Protective Measures

by **Kuvarakh** on February 6th, 2014, 7:21 am

15th of Winter, 513

Well, she had warned him, after all. But being a Nuit, Kuvarakh did not worry all that much about the lingering djed radiation tainting the atmosphere of Alchemmia Alchae. By the time any effects would show, he'd have changed bodies anyway. So her frequent hints about the developing problem didn't register with great priority.

Wanda, on the other hand, considered it paramount. She utilized all the protective techniques one could, short of shielding, a discipline she did not know. But now she stood before him, hands on hips, making a point of displaying the fraying, melted, curling, disintegrating remains of her leather-bound, lead apron. "I told you this needed to be taken care of, Ku. This thing has taken the residue of a thousand activations. It's got a touch of every mutation or alteration we've done in the last four years, stacked and blended. Look at this thing! It looks like it was cut into strips, rolled in wax, set on fire and put out with a sickle! I can't do any transmutations in this thing. It probably has more djed leaking from it than the ring itself!"

Kuvarakh tried not to snicker. Her description was not far off. Every activation left a slight haze of djed lingering in the chamber. All the rinsing, lead lining, barriers and changes of clothes did not keep it from accumulating. It was no problem for him, but he knew it was a concern for her. Despite the comic disarray of her protective garb, he felt bad. He had known that this was going to be an issue eventually. And now it was.

by **Kuvarakh** on February 8th, 2014, 11:54 pm

Kuvarakh was presented with the same puzzle as the last time. He'd used leather aprons with lead cores himself, and they were wretchedly uncomfortable and heavy. Naturally, He and Wanda had imbued the last lead core with lightness, prior to enclosing it in its leather sheath, to cancel at least one of the setbacks, but it had still been bulky and stiff.

There had been the additional possibility of transmuting some increased flexibility into the lead as well, but with the leather envelope, it could only be taken so far. Then there was also option of softer leather, or having it worked and treated for the same end result. But there would still be two layers with a thick core, however flexible, and it would still be awkward.

No, Kuvarakh had a different idea. Instead of resorting to one or the other of the inherent setbacks of a two-layer, filled apron, He would go all out. This one time he would go to extreme measures and make enough for several protective garments. But not in two layers. He would imbue the cloth itself with the density of lead, but still retain the light weight quality. And not just an apron, but a long sleeved smock with high collars, or even a hood, and gloves to match.

It would take several stages. And each stage would be several repetitive operations. He knew it took the reinforcement of repeated transmutations to change the actual structure of a material, in this case, changing lead to cloth. But the first step would take less repetition. It would be making the lead more lightweight. Changing the lead to a cloth texture would gain nothing if it weighed a ton.

The other obstacle was that even after the lead was imbued with light weight, and reconfigured to the woven, tactile nature of cloth, it would still be a mighty chore to cut to pattern and sew together. So first, the garments with the desired features needed to be procured. That was not as easy as it sounded. A standard shop apron was not good enough for alchemical work. There needed to be as little exposed flesh as possible.

Fortunately, Wanda had made these arrangements before, but her pattern accounted for the usual two-layer, lead filled system. Kuvarakh could only hope that Voren Skyglow at The Tattered Thread could make the necessary adjustments.

by **Kuvarakh** on February 9th, 2014, 9:19 pm

Mr. Skyglow was of the opinion that if Kuvarakh would be able to make common cloth have the density of lead without requiring layers and cores, then there was no need for any special patterns and outfits. He sold Kuvarakh 3 sets of standard reinforced canvas shop aprons, shirts, gloves and hooded cowls, as well as four square yards of canvas, for 6 gold mizas.

This was the simple part. Now Kuvarakh had to his figuring. For lightness, he went to the carpenter he'd been seeing lately to learn how to work on the mansion that he'd made his Architectrix connection with. On request, the man had obtained some unusual wood from some tropical location. It was called "Balsa" and it was incredibly light, while still retaining the uniform density of wood. It was not a hard or particularly strong wood, but those qualities were not a concern to Kuvarakh.

He'd figured it would take four activations for each round of lead to fully transmute its density into the cloth. So he intended to get enough for five, just in case. He figured he could do all three aprons as one receiver, all three shirts as another and the hoods and gloves together for the last. So three targets, with possibly five activations on each, meant upwards of fifteen activations.

But each of those activations would need possibly three bars of lightened lead and a square of canvas in the chargers. That meant forty five bars of lightened lead. He wasn't sure exactly what combinations would bring the best results, so he wanted to make sure he enough of everything. He cut each square yard of canvas into nine square foot pieces.

