Alchemy

Alchemy is an art focused on the production of both nonmagical and magical elixirs, balms, and explosives to name a few. The art is associated with Ireyem, who followers claim handed off the knowledge of alchemy to a lone traveler. While nonmagical alchemical recipes can be crafted by anyone, magical alchemical recipes require a combination of both chemistry and ritual work to concoct.

Socially, alchemy is treated as an honest profession and it is taught in academies across Athvrea. Women practice alchemy as well, but this is relegated to family businesses and to finishing schools focusing on medicinal and homemaking creations.

Nonmagical alchemy is effectively chemistry and herbalism.

Magical alchemy uses the chemistry and herbalism as a base but then layers on mysticism. Correspondence tables list an array of ingredients and their various properties. The alignment of astrological bodies, the time of year, and even the day of the week can be used to magnify the strength of a creation or undercut its potency. Sacred math and geometry is used to create matrices that harness these correspondences, bringing out the magical properties present and allowing them to coalesce into a whole. The construction of these matrices uses metallic ink on paper or parchment. The ink rapidly oxidizes at the conclusion of the work, destroying itself and what it was written on.

Alchemical ingredients range from so common there is no market to so precious that even governments only have a few ounces. Metallic inks also vary, although mercury, copper, tin, lead, iron, gold, and silver are by far the most popular. Given that ingredients are often purchases and astrological correspondences are out of the alchemist's control, the vast majority of alchemical study focuses on the sacred math and geometry. While a corpus of literature exists, continues to grow, and is used for education, many alchemists spend time studying and solving mathematical equations and keeping their solutions to themselves.

There are alchemical competitions this way in which a series of equations or geometries are given and alchemists work to solve them first. With the discovery of calculus 25 years ago, alchemy is undergoing rapid changes. Previously impossible matrices are now being produced and the production of alchemical good has become streamlined. Still, others warn that these changes have opened up a Pandora's box of misuse.

Conjuration is considered a forbidden branch of alchemy that has been made possible with calculus. Conjuration allows for the binding of physical, elemental, and magical energy to create 'semi-conscious' beings. These entitites obey instructions and seem to have primitive senses regardless of their components. They do not act on their own and cannot handle complex instructions requiring abstract thought. These can be made of inanimate objects, elemental energy (referred to as sprites), and most disturbingly, body parts and corpses.