Alchemy Training With T!

[Mo'chi]

Mo'chi sat in the inn, waiting for Torvallis. He was going to get that fiery mage to teach him bombs... hopefully. Maybe be better at alchemy, if not anything else. After yesterday, he needed something.

[Torvallis!]

[May 20th, 11pm]

Torvallis! stumbles into the inn, wet as anything, their robes spilling water every time a joint is closed.

They make their way painfully over to the fire, pull a fist of fire mana out from their pouches, "WITH FIRE I FUEL THE-", when they're interrupted by a muffled squeaking from inside their robes.

Rolling their eyes, they pluck a black rat from their sleeve and almost hurl it across the room when they apparently think better of it. Gently setting it down on a table and plucking a morsel of cold chicken for it to eat.

They then toss their soaking clothes over the line above the fire, grab a towel from godknowswhere, and plop down cross-legged in front of the fire.

[Mo'chi]

Mo'chi noticed Torvallis! stumble in, wet and cold. Would they still train him? They looked... downright miserable. Shrugging, he sat down next to them by the fire and began writing.

"Are you free for alchemy training?" He offered a sympathetic smile as he held his chalkboard out to them.

[Torvallis!]

Torvallis! looked at the chalkboard.

They nodded.

"Let me dry off a bit, and then let's BLOW SOME STUFF UP"

[Mo'chi]

Mo'chi smiled wide and nodded enthusiastically. Great! Maybe he could use bombs against the bullshit that attacks Holdfast.

Laughing, he wrote "Hopefully not ourselves, yes?" while waiting for T! to dry off a bit. "Or town!" He added quickly.

[Torvallis!]

"Uhhhhhh . . . no guarantees, but if we do everything right . . .

So, do you have a suitable alchemy kit? I'll need a sieve, a proper cauldron, some doodads that look cool, y'know, an alchemy lab"

[Mo'chi]

Mo'chi paused for a moment before running off to grab his kit. He laid it out before T! no sieve, and not many doodads, but he had a cauldron.

"I'm not sure my kit is powerful enough, if explosives are what I think they are." He wrote "Use yours?"

[Torvallis!]

"I'm still in the middle of purchasing items for my kit, I know what I want and where to get it, I just don't have it yet"

[[OOC: I have an alchemy kit, I don't have any explanations for how Torvallis! has it yet]]

"I'll bring what stuff I have from mine, it should fill out yours nicely and we can begin. Meet me by the fire circle"

[Mo'chi]

Mo'chi nodded, packing his stuff up and heading to the fire circle. He sat near the circle, warming his fur by the forge while waiting for T!
(OOG: do we gotta move the thread or will it be fine?)

[Torvallis!]

(OOC: eh, I usually keep threads together. I think technically, we *should* move it, but it also clutters the forums.)

Torvallis! arrives down by the fire circle, arms full of doodads, a sieve, and a lot of alchemy components.

"Alright, so, the most important thing about alchemy is that if you use very small amounts of things, it WON'T blow up in your face, and you can check to see if your brewing methods are stable.

So here's the ingredients for the recipe we're making today", T! slipped Mochi a piece of paper, "We're going to make this in miniature scale, to see if it's stable at the end, and then you'll do part of a rending on it . . . we won't have enough to actually rend it, but we can run a single test"

"First we want to clean your cauldron with a wire brush, and then we'll begin by coating the pot with the first ingredient"

[Mo'chi]

(OOG: i'd prefer it here anyways :3c)

Mo'chi already had his kit set up at the circle, cauldron and various jars and bottles laid out. He put his goggles over his eyes and took the recipe, before nodding.

Following the instructions, he took out a wire brush and started cleaning his cauldron. He took out the first ingredient, laying it to the side for now.

[Torvallis!]

"Mmm, we're doing micro-brewing right now, so you'll need to be cleaner. Those little specks wouldn't effect a normal dose of potion, but they'll be a significant amount of this one. Take a fine cloth and pick them up. If you can't get them off, put the cauldron on the fire and let it turn them to ash, then they can be picked out easily."

[Mo'chi]

Mo'chi nodded, making an affirmation noise. He started on the larger specks- leftovers from brewing poultices last night and that.. other potion this morning. Taking out a cloth, he started on the smaller ones. The cloth only picked up half, the other larger ones being picked up by his uncovered fur.

Mo'chi did as instructed, holding the cauldron over heat to try and burn off anything he missed. "Fur is useful, I suppose. Don't need much of a cloth." He smiled and wrote while waiting for the heat.

[Torvallis!]

Torvallis! lazily gazed at the fire.

