Alchemists: Mixologists of Evil [Promethean: The Created]

News, Open Development, Promethean: The Created

Look, you want updates while I’m mid-coffee, you take your chances with the post titles.

Now, glib titles aside, alchemists are not necessarily evil. Mark Stone proposed, while we were brainstorming Promethean 2nd Edition (then known simply as The Firestorm Chronicle) that we should include mortal alchemists as antagonists. I had to noodle that – I knew that including a new antagonist would mean cutting somebody, probably the Zeka, since I couldn’t cut Centimani or Pandorans as they’re both too central to the game. But the more I thought about it (and read Mark’s pitch), the more I warmed to the idea. And then Mark’s draft sold me. (Imagine if it hadn’t? “Mark, cut these 5000 words and write something about the Zeka instead.” You’d hear the anguished cries across the vacuum of space.) From Mark’s draft:

Alchemists are people who combine that characteristic human obsession with improving themselves and their circumstances by unraveling the mysteries of the world around them with a tragic failure to appreciate the beautiful parts of the human condition. These are humans who are so terrified of death, infirmity, and ignorance that they have lost sight of love, fellowship and the value of mundane accomplishment. Bit by bit, they sacrifice their humanity for power and knowledge, until they have turned themselves into something monstrous. Where the Created seek to transcend their monstrous condition, leaving behind their power, longevity, and superlative durability in favor of the simple pleasures of humanity, alchemists want to leave their humanity behind in the hopes of becoming something more than human. More frequently, they end up becoming something much less than human. Although alchemists meddle with Pyros and Flux, the stuff of creation, change, and destruction, they are still only human. Their ability to generate the Pyros they need for their alchemical workings is sharply limited. The best way to get around this limitation is for them to steal Pyros from those beings who generate it naturally — Prometheans. Prometheans are also a wealth of alchemical wisdom. Although a Promethean’s conscious insights to alchemical change are mostly useless to alchemists — most Prometheans engage with alchemy on an instinctive level, while alchemists decipher it cerebrally — alchemists can learn a lot by examining and experimenting on his internal organs and bodily fluids. Between the Pyros Prometheans store and the wisdom that can be gleaned from their body parts, it should come as no surprise that alchemists often hunt Prometheans. Their goals and methods vary wildly, however. Some alchemists hunt alone, others work in groups. Some alchemists use force; others use guile. An alchemist with many sources of Pyros might use a great deal of alchemy in his hunt, while another with more money than magic might rely on hired help and expensive, specialized weaponry. A more patient and economical alchemist might try to immobilize or disable her prey so she can keep them as a permanent source of Pyros, while a more impulsive alchemist simply kills Prometheans and takes what he can get. Even worse, the only way for an alchemist to work a permanent change upon their own body — including some of the more infamous alchemical feats, like immortality, increasing their regenerative abilities, or permanently curing chronic diseases — is for the alchemist to ingest a potion based on Vitriol. No Promethean would willingly part with their precious Vitriol, so the only way for an alchemist to get her hands on it is to steal it, usually violently.

Not all alchemists hunt or would harm Prometheans, of course. Some of them are careful, decent folk who just happen to know how to combine alchemical compounds in new and exciting ways. But the problem that Prometheans have when meeting an alchemist, is that whether “dark” or “light,” the alchemist is human, and therefore susceptible to Disquiet. It isn’t long, therefore, but the alchemist feels entitled to the humours and reagants that the Promethean is carrying around within her weird, quasi-living body. So why shouldn’t the alchemist take a bit of Vitirol? It’s not like the Promethean is a person, after all.

All right, as always, questions in the comments, and I’ll be back on Sunday with another hard choice for y’all. Oh, also, I’m running a Promethean: The Created chronicle at present. We recently converted characters over to 2nd edition (so it’s a playtest, now), and I’ve got an AP going here.

ETA: Also, Michelle Lyons-McFarland (my wife, OPP author and editor, corgi wrangler) did an interview with the Darker Days Radio folks here. I don’t think she talked much about Promethean, but I know she talked about Demon and I’m not doing a whole new post anyway. Go listen.