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ALCHEMISTS

(outlaw guild)

ARCANOI

An Alchemist   can learn the following Arcanoi at initiate and common level.

FLUX                 INHABIT          EMBODY     

Any other Arcanoi an Alchemist  learns is common level only.

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The underworld has little in the way of material wealth or natural resources. Its primary raw materials are ore scraped from the Labyrinth’s upper fringes and souls deemed too useless or dangerous to continue to exist among the Restless. Most wraiths accept this process as the price of continued Underworld civilization, but every generation of newcomers has had its share of artisans and unnatural philosophers who seek innovation — or a more palatable alternative to soulforging. An outgrowth of the study of relics, Flux is the Arcanos of working with material things and their memories. Using its arts, an Alchemist can reshape the echoes of objects that linger after their Skinlands prototypes’ destruction. She can also reach across the Shroud to preserve or destroy physical items. Such power could easily threaten the Artificers’ soulforging monopoly if the eldest Guild had not so thoroughly painted Flux as a feared tool of Oblivion.

 

Guildmarks

As a wraith works with the echoes and reflections of inanimate objects, they, in turn, mold her self-image. Parts of every Alchemist look manufactured: hinged joints, rivets, welds, mold flashing paralleling her long bones, perhaps a manufacturer’s mark from her birth city or a barcode of a personally significant phrase. These guildmarks evolve with the Alchemist’s tastes, reflecting the types of relics with which she prefers to work.

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The Guild

The Alchemists began as Artificers with little aptitude for soulforging, who sought other ways to distinguish themselves within their Guild. Studying the relationships between naturally occurring relics and those created through Inhabit, they came to see Flux as an ideal tool for working with matter and its Shadowlands equivalents. Their first efforts garnered little attention, but once they demonstrated the capacity to reshape relics, Artificer leaders took notice. Unfortunately for the researchers, so too did a cabal of smiths and Nhudri cultists who saw the research as both blasphemous and a threat to their economic hegemony. The “Alchemist” moniker came from opponents who used it to imply a connection between the Flux experimenters and the eponymous mortal charlatans who claimed to be able to turn lead into gold. The researchers quickly adopted it as a badge of honor, though, and when the final split with the Artificers came, the Alchemists’ Guild proudly claimed the name and its connotations. Sadly, the Dictum Mortuum provided the perfect excuse for the smiths to lower the hammer on their wayward cousins (and potential competitors). Under pressure from the Artificers and their allied Guilds, the Deathlords decreed Flux an abomination for its entropic connections to Oblivion and outlawed the Alchemists. The Alchemists survived the intervening centuries by finding places where the Artificers had little pull and the Legions had higher priorities. They weren’t invited to
sign the Compact of Guilds, much less to join the revolt against Charon. Indeed, some aided Stygia, seeing the chance to pay back the Artificers for centuries of persecution. This aid didn’t go unnoticed in all Necropoli. Today, in any Citadel where the Artificers hold little sway, it’s likely that a Circle of Alchemists still does business while the local establishment looks the other way — or even relies on their wares. Some Alchemists also offer rogue Artificers fleeing their former guildmates protection, though they’ve long since learned to be wary of infiltrators.

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Factions

Despite the Alchemists’ Guild’s small size, it’s remained surprisingly formal, partly from its Artificer origins. Mostly, though, it’s because Alchemists try offset their bad reputation with ostentatious professionalism. An elaborate arrangement of Circles acknowledges proficiency with Flux, while different Orders apply the Guild’s body of knowledge to diverse ends. The Ordinis Denarii is the Alchemists’ commercial arm, supplanting or competing with the Artificers where the local authorities permit such trade. Scientifically inclined Alchemists gravitate to the Ordinis Velum and study the Shroud, the processes of transition across it, and the relationships between Oblivion, entropy, chemistry, and physics. The Ordinis Oxidato attracts the guild’s ill-regarded fringe of militants and nihilists, who are most likely to use Flux as a weapon or to instruct outsiders in it. Most Alchemists embrace disruptive trends (“catalysts,” in Guild parlance) to some degree. The most egregious adaptor of modern mortal technology to the Underworld, and the Artificers’ particular bête noire, is the periodically renamed Ordinis Silicium.

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