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Kai, since there actually seems to be a few folk in this guild who have a grasp of alchemy of some form, as well as (gasp!) intelligent folk (and some combination thereof), I thought I'd put forward my wee idea here. As a preface, though, I've got to say that after reading some of FL's and Lobo's posts, as well as others in this subforum, I may be treading on a few toes here. However, I also noticed that the alchemic systems touched on in this guild are absolutely crazy and make no sense to me, so there. :/

Okay, so -- At present, there're two main schools of alchemy; there's Physical Alchemy, ie, utilising energies (be they chemical or spiritual) in order to change the composition of matter, and Spiritual Alchemy, ie, taking all the alchemic symbols and whatnot as a metaphor for one's spiritual perfection. Now, I was thinking on the idea of magickal combat and the like, and pondered - "Hey, wouldn't it be koo if you could somehow use alchemy to transmute magick itself? Like, you could make a servitor turn to rust, or punch through a psychic shield by cerating it over and over". After that brief bout of Dissociative Personality Disorder, I wrote said idea down and proposed it to another guild, but it wasn't terribly well accepted, mostly because I was vague, so:

My idea here is to create a system based on the symbols, processes and reactions within alchemy, that is strictly used on magick and/or energy itself. Things would be done probably by drawing some variety of symbol on something, and doing some minor visualisation - for example, for the servitor-rusting example, you could take the sigil associated with the servitor, then draw it on the ground using scrapings of rust. While this isn't a new concept, the fact that it'll be an internally consistent system in its own right is what I'm going for, which I believe is a brand-spanking new idea. Some possible ideas for its use would be:

> Using symbols for salt, absorption and incineration in order to upset the flow of [k/ch/q]i in someone's home by destroying the watery element.
> Creating a magickal smokescreen around oneself to counteract an opponent's attempts at hexing you, by utilising symbols for fire, ash, and smoke.
> Transmuting the symbolic energies of a metal such as copper in order to make its symbolic energy appear more like gold, or silver. (As an aside, this is my magnum opus - this'd be incredibly useful in me workings with the Goetia).
> Weakening attempts at scrying by water, by symbolically transmuting water around the target into mercury. Mercury can provide a distorted reflection of the target's inner self.

So, questions, comments, suggestions, ideas, requests for clarification plz?

Ideally, I'd find some sort of physical aspect to it - my energyworking skizzles are sub-par, to be perfectly honest. I've an idea to use symbols in the system in the same way as a mathematical formula - by writing out a formula, you're not actually doing anything except tweaking something in your head to come to the conclusion that doing such-and-such makes such-and-such; you're not forcing the world to work this way, just saying "Hey, if I add these two symbols, this thing happens, because this symbol means this, and this symbol means that, kapeesh?"

Or maybe I'll think of something better, and more coherent. I dunno, I'm open to suggestion. X3

AgreeB'd. I'm gunna hop around on a few guilds once I have the basic system working and ask folk to try their hand at expirementing with the system so that it's sound and y'know, useable. Otherwise it'd end up being a lotta abstract theory that wastes time that could be better spent masturb studying.

Wewt, let's make us some chaos babies. '3'

Fraid not chief, I ain't an alchemist of any sort thus far. Ask around on the main page of the guild, you might find a teacher thar - Lobo and FLCL are apparently accomplished alchemists.