Immortal Lore: Alchemy

Alchemy

    Alchemy within Immortal is a very wide subject, like talking about the military and not just the air force. But it’s also not what you might think it is, but it also is.

Alchemy in the World

“Though the world alchemy evokes images of potions in many commoners' heads, potion creation is actually its own type of magic. Alchemy within Immortal is divided among spellcasting, rituals, and essentia. Spellcasting involves using vocalization and a catalyst to mold the physical world around them to create spells. An alternative and more primitive version of spellcasting is using tools to create alchemical circles to perform a ritual, which is then powered by the alchemist to create a spell effect. Essentia is taking physical material and using tools to break it down into its fundamental material, a slurry or liquid. Essentia is the method used to create potions, but not just potions, solid matter is another manufactured material used in the creation of advanced alchemy.

Unlike the other two power castes (psychic and theurgy), alchemy has the unique property of being the only caste that can directly influence the physical world, but lacks the ability to directly affect a mind or influence the soul of others. While an alchemist can create a spell that casts a sleepy fog, the alchemist can't reach into the mind of others. It is impossible for an alchemist to influence or interfere with souls and fate.


Some spellcasters may know many spells and be trained poorly with them, compared to someone who knows a few spells that excel in them.”

- An excerpt from one of my own documents.

Ritual Circles

    Alchemy is the process of transmuting the world by drawing on its material to make new things. It’s like pulling apart atoms to make new elements. Rituals take the same form you see in Full Metal Alchemist - you need the full material to create the effect you need. The ritual circle defines the area which you are transmuting, along with everything inside. Rituals are slow, requiring the alchemist to spend time using a marker to define the spell, then find the material. However you can perform as many rituals as you can in a single day at no cost to yourself. A normally skilled alchemist can average 6 rituals back to back in a single hour, while an experienced ritualist can quickly perform about 3 or 4 extra rituals within the same time before needing to take a break.

Spell Scrolls

    People who are good at this are called Ritualists, and can perform rituals with incredible speed. This is where spell scrolls come in. It’s the next and final technological evolution of ritual circles. Spell scrolls work very similarly to spellcasting where it doesn’t have a fully defined circle to draw from, you just need to be sure to define exactly what you want and what you don’t want it to pull from (like matter/energy from your body). Spell scrolls are extremely difficult to make and time consuming. A modern world would be better in mass producing these, but the further away from a modern age the more exponential it's rarity is.

Spellcasting

 

    Spellcasting completely bypasses this. A catalyst is tied to the energy around it, then a spellcaster attunes to the catalyst so they in turn are connected as well. However a spellcaster's connection to the energy is through the filter of the catalyst, which also doubles as a safety ward against the raw nature of magic. Without a catalyst it would be no different than shoving a fork into an outlet while you are holding onto it, trying to power a light bulb held in another hand.


    By creating the right tones to create a chain reaction that makes a spell. Words aren’t needed, but sound is. A tuning fork is perfectly serviceable, if limited. You then need to animate your body to direct the spell - like throwing a ball. Spell slots represent a connection to the soul’s power from which is used to power the vibration that creates the spell. Your catalyst is plugged into the energy, your soul, it needs to power the lightbulb, and your words are what colors the light.


    And yes… you can be connected to this energy without a catalyst. Naturally born people who do this are called sorcerers. I forgot what the name for an artificially created connection is (can’t seem to find those notes), but that sort of connection is far more dangerous to the person and no more dangerous to those around them.

Essentia

    Essentia is the act of manually taking material and breaking it down into liquid elements, which is then contained (usually within glass). This requires no catalyst, but does require a ritual circle. However you only ever need one ritual circle to break down any material. The only concern you have is to contain the essentia, due to the fact some of it is more or less stable without breaking it down even further (thus wasting energy). There are multiple “complexity layers” and the higher you go up the less stable it is in raw essentia form. The lowest form is something you’re quite familiar with: Earth, fire, water, air. There is a 5th element however: ether.


    Unlike most fantasies, the base elements aren’t literal. You don’t have a literal bottle of water or dirt. A base element defines how it acts. (I won’t get too deep into this because that’s a very long post by itself, but I’ll leave you with this: ether is mandatory for things to be glued together and is the legitimate true essence of magic.) As you go further up the chain it uses a combination of any element of a lower layer. Spellcasting does all this which is why it's so taxing on your spell slots.

 

Deeper Lore

Let’s go a bit deeper. Here’s another snippet.

