Techniques

Scumbag_Brain wrote:

Firearms

Concept: A metal barrel, usually steel or enchanted steel, is packed with a volatile mixture of alchemical ingredients. There are many different recipes but the favored one is powdered cockatrice bone or beak. This ingredient is favored not because it is the best, but because the cockatrice has long been domesticated by the colonists. Expert musketeers often frown on such traditional powders and guard their own secret recipes. A projectile (usually a lead ball) and a wad is loaded in front of the alchemical charge and tamped down with a ramrod. The mixture is ignited with a flint tipped hammer keyed to a trigger that produces a spark in the weapon's breech.

Adaptations: Among the colonials, who are more adept at alchemical technologies, shooters have taken to rifling their barrels, a process that causes the ball to spin and nearly doubles the effective range. Handheld muskets (flintlocks) are also available, though their range is considerably less and so they are favored less by soldiers and more by town militia, cavalrymen, and criminals.

Details

-The smoke from a musket is laced with latent magical energy which gives it a prismatic hue. Scholars of magic call such arcane smoke aether and it is a byproduct of most combustive alchemy.

-Musketeers on the frontier will often wield the most powerful muskets for in the wilds they come across ingredients that are hard to find in the civilized east.

-An expulsion of intense magical energy can cause cheaper musket powders to ignite. Such magical explosions occur when a ley stone is shattered or when a sorcerer dies. A musketeer standing to close to such an event when it happens could have their powder horn blow up on them.

Scumbag_Brain wrote:

Enchanting

Concept: Ley stones are a crystalline ore that is found in rare veins throughout the world. It is refined into pure ley crystals through a secret process known only to a handful of noble Houses. Enchanting is the process of storing a spell in such a crystal through resonance. Crystals are particular and finding the right one to resonate with the chosen spell or altering the spell slightly to create the desired resonance is an art in and of itself.

Once the spell is bound in the crystal, its effects will remain so long as the spell's energy persists. Crystals can be recharged only by a sorcerer of the same bloodline of the one who made the spell.

Adaptations: Crystals are only used for the most potent enchantments and many lesser spells are bound by using inks laced with powdered ley stone. These inks are cheap because they can be made with low quality ley ore and adaptable for they can be painted on any surface or even tatooed into the skin as is the case with the Marked.

Details

-Ley Crystals are delicate and prone to shattering, thus enchantment is an art that requires profound concentration on the part of the sorcerer.

-Ley crystals can only be charged by sorcerers. Alchemists who have attempted to charge them have, more often than not, wound up lacerated by crystal shrapnel.

-Enchanted weapons and armors are usually socketed with ley crystals, but some extremely expensive and powerful items have the crystal threaded into the very metal.

-All the derivatives of ley ore, crystals, inks, and alloys, are proscribed and possession of them by the unblooded without documentation is punishable by prison terms or, in the case of some more ruthless Houses, death. The Marked are punished in the same fashion if they attempt to flee their masters, for they are seen as enchanted property.

Wake wrote:

Refined Promethean juice and the steam engine.

A curious discovery was made in the colonies some time ago. A particular strain of plants bearing 'Promethean fruit', which was known for containing highly flammable juice. This discovery wasn't hugely significant for a while, other then it's use as a cheap alternative to whale oil. However in the recent decade an intrepid alchemist discovered that if the juice was mixed with purified spring water and brought to a boil, it would become a form of gas. Later experiments showed that this gas could, when heated, be forced through a series of tubes releasing pressurized water vapor. Using a series of pistons, the alchemist was able to harness the pressure from the releasing water vapor in order to move a set of gears machinery with out humans or animals exerting any effort.

From this discovery the alchemist was able to create a primitive steam engine, which could run a cart along a track alone without animals to pull it. Though still an uncommon sight in the colonies, the newly minted rail trains are quickly becoming a modern wonder.

-Promethean fuel only needs to be heated to become pressurized. Though this means that not much heat is needed to ignite it and use it as a fuel, its also considered unwise to let it get too hot, as it is likely to explode at more extreme temperatures.