OOC: This is out of the usual sphere for this particular muse. I am working on a Steampunk bit over on Pan Historia in the novel, “The High Adventure”. Essentially, it is the Steam Barons vs. the Alchemists who want to destabilize the economy and make things more “even” among the common people by literally turning lead into gold. Faelyn and her friend and confidante, Doctor Augustin Chaubert, who heads up the local chapter of the Order of the Golden Dawn, that serves as a front for the Alchemists, are the “bad guys”. We are hoping, however, that people may be able to empathize at least a little with thier alleged “cause”..
“…and we must put aside the aside the conventional image of the alchemist as a threadbare, etiolated individual, filthy and stinking from sulphurous smoke and half-poisoned by mercury, and picture a well-dressed, articulate man surrounded by noble men and women in a vaulted chamber of a castle or palace, lecturing deferentially to people who most certainly well understood what he was talking about and who had examined his equipment to obviate any chances of fraud. Demonstrations by members of the Academie des Sciences in the presence of Louis XIV, or by Fellows of the Royal Society of London before Charles II, provide close parallels, the demonstrators being some of the foremost scientists of the day.” – P.G. Maxwell-Stewart, “The Chemical Choir: A History of Alchemy”
Upon the dais he had ascended and he had done so magnificently. After the long-awaited passing of, Leiland Worth , Augustin Chaubert was the new blood that the Society of Alchemists had been needing for so long. Continue reading