Alchemy, Augmentation and other Magical Enhancements

[Orc Knight]

This may be covering a rather broad topic, but as I've not really seen any on it, I'm throwing them all into one. If only because in my stories, humans have very few ways of being truly equal to the Fea and Green (elves and trolls, and the others) unless they are truly strong in magic and more then a little wily. And they've gotten pretty damn good at it, fusing everything they know of magic and using golems as support.

And the way they do it is using alchemy, Eld's version of which means getting a hold of essences of creatures or very concepts and bottling them and putting them to use. They can change and morph a person who drinks them, sometimes permanently (Lot's of Jekyll and Hyde sorts). They also augment themselves with magic, using spells inscribed by tattoos or actual metal (silver being the most common) to make them both faster and tougher. The other magical enhancements, sometimes means exactly what you may think it means, or not. These sorts are usually soldiers who will end up on an operating table to have magical skeletal enhancements and internal redundancies, trying to create super soldiers that can take on their other foes. Or sometimes it's not so voluntary and used on the human descent monster races.

So, what of your world and stories? Does alchemy and it's like play a big role in it? Or is it a snake oil salesmen's sort of business? Or just the precursor to actual chemistry? And of augmentation and enhancements? Any magical upgrade sorts?

 

[Blue]

My world at the moment has magic but not alchemy, magic is something you are either born with (blessed) or not. However the Gods of my world have the ability to grant blessings on anything non-living it is possible for normal people to augment themselves depending on how clever they are.

My world is in very early development at the moment though ^_^

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I have a full herbal system based on the magic system. It’s a tad much to go into here, but herbalism also has some relation to a variety of metals and gems. Most of this doesn’t actually come out in any books, but it does exist, LOL. If I get enough books written, then! readers will have an idea waht’s going on... or if I created magical spoiler page on my website.

The hows and whys of magic plants, animals, metals, and precious stones are all all interrelated.

 

[aDwarfNamedUrist]

In my world, Alchemy is a catch-all term for any type of magic which doesn't involve incantations, which means it is a huge field. It includes golemancy, potion-making, and enchanting. Potion-making involves using certain herbs and animal ingredients put in water to cast magic as opposed to runes, used in enchanting and magical shorthand, or runic names, used in incantations. golemancy and enchanting, which are often interchangeable, are done by placing an arcane circle on the object you wish to enchant. This magic circle is composed of four parts, the element, the prime, the focus, and the talents. All of these define how the spell is used and what it, fundamentally is. The arcane circle is not the enchantment, though, only the anchor for it. The enchantment is actually cast by the mage at the time of inscribing the circle. It can be thought of like heraldry, where the visual piece, i.e. a painted coat of arms, is not the actual thing, but the real thing is the blazon which defines it.

 

[Devor]

I've a number of settings, and most don't get into this kind of thing. Two of them do, however.

In one, alchemy involves the mixing of chemical elements to create items that break down objects into those specific elements. There's a little chart of what happens when you mix each of the different elements. For example, earth plus water equals an acid that melts anything it touches. There's a scene in which the villain, furious at one of his subordinates, walks up to that person's locked door, throws a bottle of acid at it, and an opening melts for him so quickly that he doesn't even stop walking. Another example, water plus air = steam, a substance that melts certain types of substances into steam for fuel.

As for the other setting, there's a full-on RPG-style item system, with crafting, and augments, and all of it. It's ancillary, but it covers the details. For example, if you wanted to "resist fire," you would have someone carve fire runes on your bracers, because bracers are the best place for that type of resistance magic to work (umm, reasons?), and it serves to limit how much resistance you can have to more or less the runes on each bracer. Amulets grant "active" powers, brooches grant "passive" ones, and so on. Again, it's ancillary to the story, not something you would see spelled out for anybody.

 

[Horus]

My setting Alchemy is a quasi-magic that has risen because your average person has limited to no magical potential. Magical potential is inherent, and cannot increase. You have a mana capacity (how much magic you can hold), a processing speed (how fast you can build incantations), and an absorption potential (how quickly you can recover mana by using the environment). This gives rise to mages who had low magical capacity and processing speed, but good absorption rate (a common problem). Enter Alchemy, a magic where you can perform magic by reducing the mana needed because you use elements already present. Plus Alchemist "truncate" their formulas by using transmutation circles, allowing them to cast without chanting. Mages also truncate their spells in a variety of ways, but all of them result in spells with less power than doing the full casting.

Alchemist are currently looked down on by mages as being "fakes", so they enjoy less social prestige. Alchemist can't do certain things that Mages can, but mages can do everything that alchemist can. But this is changing. Alchemy in one nation has given rise to an almost industrial level of technology because Alchemic Tech enables "failed" mages (people with almost no magic ability) to use things like "Air Guns", which use transmutation circles to compress air into creating an explosive force to propel projectiles. They have black powder rifles too, but they are crude, prone to misfire/hangfires, and too dangerous to handle due to the refinement of salt pewter being dangerous. But this achievement is one for chemist, who commonly view themselves as being against Alchemy and Magic.

Enchantment and Augmentation are done by all means. Mages use enchantments by using crystallized or liquidized mana, but the process is incredibly dangerous for refining mana. Warriors are able to naturally practice a form of magic that makes use of life energy to temporarily augment themselves in battle, while priest/shamans accomplish similar with blessings. Though forbidden, necromancy and life weaving allows one to permanently alter a living organism, but the effects require a lot of trial/error. Monastic magic is by far the best at this, because it creates permanent changes and the Enlightened (monks who reach the highest mysteries) are able to change their bodies as easily as changing clothes.

 

[Viorp]

I think that the "witcher" series has mutations induced by magic.

In my world it is not set yet because I just tarted it kind of. It is a very clasical medieval fantasy.

Human children can be altered using magic while still in their mothers womb to be unpararelled warriors for example.

There also a drugs like the "Berserker Potion"