Alchemist

Of the 6 Career Skills, choose 3 to get a free rank. Of the 4 Specialization Skills, choose 2 to get a free rank.

Mystic Career Skills: Charm, Coercion, Knowledge (Lore), Knowledge (Outer Rim), Perception and Vigilance

Alchemist Specialization Skills: Knowledge (Education), Knowledge (Xenology), Medicine and Resilience

A Mystic begins play with a Force rating of 1

During the era of the Galactic Republic, the Jedi Order never embraced alchemy. Various spiritual orders that had worked in alchemy also allied with the dark side of the Force. The Sith, the Nightsisters of Dathomir, and the Frangawl Cult on Bardotta all used the dark side to power their weapons, talismans, and magicks. Whether or not the Jedi thought that alchemy led to the dark side of the Force has been lost to time. Perhaps the Order felt that giving life to the inanimate, pouring the Force into a dead object, replicated the act of giving life, of giving birth, or of playing god, and would cause the Jedi to become prideful.

With the rise of the Empire and the loss of the Jedi Order, now no one can warn a potential Alchemist away from practicing this lost art. This might be just as well. Just like any technology, it isn’t the object but the user that makes it good or bad, light or dark, useful or destructive. In addition, the Force flows through everything, even inanimate objects. Rocks have a measure of the Force in them. How else could a Jedi move them? With that reasoning, nothing should prevent a Jedi from imbuing a machine with the Force, save the Jedi’s own fears, hatred, and obsessions.

The Jedi built their own lightsabers not only for ritual or training purposes, but to infuse a bit of their own essence into the weapon. The Jedi consciously and deliberately built these weapons both as a technical test and as a meditative test. It could be argued that a lightsaber contains the presence of its creator—and perhaps its user(s).

Force alchemy extends this idea and discipline further, crafting physical objects infused with the power of the Force. These objects appear to have a life of their own, and in the eyes of a Force sensitive, perhaps they do. This creates a metaphysical conundrum: if an object possesses a measure of the Force, how is it different from a living being?

Alchemists tend to focus on medicinal concoctions, since the healing of a physical body is the most direct method of using and influencing the Force. The flow of a medicine, tincture, salve, or draught mimics the flow of the Force. Alchemists can work in other materials, but this requires more training and attention. A malformed or malfunctioning machine can’t be fixed with an infusion of the Force. In many ways, it might exacerbate the damage.

Folk tales and popular holovids of machines coming to life and terrorizing their creators and innocents may be based on true stories of Alchemists who fell to the dark side of the Force. Force-infused objects can be tortured as much as any living creature. When the Alchemist is a dark side user, alchemical machines take on a sinister and dangerous aura, “malfunctioning” to cause harm or, in the case of a weapon, increasing suffering when it does cause harm.

Potential Backgrounds

  • Artist: Some Alchemists started out as sculptors, clothing designers, and body modifiers, working in the physical. They found themselves drawn to making a thing with a purpose, a reason given form. Admirers would tell these artists that their works had a mind of their own, a life and personality. This praise, however, never felt true. They weren’t the ones who gave it life; something else, something unexplainable, did. Without realizing it, these artists had designed with the principle that Force follows form follows function, until one day they had discovered all three meant the same thing.
  • Augurs: Alchemists who began as augurs served a variety of roles. Some experimented with chemicals to produce visions, either through street drugs or corporate-sponsored research into mind-enhancing medicines. Other alchemical augurs produced vaccines to inoculate a population from an impending outbreak or produced analgesics to ease pain. All of them shared the ability of diagnosis, isolating the source of an ailment and perceiving a cure. Of all of the augur backgrounds, Alchemists have the most practical of mind sets; looking forward to results, they take a little longer to accept the Force as a guiding principle.
  • Con Artist: These budding Alchemists didn’t use their abilities for good at first. As con artists, they created fakes: harmless chemicals instead of dangerous drugs, a “priceless” painting for the rich, or even weapons that didn’t function (for the truly brave or foolish). When the fakes somehow helped improve lives, such as that dose of fake spice curing someone’s addiction or that counterfeit painting inspiring the rich patron to donate to charity, these con artists chalked it up to happy accidents. Soon, they found themselves glad of these mistakes and gave up the criminal life to do good.
  • Economist: Alchemists who were economists saw the distribution of goods as an indicator of health. Alchemists with this background tossed out supplies and balms, like messages in a bottle out into the ocean, thinking market forces delivered them to the right person at the right time. The patterns hinted at a benevolent intelligence, and the first test of this understanding came when they encountered individuals, organizations, or corporations that hoarded their creations. These economists began to push and disrupt these acts of selfishness, a call to action from the Force.
  • Political Expert: Political experts who saw the galaxy like Alchemists viewed law and governance as an unfeeling machine, and devised concoctions and inventions to fix that machine. Medicine can treat the symptoms of a broken system, such as diseases caused by a malfunctioning water purifier, and make the whole feel better. The infected community can then become productive and vital, and thus provide the energy and will to fix the broken part. It is then a short step from thinking of a community as a living being toward seeing the Force as a living thing.
  • Religious Ecstatics: Alchemists who were ecstatics didn’t simply use drugs recreationally, although some Alchemists with this background did come to their enlightenment experimenting with mood-altering, consciousness-enhancing substances. Sometimes they worked to create an alternative drug, isolating the dangerous compounds while extracting the chemicals that enhanced the body and mind. Why did they achieve visions and insights, however, whereas others merely experienced a high? After some searching, they discovered that they didn’t need drugs to see the energy binding the galaxy together.