What happens on Wurm is not always about great events. Wurm is land where those who have great skill are always in demand, and the knowledge they possess is often not easy to come by. This article by Roaxanna, reporduced from the Wurmian Times looks at alchemy - an art that just may safe your life!

Alchemy is one of the most rare skills used by Wurmians. Of course, almost everybody has made a few healing covers in his/her lifetime on Wurm but few hold Alchemy as a profession. A healing cover requires two ingredients of different kinds and some patience. Even an apprentice can create quite good medicine, but it takes a master to do it consistently. Making healing covers raises experience with natural substances too, because each ingredient is unique and using it always teaches you something new.

But, Alchemy is not only for medical purposes! Leatherworkers, for example, need lye. This is a corrosive substance made from ash and water. Its main function is to remove hair from the hide and to preserve the animal hide to make leather. Making lye is a simple task and an apprentice alchemist will handle it easily. Be sure to use good quality ash (I personally like using birch, but all trees are good, ash from lemon tree has a funny smell); dirt and wood remains etcetera, are a rather bad thing.

Another skill of alchemy is the creation of colours; to be more precise, dyes. Ever wondered why some houses are red, grey or white? They are painted with dyes which were probably made by a skilled alchemist. There are some basic dyes that can be easily made by almost everyone. For example, botanize to find woad, put it into water for some time and blue dye is made. Although your skill is important, dye colour and quality is higher if better ingredients are used. However, the chances of success even using fine specimen woad or lump of pure copper, are not constant. So a good Alchemist knows how to extract juices from woad or carminic acid from cochineal to achieve a top quality product far more often.

As I mentioned before, some dyes are easy to make and some are not so easy. Basic colours like blue, red, green or white need good ingredients (woad, cochineal, copper and zinc lumps) and some skilled Licensed Alchemists can make them with almost one hundred percent success.

The hardest of the colours is black dye. This colour is hard to obtain and requires enormous skill. First, you need a good acorn to make the tannin. This very complicated chemical substance will, when you pour it over pure iron, create black dye. It is tricky process; you can fail preparing good tannin, and even if you succeed the reaction between tannin and iron is not stable and needs constant regulation by a qualified alchemist. I am an alchemist with a diploma and yet only a small percentage of my attempts at making really good black dye are successful.

There are colours that are not so common. Purple, pink, turquoise and yellow can be made from the more basic dyes. You need very good basic colours and an ancient manuscript called "RGB tablets". Each dye has its own values of elements. If you check the red dye, for example, there will be some strange text like: R200 G30 B30 or similar. It means that red dye has very strong influence of red element and weak green and blue. I know, that probably sounds strange, so let me clarify a bit, and the RGB tablets manuscript will play a role here. When you mix dyes the elements will change values! But what the result will be depends on the potency of each element. With the help of RGB tablets, it is possible to determine the outcome value. It works this way: when two dyes are combined, the value of each element is added together and then divided by two to make an average.. For example, a good red dye with a good blue dye will look like this: R140 G40 B130.

More complicated colours will need more than one step of mixing! But beware of grey influence. Each mixing will make dye more greyish and colours will fade, which is why a good quality starting point is so important.

Well, there is not much more to add. Everyone should experiment with dyes to learn how to make the best or most unique colours. One last thing about mixing dyes; although it does not require alchemy skill, without alchemy or an alchemist you will have a very limited supply of good quality ingredients to play with as a painter.

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention one thing. Some time ago, alchemists discovered how use animal fat to make candles. You need some animal fat (butchered from an animal) and a short string of cloth. Fat has a tendency to burn but not with a very warm flame, but burns quite long. It is a good substitute for people who don't have tar in their area or like to decorate houses with something cosier than street lamps or lanterns.