Philosopher's Stone

The **philosopher's stone** is the ultimate alchemical catalyst, with among the widest uses in *dwarvish alchemy* and medicine. It is sometimes called the **stone of the wise** and **quadrite**.

The process to create a philosopher's stone is one of the greatest kept secrets in all of alchemy, with only a few ever being confirmed to have been created. There are general guidelines that the four humours must be followed in order of complexity and inverse of their natural occurrence to create a philosopher's stone. In *dwarvish alchemy*, an elixir is identical to a philosopher's stone, but only in a pulverized and less potent form.

## Creation

Though its exact process is not widely distributed or well-known, its creation is often called the Great Work or the One Goal, as a testament to the fact that all of *dwarvish alchemy* is dedicated to the interplay of the elements and humours to craft the philosopher's stone.

The process of crafting a philosopher's stone is in direct contrast with its *elvish alchemy* cousin, the polyphant's stone. The latter is derived from the "peacock's tail" and is understood to be mainly a catalyst; the philsopher's stone in and of itself is the derivative and must be formulated through careful and critical analysis.

### Four Stages

The four stages to reach the philosopher's stone are as follows:

* *nigredo*, a blackening or melanosis
* *albedo*, a whitening or leucosis
* *citrinitas*, a yellowing or xanthosis
* *rubedo*, a reddening, purpling, or iosis

These can further be divided into the Twelve Gates, which are also as follows:

1. Calcination, heating to high temperatures and boiling
2. Solution (or Dissolution), dissolving substances to create a solution
3. Separation, isolating the individual bodies of the solution
4. Conjunction, recombining the individual bodies in a process as to create a new substance
5. Putrefaction, letting a new catalyst decompose in darkness
6. Congelation, letting a new catalyst congeal in the light of the sun
7. Cibation, feeding the contents of the congelation to the substance in a crucible
8. Sublimation, spontaneous heating to turn the solid solution directly into a gas
9. Fermentation, allowing the enzymes of the putrefaction to ferment in the presence of the substance
10. Exaltation, graduating the substance and carefully measuring out residue and impurities
11. Multiplication, the repetition of the process to further increase the potency of the substance
12. Projection, the use of the substance itself

Most alchemists understand that the substance, as it appears up to the Fourth Gate, is Diana's Tree, a living mineral plant that bears silver fruit and literally grows silver. It is also obvious to alchemists that the Eleventh Gate is necessary to increase the potency of the arrived stone, which at this point is technically the philosopher's stone, and the process must be repeated replacing Diana's Tree with the Stone to increase the potency.

The Eleventh Gate is exceptionally difficult as the boiling point of the stone increases with each iteration, meaning that by the second time visiting the Eleventh Gate, achieving Sublimation the next time is by all means impossible to mortals, and only hellfire or some other great heat must be used to increase the stone's potency.