Ultimately, he would be blending the cloth quality of canvas, the density of lead, and the relative light weight of balsa wood into the garment items. If he was going to use three one-pound blocks of balsa for each of the forty five lead bars, he'd need one hundred thirty five such blocks. His carpenter friend said he could only sell it in fifty pound quantities, so he bought three. It was an unusual type of wood, that demanded between ten and twenty five gold mizas for fifty pounds' worth. Kuvarakh offered him the highest price, and doubled it for the trouble of cutting it up, totaling one hundred fifty gold mizas.

The lead was generally sold in ten-pound ingots that were each in four-cube, end-to-end configurations. He would need forty five of these cubes, so he bought twelve of these ingots. This would give him forty eight cubes, at one hundred twenty pounds. At five silver per pound, this would normally be 60 gold, but he offered an even hundred for the worker to bother with steel slips in the molds while pouring them to keep the cubes separated.

So after paying one hundred fifty for the balsa, one hundred for the lead, and six for the canvas and garment items, he now had what he needed to begin. He had these all carted back to the shop to wait for Wanda to give him free time to get started.

by **Kuvarakh** on February 11th, 2014, 10:26 pm

Later that night, after Wanda had left. Kuvarakh set out his materials. He was having a somewhat different visualization of how he would approach this than he'd had earlier. He thought it might be better to attempt a more 'multiple-blend-per-activation' program. It was always good to begin blendings as soon as possible, to more quickly begin aligning the djed to its eventual end configuration. It should help it "take" the change more thoroughly.

So he started a series of repetitive activations. Each one would have a square of canvas and three blocks of Balsa as chargers. For the filters, he simply dumped small piles of sawdust. He reasoned this should prevent any change to becoming actual wood without diluting the desired density. In the center of the ring was an ingot of lead, already divided into four equal cubes.

He chuckled to himself with the thought of how many times he was going to jab his finger in the next several days. They charged cost on the basis of six activations each per day for both he and Wanda. But Kuvarakh knew he could handle twice that easily, since he did not need sleep.

The ring loaded, Kuvarakh pricked his finger and slid it along the ring to familiarize his senses with the feeling of movement at his fingertip. When he reached the keystone, he stopped sliding his finger, but his long-ingrained focus brought movement within the ring itself. The manifestations of djed quickly forming in his mind as an image of a whirlpool. The ring accelerated quickly as the whirlpool image became a mighty maelstrom in his connected thought.

It was not so much the increase in speed which was his aim with this visual metaphor, though that was always important. It was, rather, the envisioned elements of the charger and filter qualities, that floated in the whirlpool's image, that gave him the control he enjoyed.

Some bands of the water's surface showed a lot of bubbles, which Kuvarakh knew from experience were areas of low density. He pressed his control to visualize these bands working their way up and over the edge of the water to dissipate in the air. Other bands showed bubbles being pressed up and bursting at the surface. He focused on keeping these bands present in the watery funnel.

The property of cloth texture was more subtle, but he'd done this before. He let his eyes pick spots and follow them around the circuit, rather than eyeing the whirlpool in its entirety. He soon found spots where the water had a criss-crossing look to it, consistent with the weaving you would find in most fabrics.

Confident that he'd retained the qualities he wanted, and rejected those he did not, he concentrated on pure acceleration. He could almost feel the spray of water as the maelstrom spun so fast as to lose particular features and become a blur. He released the keystone then and the reconfigured djed slammed into the lead blocks in the center with a bright flash.

by **Kuvarakh** on February 14th, 2014, 5:11 am

Though Kuvarakh was not overly concerned with the residual djed, since he'd be changing bodies before much effect accumulated, he still dunked the lead cubes into the water basin. There was a subtle texture change, a roughness, and the blocks were noticeably lighter than the next ones going into the center of the ring.

He spent the rest of the night and the early bells of the morning finishing the first round of twelve ingots' worth of lead blocks. Since he was expecting it to take several rounds, he did not push himself to exhaustion on any one of the activations. But it was still an exhausting ordeal overall. Wanda found him meditating in the back room when she opened up. This was strictly a restful meditation, not the bid to counter the onset of disinterest in community that many Nuits succumbed to. Kuvarakh was enthusiastic about his project now, regardless of the cost and effort.

