Concoctions of the Mind
Third Day of the Seventh Month 293 AC
The hall, once a small warehouse, is filled with parchment slate sheets hanging from the rafters covered in complex alchemical formulae written in chalk, having obviously been written, erased, and then written anew several times over and everywhere the clinking sound of golden claws as golden wyrm constructs fly hither and yon beneath twisting and over-tall glass instruments. Their voices mingle with those of Scholarum students striding purposefully about with odd contraptions in their hands, odd not because they are complex and arcane, but rather for how simple they are, a small wooden board with some sort of latch in the upper part that would hold a sheet of parchment firmly in place that one might hold it with one hand and write with the other.
Your eyes are drawn to a vast copper pot filled with boiling green sludge of uncertain provenance. What looks like eyeballs bob in the liquid, almost seeming to blink as they vanish and reappear. Beyond it spirals of glass carry measured doses of quicksilver down them like silvery worms while dark fumes are caught and distilled in rune-carved spheres of cold iron.
"I'm happy you have been keeping yourself busy. I wouldn't want you to get bored," you shout to Waymar over the bustle that does not seem to stop even for kings, not that your current dress has aught royal about it. You could be any dragon-born sorcerer, neither your features nor your age remarkable among the many far more unusual mages all around you.
"This is..." he shakes his head in a sort of proud bemusement at all those still working on the project. "This is owed to them more than me, to tell the truth. I may have derived the principles but I certainly could not have gotten as far as I did without them to turn the spark of an idea into the flames that will hopefully warm us in the future."
"You are getting a flair for rhetoric," you note, amused.
"It's the odd company I keep, no doubt," Waymar replies in like manner.
"I think Tyene would object to being counted odd," you reply, teasing him in turn.
By now most of the mages and other assistants begin to realize who you are. You spend a moment waving away the various awkward bows: "You are all a great deal more pleasing to my eye on your feet and working towards your goal than bowing and scraping."
Rather than provide further distraction from their tasks you and Waymar withdraw to a small side room that had remained an office through the building's dramatic change of purpose.
"So, who made the parchment holders?" you ask, maintaining a serious tone by dint of sheer will.
Your friend rolls his eyes, looking very young indeed for that one moment. The two of you might almost be boys met under some other circumstances, squires to the same knight perhaps, laughing at each other's foibles. "Ysi thought of them, actually. With all the steel available, not to mention the skilled craftsmen that seem to be growing in number more by the moment, forging the clamps was a small thing."
"Well then, be sure to tell her Alinor will be most thankful for her creativity," you answer. "In fact you should keep an eye out lest she be tempted away to become a clerk."
"She could do worse than the imperial administration certainly," he snorts. "She wants to have adventures of all things..." The young knight shakes his head, though only half-serious you suspect.
Waymar leads you through the various stages of the project he is planning with familiarity that belies his earlier words about not having been as involved as others in its creation. The 'Alchemy Works', which he thinks to dub royal and you name Royce in reply, are to be prodigious undertaking aimed not at supplying rare potions and philters to a fortunate few, not even 'merely' at arming the Legion, but at offering bottled magic to thousands, tens, and hundreds of thousands to better to improve their lives. You find there substances to ward off sleep and guard against an unwanted child, liquid flame and healing salves and smoke... even the discretely named 'alchemist's kindness'.
"Did Saan come here by any chance, either of them I mean?" you ask upon the discovery of an apparatus that can produce cures for wine-sickness.
"I'm sure there will be plenty of people beside them willing to buy them," Waymar shrugs. How far he had come from the unceasing boy on foreign shores, ill at ease in the company of Braavosi traders. Unlike Tyene you doubt he will ever care enough to get involved in any of your business ventures, but he certainly understands them.
Royce Alchemical Works being built (Will require a skilled alchemist's presence during the construction)
What do you do next?
[] Receive the report from the North
[] Receive the report from Crackclaw Point
[] Write in
OOC: Yes, you read that right, Ysilla invented the clipboard. All the pieces were there and it is pretty intuitive.
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