{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/vermin/living-transmutation",
  "path": "/posts/vermin/living-transmutation",
  "publishedAt": "2026-01-17T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "The first law of alchemy defines the chain of emanation.  Through\ndreaming, matter begets essence; through alchemy, essence begets\nlimina; through transmutation, limina begets matter.  This is a chain\nand not a loop, as enforced by the second law of alchemy: It entails\nthat alchemization and transmutation are governed by opposing fields\nwhose energy values must have a product of zero at all points in\nspace. Thus, the \"transmutation of dreams\" would be a phenomena as\nparadoxical as a machine perpetually in motion.\n\nKnown to the ancients as \"divine clay\", limina is a mediator, able to\nbe polarized alchemical or transmuted, and through limina both\nprocesses share a certain tendency to amalgamate, cohering into\ncontiguous paraphyiscal structures.\n\nThe most famous structure of this sort is the mortal soul, formed\nnaturally around the wellspring of essence that is the willful mind.\nThe natural soul is faint, disorganized, and patchwork; mortal essence\nalone lacks the mass or velocity to attain the nonlocal coherence of\nhigher alchemical structure, and so throughout the body transmutation\nhappens microscopically at random.\n\nPart of every alchemists' journey is a purification of the soul; by\nclearing way the transfigured detritus that arises through the course\nof one's life, pathways are wrought through which essence can\ncirculate freely. This is a compleation of the great work.\n\nThe self-interaction of essence has qualities of resonance or\nmechanism.  Consider how objects placed in a cavity can baffle its\nacoustic qualities, or how a pebble lodged in cog disrupts the whole\nclockwork. For this reason, an alchemist is at their apex so long as\nthe soul remains free of transmutation.\n\nBut a properly functioning liminal body is able to achieve this\nunthinkingly; famously, if a warrior should try thrusting a transmuted\nblade into the skull of an alchemist caught unawares, the target's\nsoul will deconstruct the blade even as it approaches.\n\nThe atomic, transient nature of matter presents a mystery, though.\nTransmute a glass of water.  If you drink it, if you let it condensate\nor turn to mist, what happens to its transmuted nature?  Is each drop\nof water marked and cursed forever more?  Will an alchemist become\nimpure simply for breathing nearby air?\n\nNo, transmutation evaporates and unravels just like water itself.\nGiven long enough, the transmutation field relaxes toward zero.\nNothing shall remain to show that this matter had special provenance.\n\nIn fact, this is a chief concern of the art of alchemy.  The layman\nassumes the challenge of alchemy is studying what can be done with\nthis marvelous power of creation.  No, the true challenge is studying\nhow it is undone.\n\nThe third law of alchemy holds that all transmutations can be\ndispelled: every working requires an equivalent unworking.  Time's\npassage will always accomplish this much, but the spark of\nalchemization can accelerate this.  The simplest form of dispelling\nresults in  total collapse.  Transmute a pile of sand into a chair;\nwhen suddenly dispeled, it will explode into tiny shards.\n\nBut if left alone, it may crumble bit by bit, cracks forming as if\nfrom the expansion-contraction of exposure to the elements, fragments\nslowly falling away --- but this is an ideal case.  The tendency of\nlimina to meld together means that the disruption often happens all\ntogether, self-catalyzing, once a critical threshold is met.\n\nFor this reason, dispelling is almost synomous with \"popping\" a\ntransfigured object.\n\nWith careful alchemy, limina can be engineered for the stress of\ndispelling to be vented into outlets other than a violent explosion.\nBut this is delicate work.\n\nYou can see why the novice application of transmutation is as a rule,\ndirected to the creation of temporary tools and structures. An amusing\nstrain of proverb advises you to never let an alchemist prepare your\nfood --- who would dare risk a sandwich that might burst inside you?\n\nYet sometimes it is more than a matter of convenience: transmutation\ncan be used to heal; however this is most effective on the laity,\nwhose souls never accumulate the essential momentum that could easily\ndispel a transmutation.\n\nAll this serves to illustrate why \"self-transmutation\" is so abhorrent\nto alchemists.  To turn part of the body into an object of\ntransmutation requires amputation and restructuring of the liminal\nbody to circulate essence around it.  This generally hinders an\nalchemists' power output, and the marginal gains of self-transmutation\nare seldom worth that.\n\nTransmuted flesh is dead flesh, starved of the animating soul.\n\n- - -\n\nAll of this serves as the necessary background to appreciate the\nparadox that is the chrylurk.  These monsters are famously called\n\"living transmutations\"; for centuries they were considered a great\nand terrible mystery, walking defiances of all three laws.