Initiation Script for Lesser Elixir +5 (Target 15)
The degree of fermentation. Now the purified and conjoined initiate is tested against the world. Just as the grape must decay to make wine, the initiate must suffer to pare away any remaining weakness, and to bring forth new strengths.
The initiate has a duty now to subtly guide mundane alchemists, providing cryptic hints and guiding experiments towards beneficial outcomes. Many write books on Philosophiae, hiding cryptic secrets in them for the benefit of the clever. (initiate sacrifices time +1)
In addition to personal assistance, the initiates of this rank quietly finance promising alchemists either directly or by sponsoring centres of learning. Anonymous gifts to young magi with an interest in alchemy are also appropriate. (initiate sacrifices material wealth +1)
All the while the initiate tests themself, seeking out challenges and pushing their limits. This provides no benefit to the initiation, strictly, but is an essential part of the spiritual process.
When they feel ready to advance, the initiate must acquire a Flower of Youth . This thorny magical plant grows only in the deepest parts of the ocean. Consumption of the plant removes all decrepitude and restores apparent age to youthfulness, but the effect is unnatural and temporary. Examples of the plant are extraordinarily rare, so much so that at least one cult master had to travel into the aquam province of the magic realm to find one. This plant is fed to a snake, which immediately sheds its skin. By eating the skin the initiate receives a flash of insight. Over the course of a season of meditation and experimentation they acquire the Lesser Elixir virtue. (quest +3)
Initiation Script for Minor Philosophic Alchemy +6 (Target 15)
The degree of distillation. The last impurities are boiled away in preparation for the final step of the great work.
Anyone who has achieved this stage is on par with the masters of the cult and is hot on the heels of the secret master, who has only recently become the first to achieve the completion of great work. Initiation scripts at this stage are the uncertain and experimental scripts used by the masters of the cult to induct themselves, of which the script below is just one example. Scripts for Major Philosophic Alchemy are even more experimental or may not yet exist in 1220.
The initiate begins by preparing or acquiring lesser enchanted devices to match every hermetic form, ten in total. Each must be enchanted with a ReVi 30 (Touch, Moon, Individual) effect which transfers a vis from another object into the device, over the course of a lunar month. The initiate also acquires one pawn of vis for each form. (quest +3)
The initiate assembles the objects in his laboratory and places a pawn of matching vis in each. They activate the first item and observe the effect. At the exact time the effect concludes, they activate the next item and observe again. When that concludes they must activate the third item, and also begin transferring the vis from the first item into the second. The next time they activate the fourth item and begin transferring the vis from the second item into the third and so on. As each item is emptied the initiate ceremonially destroys it, reducing down to just one item by the end. (equivalent to sacrificing a powerful invested item +3)
The final item will have accumulated all 10 pawns, taking 11 lunar months. For this duration the magus cannot leave their laboratory for more than a week per season, or they risk missing a timing and having to start from the beginning. They may perform other lab activities, but count as having a month’s distraction.
This process attunes the initiate to the ebb and flow if vis during a long transfer, making the whole process intuitive. A season of reflection allows the initiate to acquire the Minor Philosophic Alchemy virtue.
As a negative side effect of the experimental nature of this process, the exposure to so much mobile vis over a prolonged period has a detrimental effect on the parma of the initiate. They acquire the Flawed Parma Magica (Vim) flaw. This grants no bonus to the script and a skilled mystagogue may try and remove this from the script entirely. Such are the risks of trying to invent initiations whole cloth.