Alchemical artifacts: Spagyrics

The US version of Nephilim was forked from the first edition rulebook of the French, so it didn't incorporate any of the many revisions the French supplements added that were available around the time. One of these was the rules for alchemical artifacts or spagyrics. The US rulebook includes a few alchemy formulae for various golems, but the French version revised and expanded on this into an entire class of alchemical artifacts known as spagyrics.

When the third edition was released in 2001, it couldn't include spagyric rules due to space constraints and was canceled before an official supplement could be released. However, a fansite included an unofficial conversion of the spagyric rules to third edition (part of a homebrew revision of alchemy rules and alchemy formulae). The third edition alchemy rules made an unpopular change by linking each substance to a specific element, although Vision-Ka #1 included a short house rule to rectify this, Vision-Ka #9 included detailed articles on alchemy topics like spagery, and Ubik (who owned the publishing rights for a time after Multisim went under) seemingly gave their official support to the longer article "Alchimie Old School" that includes a list of formulae.

I wanted to adapt spagyrics to the US version in order to give The Chariot suitable arcane techniques. The original spagyrics don’t suit the revised alchemy rules, and the revised alchemy rules only have the most rudimentary support for golems. These golems are biological in nature, so they don't fit Chariot's emphasis on robotics. The way I imagine spagyrics for them would be robots enchanted with magical faculties like artifacts, but able to move and perform various tasks for their creators. For example, something like the old Angelic Automaton where the alchemist would taxidermy a bird, fill it with robotics, and enchant it so that it can move and fly on its own and send telemetry back to home base. In a modern setting, technomagic as described in Liber Ka and Enlightened Magic (casting spells via connection over the internet or other telemetry) would probably be standard practice for most Nephilim so Chariot would need a lot more to standout. Automatons go far back in history, so I imagine Chariot had a lot of advanced stuff for the times. Not to mention the kind of super-science described by conspiracy theories...

The French version goes even further by giving them cyberpunk bionics, although that's probably too far for the subtler nature of the US version's magic. Then again, Major Arcana has a plot hook where Chariot clones dinosaurs to create their own Jurassic Park with predictably disastrous results.

I need to think on it...

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