"With fire I fuel the flames"

Grabbing the pot with the sleeves of their shirt, they quickly and deftly cleaned the ashes.

"You already know how to clean things, that's not what I'm teaching you. May as well speed up the process"

[Mo'chi]

Mo'chi laughed. Guess not everyone was quite as patient as he was. But T! was right, he did know how to clean things. He wouldn't be much of an alchemist if he didn't. He smiled at the fire mage.

Mo'chi pulled out the first ingredient, and grabbed his mortar and pestle. If it didn't need to be ground, T! would likely stop him.

[Torvallis!]

Torvallis! watched the grinding for a moment, then gently grabbed Mo'chi's hands and guided them.

"Trick I learned from cooking. There's a few different patterns you can use in a mortar and pestle to speed up grinding, or to preserve chunks of a certain size if you want. With this one, you want to break apart the large chunks, and they'll shed some dust every time they split. So you can just smash the big chunks directly with the pestle. But you have enough for the micro-brew now, so let's just filter this through my sieve to get the small stuff, and we'll grind up the larger chunks afterwards when we do a normal sized brew.

I'll scrape out your mortar while you coat the cauldron, we need to grind down the next ingredient and lay it down as the first layer in the cauldron. The recipe I got suggests that you can add more of this ingredient to get a bigger fireball, but I've not yet experimented.

Ah . . . make sure the cauldron is cool before you add any of these ingredients. Dip it in the lake if you need to cool it down fast, but don't let any water in it."

[Mo'chi]

Mo'chi stiffened a bit as he saw T! coming closer to him, but relaxed when he realized his fellow alchemist was going slowly.

The kaern nodded along, getting up to dip the bottom of the cauldron in the lake and sieving out the small portions, coating the inside of the cauldron. He licked his lips nervously, part excitement, part anxiety. He hoped T! wouldn't blow them both up.

[Torvallis!]

Torvallis! handed back the mortar and pestle and made a hand-motion towards it.

[Mo'chi]

... Whoops. Did he do it wrong? He just did it wrong, didn't he? The kaern sighed a little before letting it go. It's fine! This is still fascinating.

Mo'chi nodded enthusiastically. He started grinding up the next ingredient, using the same motions that T! taught him just moments before. He repeated his actions, coating the cauldron.

[Torvallis!]

"Mmm, there wasn't really a need to coat the cauldron with this one, as afar as the recipe goes.

Now, the next one has to be ground 'to the finest powder'."

Torvallis! removed a small bottle of yellow dust from their robes

"I've already ground some up here. There's nothing difficult about the grinding, but it does take a long time to grind this, so I try to do it before hand. Here, now you need to mix up the powders that are in there 'until an even texture'. Which doesn't make much sense to me, as these are all powders and the texture should already be even if we know what we're at. In any case, mix it until it's a uniform material.

Oh, ah, since we're microbrewing, this bottle is enough for a full recipe, so just take a small amount. For that reason, you also won't have much mixing to do"

[Mo'chi]

Mo'chi nodded. "That's smart." He took a moment to write before taking the bottle and putting a little into the cauldron. He set himself to mixing, switching to gloves that would cover all of his fur. Somehow, he didn't think fur was a necessary ingredient for this recipe and some of these ingredients likely wouldn't wash out.

Once it was uniform, he looked to T! again.

[Torvallis!]

"Right, now here comes the first part we really need to pay attention to.

We need to heat up some of the 'blackest tar' in a separate pot over the fire, but only warm it until it is somewhat fluid, NOT boil it.

When it's warmed up, we'll pour it into the cauldron and mix slowly. If it's too hot, that's when it'll cause an explosion.

It's actually pretty risky to only heat a small amount of tar: it'll heat too quickly and it'll be hard to judge when it's the right temperature. So for this ingredient, we'll heat a full amount."

[Mo'chi]

The kaern listened, gently grabbing another pot to hear the tar. Still watching it, he decided to take a moment to write. "I appreciate this, T!" He then turned his attention back to the pot, waiting for it to become a little bit fluid.

[Torvallis!]

Torvallis! flashed a smile, and then returned to watching the pot.

And watching the pot.

And watching the pot.

"By the way, never use fire magic to speed up alchemy. I'm sure it can be done safely, but I've never managed"

[Mo'chi]

Mo'chi nodded. Makes sense. "They're both pretty volatile. Wouldn't want to blow yourself up." He wrote. "Or ruin whatever you were brewing with it." He looked at the pot again, watching it.

Alchemy took a lot of patience. Shortcuts ended up in recipes gone bad.

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