentence, helping hone your understanding of their general logic and flow.

Experimentation Hints

The number of total ingredients in a recipe is equivalent to its rarity tier. For example, a rarity 4 potion will have 4 ingredients. However, it may contain 4 individual ingredients, or it may have fewer separate ingredients with higher quantities. Both of the following recipes qualify for rarity tier 4:

Ingredient A + Ingredient B + Ingredient C + Ingredient D.
[2] Ingredient A + [2] Ingredient B.

Quantities are often increased when the ingredient must lend a significantly potent effect. For example:

Potion:

Expand the consumer's mind to encompass their proximate space, seeing and hearing every disturbance in the thread. Rarity 7.

Recipe:

[2] Evolve + Capability + Sensory + Awareness + [2] Nature.

Construction Sentence:

"[Transform] the [ability] of their [vision and hearing] to [perceive] the [surrounding area]."

"Evolve" is doubled due to the extensive transformation it must evoke throughout the consumer's body. "Surrounding area" is doubled due to the many minute details that must be affected in such a large radius.

The construction sentences formulating rarity 1-7 potions always begin with a verb. For example:

Potion:

Causes the consumer to feel happy. Rarity 5.

Recipe:

[2] Formation + Mood + Nullify + Negative.

Construction Sentence:

"[Bring forth] a [mood] that is [not] [bad]."

Even though the ingredient's name presents as a noun, "formation," it can be used for verbs, adjectives, and adverbs depending on context and its synonyms, as seen in the potion book.

Rarity tiers 1-4 only contain organic ingredients. Rarity tiers 5-7 contain a mixture of organic and inorganic ingredients. Rarity tiers 8-10 contain a mixture of organic, inorganic, and incorporeal ingredients.

As the potions scale in rarity, their recipes begin incorporating tricks. Rarity tiers 1-4 are generally simple and straightforward. Rarity tiers 5-7 introduce moderate tricks. Rarity tiers 8-10 adopt complex tricks. Some tricks are:

Unorthodox ingredients may combine to replace a more conventional ingredient. For example:

Potion:

Allows the consumer to alter their internal functions, such as the speed of their pulse or their body's temperature. Rarity 7.

The most straightforward explanation is:

Straightforward Recipe:

[2] Formation + Capability + Sensory + Awareness + [2] Internal.

Straightforward Construction Sentence:

"[Create] the [ability] for their [senses] to [perceive] their [inner faculties]."

However, as a rarity 7 potion, its recipe is likely elaborate. Another recipe that does integrate unexpected ingredients is:

Tricky Recipe:

Formation + Capability + Sensory + Awareness + Negative + External + Presence.

Tricky Construction Sentence:

"[Create] the [ability] for their [senses] to [perceive] what is the [inverse] of the [exterior] of their [physical being]."

The construction sentences of common potions generally focus on the overall gist whereas rarer potions concentrate on the details and may reiterate the same effect in different ways. For example:

Potion:

Causes severe pain in the consumer's muscle and bones, leading to hyperventilating, blurred vision, increased heart rate, loss of motor control, and difficulty speaking.

A lower rarity potion would cover the broad concept of the potion, such as:

Common Recipe:

Formation + Negative + Internal + Mood.

Common Construction Sentence:

[Create] [bad] [internal] [feelings].

A higher rarity potion would delve into the facets of the potion, such as:

Rare Recipe:

Internal + Negative + Ward + Disorientation + Sensory + Internal + Capability + Nullify + Communication.

Rare Construction Sentence:

[Inside] the consumer, [remove] their normal [safety] by [disrupting] their [senses] and [internal] [functions] and [cancel] [speaking].

The common construction sentence states the clearest phrasing--to cause pain, referenced as "bad feelings." In the rare construction sentence, the same meaning is repeated with different wording, such as disrupting both their senses and their internal functions, when only one is necessary. It also mentions specific symptoms, such as their ability to speak.

In the rarest potions, some ingredients may re-appear throughout different sections of the recipe. For example:

Potion:

Changes the consumer's limbs into tree branches.

Recipe:

Evolve + Presence + Formation + External + Formation + Evolve + Formation + Awareness + Formation + Nature.

Construction Sentence:

[Transform] their [physical being] and the [formations] on its [exterior], [create] the [growth] of new [formations] that are [perceived] like the [existence] of [nature].

The ingredient "formation" is re-used for different additions to the sentence, each serving separate purposes to the overall structure. For example, the first instance of "formations" in the construction sentence represents the consumer's limbs whereas the later application of "formations" stands for the new tree branches.

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[PTab=Alchemists]

You must purchase an alchemical vial from a Galleria merchant for each potion added to your inventory. If you wish to discard the potion instead, then you do not need to purchase a vial. Neutralized potions never require a vial as they are never included in your inventory. If you do not yet own a vial but want to keep a potion you have created, you may leave the experiment thread as pending until you are able to acquire a vial.
You may decide all details of your alchemy service, including but not limited to: forms of payment permitted, packages offered, discounts, refund policies, if you offer ingredients or potions, any specializations, business arrangements, loyalty programs, bundling deals, restrictions on use, exclusivity agreements, and contracts made by a lawyer.
You may advertise your services in the "adbox" in the left-hand sidetable beside the cbox, the IC Newsletter, the homepage footer's classifieds, through character interaction via standard roleplaying, and in the field "promotion" in your account under edit profile > personal.
Alchemy transaction threads are archived in Freelancer Receipts. You must log your records in Scrolls, as described in the Faewin Lawbook, which is mandatory to read. Alcryst's Scrolls site was coded from scratch by Brynora and hosted by her realistic SIM, Elite Equestrian.

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Post by Brady on Jul 29, 2015 21:09:43 GMT -6