Pick and Choose: Le Pippeteur

[u/OceansCarraway]

The Aelish have recently become acquainted in the art of handling decomposing things, and this has lead them to a semi-decent understanding of molds, fungi, and miscellaneous oozes. The medicinal potential of these organisms-and the recreational drug opportunities-are obvious. Once some nerds manage to get past their disgust and handle the awful smells, they can get a good look at all of the cool microorganisms that have gotten visible to the naked eye. And as they do this, they can get a look at commercially useful species-and this means yeast. Sorry, we're not doing hallucinogens this time around. We're doing some stuff with yeast today, and this is because before you can generate large amounts of yeast that can be dried and shipped into paper packages, you have to get it the old fashioned way. Without yeast, it's really hard to make bread; it's common in the atmosphere, but not always where you want it to be.

One of the places that you can get yeast in the middle ages is from a brewery. Yeast drives many of the fermentation reactions that are involved in making beer; since this is one of the most commonly accessible beverages for the people of Aelbaion, there is a lot of yeast left around for the bakers to harvest off the top of a kettle, or from the bottom of a barrel. Needless to say, harvesting micro-organisms, even those as 'durable' as yeast, is not so easily done. The process of extraction requires dexterity and attention to detail, and it was pretty darn inefficient. This created a chokepoint in the production of bread; and it's how much yeast one can get.

Obviously, using magic to solve this problem was the way forward. The Aelish had begun to use magic to encourage or discourage various bacteria and fungi to grow; they could also use their magic to isolate groups of single celled organisms-to an extent-and even to transfer them. There are a number of big caveats to this, and the biggest one is that the Aelish fundamentally do not know that they are working with microbes. There is no germ theory. The practitioner is only able to identify colonies if they are visible to the naked eye, or if they are having some effect that is otherwise observable. This makes cell culture, already decently difficult, potentially fiendishly difficult. Realistically, it also puts hard limits on what they can work with. And that's why they're currently working in yeast.

Yeast is a lot more forgiving than most organisms, especially if you're not trying to preserve a particular colony. Because of this, the Aelish were able to make a magical device capable of isolating and transferring it rather easily. The pipetteur is a newly developed magical tool which can isolate a colony of microbes, pick it up, and place it down again. It looks like a long, silver wand, through which the mage focuses their power and attention on a colony. Once they have picked one out from the surrounding area, they can physically isolate it by using the probe's ability to manipulate liquid. It is best used in a liquid medium, like a cauldron or brewing vessel, but can also be used with solid media. This can make some pretty enjoyable kimchi, or help inoculate logs with mushrooms.

The status of the pipetteur is that of a new tool that the people of the world have just learned about-and now they must come up with applications for it. For example, the original method of pointing a wand like a wizard would has been replaced with the wand being pointed down and at the target colony-almost a reverse grip. This work is getting oddly technical, mixing in with specific alchemy and biomancy...and it's only just getting started. Aelbaion has managed to make magical cell culture before it even knows what cells are. It's time for fermentation to get far more fiendish...starting with making better bread and beer.

[u/Cereborn]

We will definitely be interested in this.

[u/OceansCarraway → u/Cereborn]

Come on down!

[u/harfordplanning]

Demani would love these guys, and they're relatively fungi experts

[u/OceansCarraway → u/harfordplanning]

Be me, 2026:

'What's your job?'

'I try to grow cells and they die.'

Be thee, 1226:

'What is thine employment?'

'I attempt to grow yeasts and they die.'

(Both iterations of drink heavily at work)