Alchemy Adjunct or Adverse to Medicine (Padraig & Faith)

Hookor gets deeper into the theory and practice of alchemy

15th of Ymiden 718

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Hookor Crook
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Alchemy Adjunct or Adverse to Medicine (Padraig & Faith)

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15th Trial of Ymiden, Arc 718
Life had been so busy. Hookor's studies had themselves taken up the majority of his time. An odd excursion into the Sweetwine and volunteering at the clinic had consumed the rest. Early summer season was the first opportunity Crook had had to delve a little deeper into one of his odd hobbies.

Alchemy.

Hookor was a pure novice at it, with a rudimentary knowledge at best, but it intrigued him. The half-eidisi was a scientist, an evidence based researcher at heart, and so the very idea that substances could change, could transmute, and have near magical properties was something that tugged at his curiosity...and his skepticism. Still, in the little he had learned, there seemed to be at least a little something to all of it.

And so when professor Faith had mentioned another teacher, by the name of Padraig, Hookor took note to pay him a visit. This was that visit. Down a corridor of the academy, out of the way a little from where most of his studies had occurred, the blue toned Hookor found himself strolling. Near the middle of the hall, a doorway stood ajar. Crook came up to it, hearing nothing of note as he approached. Odd.

"Hello?"
Hookor called. "Professor? Hello?" he called out again. Hookor could see some of the alchemy equipment sitting on a couple of tables, the shelves had numerous containers upon them, but at the moment there appeared to be no one around...
Last edited by Hookor Crook on Fri Jun 22, 2018 9:46 pm, edited 1 time in total. word count: 252
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Ordinarily, on any given trial, Padraig wouldn't have been in or around this section of the university at all. Not that he wasn't interested of course or didn't dabble. Neither of those could be farther from the truth. Padraig Augustin had been an alchemist before he'd been a physicist. A physicist first, before an astrophysicist. As it happened however, lately he'd been filling in for a fellow professor who had taken a leave of absence, and had asked him to step in and oversee a few of his tutoring sessions. The scholar had been happy to oblige. It gave him the opportunity to immerse himself briefly in alchemy again.

Still, earlier that trial, he'd met with his lone student in need of guidance, and hadn't thought he'd be returning to this wing of the university till next trial. Except that he'd forgotten and left his satchel behind in his haste to reach the lecture hall where he was to speak to a group of incoming students. It had been too late then to return for it. So now that the lecture was behind him, he he'd returned to collect his belongings. He could be forgiven maybe for the distraction, having just returned from an expedition out at sea.

He spotted the door ajar as well when he approached, and frowned. But he also put it off to whatever level of distraction he must have been under when he'd quit the lab a break or so earlier. Surely he'd just forgotten to lock the door behind him. The wages of taking on more work than he was happy with, no doubt. Except that before he reached the threshold, on the other side of the open door, someone called out, and he could see the shadow of somebody's feet beneath the door.

"Professor who?" he called out then in almost a jovial manner. After all, the university was overflowing with professors. "I'm Professor Augustin," Padraig added, and noted the appearance of the man at the door. Eidisi, he observed. One of the blue people. Which in his mind was not a harsh judgment. He was a scientist, he dealt in facts and proven, or yet to be proven theory. The eldisi were blue, and it was a simple observation. Still, the situation was a curious one. Had he overlooked a tutoring session on his schedule? It was very possible.

