Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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NFU 'Alchemy'

Uriel

I Shall Know No Fear
For those relevant, then.

What's to stop someone making a new type of metal with certain properties? An alloy, essentially, with certain properties that replicates certain elements (with enough dev behind it, obviously a given). Treat it with certain chemicals and bam you can replicate a number of effects that alchemy does. Chemistry and metallurgy combined, as it were.

Also, belatedly: the Jedi Order toyed with alkahest, as they called it, which was Light Side alchemy. It has been done here on SWRP. It exists. It is canon for us. You can't deny it hasn't happened; hell, I was in the dev threads for it. Dark and Light can do it. Why can't an NFU do it?
 
Uriel said:
For those relevant, then.

What's to stop someone making a new type of metal with certain properties? An alloy, essentially, with certain properties that replicates certain elements (with enough dev behind it, obviously a given). Treat it with certain chemicals and bam you can replicate a number of effects that alchemy does. Chemistry and metallurgy combined, as it were.

Also, belatedly: the Jedi Order toyed with alkahest, as they called it, which was Light Side alchemy. It has been done here on SWRP. It exists. It is canon for us. You can't deny it hasn't happened; hell, I was in the dev threads for it. Dark and Light can do it. Why can't an NFU do it?
Sith Alchemy and Art of the Small (I refuse to call it a nickname) change the material at the subatomic level, if you want to spend weeks or months changing the atomic composition of a dagger-sized object, be my guest. The suggestion I made was the most feasible, and that involves one of the most rare substances known to both Chaos and the SW universe (Pyronium).
 
[member="Isley Verd"]
Alkahest, by definition, is art of the small. Just as Sith alchemy, by definition, is art of the small with the use of the dark side.

They are interchangeable, they are almost identical.
 

Uriel

I Shall Know No Fear
It's not Art of the Small, whether you want it to be or not, [member="Silara Kuhn"] - trust me. I know Zane, as I wrote some of the items' creation, is not even capable of Art of the Small. Some of it's just imbued stuff. I'm something of a purist too, but times and standards change. Ask anyone who was here back in the day how hard I fought against power armour in the Factory as an RPJ... and here we stand now, where my main and only active character lives in it.

Purism just can't work here at Chaos when you define and exhort standards. I wish it could. Believe me, I wish it with all my heart. But purism isn't fair; it's not even fair to the purists themselves when the power curve here is so screwed.

Ultimately, IMO, I would like to see a metal that developed once doesn't need to be a technical alloy again. Do a couple hundred posts of dev on it, and then you can make it easier from there. I take my new, chemically-workable Cookietanium (for lack of a better name) and apply x chemical to it to give it y property. I don't like the idea of writing a metallurgic dissertation for every dev thread. Make it rare and hard to get. Control it. But make it doable.
 

Liona Mikael

Ain't nothin' a little hotwirin' can't fix.
I feel like it's mostly the name 'alchemy' that's giving people issues. It could easily called 'synthesizing' instead. You synthesize new materials or using it to break down objects to their base parts. It's obviously going to be a lot harder for someone who can't just use the Force to make all the parts do what they want. Objects that are synthesized probably aren't going to have the same specific properties that those built with Sith Alchemy do, but it's conceivable that someone who took the time and patience could come up with something akin to it.
 
[member="Ceska Starshield"]

You should not presume that just because a character wishes to try something new, that they are automatically entering into an arms race. Do you even know anything about Ijaat? His plans? Why he's doing this? The guy's just a nice humble beskar smith, it's actually a nice and unique progression that he's after for his character. Please don't belittle that.

As for the Lightside Alchemy, it's actually a canon thing. Look at Art of the Small. It's actually worse than alchemy in that it can alter anything to be anything if done right (it's the shifting of an items molecular structure.)

With regards to the OP, I don't think it's too unrealistic. We've spoken about it, briefly, OOC before. If you put in the work and add some sort of a logical foundation, then by all means it's within the realm of possibility. Historically, 'alchemy' was just the early days of science. Chemistry! So why can't a NFU attempt it? You'll never have it as perfect as Force-Enhanced Alchemy, you'll miss out on a few of the perks, but yeah. I'm actually very interested in this.

[member="Ijaat Akun"]
 
See, this is where I need to inform you both that Art of the Small is the use of the light side of the force to alter materials or living being on the subatomic level. If we go by definition, they are both art of the small. This isn't an issue of purism, I only have that issue with the creation of metals (which we don't do in the factory anyways, not without ridiculous amounts of development [ and I don't mean 200 posts if we're talking about a material that would transcend beskar, which this would]), it is about the base of each force ability that is being used. Alkahest is to Art of the Small as a Square is to a Rectangle in geometry, one is the other but they are not the same. It would be like saying alchemy for sith swords is the same process as that for biological alchemy, as they are two entirely separate beasts. One is the extension of the other, a subcategory within a category if you would. I am not saying it does not exist, nor am I saying it doesn't have a name, I am saying that it would fall under at of the small, as that is the force power you would have to learn in order to perform this "Alkahestry", which is something taken from the real world (it's what alchemy should be called, as alchemy is about turning lead into gold and such, but I won't argue semantics here) definition for a universal solvent.