Alchemy in Society

“Alchemists are in common demand from the lowest to highest parts of society. From maneuvering ships by directing water to healing the sick, the demand for their services is extremely common. Not all alchemists are trained equally - spells demand a high level of skill to optimize their power. A healer could never compete with an illusionist and vice versa as spells which are useful for those types of magicians demand very different skills. However a spellcaster may learn spells outside their specialization but shouldn't be expected to perform well with it.”

Spells within Immortal are not all equal. Unlike most games like Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder where you only need a single spellcasting modifier, spellcasting in Immortal demands two things: Your Spellcasting ability and spellcasting skill.


    Just because you know the knock spell doesn’t mean you can open a lock with it. You need to invest in the proper skill to do so (Deft would be the correct skill in this case). If you want to be good at healing you need to have a high medicine skill. For the last example: If you want to be more effective at controlling plants or water you need to invest in your knowledge of nature (plants and geology both fall under this umbrella).


    Thankfully you only need one spellcasting modifier: Memory. It’s an extremely important aspect that also defines how many extra spells you know. Having a good memory means you can recall the exact tone your voice needs to be and remember the optimal movement to make with your body. It’s a very involved process and combat makes it even harder, especially if a warlord is burning a hole into your forehead standing 5 feet away. And no, there is no spell failure. (There would be, but I removed it to assist game-feel)

The birth of Immortal

 Major Heading goes Here

    After multiple successes with my classes getting positive reviews I think it’s time to dive too early into creating my own ttrpg with little experience in ttrpg’s in general! Yes I have played them in the past but I find myself bored when playing DnD and finding little to get engaged in. But the larger part of my reason is I want to undertake my magnum opus: Creating my own game.

    The journey is going to be very long and difficult, but you know what? I think I have the right mentality going into this. I’m ready for the challenge and pain. I’ve been homebrewing for 3 years non-stop with only a few weeks of burn out. I think I have what it takes.

Let’s get into some worldbuilding. I’ll keep my world building posts short and digestible.

Immortal

    Why the name Immortal? I have taken the name from Immortal Universe, which is a location within my setting, but also to set player expectations. The journey you take will lead each and every player to immortality (should the campaign last). There is no afterlife within my setting - instead there are two major players: the Mortal Universe and the Immortal Universe. Mortal universes are where you would expect a journey to begin. Players start here and become so powerful that the universe ejects them into the Immortal Universe when they reach beyond 10th level. But the journey doesn’t end there. There are more grand and dangerous things to tackle in the Immortal Universe should the rare ttrpg group find themselves able to play beyond 11th level.

    Players who find themselves 7th level will become demi-immortal, where their aging slows and no longer impacts their performance. This is typically where most people find themselves plateau. Of course the people at the table can and will most likely exceed this limit and go far beyond. These types of people are extraordinarily rare in the setting.

Deeper Lore Ahead

    This is where you are free to leave the lore. It provides no benefit as a player, only for those who are hungry to know more.

    Why a mortal universe? A very long time ago a number of entities shattered themselves to combat the abyss which was quickly becoming a problem. They created countless smaller universes (about the same size as our real one) that are relatively protected from the abyss’s influence. The universes were created so people could shed their preconceived expectations and become stronger, wiser, through the tribulations of life. Life as we know it in real life does not exist in the same way in the Immortal Universe. But there is a second piece to this: Those pieces I mentioned earlier.

    Truthfully, those entities that shattered themselves were among the few beings in existence. They weren’t gods, they were people without a solution to the abyss. By shattering themselves and reconstructing their pieces into universes and creating the first souls they offered a chance for the universe to save itself. Those who find themselves imbued with a shard during their life will find themselves having an even harder life than those around them. But this is a spiritual alchemy: Trial by fire purifies them of any vice they have and open themselves to true humanity.

It's this humanity that not only makes them immune to the corruption of the abyss, but can even restore humanity to a corrupted soul. These people are known as…

Avatars

    Was that a good segway? Anyway; creating avatars is the goal of these universes. About half the people who willingly become mortal seek to become an avatar, but less than 1% of people in the universe become avatars, and even fewer ascend to immortality. An avatar is not special. They do not get special treatment, no plot armor, no protagonist powers. Their life is truly harder because that shard attracts that difficulty, forcing it upon them. An avatar will either swim or sink, there is no inbetween. There is another catch: No person who is deserving to be an avatar will become one, only someone who needs it will receive it. Example: Batman is not a viable vessel to be an avatar, but the Joker is.

    What about the other half? Turns out living a life and experiencing what it's like to live with restrained power then becoming immortal through ascension makes a person significantly stronger than one simply experiencing existence in the Immortal Universe. Kind of like training with weights to improve calorie burn.

That’s all I have. Thank you to those who reached the end!

