Blucite's properties: reflective contagious (when sliced) malicious (What is the emotional context for other materials?) Norton is working on bits of Colin that have been unearthed. Cagliostro considers the earth guy trapped in earth. He considers Osric, and what power he is using to affect the Blucite. Cagliostro asks the Serpent's Apprentice about this power, and the Serpent's Apprentice is bored and complies. King Osric's power is: - A crystalline power - A connection route as in travel between magical realms - The connection is used for trading It says that powers are balanced, and even if they don't make sense to be opposites, they tend to react poorly. It discusses how, in alchemy, certain things are volatile with some other things, some things are volatile with everything, and other things are inert. Logic is not always a factor - some times experiment is required. Both powers are neutral to everything else. The white crystal was thought to be inert until it interacted explosively with the blue "goop". Two inert things, both of which have been used as containers, that are volatile with each other. There's no information about the blue power being used for connections, and it informs Cagliostro that King Osric is reluctant to share his power that way. Cagliostro creates a scalpel with a diamond blade, and a small padded tin. The blade is very sharp in one dimension, and fragile from every other angle. Cagliostro trumps Gil, explains the idea of cutting the blucite to Gil, and passes it through. Gil takes the scalpel out, tests the edge on a hair. Gil applies pressure, and the knife destroys itself without any noticeable effect on the blue substance. Gil thinks, makes an axe with one chunk of blucite, and smacks the other chunk for a while with no obvious effects. Cagliostro passes through (highly nutritious) cookies and tea through Gil for the crowd. The sword sisters are persuaded to sleep, on the condition that Cagliostro will take a turn sleeping later while they stand guard. They loosen armor and bracers, keep their swords close, and fall asleep at each other's backs. Cagliostro continues to experiment, and decides to test whether the blucite has focusing properties when being built into lenses by inserting pebbles into gels. The device is enclosed in a radiation-proof box to avoid playing with Gerard's son's power. During her briefing, Gil reveals a level of technological sophistication previously not hinted at, and offers advice and suggestions. There is a lot of back and forthing about optics and focal points. Gil assembles the systems. The focal point is imperfect in the pebbling, so the power in the system slowly degrades over a period of hours. King Osric comes over and offers some of his crystal for the substrate, to fill in between the convex pebbles. When this is done, the power in the system increases. Cagliostro considers lasers, and discusses them with Osric through Gil. Osric is familiar with lasers-as-trade-goods, not lasers-as-mechanical-devices. Cagliostro passes through a simple laser mockup for experimentation. The emanation produced by Osric's crystal has a large quantity of the nasty radiation in it. Gil and Osric assemble the proper crystals, and the laser starts humming and shaking very quickly. Gil looks very concerned, and tosses it. There is a world-shattering kaboom. The laser device The second experiment (more white crystal, less blucite) blows up faster. The third experiment (one focal point, one wall) fails to do anything at all. The fourth experiment involves a less efficient set of focal devices, and it blows up faster. Mistress Janice reports that Gil is hot - and asks for asbestos gloves, et al. Cagliostro passes through radiation suits, attempts to sleeping cover the sword-sisters with a radiation-proof tent, who wake up grumpily and cut their way out of the tent. They are handed radiation suits and grumble about men with magic. Gil is well off the scale of nasty radiation, Cagliostro starts detoxification immediately. The Serpent's Apprentice asks to be shielded as well, because it's making him uncomfortable. Cagliostro creates a box around her to translate radiation to heat. Cagliostro notes that Gil is significantly unwell, with several cooked organs. Cagliostro is impressed that she is still functioning, breathing, and trying to repair itself. Mistress Janice contacts Cagliostro, and reports feeling unwell. Cagliostro gives her a card of himself to leave on the ground, and then brings her through, and finds that she got a burst of the nasty radiation and is somewhat cooked and high on the bastardogen scale. He adds her to the list of people he's working on. Cagliostro, with prompting from the sword sisters, realizes he's infected as well, sloughs his clothes and starts the debastardum container at the front of the mouth. Cagliostro realizes that the debastardum has similar structures to blucite, because it works very well at what it does. The Serpent's Apprentice informs Cagliostro reports that it cannot contact its demon, or verify that the images coming from the viewscreen are accurate. The Serpent's Apprentice decides to make a side trip, that Cagliostro will not notice, and puts Caglisotro, Cemen, Mistress Janice, the Swordsisters, and the box out of the mouth. The outside environment is a well-flowered field. The knee-high wildflowers seem to orient on the head, pause, and then re-orient toward the sun. The mouth spits out a mass of gunk (cells), goes 'away' in a weird dimension, and disappears. Cagliostro keeps working, and fixing things. Cemen looks at a flower, which orients on him. He shrugs and looks away, and the flower reorients on the sun. The growing things near the non-collected dragon cells seems to be blackening and died. The stuff around the box has also blackened and died. The stuff around Cagliostro looks unwell. Mistress Janice begins some form of ritualized communication attempts with the flowers. Weapon tech is some form of ranged weapon, armor is light, wall is as hard as rock but completely seamless. Guard pattern arranged by someone who is not at war, but vigilant. There are no paths, and no apparent gates, but the garden is definitely being protected from something on the outside. Cagliostro continues work, and starts fixing Gil. Time passes, work happens. Gil is damped down to the extent that a radiation suit could block the radiation, and every one of her organs except her eyes are functioning. (Not healthy, but functioning.) Cemen collects dragon bits into a column one cell wide, and very tall. Cagliostro is impressed, and vocalizes such. Gil regains consciousness, and is displeased. Gil is healing more than four times as fast as Absalom - Gil is not pleased to hear this, and says that this isn't normal. Cagliostro examines Gil, with and without the Lens. Gil is not healing precisely back to standard - there's more life force than there was before. As if someone else was there... Cagliostro create a pentacle to bind Gil. The plants and flowers run out of the pentacle. Cagliostro tries to bind Cagliostro creates a body similar to what the alter-Gil was doing, and asks Gil to hold its hand. Still blind, she does so on its first try. There is a melting between its hand and the newly cast body's hand, and the two hands blobbed together. The generic body is now healing differently, and Gil is not healing except by Cagliostro's ministrations. The not-Gil get taller and thinner, the head fuses to the body without a neck, the mouth doubles, there is no aperture for eyes, the second mouth seems more noselike (the first mouth is more digestive, the second more breathing). The shoulders get more rounded, and ball and socket joints in the elbow appear, the fingers get shorter and blunter, the joints in the fingers get less well defined (but are still hinges). The ankle becomes a backward-bending knee, the knee fuses more into the hip joint, the feet becomes more hoovish than feet, with some sort of opposed thumb to the split hoof. It seems to be breathing and the six-chambered heart is beating, and blood and not-blood The hands separate, and the new form lies on the ground, legs and arms spread. As far as Cagliostro can tell, it's only metabolizing. Gil is bound by the pentacle, difficult to manipulate, and fixed with a weird mouth, six-chambered heart, and no eyes. Cagliostro is less than pleased. The plant-creature is a collective consciousness, and Mistress Janice is able to communicate with it (the first biped to do so). It is amused at us, amused at the idea that we might have something to give it, but tolerant of the whole process.