Alrighty so of course this months more doodle heavy Patreon lore doodles were notably a lot more organized as this was the first time I was doing one of these but regardless, lets talk about a topic that has come up in the comics before I really talked about it here, fancy that!
So here is Last months patreon lore doodles discussing alchemically treated organics!
And I will just jump right to copy and pasting that ramble

Lets chat on Alchemically treated organics!

As of course while metal and stone, as well as untreated bone, chitin, and other materials are very common, that isn't to say that dedicating your industry to stone and metal is not the only possible decision. In fact there are cultures of people that don't really bother much metallurgy and instead invest into the lithics around them and develop more intricate technologies around their use of Organics!

So things like bone, bamboo, chitin, and other things, typically through alchemical treatments! Which are a versatile way for people to modify these already useful materials into increasingly specialized and purpose built uses

So moving from the top down

How does one engage in alchemically treating organics? There are a lot of ways and styles of doing so but they tend to follow a general formula that is common within the field of alchemestry

So first lets talk about exciting mana

Mana is the leftovers of the influence of the Raddir, and in a sense is resonance, just kinda the lowest quality resonance. One thing that can be done to it in order to bring some of that resonance out is exciting it through physical sound rather than metaphysical sound! This can be done in a lot of ways, but the most common way is in storing the mana in some sort of resonant container, such as a ringing clay pot or a metallic resonant bowl, etc. that can be sealed from the open area to an extent. This is then brought to resonate, like a musical instrument! This can be by striking it with a soft mallet as seen above, it could be by bowing the rim of the resonant container, it could be through some other method, etc! As the container begins to ring (as any good ceramic, metal, or glass ought) That sound begins to bounce around in the container and through the mana which causes a metaphysical/physical excitement. Meaning that mana starts to spread out as a vapor rather than a fog, and begins to itself ring.

Mostly this creates a small degree of pulse resonance and creates a small area of destabilized reality within the space the mana is resonating. Easily contained but best be careful This effect can be maintained and intensified when this vaporized mana is placed in another resonant chamber, causing the resonance to bounce off the walls of its container, further distorting and intensifying that resonance. This can be dangerous though, so its common to provide a vent for that resonance to disperse, such as the whole in the pot. As otherwise you will start to form a dangerous rift that can cause some uh, reality warping problems to your internal organs.

But this is easily prevented by just providing a hole for the mana to disperse, that energy disperses quickly and while you shouldn't place your hand into the container, its not very dangerous to be around as the air spreads and nullifies that resonance quickly
the other part of course is the organic you mean to treat

Be it bone, bamboo, chitin, or whatever it is you are looking to treat, it is wrapped in some sort of conduit. The easiest conduit for resonance of course is clay! Though metals and glass also work. This clay is often mixed with whatever chemicals, materials, etc. you would want to instill into the organic. If its silica? Then sand! If its latex? Than a source of latex or rubber, keratin, calcium, etc. etc.

The excited mana may also be elementized, say by heating it with a fire, or exciting electrified mana, etc.

And This is all wrapped up and suspended into the resonant chamber until the resonance dies down (depending on how much excited mana you put in there

Whatever comes out is the end product!
So what does alchemical treatment do to these materials?

The Excited mana and its resonance essentially breaks a lot of rules of physics and melds the materials in the conduit material (wet clay) creating a modified material with modified qualities that often mix the two. For example, as seen in Audited, Alchemically treating bamboo with silica makes it far harder, sharper, and strong enough to punch through wood! You could do the same thing to a bone to make it harder, but also more brittle and sometimes even easily knapped depending on the degree.

Another common example is the use of Latex to turn less flexible things into springs. Either by augmenting something liike bamboo into a very powerful and effective leaf spring like material, or giving a chitin length a bit less regidity. And as one last one, Keratin can be added to make something like bamboo or bone far more flexible. Bendable but not springlike, something you can twist and mold into a flexible shape.

But this can go a lot of ways, you could also instill these organics with elementized qualities such as making a heated piece of bone or a chillingly cold tube of bamboo. Combined with other things these can allow for some interesting technologies (Portable bamboo fridge anyone?)

This offers a varied and flexible means of making highly specialized materials that, once someone figures it out, can be made with only a moderate amount of difficulty and complexity

the main downside of course is the magical instability

These materials may last for some time, but they aren't usually durable enough in of themselves to hold mana in such as stone or metal and, due to this, tend to slowly crumble and disintegrate due to the mana slowly destroying them from the inside out!

