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The History of Alchemy
WarrioroftheWind_ESO
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On the rare occasion I got the super special alignment of circumstances that allowed me consecutive off days from work, I got to go home for the holidays to visit the folks for the first time in months. (though it's not possible for me to log in game on account of the internet being finicky) There was a copy of Archeology magazine on the dining table and I skimmed through it and came across an article about real-life alchemy as practiced in medieval times.
Mortars and pestles, alembics, retorts, and calcinators aren't just terms pulled out of the butt of a fantasy writer. They have basis in actual theoretical science. The article went into detail how scientists recovered and painstakingly restored glass bottles and performed chemical analysis on residues inside and determined the bottles were used to perform experiments with purifying gold; using antimony to remove impurities from raw gold and rendering it into its purest form. There apparently were experiments as well to apply the same theory to medicinal practices, but that didn't work out so well. (antimony is poisonous to ppl. lol...)
The article is in the January/February issue of the magazine for anyone who happens to subscribe, and the website is www.archeology.org if anyone is interested in reading. It's quite an intriguing concept, that these practices are sort of making a comeback being considered more of a forerunner to modern chemistry instead of alchemists of yore being derided as quacks promising cure-alls. It also got me reminiscing about alchemy as practiced in Elder Scrolls games.
For anyone who's played Morrowind you might remember that anything and EVERYthing had alchemical properties. You didn't have a handy dandy station located in an inn or guild hall to visit, you had to lug that equipment around the old fashioned way. You weren't limited to flowers and shrooms, you could use food, metal, even gems. Dwarven scrap metal, ebony ore chunks, glass, emerald, rubies, even diamonds had special effects made all the more precious by their rarity.
Unfortunately in Oblivion most of those items got relegated to being vendor fodder (which I fail to understand since its only a few years gap between the two games, unless ppl in Vvardenfell are more liberal in using precious metals for such utility rather than Cyrodiilics...). The loss of options is much more apparent in Skyrim where a 200-year gap plus multiple world-shaping events has either resulted in a loss of knowledge or available materials. Nords prefer to wear rubies instead of rendering them down to make potions of feather apparently.
However being that ESO precedes all previous ES games, it'd be interesting to see if the players themselves can take part in pursuing a theoretical science of the Interregnum. If I could get the chance to discover that I can make a potion of invisibility from diamonds that last a few seconds more than the standard kind from Blue Enteloma and Nirnroot, by golly I'd do it because I have like freaking 400 of the freaking things stashed on a mule... To the stuffy old professor from that alchemy skill book you find in bookcases, I say screw you, you don't get to tell me I can't make a squirrel potion. I say I'll sacrifice this squirrel...for SCIENCE!!
Mortars and pestles, alembics, retorts, and calcinators aren't just terms pulled out of the butt of a fantasy writer. They have basis in actual theoretical science. The article went into detail how scientists recovered and painstakingly restored glass bottles and performed chemical analysis on residues inside and determined the bottles were used to perform experiments with purifying gold; using antimony to remove impurities from raw gold and rendering it into its purest form. There apparently were experiments as well to apply the same theory to medicinal practices, but that didn't work out so well. (antimony is poisonous to ppl. lol...)
The article is in the January/February issue of the magazine for anyone who happens to subscribe, and the website is www.archeology.org if anyone is interested in reading. It's quite an intriguing concept, that these practices are sort of making a comeback being considered more of a forerunner to modern chemistry instead of alchemists of yore being derided as quacks promising cure-alls. It also got me reminiscing about alchemy as practiced in Elder Scrolls games.
For anyone who's played Morrowind you might remember that anything and EVERYthing had alchemical properties. You didn't have a handy dandy station located in an inn or guild hall to visit, you had to lug that equipment around the old fashioned way. You weren't limited to flowers and shrooms, you could use food, metal, even gems. Dwarven scrap metal, ebony ore chunks, glass, emerald, rubies, even diamonds had special effects made all the more precious by their rarity.
Unfortunately in Oblivion most of those items got relegated to being vendor fodder (which I fail to understand since its only a few years gap between the two games, unless ppl in Vvardenfell are more liberal in using precious metals for such utility rather than Cyrodiilics...). The loss of options is much more apparent in Skyrim where a 200-year gap plus multiple world-shaping events has either resulted in a loss of knowledge or available materials. Nords prefer to wear rubies instead of rendering them down to make potions of feather apparently.
However being that ESO precedes all previous ES games, it'd be interesting to see if the players themselves can take part in pursuing a theoretical science of the Interregnum. If I could get the chance to discover that I can make a potion of invisibility from diamonds that last a few seconds more than the standard kind from Blue Enteloma and Nirnroot, by golly I'd do it because I have like freaking 400 of the freaking things stashed on a mule... To the stuffy old professor from that alchemy skill book you find in bookcases, I say screw you, you don't get to tell me I can't make a squirrel potion. I say I'll sacrifice this squirrel...for SCIENCE!!
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Elebeth✭✭✭Gah, you've triggered some bad vibes in me!
As a part of "Geology and Mineralogy for archaeologists" I had an entire semester dedicated to the history of alchemy. The amount of technical details I had to memorize for finals got me thinking if I should just give up on archaeology and continue the search for the Philosophers Stone.
Regarding the alchemy in ESO; I hope we are going to get some craftable poisons with next two DLCs. Other than that, I kinda doubt that we will get any kind of revisit/update of the skill line; but we can always hope.
Funny thing is, "The Heroes Guides to the Elder Scrolls Online" has Agents and Reagents: The Bounty of Mundus that explores various alchemical ingredients in great detail (Morrowind style) but majority of that is not in the actual game. Too complex for a MMO I guess.
And as for future TES series, I'd like it soooo (yep, with four Os) much if they get back to alchemy as it was in Morrowind. But that goes for a lot of things, like spellmaking and enchanting.
To me, judging by all the lore books, it looks like that "Morrowind style" alchemy is cannon but we can't explore it via gameplay mechanics. I understand why we can't in a MMO but I have no idea why they progressively nerfed alchemy (and spellmaking, and enchanting) from Morrowind to Skyrim. Sure it was consider overpowered, but everything is overpowered in the end-game of TES
Edited by Elebeth on December 25, 2015 11:52PM"I don't recall using teleportation, and yet there I was. Alone. Naked." Morrowind0