Hydrazine Background

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So an alchemist scholam is much like any other scholam. Most of the seniors are ready to get out of there by the last semester. I was dealing with the traditional senior agony, what to do for a senior project. I coped with the standard scholam student approach; I went drinking. I went to a nearby campus bar, don't remember which, they were pretty much all the same, and ordered a chilled bottle of vodka as a warm up...

...yeah, whole bottle. After three and a half years of alchemist training, you have serious alcohol tolerance. The mutagen specialists are just phenomenal, but any alchemist can pack it in. I remember one waifish gnome girl (Hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane, Hexa for short) who used to go to regular bars and challenge big bruisers to drinking duels. There would be a dozen guys passed out on the floor, and she wouldn't even be slurring her words...

...yeah, a mutagen specialist. There was an incident where a guy wanted something other than a drink, and she disagreed. The scholam covered his injuries, but the dean made her go only to campus bars after that...

Anyway, Natrium and I were drinking and talking, mostly griping about our projects and lack of a decent idea for one. While moaning how every idea had been done endlessly, Aqua Regia wandered in and joined us.

Aqua Regia (always both words, never just Aqua or Regia) wasn't exactly a friend. He was the sixth son of a minor noble family or something, never learned the exact details. He was tolerated because he had money and bought often, but his name dropping habit was tiring.

This night he wanted to share something he had scored, aboleth sashimi. He told us where he got it, but I don't remember the details. We'd long since learned to tune him out when he started rambling on about his connections. I thought it was just some odd bottom feeder fish someone conned him into buying, but I was wrong. It may not have been aboleth, but it was something arcane and powerful. too much foreshadowing? also, too callous towards Aqua

And quite foul tasting. This is not a big deal for an alchemist. If you can't handle bad tastes you need to find a different profession. But it was kind of a everyday foul taste, rotting bitter with an ammonia overtone. Like a lot of the various rotted fermented fish products, hákarl or lutefisk for example. People aquire a taste for them, even non-alchemists, and I figured this was just another, although not one I'd had before.

Well Natrium and I were unimpressed, and dropped hints that he get us a pitcher of tequila. Aqua Regia was obsessed with the stuff though, and wouldn't let it go. He pestered us into trying it again (still tasted vaguely like rotted fermented fish.) He then hit on the idea that it must have some arcane properties, and we should try using it in a mutagen or an infusion. This wasn't exactly a crazy idea. Aboleths are these powerful deep ocean arcane creatures. The have an inherent arcane talent, and many develop further powers similar to wizards or sorcerers. So the idea that their flesh contained magical power was actually plausible. need to clarify Aqua's motivations

Well, we still needed a senior project, and we were getting tired of staring at the stuff on the table, so Natrium and I agreed to go back to the library to some research. I figured we find some simple infusion, try it, see it fail, and conclude it wasn't aboleth. Turns out there was almost no literature on using aboleth flesh as an alchemical component, and not much more for arcane applications. Not surprising really, since procuring the flesh of powerful malevolent arcane creatures tends to be a bit of a challenge.

What little we could learn suggested a mutagen would be most promising, possibly enhancing water related abilities. I was getting sick of this, since by now I was convinced all we had was some rotten fish, and all that will do to a mutagen is make it taste a little better. I suggested we go to the lab and check it out right then. Waiting until we had a chance to talk to an adviser might have saved us a lot of pain and grief. Or maybe not, since we were in unexplored territory.

Back in the lab we start gathering reagents. I cut off a piece and start mincing it. Natrium cuts off a larger piece and says, "be bold." Aqua Regia grabbed the rest, about half. After half an hour or so, we were ready. We ate or drank our mutagen, as the case may be, and started to transform. Right away I could tell something was different. My bones were elongating and turning almost rubbery. My fingers were turning into long claws. Then my skin turned to liquid and splashed on the floor.

The reason it hurts when you cut yourself is nerves are exposed. That is how you know you've been injured and to stop doing whatever caused it. Every single one of those nerves in my body was exposed. I screamed in agony. That scream probably saved our lives, Natrium and me, anyway.

We were lucky, one of the senior professors was working in the lab that evening, and heard. And more importantly, and had access to some powerful magic items the scholam kept for just these type of student accidents. It was touch and go, though, especially for Natrium. In addition to what happened to me, his lungs turned into gills. Alarmingly, the transformation did not wear off for either of us. They worked out some temporary skin infusions for us, and set up a large tank of water for Natrium to live in. Everyone took to calling it the fishtank, which did not amuse him at all.

We did get senior projects out of it, figuring out how to reverse what we'd done to ourselves. This was made more difficult since we didn't have any of the aboleth or whatever left. There was a lot of guess work involved, and every professor helped. We were something of a challenge for them. We were mostly successful, I more so than Natrium. We both have permanent skin now, and my bones are more or less solid these days. You can see my hair and eyes, never figured out how to reverse that. Wasn't much of a priority, really. We did graduate with honors though. The faculty all agreed it was a quite innovative senior project.

Natrium never managed to get proper lungs again, although he did manage to get to the point where he could breath air for ten minutes or so. Someone in the legions caught wind of his situation. The empire is big, and there is a niche for everyone. Turns out the legions have a team of underwater specialists, and they just love him. I understand he has been developing underwater alchemy techniques. We still write on occasion. He's always in a different realm, and vague about what he has actually been up to.

...right, what happened to Aqua Regia. I don't really know. No one does. I have vague memories of seeing him dissolve, but I was nearly blanked out with pain at the point. Natrium was worse, with suffocation added in. It even threw the professors for a loop. They couldn't find a trace of him, even with tearing up the floor. This was something of an accomplishment. Even the guy who created the disintegrate infusion 50 years ago left a pile of dust to be swept into a vial and shipped back home.

Which was a spot of trouble for the scholam. Apparently he was a bit of a problem for the family, which is why they sent him off to school. Get him out from underfoot, or maybe away from someone's daughter. But they didn't want him gone completely, and were demanding answers from the scholam. They wanted some seriously powerful (and seriously expensive) divination magic used, but there was an argument over who would pay. Eventually someone in the scholam administration pointed out that since he'd killed himself in a way the professors couldn't figure out, tradition said he gets to graduate posthumously with honors, with his adviser accepting his diploma on his behalf. Since he'd achieved something unique, not leaving any mortal remains, he was declared valedictorian, with the dean accepting on his behalf. His family accepted this as bringing some honor to his family, and let the issue drop.

...well I don't use the mutagen because this mishap had some permanent effects there. I don't just turn bigger and stronger, there are other changes. My arms extend and get a bit rubbery. My hair clumps into a bunch of tentacles. They look like they have eyes at the ends, but they don't actually. That would be useful and we can't have that. My eyes actually glow. Not enough to illuminate, just make it harder to hide in the dark. And after it wears off, my skin dries out and cracks, which is annoying. Painful too I guess, although what I consider painful was recalibrated up a fair bit. Anyway, the mutagen makes me stronger and a better fighter, so I'd be useful in a casual bar fight. In a real fight though, using the mutagen means I've run out of bombs, bullets, stones, random pieces of furniture, and harsh language to throw at the enemy. Generally everyone else would be dead, and I'm going down fighting.