Wanda was willing to let him get started on this private work a little earlier the second day. It did go faster the second time. It had taken him several activations, the first round, to get attuned to the feel for the various properties he wanted to manipulate, as they were represented in his whirlpool vision. There was no such wasted time this round. But this gain in time was lost in the necessity to get hold of more sawdust. This was certainly not a difficult material to obtain, but it was still time consuming.

By the time he'd finished the second run-through, the lead ingots were significantly lighter. It was now more the need for additional cloth texture that was required. He had plenty of wood left at this rate, but if he shifted to placing only two blocks of Balsa and two squares of canvas in the founts, he would only use forty eight for the last two rounds instead of the seventy two he'd used on the first two. It was nice to think he'd have thirty pounds of this unusual wood left out of the hundred and fifty he'd bought to go into the store room. It would make up for the canvas he would be using from Wanda's stores.

The next series of activations were a little off from the first two rounds. There was less of the smooth water with the bubbles being squeezed from it and more of the woven textured surface. But outside of a little residual dizziness from doing more focused watching of specific spots on the water's surface than usual, the round went off without a hitch. The lead was now virtually floppy, almost elastic. It weighed no more than a lump of heavy wood, and stayed wet deep into the surface after being dunked in the rinsing basin.

Kuvarakh squeezed it like a sponge to get the water out. It resisted a bit but followed suit with what a cube of cloth would do when wet. The hardest part to fathom was how solid it felt even as it squished to expel the water soaked into it. It felt like a slab of thick wet leather inside of a snug canvas cover. It was time for the last of these preliminary rounds.

by **Kuvarakh** on February 15th, 2014, 8:08 pm

Once more, the jab to his finger, the slide along the ring to generate the sense of movement along the tip. In his mind, the movement continued when he stopped his finger at the keystone. The djed obeyed, slowly at first, but building speed as the repetition of fount and filter reinforced the pattern of qualities he sought, the others dismissed. It got steadily easier each time, and now,after 3 full rounds of 12 activations each, it was second nature.

Even the water in his representative vision became cloth-like. There were no longer any bubbles after ten or fifteen seconds. It was almost as though it was a picturesque tapestry of a lake surface, coiled into a funnel and set to spin. It was only the subtle feeling of spray, and the roar of vast quantities of water that kept the impression of a massive whirlpool in his mind.

When it got to such speed that individual features could no longer be distinguished within the blur, Kuvarakh released his hold and let the djed surge into the center of the ring to further alter the lead blocks there. He picked it up and dunked it. It sagged like wet cloth. It WAS wet cloth. Wet cloth with the density of lead but little of the weight.

He finished the round of twelve ingots, though that term hardly applied anymore. He'd been at it for four days now, straddling his regular shop time for Wanda. She was making an effort to look pathetic and abused in her mutated shop apron. Portions of it had stretched and had to be cut away so she didn't trip on it. Parts had developed a sort of 'dry-rot' condition, as a result of getting too much lingering wooden djed. There was a streak that smoked, though it was not hot. Kuvarakh could not suppress a chuckle at the spectacle of his boss reduced to such a 'poor waif' look.

"Tomorrow, I will be finished. I promise." he assured her. "After today, I will be able to do the remaining rounds. I've got the chargers all crafted, I just need to do a three-rounder for the final chargers and then one more three-rounder on the actual items. I can do that before morning easily enough."

"Petch that." Wanda snapped playfully, "We're closed until you get this thing done. I've worn this rag long enough. I'm afraid some part of it is going to turn into bugs or something one of these days."

Kuvarakh winced at that memory and Wanda visibly softened with regret for her remark. It had been HE that had nearly been eaten alive, not her. But it was true that she was wearing the very apron that was in use when that disaster had struck. And since it had to be imbued with whatever combination of djed overflows had led to that dreadful mutation, he could not blame her for her eagerness to see it gone.

He bowed in exaggerated deference, "Your will be done."

by **Kuvarakh** on February 17th, 2014, 2:27 am

Kuvarakh set immediately to work. He had twelve "blocks" of cloth possessing surpassing density without the inherent weight. He still wanted to see a bit more cloth-y texture though, as well as a thin, flat structure. Fortunately, there was still a whole bolt of canvas in the store room. He cut eight pieces from it, each one a square foot in size.

He set them in a square pattern, two deep, in the center of the ring and placed four of the cloth blocks in the founts. There was no filter concern with this round of three activations. He wanted to retain all the qualities of the cloth blocks in the founts, and the only change would be these qualities being set into the more conventionally thinner cloth form. There was the concern that the two layers of receiver material might be fused into one, since the founts were blocks, not sheets. Part of this step was to see if this would occur. He did not see any reason why this should affect the final step. He was simply curious about a detail he had not needed to attend to before.

