The Laboratory
Put two things in the vessel and see what they make. Twelve discoveries lead from the hungry Lion to the Philosophers' Tree. Play at your own pace.
Opus Magnum · Chapter III
The Laboratory
An alchemist's notebook was a list of pairs: this with that, in this vessel, at this heat. Most pairs gave smoke. A few gave something new.
Combine two things at a time. Find all twelve discoveries.
The work rests
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I made this game the way I make projects for clients: many separate parts, brought into one piece of work. If you need something interactive, write to me.
How the recipes work
Alchemists described their work as a sequence of meetings between substances, and they wrote it in pictures. A green lion eating the sun, a black raven, a peacock's tail, a white swan, a red phoenix. Each picture names a stage.
Every recipe in this game follows that picture language. The Lion devours the Sun and the matter blackens. Fire burns the black matter to ash, and ash is Salt. Mercury, the messenger, brings out the colours. The Moon's water washes them white. Sun and Moon marry and give the two-headed Rebis.
The last step returns to the first: the Key opens the raw green matter you started with, and it grows into a tree. The alchemists often said the work ends where it began.
- Choose two things on the shelf. They go into the vessel and react.
- A right pair makes something new. It joins the shelf with a line about what it means.
- A wrong pair only makes smoke. Nothing is lost.
- Stuck? Read the clue under the vessel. After two failed mixes one of the right items lights up, after four both do.
- Find all twelve. The faster you finish and the fewer failed mixes, the more gold you keep.