As I suspected, this week was somewhat more normal, but unfortunately that “normal” entails things getting increasingly busier. What’ll that mean for this blog? Considering we’re only in the third week of this thing, whatever changes are afoot won’t exactly break the status quo. We barely have one, after all. If you trust me on this ride, I say we just take things as they come.
To apologize for last week’s shorter post, here’s one that’s a little more gargantuan in size. Sorry if it gets too long, but there’s a summary just a few paragraphs down from here. It’s getting harder to find more relevant images as topics become more obscure. You’ll have to forgive me if things get too wordy around here. If I were an artist, I’d shower you with illustrations. For now, try to illustrate in your mind.
The gears are turning on the story about our dear Pich Sotheara and her strange, twisted descent into the grand pool of time. Nothing is on paper yet. Things are still working themselves out in my mind. It’s a process!
If any of you are interested in being a beta reader or a soundboard as I write, please reach out. I could use the help! Always.
But, anyway…
Today, we’re talking about alchemy. And it’s not quite the kind you’re used to. Let me tell you a story… (Some of you have already read a version of this, but this one here contains a bit more.)
“Alchemy is one part science, one part magic, and one part luck. The third of these is where most of my students fail. The universe seems not to love us all in equal proportion.”
Ang Sophea, former member of the Order of Those Without Form, or the Bodiless, now a traveling teacher of alchemical theory across the Harborage. Sophea no longer practices alchemy and can thus perform no demonstrations for the students he takes on, though he encourages safe experimentation in their own time.
(Is this too long? Here’s a summary: For the trained alchemist in my world, transmuting inert metals into their more precious counterparts [think copper to gold or silver, like you see alchemy portrayed in most fantasy], while by no means just easy, is akin to child’s play. Their goal, instead, is to find a way to replicate what they call the Immortal Metal, found all over the world in the ancient ruins and wreckages of the Pre-Aspirants. What is it? Space-age metal used in spaceships, with extreme durability and thermal conductivity.
And for historical relevance, at a glance: One of alchemy’s originations came from the South Asian subcontinent, Hindu practitioners. Another, from China. For more, read below.)
Some people want to be immortal.
The Bodiless alchemist prostrates, in a way, before the imperial court. Four blind servants, irises all a milky white, hold aloft tall posts around which a tapestry is wrapped around the outside to form a cubicle on all four sides. Enough room within the confines to stand - and the alchemist does. Even enough to pace. With each short stride, jingling with the din of small bells, the servants follow the sound of each step in time.
Sitting courtiers, some yards away across a narrow runnel of water littered with perfumed flower petals, carved between the plates of stone that make up the floor, chatter among themselves. A few steal glances at the pacing box and its gaggle of servants. They shuffle like goslings after their mother. The exalted members of court, from their cross-legged positions on the upper platform, look upon the Bodiless from the outside, the tapestry their sole glimpse of who the person beyond may become.
Hopeful, at best. Woven into being in careful rows of fiber, cool colors form a hilly landscape. In the foreground, the image of a golden-bodied being crowned by a garland of flower petals and backed by a flaring sun sits with crossed legs upon a lilypad before the foothills in the distance. Four arms sprout from the torso, two lifted above the head to raise aloft a floating, orange cube. The other two rest by their sides, one holding a flower and the other a short, wooden staff. On each side of the cubicle formed by the fabric, the image is much the same, though the expressions differ. The one facing the councilors now is soft, eyebrows etched into the glistening face perked.
A few steps more toward the expecting audience and boot-soles meet the water, which they lap up thirstily. The alchemist is undeterred. And as far as they are concerned, their range of movement encompasses the whole of the auditorium chamber. Their servants, unseeing though they may be, are coordinated and deft. All of them know what it would mean for the cloth to catch on a heel and fall. The tapestry contains the alchemist's body - the ideal form of it, anyway - splayed out in magnificent, colorful artistry. Losing it would surely be a loss of identity, an affront to the alchemist's lifetime of work. So their footwork is certain and their steps are true. They have to be.
A gloved hand reaches through a slit cut over the heart of the figure sitting cross-legged on the fabric. Trembling fingers curl around a metal cube no larger than their palm. The same slit sprouts another gloved hand. This one grasps a metal rod.