He empowered the circular djed stream, giving only a few moments attention to the imagery of the whirlpool image. All the qualities he sought were there, with none of the detriments. So he concentrated on building speed. In an indeterminate span of chimes, his vision grew to a blur. But his numerous activations, always with the same properties, caused him to notice a detail. The funnel of the whirlpool seemed wider. Intuition corrected him. It was the thickness of actual spinning funnel of water that was thinner!

He put his attention to building speed on hold, simply maintaining his current level. He had been working with blocks of wood, and that thickness had not been anything he'd worried about up until now. But the lead blocks, being of such smaller size, were having this reflected in his whirlpool vision as "thinner" walls of water, causing the appearance of a wider funnel space.

So he focused his attention on manipulating his image. He held the acceleration steady and pictured his own hand entering the field of vision. He closed all his fingers but his pointer and dipped it into the top edge of the spinning water funnel. It created a trench in the edge, which was a little darker than the rest of the edge. He tried to maintain the trench as he withdrew his hand, but it filled in again.

He tried a second time and failed again, but it lasted longer before filling in. A third and fourth attempt yielded ever greater duration, but ultimately still filled back in. He was starting to get tired. None of the stages in this project had been particularly demanding. But this time, he was basically trying to force a quality concept, that was not present in the founts, into the djed stream, to retain a quality that was present in the receivers. He did not know for certain that it was even necessary, but when an opportunity for discovery arose, a true crafter jumped on it and accepted the consequences.

He went for broke on the fifth attempt. He worked the acceleration up to blurring speed and held it there while he forced the trench into the edge of the water funnel. He envisioned the trench extending out of sight to run the full depth of the whirlpool. There was an odd sound to the water as he released the activation. In the flash of collapsing djed, he realized the sound was his own voice, roaring with exertion.

He staggered back and collapsed, surprised to find a large folded blanket on the floor behind him. He left a large sweat stain on the blanket as he rolled in dizziness. Wanda was immediately there, cradling his head. "Are you okay, Ku? You said these steps were not wearing you out! You don't have to do this all tonight." Her voice was raw with concern and he saw her face pale and red-eyed. He wondered how long his shout had lasted to cause her such anxiety.

He nodded to let her know his mind was present. A few moments later he managed to gasp. "I'm sorry...it's okay...I had a...chance to try...something new and...this next time...I won't have to...Now I...can see if it works...without the extra effort. Then I'll have my answer." He smiled up at her as she picked up the eight separate squares of canvas and dunked them in the basin.

by **Kuvarakh** on February 17th, 2014, 7:28 pm

Kuvarakh was quite gratified to see that the two layers of canvas squares had remained separated. What he did not yet know was whether his exhausting effort to force a property through his connection to the transmutation ring had been the reason for it. It was entirely possible his exertion had been unnecessary.

After a bell's rest, he reset the ring for an identical transmutation. Four of the cloth-y lead blocks filled the founts and eight newly cut single-square-foot pieces of canvas, stacked two-high in four spots sat in the center as receivers. He began the circular flow of djed within the ring, concentrating only on acceleration. He put no effort this time into envisioning a separate inner funnel within the overall whirlpool.

Back to transmuting the same properties and materials that he had been doing for several days now, it went quickly and smoothly. The spinning djed stream soon towered at eye level, though from his perspective it was his eye level that lowered to the water line. The water was a blur as he released the activation, light filing the room in a flash that imploded in reverse of an explosion.

He picked up the receivers to dunk them in the rinse basin. He was both exhilarated and glum to see that the two-deep squares had fused into single sheets, twice as thick as the previous results. Glum that he would only get four chargers from this transmutation, but exhilarated to find that he his effort in the previous activation had apparently been the operative factor.

Was it possible that the alchemist could act as a fifth charger? He had put forth the effort and the result had been there. This time he had not, and the result had NOT benefited. He HAD made the difference, but how? As he rested for several chimes, assuring Wanda that he was not suffering from exhaustion like last time, he analyzed his previous experience.

He recalled other times he had put forth so much effort as to collapse like that. It was when he had insufficient charger support for a property that had a great deal of resistance due to greatly ingrained counter-quality within the receivers. Those efforts had slowly taught him that repetitive transmutations could overcome it, and not to try to effect too much change in a single activation.