"I teach physics here at the University ordinarily. But these recent trials, I've added alchemy sessions to my schedule. Are you here for a scheduled one?" he wondered, ready with an apology right quick if he'd managed to forget. At any rate, having come for his satchel and also discovering that he'd a free break or two before his next engagement, he'd figured he'd spend some time dabbling in the lab.
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She'd been in her office when Duane had come by. "Professor Faith?" He'd said and she looked up with a smile. "Hello, Duane. How can I help you?" He was a good lad, hard working and diligent. Sadly, thick as a brick, but he worked all the breaks of the trial and Faith helped him a lot. "I think this is Professor Augstin's bag?" he said, holding up Padraig's satchel. She smiled at nodded, she'd bought it for him when he'd got the job, she recalled. It was no longer the pristine thing it had been then, but then she supposed they weren't either. "Where was it, Duane?" Faith asked and he told her the room number. "Thank you, Duane, I'll see that he gets it." She glanced at him and raised an eyebrow. "How did you do for Professor Hamilton-Smith?" Faith asked that question with some trepidation, but Duane beamed. "I passed! He said it was barely legible drivel, but good enough that it was just about scraping a pass." Faith grinned at Duane and mischief lit her silver and red eyes. "Well, constructive criticism notwithstanding, a pass is what you needed. Well done, Duane, I'm proud of you. Practically, your work is excellent, you know that?" He nodded. he could do the job with patients, he was developing into an excellent medic. But nowhere would employ him without at least a letter, so he had to get it.

And, if Faith had anything to do with it, he would.

Still, she determined she was going to have to get this bag to Padraig. That was good, in fairness. She hadn't seen him this morning as she'd had a shift at the Order before work and so had been up long before him. She went to his teaching room, but he wasn't there. One of the young men there told her that he was in the Alchemy bit? which Faith had thought he was in before this class. Figuring there must have been a change in schedule, she made her way to the room where he was standing in for one of the alchemy professors for a while.

As she approached, she saw an open door and heard voices.

One of them, unmistakably, was Padraig's and Faith felt the familiar rush of pleasure. He'd been gone on the expedition for far too long, before that he'd been in Viden and before that she'd been in the relief effort. Punctuated between those things, there were jobs and duties, more jobs and more duties. And those little details which she hadn't yet mentioned regarding how she got the glowing ruby tint to her eyes, or the remembrance service and so on. They'd have to catch up and do that, but he was taking these extra shifts and he was still tired from the expedition he'd been on.

Knocking on the door, she was speaking as she popped her head in. "Professor Augustin? You left your satchel in here and.. oh! Hello Hookor!" She smiled in pleasure at the serious young Eidisi. "I see the two of you have met. Hookor Crook, my new student and mentee at the Order. Since I got my grey cloak," she said to Padraig, aware that she possibly hadn't mentioned the grey cloak. It meant that she no longer had a mentor, now being a mentor for the new green cloaks. "And my husband," Faith touched her hand to his, stroking her fingers against his as she handed him his satchel and when she looked at Padraig, he was very obviously all and everything she saw. "Professor Augustin."

Looking around, she grinned. "So what are we doing?" She asked both of the males in the room.
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"Professor Faith!" Hookor said with surprise. He was just about to answer Padraig when Faith had poked her face around the entrance.

"I...I mean, we...we were, well I mean, no."
he added, when she had mentioned the two meeting. The young medical student looked down at the floor, then back up at Padraig as Faith took the matter into her own hands and introduced Crook to her...husband?

"Oh, I didn't know."
He was still stumbling a little over his words as he referred to the to teachers relationship. Perhaps Faith had told him the connection between her and the alchemy professor, but if she had, he did not recall.

One...two...three...four...

A nervous tic, the counting seemed to calm the half-eidisi down when his nerves tried to get the best of him.


"I didn't know you were meeting...I mean...I guess I can come back later."
Hookor stammered. "I was taking your advice professor," looking to Faith, "and was going to ask about some studies or tutelage in alchemy." he offered. Crook looked to Padraig, his expression one of slight apology at all the confusion.

"Is that sort of thing possible?"
he asked Padraig of the teaching.
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As busy as he'd been that morning, Padraig hadn't expected to see Faith until the end of the trial, at which point, one or both of them would have been physically or emotionally exhausted. But he also hadn't expected to be back in the wing of the university that housed the alchemy lab until next trial. He wouldn't have been, had he not left his satchel behind. He'd consider that then a very happy accident, or rather a great twist of luck.