At the end of the day, both Sith Alchemy and Alkahestry are a step beyond what you would normally perform with Art of the Small, but they are both art of the small. The only reason Sith Alchemy is separated with a different name and such is because it uses the dark side of the force rather than not. Alkahestry could be called "Light Side Alchemy" or "Jedi Alchemy", but it is simply a combination of the techniques observed with Art of the Small, Force Weapon, and Force Imbuement. It would be impossible for you to replicate many of the effects Sith Alchemy have at their disposal, while at the same point it would have its own unique properties that Sith Alchemy would also be unable to mimic.
 
Ceska Starshield said:
Light side alchemy?
My Jedi Master developed Light Alchemy, Alkahest.
No reason why it can't work. It does different things in a similar way.

NFU alchemy isn't really possible in the way it's defined because alchemy is the skill of infusing the Force into an item.

You could replicate some of these things with technology, but not some of the more arcane elements.
 
Valiens Nantaris said:
My Jedi Master developed Light Alchemy, Alkahest.
No reason why it can't work. It does different things in a similar way.

NFU alchemy isn't really possible in the way it's defined because alchemy is the skill of infusing the Force into an item.

You could replicate some of these things with technology, but not some of the more arcane elements.
This. All of this.
 

Uriel

I Shall Know No Fear
Define alchemy.

Just because it's called 'NFU Alchemy' in the thread title doesn't make the end result alchemy.

Magic is just science we haven't explained yet. If my bro over there explains it, well, that's it.
 
This, as [member="Uriel"] and a few others pointed out, isn't alchemy. Hence the quotation marks.
This is science, motherkarker (the motherkarker part is mandatory because science, motherkarker). Science that strives to do what we once thought only magic could do! Science to reinforce metals, to allow the absorption of energy, to create something stronger, tougher, cooler for all!
Science is hella sweet.

Who needs space magic when you have SPACE SCIENCE? Hmm? Okay, so that part is a joke, but try not to think of this as 'alchemy' and think of it more as creative, well thought out science from smart science people.
Because science, you dweebs*.
*dweeb is considered an affectionate term in my household.

I'll leave the discussion on whether or not science could do some of these things to the scientists. I'll just be over here, geeking out about whatever they end up making. Science<3
 
Let me explain it this way, we are discussing a method to create a lightsaber resistant material without a canon precedent (this means every single submission will require a development thread, not just the first one), and we're adding on the effects of a superconductive material (ability to reflect blaster bolts and lightsabers, conduct/store electricity), while also making it unable to dull (this really doesn't matter as nobody writes out a dull blade), and adding various other effects beyond a conventional restricted material.

This is adding up to huge amounts of development, and if the idea is to create any form of a baseline metal alloy that accomplishes all of these things you are looking at an insane amount of work to be done. I can't guarantee that it will pass through the factory until that point has been reached, but I can tell you that a lightsaber crystal that bypassed the weakness of one to cortosis took 800 posts of development, making something that is essentially beskar with special abilities is going to take well over that.
 

Uriel

I Shall Know No Fear
[member="Silara Kuhn"]

And you know what? To level the playing field in this little hellhole?

I'd write all eight hundred karking posts myself to make this happen.
 
[member="Uriel"]
The result is going to be a new restricted material, it won't be much different than doing the exact same thing I mentioned earlier through the use of Ultrachrome and Pyronium.
 
We're looking at more than just one type of metal or process. While someone is bound to want, as the kids say, "ALL THE THINGS" with their fancy science metal, most people probably aren't going to want every affect they can manage without true space magic. Someone might just want a harder metal, maybe not even fully lightsaber resistant, while someone else will just want some level of energy absorption. One person will use the process Ijaat (I spelled that wrong, didn't I?) mentioned while someone like [member="Triam Akovin"] will just science everything without all the metal creation stuff.

Something like this can't have a blanket statement. It would be, like true alchemy often is, a case by case sort of thing. Or so that's what it's looking like to little 'old' me.
 

Uriel

I Shall Know No Fear
A metal that reacts to certain chemicals in certain way with associated dev threads isn't a single blanket metal that can do everything alone.

Simplifies the process, but is not a be-all and end-all alone. Far easier.
 
[member="Vivienne Zambrano"]
There is a metal for every single point you'd make towards NFU "alchemy" that already exists and is not a restricted material (minus the lightsaber resistance, as all of those are restricted). The suggestion being brought up was to replicate the effects of Sith Alchemy/Alkahestry with a synthesized alloy, hence my short example of what to expect for such.
 

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