About Me

 Now that I've warmed up,

let's dive into more detail about my exciting life.

On my game side:

    My first table top game was D& D 3.5e. Going to be honest, I was a shitty player constantly trying to cheat and I had literally no idea how to role play other than solidifying me into a single trope that never changed. I went into a few games for 2-3 sessions before getting bored. My mind then was very scattered with too many ideas. That's still the case today but it was the same back then. I had a new character idea every single day, sometimes even 5 as I looked through the classes available to me. I had a bottomless hunger I couldn't fulfill and a very patient DM that tried their best to bend to my whim. Unfortunately I burnt them out, and their life took a negative turn. 

 

    Thus ended my interest in D&D until about 5 years ago or so. But I never stopped thinking about making my own game. In fact, it spurred what would eventually become a multi-universe world building project that I wanted to fit a role play game into that had a million options to choose from. The story of those worlds are still ongoing, by the way, and is worked on at least once a week.

    About 5 years ago a new coworker came into my life that has been playing since D&D released. The very first release. We talked for literally hours about the game, and he is an amazing listener that wanted to hear everything about my world. I'm sure you can imagine how long it would take to get through everything. He brought up D&D to me again and I checked it out: 5e was released just a year before he arrived. So we gave it a go, and I would use one of my universe settings that I had been working on more "recently" (about 7 years). Of course, I was the DM, and it was an extremely stressful position. I barely knew any of the rules and my friend forced me to come up with rules at that point and I would look them up later. This restarted my love for options, and thus I began brewing.

On my brewing side:

    Literally 3 months after starting 5e I decided my knowledge was ripe enough to start making my own content for my players to use. The Viper rogue was my very first creation. It was as bad as you'd expect, but the flavor was amazing. Unfortunately soon after I started brewing, my anxiety over being DM and doing live role play (I'm only familiar with online text RP) I had a severe and crippling case of embarrassment and anxiety from role playing. But that couldn't stop the literal tsunami of ideas and character options that would spur my 5 year journey that hasn't slowed down in the least.

    I would go on to homebrew a minimum of 3 subclasses each day for a full 3 years before I started to experience any burn out. Was I getting exhausted? Sometimes. My burn out rarely lasts longer than 2 weeks,. The worst I have is 1 month. By that point I was significantly more familiar with the rules and balance at hand. Was I good at brewing? No, lmao. I'm a slow learner - I have a learning disability, but more on that later. Was I getting better? Very much so. I didn't truly capture what making content was about until I created my Primeval Domain cleric. (Link: Primeval Domain) Creating a subclass was no longer about the balance of my content, but things that naturally led a player to role play their subclass. Within my cleric example, Primeval Armor was what defined my love for the subclass - everything else was just par of the course. It told the player how they can make their subclass feel more alive and not just a bunch of features with numbers attached.

 

 On my disability:

    I hate using it as an excuse so I don't bring it up in any conversations I have unless it's talked about. I don't hate the disability itself, I just hate that I feel like it's a poor excuse as to why I'm developing so slowly. My disability combined with my early upbringing of being an only child with no friends also forces me to think in very strange or obscure ways, but you wouldn't know until you've spoken with me for a long while as I've gotten better with social skills.

    Another issue I have is maladaptive day dreaming. If I'm not doing something that demands my attention I'm day dreaming. I day dream even while I need to pay attention. If a situation is extremely stressful, I force myself into a subsurface of imagination and block out the real world. This is really bad for me, but I feel more comfortable in life by removing myself from the boring, stressful world. I've been doing it since I was around 5 or so. The power and speed of my imagination is far more extreme than most people I meet. It even extends to my dreams, where I can see the lines on my palm, my finger prints, or the tiny rocks in cement (even the little sparkles are there). My dream world can also simulate the physical world with incredible accuracy (Though, not all of them do). Ensuring that my imagination closely follows the simulation of proper universal laws is very important to me.

On now:    

    My goal has never changed: create my own role playing game. The love and interest for that idea when I first played 3.5 hasn't dwindled. Not even a centimeter. The obsession drives me to use my maladaptive day dreaming to its advantage: rapid idea creation. And now that brings me to what I consider the second era. My first was when I discovered the Primeval Domain cleric, and now the second era is discovering that new information I have has re-contextualize old information, and now I feel as if I'm starting from the beginning again, and rediscovering my love for creation. I'm at my happiest when I have fun ideas to chew on. I want to create a game people love to play. Do I want to make money off it? I would be lying if I said no. But I want the content to be "pay what you want" because I know what it's like to not have enough money. If people want to make money off my stuff then I will demand it be "pay what you want", but they are free to do whatever otherwise.