Alchemy

Alchemy is the manufacturing, distillation, and creation of potions, poisons, and other products that can be used to manipulate the laws of nature through a specific scientific method. It is often seen as a pseudoscience due to its findings being rooted in direct manipulation of magic. Many Alchemists view their trade as the attempt to help comprehend, understand, and redefine the world through complex equations.  

The Essence of Life

The world is bound together by what Alchemists refer to as Essentia; or Essence. Each object carries distinct properties that can be distilled, boiled, or grafted out from the base product in order to create a distilled essence that can then be combined with other essences to manufacture a potion or poultice. While this process can be somewhat easy to comprehend on the surface, the many different nuances required to properly harvest Essence from an object can lead to many headaches. High heat may prompt something to explode. Low heat may cause it to freeze the glass -- or even the laboratory, solid. Or worse yet, the inverse may happen.   Essence harvesting is thus a process carried out through careful trial and error. Furthermore, essences are not something that can be contained for a reasonably long amount of time. While Alchemists have found many different methods in manufacturing ways to carefully distill the essence of an object, it will generally go inert within seconds of its acquirement. Essences are thus often kept in their base product rather than stored directly; an Alchemist's shop is always full of all manner of mushrooms, ferns, leaves, flowers, powders, stones, and whatever else they deem necessary for their research.  

The Five Schools

The Five Schools of Alchemy are dictated by the Alchemical Star; a Pentagram that points towards a specific school. Each school carries a distinct branch of study that follows its own unique field.  

Alkahestry

Alkahestry is a medical field that is by far the most common field of Alchemy. It gets its name for the attempt in finding the Alkahest; a theoretical cure-all that can miraculously mend every disease or injury possible. Alkahestry can be found just about anywhere in the world; most famously, it is the primary field where Health Potions are manufactured.  

Toxicology

The art of killing things is something that fails to escape even Alchemy -- Toxicology is the study of creating harmful products that are inherently dangerous to life. It is the creation of poisons, acids, and other such products that can slowly erode at life. Toxicology is often seen as a taboo subject due to its close association with assassins.

Mutagenesis

Mutagenesis is the study of self-perfection through Alchemical products. It is the creation of potent chemical cocktails, called Mutagens, that utilise Essence to better the self. A common example of this is turning one's skin to be as a strong as stone, or enhancing the muscles so that they can rupture through rock.

Transmutations

Transmutations is the vast field of creating or altering matter from something else. No material is ever truly created, but is always altered from Alchemy. Transmutations is a particularly popular field due to it often being associated with the age-old efforts to transmute lead or iron to gold -- a feat that is actually easily acquired, but notably outlawed across most governments due to its potential in decimating economy.

Destruction

True to its name, Destruction refers to a field of Alchemy that is focused on the complete annihilation of things. Not to be mistaken for Toxicology, which focuses on toxins to orchestrate the death of living things, destruction generally comes with much more collateral; it is often used to create high grade explosives.