\n\nAtop their exoskeleton, chrylurks have a layer of exoderm, a slimey\nsecretion that can attain the qualities of wax or clay or silk at the\nbugs' design.\n\nKnow this: Chrylurks do not have a soul.\n\nThrough the circulation of high volume of essence, alchemists are able\nto project a field outward, and through this they attain extrasensory\nperception in a radius around them.  Laymen register as faint\nsignatures; transmutated matter confesses its true nature; and the\ncirulation of another alchemist becomes unmistakable.\n\nWhen aiming to hide among the populace, chrylurks are invisible to an\nalchemist's sensory field.  This is chrylurk quiescence.  The bugs do\nnot generate essence and need not circulate it; and each can don\nwhatever limina would serve to disguise themselves as a mortal soul.\n\nOnce discovered or ready to attack, and thereby needing no illusions,\ntheir exoderm writhes to life.  Any alchemist will recognize it at\nonce as a transmutation.\n\nWhat maddens those who scry too closely is this is no single\ntransmutation; the limina do not form a contingous body.\n\nNo, a chrylurk's shell is coated in a kaleidescope of a myriad\noverlapping transmutations, like the shimmering scales forming a\ndragon's hide. Worse, should an alchemist try to dispel this\ntransmutation, it will have nearly no effect.  Like emptying the ocean\nwith thimbles, the dispelling of a single transmutation is a minute\ndiminishment at best. She sheds a single scale and another lay\nunderneath.\n\nMake no mistake: Partitioning a transmutation so that the failure of\none component does not bring down the whole is something any skilled\nalchemist could accomplish --- but this is subtler. Likewise, actively\nsustaining a transmutation, reinforcing it against dispelling, is a\ntrick all could replicate.\n\nBut if an alchemist were to coat themselves in transmuted chainmail\n(hardly a new idea), then their soul shall reflect that.  If an attack\ncan penetrate their armor, then it can disrupt the alchemization that\nsustains it, and the effect can be unraveled.\n\nAgain, alchemists can project a field of extrasensory perception\naround themselves: so they can see that what stands before them is but\nan empty husk.  No essential dynamo spins at the heart to bring this\nbeast to life.\n\nThe first law says emanation flows one way, and the second law says\ntwo cannot coexist.\n\nYet here is limina: created, controlled, and cast at the same nexus. A\nliving transmutation!\n\nThose brave and lucky enough to penetrate the mysteries of chrylurk\nexoderm have devised a theory.  Essence comes in different forms.\nAlchemists augment the meager essence they naturally generate through\nconjunction with divine ambrosia.  One part mortal, ten divine ---\noften more.\n\nBut chrylurks infect and corrupt humans to produce a novel form of\nessence which they forcibly siphon.  Divine ambrosia is elemental in\nits simplicity --- such is what gives alchemy its mathematical\nprecision.\n\nChrylurk essence, by contrast, is far more complex and organic in its\nstructure.  Thus, it enables a perverse geometry within the \"scales\"\nof the exoderm. Each is structured to isolate its alchemical component\nfrom the transmuted mass.\n\nRecall the image of the alchemist in transmuted armor.  Now imagine a\nrank and file of them marching together.  Each is an essence dynamo\nsurrounded by an aegis of transmutation.  Now imagine each as small as\na grain of rice.\n\nThe kaleidescopic hollow soul of the chrylurk arises from her at once\nperforming a million micro-alchemies!\n\nThis comes with its own drawbacks --- scaled exoderm can never mimick\nan alchemist's projected sensory field, nor capacity for action at a\ndistance. But perhaps this point is moot when chrylurks can weave\nserivane, diaphanous strands of silk that pass ghostly through matter.\n\nMoreover, scaled exodern is simply incapable of the dynamo-circulation\nthat grants alchemists all the power they boast.  The workings of an\nadept alchemist can be cast with power a chrylurk physically cannot\nmatch.  The same multiplicative effect that makes any impurity in a\nalchemists' soul a hindrance means that these millionfold\nmicro-alchemy is simply deficient compared to that same mass\ncirculating within a single uninterrupted field.\n\nBut this also serves to explain another terrifying quality of\nchrylurks: their immunity to antiblight.  Antiblight is a fungal\ndisease that afflicts mortal and divine alike, and alchemists suffer\nits ravages so much more keenly.  Antiblight can pass into an\nalchemical field without being dispeled, and twist the flow to the\npathogen's own ends, draining energy to fuel growth.  As soon as\nantiblight takes root in a body, its liminal spores have already\ncirculated to every part of the soul.\n\nBut chrylurks have no soul, not until they have need of one, and it\never remains finely partitioned.  If infected by antiblight, the\nchrylurk can simply shed those scales.\n\nSo what chrylurks lack in power, they gain in flexibility and\nsecurity.  But a comparison between alchemist and chrylurk will always\nbe flawed, because what they do is fundamentally different.  The\nbuilding blocks are not the same, a",
  "title": "A Living Transmutation"
}