Alchemist
Work on turning lead into gold in a workshop full of furnaces, flasks and very old books. Nobody has managed it yet. Your patron is confident you'll be first.
c. 1100 – 1720About the role
For six centuries, some of Europe's best minds tried to turn base metals into gold and to find the elixir of life. They never did, but along the way they invented much of the equipment and many of the methods of chemistry. Isaac Newton wrote more about alchemy than about gravity.
In the Tower Workshop, you'll keep the furnace lit and distill, dissolve and record every experiment in a notebook written in a code only you understand. Your patron, a member with deep pockets, visits on Fridays to ask how it's going. Say it's very close.
What you'll do
- Keep the athanor, the alchemist's furnace, at a steady heat day and night.
- Distill, dissolve and calcine according to recipes written as riddles.
- Record every experiment in your notebook, in your own private code.
- Report progress to your patron on Fridays, optimistically.
- Clean the glassware. Then the ceiling.
What we're looking for
- Curiosity and a great deal of patience.
- Steady hands with hot glass.
- Comfort with failure, repeated indefinitely.
- A cloak. Optional, but expected.
Perks
- Your own furnaceIt has been lit for centuries. Do not let it go out.
- A library of recipesWritten in riddles, symbols and a little Latin. Some of them work.
- Discoveries along the wayNot gold. But phosphorus was found this way, in a pot of boiled urine.