(I was inspired by the above scientific demonstration!)
Their onlookers, a coterie of some of the emperor's lower-level advisors, watch intently as both devices begin to glow red-hot. The hand around the cube flinches before tightening around it. The hand around the rod shakes only more violently as it begins to deform. There is a clatter when the rod, now bent, falls to the ground, the glove left with a vicious burn. The cube remains intact. The burn marks on that hand's glove are minor, forgettable. The fingers tighten around it again. And again it goes red-hot. But this time, the alchemist removes the other glove. And places the glowing cube in their own, bared hand.
A quiet ripples through the throng of watchers. Then, a low murmur as eyes drift inward. The alchemist holds it out now toward the advisors. No pain. No sign of even a burn. Near-molten metal on flesh. The red-orange light dissipates as the chunk of metal returns to its dull, unassuming gray.
This is the alchemist's ideal body. But to the court, more importantly, this is the Immortal Metal. That which came before.
Who’s that ‘alchemist’ person?
Alchemists are the scientific mystics found to inhabit the remote nooks of these lands. Most are employed by imperial or royal courts, given the high cost and obscurity of the study. Practitioners are viewed with skepticism, though no more than that which pervades anyone speaking of drawing closer to the precursors and their technology. They are related in many ways to their cipher-monk religious zealots. Certainly in their belief that we can unlock the secrets of those whose only trace on this earth are their remnants. And that we may yet become them. Theirs is something of a different charge than the cipher-monk's code-breaking, all said. Some of the metal that litters the land in gargantuan ruins is impossibly sturdy, resistant to all things from the harshest elements to the most oppressive heat. The Immortal Metal. Should anyone be able to harness this material, surely they would wield an unknowable power, undefeatable in conquest with a claim to godhood. But because of its properties, it is woefully unsalvageable. The next best thing would be to attempt to be able to create it from much baser materials.
The alchemists believe they can. They spend their days trying to mix what they believe to be the essential essence of these metallurgic husks, a trickle of liquid that seems to "sweat" from these structures which bears a remarkable resemblance to something that is easily extractable from the Near North and Near West. To an outsider, their labors may seem fruitless. The interest itself is rather niche, owing in part to its seeming impossibility. But ask one of the rare few that devote themselves to the practice and they would tell you that each day brings new discoveries, and brings them ever closer to understanding the Immortal Metal. More obsessive alchemists, namely the Bodiless, take the alchemical tradition to new heights and seek to render their bodies into metal form, believing our precursors to have been made of the same hard-stuff. Where minor alchemists may seek only to search for the answers to the metal, or even to replace smaller body parts here and there, the Bodiless believe that only by following the true path of replacing their bodies wholly will they find the solution, and find themselves closer to their gods.
What’s real about that?
While most of the above is, of course, heavily fictionalized, drawn from the disparate corners of my brain-stuff, this too draws from real history. Alchemy has been around in Asia for over a millennium in different forms. I have to do more extensive research into this myself, but what I have found so far is fascinating and I have tried to incorporate overarching themes and elements into my work.
My info comes from many places, but the write-up for this comes from here.
Rasāyana is the Sanskrit term meaning “alchemy,” though it’s been around much longer than alchemical scripture, the advent of which fell around the 10th century. Centuries before that, it was thought to mean “rejuvenation therapy.” Around the 8th century, rasa-rasāyana found its way into Buddhist and Hindu tantric (tantra referring to the Buddhist and Hindu traditions that developed in India from the 1st century onward) texts to refer to the siddhi, or supernatural power, associated with finding magical elixirs. From there, Indian alchemy had twofold intention: turning normal metals into precious metals, namely gold (dhātuvāda, transmutational alchemy: like we see in the standard depiction of medieval alchemy); and producing elixirs of immortality (dehavāda, elixir alchemy), to achieve “an immortal, invulnerable body possessed of supernatural powers.” Rasa became a term for the substance mercury, and rasāyana became a term for mercurial alchemy. These goals were ascribed to tantric alchemical practice between the 10th and 13th centuries, and is the primary era from which I draw inspiration for the alchemy present in our story now. Later evolutions began to incorporate other practices, rogavāda for medical alchemy and rasacikitsā for mercurial medicine for example.
I never really know how to end these. Thanks for sticking around this far!