He'd only just introduced himself to the man he'd found in the threshold, when Faith knocked on the door and spoke up. Turning round in surprise, a pleased smile crossed his face. So yes, she and the eidisi did seem to know each other well. "It's good to meet you Hooker," he said when Faith made the introductions. But yes, both colleagues and spouses and he grinned again as he looked at the satchel and took it. "Well if it takes a little absent mindedness to arrange a little extra time together," he said, "I'll take it gladly."

But what were they doing? That was better left for Hookor to answer. "It was a happy accident," he said when Hookor apologized. "In fact I ought to thank you instead for being a part of it. Both of us are so busy lately that we'll take the opportunity when it comes around." So the man was interested in alchemy. "Are you interested in earning a letter, or simply knowledge in alchemy that will supplement your medical knowledge?" he asked, then explained that while he had a great deal of experience with alchemy himself, he had no certificates come from formal learning. Those, he'd earned in physics instead.

So in short, there was no wrong answer to his question. At any rate, "Of course it's possible," Padraig said and put his satchel down on one of the workbenches. "I've got a little time now, if you do?" Then turning to Faith, he added, "Do you have the time to stay awhile?" A hopeful inquiry no doubt. There were lots of places to sit, and gesturing towards any one of the stools, he took one himself.

"I suppose in order to start, we need to have an idea where you are already. Have you dabbled already?" he asked. In alchemy, he meant. "How are your math skills? Chemistry? And it might help me to know, in what way would you hope to use alchemy to supplement your medical knowledge?"
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Alchemy Adjunct or Adverse to Medicine (Padraig & Faith)

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"Padraig and I weren't meeting, Hookor, it's fine." Faith spoke in her usual calm and soft tone. "A student brought me his satchel and I was returning it. So, I happened upon you both" She smiled in pleasure and nodded her head when he said that he was here to seek out tutelage in alchemy. Faith smiled at Hookor and nodded her head. "That's excellent," she said and watched him. He was a strange chap, there was no doubting it but, equally, he had a talent for medicine and, more than that, she liked him as a person.

It was indeed a happy accident, though Faith was somewhat surprised to hear Padraig admit as much. But he was right, so she couldn't argue with that. He easily and automatically slipped into the role of the teacher and Faith was about to excuse herself and get back to the pile of paperwork she'd been in the middle of tackling when Padraig turned to her and asked if she had time. Looking at him she smiled and nodded. "I do. I certainly do," Faith said and she smiled at him as she pulled a stool up for herself.

Padraig asked about Hookor's maths and chemistry skills and Faith waited until he had asked that, to interject. "I think it's worth to consider that question from both sides. Padraig and I have worked together on a number of collaborative projects for medicine. We created the Raft together, for instance." Looking to her husband then she grinned slightly. "In a room in the Order of the Adunih in Rharne with celery after a discussion about clarified broth." Point being, she said, ideas came from strange and sometimes obscure places. Then, though, Faith turned her attention to Hookor and waited to see what he thought of Padraig's questions and considerations.
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Hookor didn't say much, as he watched the two interact. Always collecting data, the young student made mental note of the body language, and dialogue between the teachers (and married couple) as they spoke.

"Dabbled would be an accurate descriptive."
he finally answered, when there was a break in the conversation. "As for my math and chemistry, I've been told I excelled in the former, and was above average in the latter." he added. Crook had many things on his plate, and so had to be honest.

"I was just looking to dabble, yet again."
he said, and immediately knew the words didn't convey what he meant. "..I mean I would like to review the basics, and more importantly, look to where the field...alchemy...intersects with medicine." he added for clarification.

"And yes, I have some time now."


Hookor smiled when Faith mentioned the Raft. It had been a topic of discussion in one of their prior conversations, and was part of the reason the half-eidisi decided to pursue a research position with the academy.

"If necessity is the mother, than serendipity is perhaps the father of invention."
he said of how the Raft actually came about. He smiled genuinely then. These were good people. Hookor had not encountered many since he lost his father some time ago. Most seemed only concerned with themselves, and getting ahead of everyone else. But not Faith. Not Padraig...or at least that was the sense he was getting.

