Wyr'palja's Notebook

The binding of this book is constructed of an extremely strange material, appearing like bright orange sheets of very thin jade, but weighing almost nothing. The covers contain no detail, but are slightly reflective. The pages are completely transparent and slick, with writing in Old Realm in different colors of ink (mostly black, but with red, green, blue and silver as well). The spine of the book is held together by eight posts that penetrate the covers and pages, which somehow flex when the book is opened, allowing it to lie flat. The book contains distinct sections, but within each section are mostly notes and scribblings, rather than prose. These notes are all related to alchemy in some way, usually notes on experimentation, with lots of formulae.

Mortal Alchemy Formulae

The first section, though short, is broken into three subsections, one for each of the mortal circles of alchemy. Entries in this section are very brief, looking more like a crib sheet of compact, abbreviated alchemical recipes. A number of what look like keys to codes are scattered throughout, often referencing pages into books called Salt, Aether and Gold. The procedures described in this section are:

Salt

• Blood-Staunching Compress: Bandages that stop bleeding
• Hallucinogenic woad: Pain killing hallucinogen
• Poison
  • Court poison
  • Lesser sea serpent venom
  • Pelagic phantom sting
  • Poison snake venom
  • River spider venom
• Venom-Allaying Draught (several versions): Allows mortals an automatic roll to resist poisons.
• Wound-Cleansing Unguent: Prevents infection during surgery
• Draught of Blessed Respite: Sleeping potion
• Firedust grenade: Small explosive device.
• Hero's Recovery: Allows mortals to heal like exalts.
• Maiden tea: Contraceptive and abortifacient.
• Philtre of Desire: Improve social interaction with a specific target.
• Rasp spider venom: Hallucenogen that aids creativity.
• Sleep grenade: sleeping gas bomb.

Aether

• Age-staving cordial: slows aging.
• Eagle's Eye Potion: Improve eyesight.
• Final Vengeance: Allows mortals to ignore all wound penalties and succeed at Valor tests.
• Ghost flower: Allows communication with ghosts.
• Ice fern: Dream enhancer, mild divination enhancer.
• Munificent Antivenin: Counteracts poision.
• Poison
  • Arrow frog venom
  • Coral snake venom
  • Sea adder venom
  • Stonefish poison
• Tiger's Heart Elixir: Mortals add 1 to Valor.
• Seven bounties paste: cures disease.
• Sweet cordial: Narcotic healing potion.
• Valiant Warrior Formula: Allows an extra to be treated as a normal character.
• Wind-Fire Potion: As Valiant Warrior Formula, but is addictive and also increases physical attributes.

Gold

• Heavenly Transmutation Processes: A series of formulae for changing transmuting mundane materials into more noble, yet still mundane, materials:
  • Ceramics into china
  • Common citrines into flawless rubies
  • Glass into a transparent material that resists hammer blows.
  • Lead into gold
  • Raw iron into flawless steel
  • Rock into marble
  • Wood into ivory
• Six-Demon Potion: Allows mortals be treated as exalts and enhances physical attributes, willpower and valor.

Alkehest

Containing only the occasional note, this section lists alchemical procedures, usually one to a page, described in careful, but efficient detail. There are occasional references to pages in a book called Alkehest.

• Alkahest: universal solvent
• Assassin Venom: a potent magical poison
• Firedust Transmutations: transmutes firedust into other types of elemental dust:
  • Briardust (wood)
  • Skydust (air)
  • Stonedust (earth)
  • Waterdust (water)
• Cage Sweat: Captures the effect of Armored Scout's Invigoration.
• Distilling the Sun: Process for refining orichalcum from gold.
• Eight-Scream Devil Powder: Irritates the skin, causing a -4 "wound" penalty.
• Godstrike Oil: Allows weapons to strike immaterial spirts.
• Jade Whiskey: Drinker can detect the presence of jade.
• Vim Vitae: An alchemical fuel

Berith

This section is less organized, with experimental notes and theoretical musings interspersed with procedure descriptions. There are numerous page references to a book called Berith. The procedures in this section are longer and less exact, often with corrections. They are:

• Berith: The philospher's stone, changing base materials into gold at a touch.
• Clarity Spirit: Drinker can see dematerialized spirits for a scene.
• Empty Canvas: a liquid that will remove paint, ink, etc. from any surface, leaving the surface otherwise intact.
• Firedust Catalyst: Add to a batch of firedust to convert it to other types of dust.
• Hound's Tongue: Talk to animals for a day.
• Master's Toast: Gain effects of Fivefold Bulwark Stance for a scene.
• Righteous Bloodfire: A magical poison that causes blood to burn, but must be stored in orichalcum.
• Skin-Like-the-Mountain Oil: Add +10B/+12L to soak, ignoring attacks that do less that five damage completely.
• Touch of Death: A deadly magical poison.

Quintessence

This section is the longest, but also the most disjointed. In addition to the usual notes and procedures, a good portion of it are long sections of text, looking much like excerpts from a book. As one reads, one draws the impression than most of these are actually draft sections intended to be assembled into a book. A few sections detail meetings with various spirits, possibly in Yu-Shan, mostly talking about the substance called "quintessence". The procedures in this section are not as well organized, sometimes with different sections scattered over various pages. They appear to be:

• Dragon Walker: Drinker gains the effect of Pulse of the Invisible.
• First Gate: Ejects an exalted soul shard from the body of a willing drinker.
• King For a Day: Drinker gains the effect of Authority Radiating Stance.
• Orison Coagulation: Transmute quintessence into ambrosia.
• Vivid Dragon Amalgamation: Mix jade of different colors into any color.

Ambrosia

A short section, containing only notes, mostly questions related to a heavenly substance called "ambrosia" and how it might be transmuted into orichalcum.

Eterna

An even shorter section, mostly containing unfinished ideas about a theoretical material that could spontaneously transmute ambrosia into the five magical materials.

Spell Distillations

Tucked away in the back is a strange section, mostly using symbols connected to names of spells. From the text, it is clear that these are intended to be the recipes for distilling the spells named into liquid form using something called the Crucible of Tarim. Unfortunately, the actual crucible is not actually described. The symbols are obviously intended to represent various ingredients, but there is no key to what they mean. Many of them can be seen in other places in the book, however.