SHRIEKING SKULLS WILL SHOCK YOUR SOUL AND SEAL YOUR DOOM TONIGHT

[acherontiastyx]

[After 10:00 p.m., the library's... definitely a little different. The tables have lit candles on them, and there are... kind of janky cardboard cutouts set on some of the shelves. An attempt was made, at least, even if there could've been more boxes destroyed in the attempt...

But regardless. There's candles set around a place for some snacks if anyone wants to bring them, and there's also a blanket set on one of the tables. Because clearly, that's where the storyteller's supposed to sit...? Maybe you wanna do it. Maybe you just want to stand or sit or something.

Either way, let's get fucking spooky up in here.]

Comments

[alchemicals]

[...I mean, maybe there's not a variety but Norman Bates has to fit in somewhere, right?]

I wouldn't know; again, it's not like I ever met the guy to ask him.

[stepout]

[ i just uglysnorted, please don't... ]

Well, someone must've. [ ... ] Got any other soul stories?

[alchemicals]

[Hmmm...]

You remember how I said that human transmutation is forbidden, where I'm from? That much is entirely true, it's completely illegal - there are way too many ethics issues to contend with for it to be considered worth it. It's playing god, pretty much.

But that doesn't mean that people don't do it sometimes.

At its core, alchemy is pretty much just the practice of turning one thing into something else. Similar in composition, but different in form. I guess the lead into gold example works, but you can also take a bunch of iron and make it into a spear or a sword - simple enough, right?

If you know what you're doing, it's actually not all that hard to make a human.

Just on a basic, elemental level, the stuff that makes up humans isn't all that complex. Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, all that sort of stuff. Magnesium. Sulfur. But whether you can actually make a person... That's another matter.

There are stories about what happens if you try, of course. They all differ in their accounts, too - some say you can make a shell but that's about it, so if you're out to create a human body with nothing in it, that's all well and good. But if you're trying to do something else with it...well, a person's soul has to be made up of something, and it's something you can't just conjure up out of nothing.

Some say trying will kill the alchemist. Some say that the most you'll get is a screaming sack of organs. Worst-case scenario, both happen - the alchemist dies, and whatever they created can't sustain itself and dies as well.

The part that gets really bad, if you ask me, is that sometimes people who don't realize what the result's going to look like have tried to bring their loved ones back from the dead.

[stepout]

[ This entire story was a trainwreck she couldn't stop listening to, jesus christ.

A really sad trainwreck? But a trainwreck. ]

...What's wrong with your world?

[alchemicals]

[You okay there, Chiyuki?]

...If it makes you feel any better, we just have a lot of people who can do all sorts of things with their alchemy. The people that can't use alchemy, or at least can't use it well, seem to liken it to magic more than a science; some of them find the things we can do kind of alarming, and a lot of them are opposed to us being in the military because they think we're going to start disobeying basic principles.

That's where a lot of these stories come from. They're just urban legends, I can assure you - I'm just good at telling them.

[stepout]

[ Is anyone okay listening to your stories. Serious question. ]

A little better. Thanks. [ ...his assurance sort of reinforces that too, that shouldn't really be a sentence associated with talking with kimbley but here we are. ] Your profile being wrong or not, you are an alchemist, right. What can you do with your alchemy?