Both Wanda and professor Feldorin, back at Zeltiva University a century ago, had warned him that his djed stream had grown so thick and so high, during those attempts, that he was in danger of bringing in djed properties from objects resting close by.

That could be it! With so much exertion, he may have widened the djed stream to such an extent that he touched the receivers and gained the property of being stacked from them! He rushed to make a note of this. He did not want to forget this theory, but neither did he wish to push himself like that again. Better that he should use a filter to remove the quality of being in a single block. Well he still had a number of balsa blocks, but he didn't want to risk decreasing the source of what had lightened the weight of the lead in the first place.

Instead, he got a single thick slab of leather. there were virtually no qualities that it shared with the founts except overall flexibility. With four founts reinforcing the cloth's flexibility, and his own experience detecting and removing such qualities, he did not anticipate any problem. Right now, he had twelve final charger to use for the last phase, where he out the actual shop wear items in as receivers. That would be enough right there. Four of them were thicker than the other eight, but he did not feel that a slight increase in thickness was any great concern.

But, in keeping with shop policy, it was always beneficial to make more of every enhanced material than a contract required, to keep in storage. If this worked, he would have sixteen squares of light-weight, lead-dense canvas of proper thickness and four of double thickness. He would use twelve of the proper type and put the remaining four proper and four thick in storage. It was time to finish this.

by **Kuvarakh** on February 19th, 2014, 6:37 am

It went easily from here. The addition of a thick, single-layer filter allowed the appearance of a second funnel within the primary whirlpool to manifest much more effortlessly. Kuvarakh only needed a small degree of concentration on maintaining it to finish the round activations with another eight squares of lead-dense, light weight canvas.

Wanda put a few contracts on hold, since the delay caused by Kuvarakh's exhaustion on the first of these three final preparatory rounds moved the tasks up into regular shop bells. Citing "inventory" as her excuse to these customers, she decided to run some of the more mundane errands she usually reserved for Kuvarakh.

She returned to the shop a few bells later to find Kuvarakh in the midst of one of the final rounds of activations. He had four of the squares of altered canvas in the founts and the three aprons lying in the center of the ring. They were already made of canvas, so the altered properties in the canvas squares being used as founts moved smoothly into the receivers upon activation.

it suddenly reminded her that she'd seen three shirts hanging on a laundry line outside when she'd returned. She hurried to inspect them, knowing that it was likely that they were finished products, hanging up to dry after being dunked in the rinsing basin.

Being canvas, they were not the most silky cloth she'd ever touched, but the sense of solidity they imparted to the touch was in stunning contrary to the way they nonetheless blew in the breeze. The lines did not sag as if mail armor had been hung on them, threatening to snap. They felt like cloth, cloth with a core of iron. But iron somehow flexible and light.

She put one on. It was cold and still damp, but she didn't care. She twirled in it and the hems fanned out from the centrifugal force, just like dresses she'd worn as a child. She laughed and bunched the cloth up in her hands, releasing it to watch it spread back out to catch the breeze with nary a wrinkle.

A stranger walked by, giving her a cautious smile and she called him over to give a touch test. The man seemed uncertain about agreeing to the odd request but took hold of a corner, giving it just the most basic squeeze and rub with his fingers. He looked as though he had already decided to give some pat answer when he his eyes widened and he did a double take. He set down the bags he was carrying and took hold of the offered cloth with both hands, marveling over its feeling of...he struggled for the word.

"Density?" Wanda offered.

"Yes...yes that's it...Density...what kind of cloth IS this?" the man asked eagerly.

Wanda put her finger to her lips. "Shhh...I just wanted to be sure it was not my imagination. It's something we're testing here. We may have it available in seasons to come. But it would be quite costly. I just wanted an unprepared, unbiased reaction. Thank you very much."

The man looked up at the sign, 'Alchemmia Alchae', and a look of sudden understanding crossed his face. Then a flash of light highlighted the windows and open doorway. "Gotta go." Wanda smiled and disappeared happily back into the shop. Unless she was mistaken, there would only be the gloves and hoods left. She would give Kuvarakh the rest of the day off and do those for him.

by **Nyxie Nadira Draer** on March 21st, 2014, 6:13 pm

Kuvarakh :

Additional Notes :

If you have any questions, concerns, complaints, etc about your grade, drop me a PM and we can most certainly talk it out.
Also, don't forget to edit your grade request to mark it as 'graded'.

As always, stay awesome!

Completed Protective Measures