Magical spoilers at chemistry workshop (Sanni)

Dragonbane Diary
Sunday, March 19th, 2006
Jyväskylä, Finland

Don't read further if you don't want to know how some of the magical objects at Dragonbane are made! I'd consider this interesting series of experiments rather a major spoiler, especially for those with some knowledge of natural sciences (just ask yourself if you want to take the chance of thinking "this must be it!" during the game). No story related spoilers ahead, however.

Continue reading at your own risk !
In the game there will be a certain amount of strange magical objects that need to be fascinating without being obviously man-made. One shouldn't see how they are made even if one has the opportunity to study them closely. Moreover, we must be able to make them happen in the woods even a week after we ourselves have left the game area. To figure out how we are going to handle these subjects we had a intensive sulphur-tasting weekend in a chemistry lab in Jyväskylä, Finland.

Friday evening I took a train from sunny Helsinki to snowy Jyväskylä. There weren't any seats left so I was sitting next to the train toilet, which actually wasn't that bad. In Jyväskylä I greeted a tall man making sure that he was Arno, our chemistry expert. When Heiko arrived too, we headed to our new quarters.

Both Arno and Heiko had been spending quite some time thinking about our magical effects so they had a nice palmful of ideas with them. Having those possilities in mind we first read the culture documents for different factions in order to find out what kind of effects are really suitable for the current story. It appeared that according to the texts about rituals we're able to use many of our most attractive charms. In order to make sure it's possible to make those reactions happen and also use them in non-laboratory conditions, we needed to test them.

Making mist last
From Saturday afternoon to Sunday we took over Arno's laboratory in the Chemistry department of the University of Jyväskylä and started going through the list of effects we had. We checked if it's possible to make foam easily with soda, tensids and mild acids and yes, it was (burst!). Then we needed to check how we could make the mist hold together longer than it usually does and glyserol seemed to do the trick.

In Cinderhill there will be the throughout-magical scroll-making process that requires a lot of chemistry from beginning to the end. For the actual writing part they'll need ink, which means we'll have to make it. Tannine and iron oxide combined seemed to develop a pretty ancient-looking surface that still kept getting darker minutes after applying on paper. It also has a oaky fragrance that resembles the smell of old libraries and wood houses. Not bad. When the scrolls have been finished with writing, they need to have holy marks made with invisible holy liquid that can only be seen with the holy dragon fumes. Indicators sound just like they are made for this, don't they? We had a couple of them and a jar of ammonium. The effect is lovely because it works every time if the scroll only is a little moist. Titanium chloride makes a fascinating smoke effect when sprinkled on pergament.

Every culture and continent usually has its own smells, which made essences and aldehydes one of the themes of the chemistry weekend. We'll need suitable fragrances for all the houses and some of the people, for example the Cinderhillian healer's house, tamer tents and the dragon. Some of the basic aldehydes have really delicious flower, mushroom and cinnamon fragrances. Also smoke, camphor and the taste of iron are easily available. The taste of iron ions makes me feel a bit unreal, just like having some blood in my mouth. That's a spooky effect to be added somewhere. Burning sulphur spreads its vulcanic flavour quite nicely too. By mixing these up a little and getting some stranger one too we sure can build some interesting smells for the cultures.

Sensitive color spectrum
One of the most exciting reactions that most people have never seen was an oscillating reaction which would keep going for half an hour, showing every color of the spectrum one at the time. Arno had found the arrangement in a book. What we knew beforehand was that the reaction is extremely sensitive for chlorids, which meant that touching the tools barehanded will cause the fluid to be spoiled by salt.

The reaction is interaction between four different chemicals, three of them being solid so they need to be soluted into right amount of purified water. The supplies also need to be measured very carefully because this series of reactions cannot happen if the first reactions do not produce enough makings for the latter reactions. Therefore, careful calculating, weighing and dish-washing followed. Soon after we had three bottles of potions and a colorant in hand. We dropped a magnetic stirring bar in the mixing jar and poured the potions in one by one. When the last potion went in, the soup kept thinking for a while. And then it happened! All the colors of spectrum showed up quickly and brightly. In the first experiment we presumably had spoiled the reaction partially with too much colorant or chlorid, because it only showed the colors once. During our second experiment the reaction really kept showing the colors until we threw it away after half a hour. Rapid color changes just out of blue. And what's better, the players really need to concentrate on this to make it work out, otherwise they will just get sort of a muddy red. This is really as close to real magic as it gets!

A lot of other thing were also tried out, but better leave some secrets! During Sunday afternoon we gathered and washed the tools carefully and left the building. Arno continued his normal life while Heiko and I took a train south. Jyväskylä is four hours away from both Turku and Helsinki so we shared the train during the first half of the trip and used the time to write conclusions about the weekend. Now I'm at home again with hundreds of pictures of coloured liquids and with the smell of camphor and ammonium in my nose. Chemistry workshop finished, check!

Sanni Turunen