"Whaaaaat.
Hell yessss."
It would seem that Terrence is in need of assistance. Let's go and give him a hand.
You see a mass of spectral fires, all earthy brown and greenish with sparks of dancing oranges and blues and yellows. there is beauty in the mixture, thoughthere are sickly pathces, dark spots, and flaming points of glaring heat, as well. tendrils reach out from the group, brushing against the surrounding jumble, reaching, prying. As you look, the mass resolves into individual bits, though it remains a sort of unified whole as well. Surrounding the mass is a still, solid feel, with tiny sparks of mundane life running it's ordinary course, all anchored and held by a massive, all embracing Solidness. You see spectral tendrils between the mass of fires, and a similar, though larger and more diffuse mass nearby. this mass contains an oddity -a slowly changing, bubbling, eating thing. nearby this larger diffuse mass is a still, firm place, ever changing, but always seeming to change into what it already is. You look for Terance, but don't quite recognize him in this disorienting display.
Hunker down in the tree pit. Be glad that it's dark, and my skin is mostly brown.
You wiggle in as best you can, snapping a small branch in the process. ohgodsohgodsohgods. Didi they hear that?
Oh no. I'm no doctor but that looks bad.
I do NOT attempt any fancy medical treatment, but I look him over for bleeding without moving him. If he isn't bleeding, then I go hunting for some kind of small prey. He might be able to shift to heal but itll cost him im sure. If he is bleeding though, then my action will depend on how much and where.
He is not bleeding. his form is nearly, but not quite, still. random spasms cause the mass to twitch occasionally. When you bring prey to it and place it on the mass, or into it, it seems not to react to them at all. The mass slowly forms a solid, single, shapeless unit, with the ouroboros evident, and the Omega mark even more so. And then it goes still. You still sense something of living magic from it, but it is deep, feeling as if it is beyond your reach.
robutt calculation: Long triangle, bucket of water at the pointy end, vial of acidy stuff I got from the crate at the mission start at inside at the wide end.
Also, holding a bar of soap in one hand and a putting the other hand on a large rock, can I turn the rock into soap?
-scroll scroll scroll, switch pages, scroll scro..- ah, the acid made with your Christmas present? okay.channeling power from the wide end to the narrow end, the wood of teh bucket begins to steam and hiss, before breaking apart, spilling water everywhere. repeating the process, you get this effect occasionally, but with refinement, you channel the energy to the water instead. the water becomes cler, and you see impurities settle into the bottom of the bucket in a fine ashlike powder. Another effect that happens at times, is that the water, instead of becoming clearer, takes on an acidic aspect, and steams slowly. So, you learn that you have to carefully direct the energies, especially if you have something like "wood" in the target location, and you have to specify the effect you are attempting to create, or you could get one of several.
As for the large rock and the small soap - you effectively convert a patch of rock about twice the volume of the soap into an impure soap, and the soap becomes a hard little amberlike ball. Retrying the calculations, you can make a larger patch into weaker soap, up to about three times the size of the original. But this soap is not particularly useful. Taking the resulting soap and trying to repeat the process results in the new soap crumbing to dust and the rock to take on a blackish, slimy texture around your hand.
Alchemy.
often, alchemy involves distilling large quantities of materials, in order to gather pure essences, which are then used to enhance items or create effects. this is probably what the Alchemist in this town was doing, as this process often creates a large amount of waste product. sometimes this waste product is inert, and sometimes it is not. The side effects of this process are one of the man reasons alchemists favor using golems (and slave labor) for most tasks, as the work is often tedious and time consuming. Of course, the effects produced can be quite powerful, and are often considered well worth the expenditure. No one asks the workers though.
metals. Each metal has a distinct property in alchemy. the most famous alchemic metals are gold, lead, and quicksilver.
Gold adds vibrance to a finished product. For example, a sword which one wishes to enhance for durability and sharpnes. adding gold at the right time will give the sword, not only a bright polish, but a "glowing" effect. this effect may be physical, or it may be psychic. that is, the sword might actually glow in the dark, or have a side effect of producing a sharp bright light which reahes out from the end of the blade and cuts at a distance, or it might have a psychic shine that renders it more powerful against wicked creatures and undead and the like.
Lead is very stable aclemically. it is quite toxic naturally, but for whatever reason, it neither responds to aclemic processes, nor affects them. this very property makes lead useful as a sort of platform on which to work, as it means one isn't adding unexpected elements to the mix (as in the bucket of water above). It is for this reason also that alchemists used to seek to transmute lead into important things. They figured the sheer power imparted and the inherent stability would cause the end result to be exeptionally pwerful and permanent.
Quicksilver, liquid metal, adds an element of change, speed, chaos, to the mix. it can greatly accelerate a process, but with unpredictable results. it can add an element of speed to an object, such that quicksilver shoes wold make one run faster, for example. these shoes might cause the ground below to catch fire though, or cause the wearer to become addicted to speed, such that they can no longer stand still.
Author
Topic: Omega Legion Team Two: A Life for a Life. (Read 39524 times)