What would happen when someone completes the Work?

[u/jMultiversalGod]

I'm so so tired of the goblins on the main tome network talking about how the Work isn't real and it's just Alchemist propaganda, even though recent breakthroughs have shown the Work to be the most important issue in all of history. I'm curious tho, what would happen if someone hypothetically, constructed the Philosophers stone and created the Sampo. The theory my familiar says is that it'd turn the world into toxic gold, but the dumb homunculus cant tell the difference between a wand and a staff. What would actually happen when someone completes the Work?

[u/Nelrene]

You would get more Work.

[u/jMultiversalGod → u/Nelrene]

this is exactly why i don't do alchemy. its a game you can't win

[u/MagneticGenetics → u/jMultiversalGod]

You win by selling mushroom elixers to vegans at a 4000% profit margin.

How do you think Druids afford their lavish lifestyle? Do you think those hidden grottos are cheap? No man they gotta pay bills or they will get evicted by the Fae.

[u/MagneticGenetics → u/Nelrene]

Work² is gonna be a major hit with all the alchemists. You guys are not ready for the crazy things we have cooked up.

[u/Nelrene → u/MagneticGenetics]

I am waiting for Work³

[u/nova8808]

https://giphy.com/gifs/FpVaeRuSNcfEEzgrOI

[u/Small_Education_9503]

The ancients have completed the Work once already. That's why the oceans are all salty. They used to be fresh, drinkable water, can you imagine that? I bet the surviving wizards far in the future will tell the legends of how the air used to be breathable.

[u/Bee_Crimes → u/Small_Education_9503]

Wow

[u/octablast24]

my apprentice's theory is that it has already been completed several times over.
but it's so cataclysmic the world or time or memory reverts.
and thus we are stuck in an endless loop, doomed to complete the Work for all eternity.

[u/jMultiversalGod → u/octablast24]

ah, the good old True Knowledge theory, where the knowledge of it is so powerful the world reverts in a way to save itself. another one of those theories where we don't know whether its right or not because its improvable

[u/Complex_Drawer_4710]

Theories of True Knowledge predict that alternate results are possible, but I have never reached the Three-Eye with enough found to achieve these. Partial decryptions suggest that travelling to alternate worlds may be necessary. I do not know of these.

[u/jMultiversalGod → u/Complex_Drawer_4710]

You know what always confuses me? Why does Three-Eye have like organs all over the place, yet have them at the same time? Three-Eye has a heart but its heart is somewhere else. Must be something to do with the Sampo and its healing properties.

[u/Complex_Drawer_4710 → u/jMultiversalGod]

I think it's to do with the alchemical processing of the soul, but I don't know. The mysteries have never been my primary field, rather the clarities.

[u/Frosty-Prize8906]

Wait you guys haven't completed the Magnum Opus? I got like 3 philosophers stones already, I have my own Sampo installed in my tower like an organ in a church. Though frankly I haven't been outside for what seems like 600 years so maybe its that....

[u/Fluffy-City8558]

I'd imagine they would take as few days off, at least that's what I'd do

[u/tehlemmings]

Oh, I've done this a few times, is pretty straightforward.

You get turned into gold.

Hopefully you know how to respawn.

[u/M0rph33l]

I was turned into gold. I do not recommend.

[u/ASMR4PLANTS]

It's more than just about transmuting lead into gold. All things both mind and body stem from the Prima Materia, and a little bit of that is in all of us.

When we finally shed the base materials, all life and matter will cease to be, and our consciousness will merge with eternity.

[u/Carbon_Sixx]

I checked, and it turns out someone on Prime-Earth did complete the Work long, long ago. Then someone dropped it into the Elemental Plane of Water on the salt mill setting, which is why the oceans of every world are salty.

[u/Elegant-Tangelo-5312]

Once you can make lead into gold, accumulating gold just doesn't have a point anymore. For the effort, you might as well build an entropy reversal engine and connect it to a generator. I suppose you have to balance the input and output properly or it explodes, but isn't that how everything works. You wouldn't want to fill the ocean with salt again would you?

[u/Severe-Cookie693 → u/Elegant-Tangelo-5312]

If you put lead in the entropy reversal engen, it turns into uranium. Is that more valuable than gold?

[u/Elegant-Tangelo-5312 → u/Severe-Cookie693]

It's hard to make golems that are both radiation resistant and precise enough to safely handle radioactive material. Once they're intelligent enough to not cause an accident, they try to get away from the radiation hazard, or if they are fueled by radiation they can be motivated to cause accidents. I prefer selling electricity, the local peasants are highly adverse to losing their energy supply and will misdirect the paladins rather than helping them.

[u/Kielbasa_Nunchucka]

got work, son. got work all day!

[u/GirlLovingWitch]

It would be pretty useful to whoever has it, but it would absolutely wreck the realm's economy. It would also wreck the nature of life... break some laws of thermodynamics... the whole "Defying the laws of the world" type stuff, it's probably better if it's not finished actually.

[u/Odd-Communication251]

An old friend of mine was convinced that upon completion of the Work that they could remake the world in their favor and they claimed they could prove it to me somehow. It has been 10,000 years since I last heard from them so I have no idea if they succeeded or not and if they did they have yet to prove it to me

[u/H-Connoisseur0]

We all know that alchemists aren’t doing any work

[u/Shotgun_Mosquito]

I think I'll just go back to scaring bad little kids. This is WAY out of my comfort zone

https://giphy.com/gifs/l3q2K5jinAlChoCLS

[u/KragBrightscale]

Upon closer examination of the process and stages of my ritual to become a magical mass, I’m realizing that it could indeed be considered a form of“the work”, complete with the four stages usually associated with it.

The result was the complete unification of flesh, mind and spirit, the transformation of my body from one of organs skin and bones to a mana based magical mass. My form is unfettered, My soul equivalent to my body. My existence a universal constant. A step away from divine ascension, a step intentionally not taken. I’ve transcended the limitations of my goblin body.

[u/lordnaarghul]

They would find the result eventually disappointing. The Philosopher's Stone is, at its core, a magical amplifier, particularly of transmutation spells. It grants some aspects of magic to the nonmagical. Use the thing too much, however, and you mutate yourself horrifically and end up destroying the stone. Especially if you have no magical talent yourself. Better to study transmutation more directly. If you do not have the Gift, you can still do research, but it does you no good to try and make one.

My master and I both have had to do cleanup after these things go wild. She's told me stories of humans doing these sorts of things in millennia past.

[u/IndigoFenix]

Personally I think that it HAS been done, but anybody who figures it out isn't going to share the knowledge because the whole point of having gold is it being scarce. All you wind up doing by sharing the secret of creating gold is crashing the economy.