20th Day of Winter in the Year 517 AV
It was late morning. A rainstorm had recently passed through although, as was almost always the case in Syka, the sun appeared shortly after. Ialari was busy wandering about the fringe jungle as well as the interior of the settlement itself, gathering various ingredients for a new experiment in philtering. The harvesting of material was really quite simple as it meant picking various types of fruit. It was the skins of the fruit however that Ialari was most interested in. As she made her way around the settlement, Ialari also made a few stops to the Mercantile to pick up some of the fruits offered there as well as some sugar and various spices. She also invested in more tools and equipment to turn her small philtering kit into a portable lab. As for fruits that she both purchased and gathered, she bought and stuffed into her backpack, several mangos, lemons, oranges, pineapples and coconuts. In total she spent 275 gm on the various purchases.
After several trips and the better part of the afternoon, Ialari was finally satisfied with the amount of material she’d acquired. Returning to her ranchero, she laid out her ingredients on every available surface of her small home. At her work table, she began putting together the full setup of her philtering lab. There was an alembic, various tubes, coiled glass, beakers, retort and numerous tools for collecting and processing philters. Putting it all together took a bit of trial and error however as she’d only ever had any experience with such a lab years ago during her studies at the Silver Tower. When she hit a snag in the setup; unsure of how some of the coils fit together, she gave up trying. Instead, she took a break and went to the Panacea.
Jansen had his own philtering setup in his somewhat small lab. While there was a bit more to it than Ialari’s, the basic principles were the same. Ialari explained her dilemma to Jansen and asked if he could help. He proceeded to explain exactly which each piece was and what it was for. While Ialari knew some of it, much of what he described was new.
“I know you probably know some of this but I’ll explain it anyway.” He pointed to each piece as he described them. “This here is the alembic. It is basically used in the process of distillation. It separates liquids. This at the top, is a venting hood. From the hood, these tubes connected to it allow vapors that have been heated to travel away from the heat source so they can cool.”