Sobriquets: Transmuters (formal), Necromancers (derogatory, common), Necrologists (respectful, though sometimes inaccurate), Percies (derogatory)

Learned Alchemists will tell you that the study of life’s cycle, of breathing vitality into a corpse, of turning base metals into valued minerals, and of turning darkness to light are what define their Calling. While much research was lost in the Exodus, Alchemists hoarded theirs and descended with it in their arms at the expense of the injured, the dying, and pleading loved ones.

For an Alchemist, the ends always justify the means.

It takes a long time for anyone to trust an Alchemist when forbidden lore is so much more appealing to them than the survival of their fellow people. But throughout the World Below, exceptions exist. Where five Alchemists might sacrifice a traveling companion for a rare mineral, one more would see the benefit of keeping their companion alive, for at least a little longer.

MORE THAN SIMPLY TURNING LEAD TO GOLD

When children hear stories of alchemy, they believe these lofty scientists in their hidden laboratories are simply attempting to enrich themselves by turning coal into platinum. This is not the case. Though Alchemists often build labs in secret caves and rig them with traps and warden beasts, they travel the tunnels and explore new locales as enthusiastically as people of their fellow Callings. They want to change more than mere matter: they want to change the course of life. They believe their harnessing of Kaos is a route to doing so, and as time has gone on, they’ve given less attention to geological chemistry and more to affecting lives.

INTERACTIONS OF THE ELEMENTS

Alchemists can command the inanimate into life or into forms the world would have never intended — until the Alchemists experimented with them. They can rot meat on a living body, make toxic air breathable, poison water or cleanse it, and alter the rarity of a mineral through the practice of their transmutative arts. They can feel the way the World Below’s elements interact with each other, detect which parts can be manipulated, and then exert their will over the most volatile puzzle pieces to complete their vision. As ingredient seekers and Dialectic experts, few compare. Alchemists studied this world before the Great Descent, and many see nature as a magnificent, expansive laboratory.

GIVING LIFE WHERE LIFE WAS LACKING

For all the fears of Alchemists being unethical experimenters, they serve important purposes in the World Below. They can conjure light from nothing, craft minions from dirt and bone to ease a caravan’s load, or gift vitality to someone bleeding out in a beast’s jaws. Alchemists sense the flow of life and death more than any other Calling. Where the Farsighter sees futures and Kaosists interact with the World Below’s powerful energy at its most raw and untamed, Alchemists view it all as one grand experiment. If it’s in line with their experiments, they can be relied upon to help everyone from solo wanderers to thriving settlements. There are some who are content to sit back and watch the boulders fall, but that would hardly be a test of an Alchemist’s prowess when they could be turning those rocks into steam.

WHO WOULD WANT TO BE AN ALCHEMIST?

The field of alchemy appeals to anyone who wishes to exert real control over their world. They pick up new quests, seek out rare ingredients, and sample strange delicacies and dangers just to see how it all works as one cohesive whole. An Alchemist might be an aspiring scientist or philosopher, someone with a natural aptitude for Kaotic arts, or simply an individual willful enough to say, “This world will be beholden to me.” Alchemists receive great reverence in their settlements — providing they work to secure them. It’s a natural Calling for Adamas and Elementals in a geomorphic sense, though more Plutonics and Qeobaca gravitate toward the Calling, perhaps because their states make them feel persecuted in a dangerous world.

THE MANY ROADS OF ALCHEMY

Alchemists come in many stripes and creeds, with legends whispered of their hazardous trials.

The highly strung professor who resents his guild’s oppressive hand and wishes to prove to the gastrevores that nutrition and poison are but two of the many forms of matter.
The embittered orphan who resents the day the World Below closes a cave on her family, leaving her alone. Never again will she bow to the might of the Vast Underneath.
The wild-eyed Agosbyr who sees the humanoid form as a frail, temporary thing when consciousnesses could perhaps be transferred to bodies of mineral and earth.
The shrewd tiller who realizes they’re possibly the only hope their community has of living through the coming Kalm period, setting them on the task to find or cultivate all the fungi and lichen necessary for survival.
The charitable necrologist who believes death is a simple bump in the road and that each settlement’s brightest and finest should be awarded a second chance.

THE CREATIVE WISDOM OF TRANSMUTATION

Alchemist characters hold the Wisdom of Transmutation as supreme among Kaotic arts. Through mastery, they can:

Handle toxic or hazardous materials without harm and impart this gift to others.
Identify the makeup and properties of the inanimate world, know the strengths and weaknesses of stone and minerals around them.
Combine or separate inanimate materials to create new and fantastic forms, shape stone, refine or alloy metals, divert water and other liquid flows.
Energize materials to render them unstable and prone to exploding, setting traps, bolstering defensive constructions, or increasing damage from attacks.
Seek out rare and vital materials and understand how to mine and separate them from their surrounds.