Now this is a slow process usually. Alchemically treated bone for example may last a good year before it starts to give out structurally

Which tends to also take it out of the use of decorative objects, wares, and artwork and mostly on developing very specific augmentations to push organic materials past their natural limitations

And of course means that usually Alchemically treated organics are never done on everything, but more done to achieve specific results for specific tasks.

You can make a saw out of metal or knapped stone, but if you want a long effective saw for say, sawing planks out of wood or felling a large tree with a saw then your best bet is instilling materials like silica, iron, or calcium into a prepared length of bone or chitin that can then be sharpened into a very long, useful saw. If you want to say, make a small aquaduct to bring water to your village then you can make the bamboo moldable and, when heated, solidifed through uses of materials like Karatin, Amber, pure Carbon, and other materials mixed to make essentially a sort of PVC bamboo. You may have to replace it, but you can do that every now again with not too much of a problem if its a couple years before something gives out then you can replace them every year and be solid

And as dragons continue to innovate You start to see some pretty extradordinary manipulations of materials.

things like rope woven by the entirety of a tree, literally alchemically changed and twisted onto itself. Effective swords and chopping blades not made of metal, but made of chitin, bone, or bamboo purely. And even materials that are not unlike carbon fiber just, made of natural carbon chains alchemically treated.
So onto the lower doodled examples


1) A bone blade made far harder and sharper than bone can normally be made. Most bone and chitin knives would likely not be treated though and this image is more to make a point. But again there does come to be a variety of long edged weapons that resemble swords that are simply intricately treated pieces of bone and chitin harvested from hunted or farmed wildlife. Particularly in the decades of increasingly complex developments

Which do have difficulties in outpacing the potential of advanced Stãl metallurgy, which in the end does start to balance out alchemically treated organics thanks to the longer life of stãlbronzes and their likewise flexible amounts of uses.

But for societies that don't have metal, or before they widely start in the adoption of metallurgy, making a "sword" of a treated bone is a perfectly good way of doing things

2) A chitin saw, a good example of a long lasted form of organically treated organics as its hard to make stãlbronze long, and while a chitin saw isn't gonna last as long as metal, you can make it far longer and it does the job well

Lots of giant bugs to cut long plates of chitin from after all

so even in early manatech industrial societies up to the mid prethalmvar you still will find even lumber companies still engaging with chitin saws that are alchemically treated for felling massive trees

3) An example of bamboo turned into a floppy tube that may be set via heat to be used in the instalation of complex, otherwise impossible shapes that a lot of drekir come to use as a means of creating forms of aquaducts or even piping like technologies of specific shapes. There are many cultures that adopt and even import bamboo through the millenia essentially to make sewer systems, running water systems, and other such things

4) The oppossite direction, hardening the bamboo into a serviceable hatchet bit. Probably more for light work rather than heavy duty work as hardening the bamboo alchemically will also make it more brittle. So this wouldn't be for felling and more for shaping pieces of wood cheaply.

Likewise a hardened chitin chisel for working very hard woods or even stone

5) A nondescript drek weilding a bladed weapon made from a long rib bone, treated to be denser, harder and sharper to serve as something resembling a sword! It may not outcompete a metal blade of Stãlbronze. But Stãlbronze that is made into swords has over a thousand years to go, making these the first "swords" of the dragonscape. They are also a lot easier to make than any sort of Stãlbronze blade

6) As one last doodle example here to highlight one of the more interesting things

In this cas a bamboo container alchemically treated and elementized to essentially function as a sort of "refridgerator" in the sense that it can cool food and help it keep for longer which, while you can't make a giant bamboo fridge realistically, small "fridges" of bamboo, wood, molded chitin, etc. may become rather widespread even early on in the DragonScape as this improves

Sorta shows some of the potential and a broader throughline of manatech, you can achieve relatively advanced technologies, with caviats, that unlike our own technological history don't require a massive push of infrastructure behind them. And its things like these (as well as many other things) that tend to aid in slowing down the growth of states

As in many cases a state of drekir and ormer can't really hold tech over the rural populations head in many cases. As usually that village is just as capable of making the same technology, even if on a smaller scale due to the handicap of their population

So yeah, Alchemically treated organics!

Always fun!