Mask of Gold and Lead

Transmutation leads to transformation leads to transcendance.

Description

The Mask of Gold and Lead empowers a ritualist with the ability to transmute raw materials. The mask itself is almost always metallic in nature, often set with jewels. All the materials used to make it are repeatedly purified in baths of beggar's lye, and some of the finest masks are said to be constructed with substances that have been themselves subjected to alchemical transformations.

These talismans which are sometimes referred to as "The Alchemists Refrain", are often crafted as a lower face mask (covering the mouth, nose and chin) of mottled dull grey with gold tracing work; or a brooch depicting a pestle and mortar. It is rare to find a Mask of Gold and Lead that does not incorporate Xun, the rune of transformation.

Employed by magicians all across the Empire, this mask allows any ritualist to act as an alchemist or to boost the abilities of an existing alchemist.

Rules

• Form: Ritual Masks (Talisman).
• Effect: Gain 1 rank for The Eight-Spoked Wheel and The Retrograde Wheel rituals
• Materials: Crafting a Mask of Gold and Lead requires three measures of beggar's lye, four measures of dragonbone and nine measures of iridescent gloaming. It takes one month to make one of these items.

We are not the alchemists of old, those that would use herbs and ale to form 'a great hardening of steel'! They would have you take dragon wort with ale and much vervain and sow that into lukewarm water, boil it all up and then place your hot billet therein 'that hardening is good for all hand-weapons'. We do not mix lead with marrowort and straw, heat it upon a rock under the moon and expect it to form into gold. No. That is not alchemy, mere buffoonery!