When did you ever rely on sense or instinct as proof?
he asked himself scoldingly. Hookor moved to some of the items on a shelf nearby.

"Would' you like to begin?"
he asked, looking to Padraig. Perhaps that seemed a bit abrupt and rude, but it was born out of Crook's ignorance to social cues, more so than a need to be pushy.
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"Good," Padraig responded with a wide smile when Faith revealed that she did in fact have the time to stay a while. "I'd be tempted to kidnap you and whisk you way, if you'd said no," he added when he'd put his satchel down and found a stool to sit on. If this time together consisted of an impromptu teaching session in part? No one would hear him complaining. Not one bit.

He remembered it well, the talk about celery and celery powder, and how such a strange conversation had led to the development of a medical treatment or device, of sorts, that had the potential to transform medicine to an extent and even save lives. "That's usually the way those sorts of discoveries work," he said, smiling as he looked Hookor's way. "Not just in medicine or alchemy, but in any number of scientific disciplines. It seems flippant to say that some of the largest leaps forward so far as progress, may happen by accident." A strange statement, maybe, but also a fair one. As a physicist, he'd stumbled across the same twist of circumstances again and again.

"Good," he said when Hookor revealed his familiarity with mathematics and chemistry. "Without chemistry, alchemy simply does not happen. In fact, many of my own creations could rightly be considered the result of chemistry, more than alchemy. It's a thin line though it might be more accurate to say that the lines are blurred. It's all in the application, and most importantly the reagent. It's about as close as you can get to magic without actually being a practicing mage."

And these trials, an alchemist, as opposed to a user of magic Padraig thought, had the added benefit of not being arrested in Rynmere and burned at the stake. So they all had the time. Now was as good as time as any. "Faith here is the better authority on the topic, but I would guess that it's also chemistry that is crucial to progress in the medical field, as much as it is to alchemy." She was the authority on that however, and he'd leave that one for her to consider and answer. Padraig wasn't to sure about serendipity however. Not a word that a physicist often used. Sounded like something an philosopher would be more comfortable with. And he continued to maintain that philosophy was not science.

The would you like to begin caused a flash of a grin to cross his face. But nonetheless he nodded. "So you could say that alchemy is a combination of chemistry, craftsmanship and magic. The magic is mostly in your choice of reagent," he said. "Then again," Padraig added with a shrug, "You can get all that from reading the introduction to the course materials. "Reading is not how I learned. I learned by doing."

"There are steps to completing an alchemical creation. Identifying what it is you are hoping to create. Choosing and obtaining the raw alchemical material you'll need. Avoid the temptation to use wild and crazy, expense and rare reagents when something more straightforward and more readily available will do. Flash is fun and gets lots of oohs and ahs...It also tends to blow up the lab when it goes wrong, and we've just finished putting this one back in order after the last, letter level mishap," he added with a grin.

Then, he added, you had to purify your ingredients, after breaking them down into the most useful form for the purpose at hand. "There's application depending on your medium, which at higher levels of creation, require multiple steps and layers. Modifiers, stabilizers, fine tuning, triggers and reagents...the list goes on. In truth?" he said, leaving the list aside. "You can see just how closely alchemy truly is chemistry with a magical twist."

So where to start? By doing. "Think about a medical conundrum that you'd like to try and address with an alchemical solution. Start from your knowledge of chemistry and then think bigger," he said to Hookor, "Don't hesitate to consider solutions that might seem outlandish...that seem limited so far as solutions brought about by chemistry alone. In my own field, we are always trying to figure out how to defy the laws of physics. Think in the same way about chemistry and alchemy. Identify the problem, and together we can try and devise an alchemical solution." Just like the raft, as Faith herself might recall.
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Faith smiled at Hookor when he spoke about serendipity being the father of invention. He could well be right, in fairness. Her smile widened as Padraig spoke of kidnapping her and she perched herself solidly on the stool. "That would be most inappropriate behaviour for a professor, you know. Besides, I don't go easy." They both knew that, more than one person had tried to kidnap her after all. She lifted her two small hands in mock fists and raised an eyebrow. "I get quite scrappy." But then, she listened as Padraig spoke and her face settled into the slight frown of concentration which both men at the table would recognise as more her norm.

