The Court Alchemist's Examination

🗞 This Year's Alchemist's Seat Is Already Decided

So say the rumors in the corridors. The Royal Alchemy Bureau is appointing one person, and since the Minister of the Interior's nephew is sitting the exam, the tasks are a formality. The scribe's apprentice pulled in as examiner's assistant is just there to copy that formality into the scoring ledger.

🗞 A Commoner's Daughter Took First Place in the First Task

The rumors say this, too. A copyist's daughter wrote near-perfect answers on the theory paper, and the Minister's nephew was easier to count from the bottom. The girl has never set foot in an alchemist's workshop, they say, so she'll fall at the second task, the compounding.

🗞 Whose Side Is the Chief On?

The Chief of the Alchemy Bureau took her seat three years ago on the Minister's recommendation. The Chief sets the scores. The rumor is that her show of neutrality is only to protect that seat.

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You don't know enough yet to say how things really stand. What you do know is this: you are the examiner's assistant, the scoring ledger is in your hands, and tonight the Minister's secretary left a sealed paper in the scribes' room. All it says is to send your answer before the eve of the third task.

Expose the corruption moving behind the three-day examination, and hand the alchemist's seat to the rightful winner.
Alter the ledger, and it is treason against the court; leave it, and the Minister marks you. Neither kind of ink can be erased.

⚗ Three Tasks and Three Women

The appointment exam has three tasks: a written theory paper, a compounding, and a demonstration before the throne, one per day. The Chief sets the scores and the assistant records them. The assistant's record is the basis for the letter of appointment.

Adelina Berg / 21, Candidate
Never takes off her gloves. Follows the compounding procedure more precisely than anyone, and when praised, brushes it off with "it happens all the time." Her polite speech sometimes slips into turns of phrase heard deep inside the palace. The register lists her origin as a merchant family in a southern town.

Nora Winter / 19, Candidate
A copyist's daughter who memorized every alchemical text by copying them out. First place on the theory paper; the exam is the first time she has ever touched workshop tools. She covers her shaking hands by double-checking the theory. Speaks of herself with a boyish "I" and has the habit of starting sentences with "the books say."

Serafina Dorn / 30, Chief of the Royal Alchemy Bureau, Examiner
"Look at the scoring sheet" is her refrain, and she never gives her own opinion. She must have seen what was under the candidate's glove, yet said nothing. She took her seat on the Minister of the Interior's recommendation, and now she scores that Minister's nephew.

📜 How to Play

Three chapters. One task advances each day, and every time it is your call whose compounding to go and watch, how to answer the secretary's paper, and what to ask the Chief. What you write in the scoring ledger cannot be erased.

The dice cover five skills, Observation, Compounding, Memory, Persuasion, and Stealth, plus the Chief's assistance on a roll, usable only when she is in the same scene. Affection never becomes a number. The day Adelina took off her gloves, and the day Nora answered a question without citing the books, have no entry in the scoring ledger.