The Elemental Wheel

Quartz

Many can remember poking at their first sample of pure Quartz, feeling it crumble into flakes at their fingertips, releasing earthen smells of stone. Quartz is the main component of all manners of rock. It breaks apart easily, while also being largely inert, allowing it to bind other elements into powders for easy storage.

Sulfur

Sulfur is the essence of flammability. It is not fire; fire may often be the product of Sulfur, but Sulfur merely bears the capability of burning. It is not by nature highly volatile, but it so happens to have a convenient reaction with mere air. Sulfur itches with potential. All it needs is a little spark.

Oil of Vitrol

Alchemists who deal in acids are perhaps the most well known across the Imperial States. Vitriol is, as of yet, the strongest we've made, but it is by no means pure; mixed with its alkaline counterpart, Quicklime, it ought to yield pure water, but as it bubbles and smokes, what's left we find brown, and frothy.

Aether

Aether's existence was once contentious. Aether gives space its volume; it is normally in equilibrium everywhere, smooth and unmoving like the surface of a lake (and thus, as Naseer Ibn Nader pointed out, difficult to isolate). Certain reactions, however, cause ripples in that lake, shaking the solidity of space itself.

Mercury

Mercury is understood as the essence of conductivity. It channels electricity, whilst simultaneously being channeled by it. It is hard to collect; one must venture into a field during a thunderstorm, collecting his samples from the mud where lightning has struck, where Mercury has been sucked out and drawn to the surface.

Gold

Mineral gold, that of crowns, buckles, jewelry, is not elemental Gold. That gold is dug from the earth, or panned from mudded rivers. It is not pure. It has traces of Quartz, Mercury, Albedo, Tungsten. Yet, it was once thought an element, and so its name has been passed down to the modern alchemist's Gold.

Albedo

Albedo was devised to explain how the stars can shine. Until recently, we called them great balls of sulfur, burning in the sky. But the stars are not warm, nor do they sputter and flare; they are serene, shining. It is our understanding that Albedo cannot give off light, only reflect it. The stars are not fires, but mirrors.

Quicklime

Companion to Vitriol, Quicklime is the source of all alkaline substances. The two are like sisters; bound together as water, they are calm, but when seperated, they grow unhappy; Vitriol, she is sour, whilst Quicklime becomes bitter; and they will willingly tear themselves from all other bonds just to be reunited again.

Phlogiston

Each element bestows a certain property upon the substances that contain it. For Phlogiston, air, that property is the capability of overcoming gravity. It is the property of billowing like smoke, or steam, of filling its container, of rolling with the wind, and of being breathed in and out through the lungs.

Tungsten

Hassan al-Din theorised the existence of Tungsten and Gold as elements distinct from Mercury. They confer the solid properties of metal (Toughness and Malleability respectively), Mercury itself being liquid. It is our grasp and skills with these elements that have done us wonders. The Magna Turra wasn't built from stone.

The walls of an alchemist's home glimmer like a treasure trove. Jars of a hundred sizes and shapes line his walls, each containing some different multicoloured chemical. Some bubble, some sparkle, and some just sit, dark and dead. Just next to them, hanging by their drawstrings, you'll find pouches of fine sand, or sunflower seeds, or polished gemstones. And standing scattered on his desk, alembic stills, ceramic crucibles, and dozens and dozens of shining, glass flasks.

Alchemy is the science of materials, or substances. We study their properties, their make-up, and then we go on to figure out how to use them. For centuries, the alchemists of the Rotating Magnate have attempted to isolate the fundamental substances of the universe. We've refined and refined the same samples, filtered, distilled, smelted them, over and over, hoping to get that little bit closer to purity. Those pure substances we refer to as "elements" or "essences". So far, we've identified 10 of them, as are in the Wheel Diagram above.

We are fairly confident these are the only ten fundamental elements. Everything else on Ittoril is merely composed of different arrangements of them. These different arrangements alchemists refer to as "salts", perhaps an outdated term, as many salts have little to do with the salt you find in the sea. Water, for example, is a salt, as are slightly more complex substances, such as black powder.

If you study Biochemy or Gastrochemy, you'll likely deal with the complicated, organic salts which make up plants and animals. One of particular interest is The Life Salt, which you've certainly heard of: the salt that gives life to earth, that touches our flesh and gives it breath. The reason that the Life Salt is such a big deal, and is of such academic interest, is that we do not, currently, know its essential make-up. Whoever discovers it will surely be a very, very rich man. After all, it would mean he had just gained power to create life.