"Padraig was my tutor, it's how we met," Faith said, by way of an explanation. "I wanted to learn everything and he seemed to be able to provide that knowledge. What alchemy I know, he has taught me and it seems to me that it is about essence. Understanding the absolute essence of a thing, a reagent." In the restaurant she owned, Faith said, they served an ice cream which kept its form in a hot cup of coffee but melted in cold. That was alchemy in action, Padraig had created it. An alchemist, Faith believed, made it their job to understand the very essence of a lot of things. When Padraig said it was craftsmanship though, Faith nodded. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a piece of fabric, a handkerchief and she handed it to Hookor. It appeared to change colour as it moved, swirling through every colour of the rainbow. "I use it to distract the babies, when I'm changing them," she explained. "That isn't alchemy, it's sewing. As a seamstress, or a chef, I understand what I'm working with on a level which is born from having done, and done, and done. As an alchemist, Padraig could put that effect on to a piece of cloth, maybe using the essence of a flower which changed colour or from the rainbow sands here, or some such. A reagent."

The piece of cloth was a miracle of craftsmanship and Faith shoved it into her pocket when Hookor gave it back, completely unaware that her talent was what it was. Padraig spoke then about identifying a problem and coming up with a solution and Faith smiled slightly. "For me, it's about identifying a problem, but then defining in detail what the problem is. Operationalize your variables." It was a phrase they used as scientists, the need to truly and scientifically define the nature of a problem.

"Bandages, traditional bandages, can be breeding grounds for infection. They get wet, they get dirty, they let infection in and they have to be opened in order to check them. Those issues were where we started with the raft." She'd been working in a restaurant in Rharne, she explained, and she'd learned how to make a consomme, a clarified broth with all the impurities taken out of it. This was done via a technique known as a raft. It sat on top of the broth and it drew all the impurities to it. She'd gotten to wondering, she explained to Hookor, if the same could be done over a wound - something which pulled out infection, impurities. Then, that had led to all the other issues which had been addressed. So she hadn't started from her knowledge of chemistry or any such thing. She'd simply identified a problem and mostly, Faith said, Padraig had solved it. That she said with a smile to her husband.

When Padraig suggested that he consider a problem Faith nodded, encouragingly. Anything, she said, from suturing to bedbaths. Identify a problem, they could start from there.
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Hookor couldn't help but raise an eyebrow as the story, as it were, of how Faith and Padraig met and courted, was told. Student and teacher? How at first seemingly inappropriate, yet tantalizing and romantic it was. Intriguing. Might require further study, or at the very least more inquiry.

But now was not the time.

No, now was the time to be mesmerized by flowing waves of color. The handkerchief was yet another awesome invention, and Hookor couldn't help but chuckle as she mentioned distracting babies with it. He shook his head, breaking his eyes from the trance they had been in.

"More than just babies."
he said with a snicker. The conversation then once more turned to alchemy, and given that was what he was there for, it is what he refocused on. Padraig suggested to focus on a medical problem, something that there was no good solution for, and to start there. Faith mentioned the Raft, and this gave him an idea.

"Since we are talking about wound care, I did have one issue that I have wanted a solution for." he began. "I have used the chemical combination of Silver and Nitrogen to clean and cauterize a wound. The application of it, however, has always been difficult in powder form. There is always damage to tissue around the wound, and too much of the powder in a single dose can cause tissue necrosis about the wound. Neither of these are...desirable." Hookor finished. He Looked to Faith then. He knew she was not the teacher here, but her own invention had greatly inspired the half-eidisi to renew his pursuit for alchemy knowledge.

"Your Raft is extraordinary not only in what it does, but how it is delivered. If I could devise something similar, or something that allows a more precise delivery, and perhaps sustained in its release over time, then I would be most pleased." Hookor then turned back to Padraig, his own lips turning into a bit of a playful sneer.

"You think such is possible with alchemy?"
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