Benedict Jacka

A brief overview of non-military U.S. corporations that trade in the UK.

Atlantic

A corporation based in New York.  Unlike most drucraft companies, they do not have a shaping department at all and their business is entirely financial.  They buy and sell the rights to Wells without ever leaving their offices or touching a sigl with their own hands.

Although a US corporation, Atlantic employs a lot of British traders and their London office has been running for longer than most UK companies have existed.  Due to this and their long-standing relationship with the Board, they’ve been able to get away with buying up more UK Wells than most foreign companies would be allowed to hold.  At the moment they hold one of the UK’s S-class Matter Wells.

Asmart

A subsidiary of a US retail giant.  They made headlines in the drucraft world in 2009 when they bought House Egmont’s Light S Well through one of their subsidiaries, becoming the first corporation in decades to displace a Great House.

Asmart is the dominant player on the UK drucraft scene – they sell about as many sigls by volume as their two nearest rivals combined.  For the most part they do this via quantity, not quality – they don’t sell many high-grade sigls, but they dominate the C- and D-class sigl markets by sheer volume.  They’re able to do this by undercutting virtually everyone else on price.  If you want any kind of basic low-rank sigl, the Asmart version is almost always going to be the cheapest one available.  Unfortunately, you get what you pay for, and Asmart sigls are notorious for poor quality and short lifespans.  Still, if you really need a particular sigl, and you’re working on a budget, Asmart can hook you up for less money than pretty much anyone else.  As a result, even people who hate them still buy their stuff.

As mentioned, Asmart hold a Light S Well, though if they sell S-rank sigls, they don’t advertise it.

YouHealth

The UK trade name of a US healthcare giant that specialises in medical drucraft.  If you live in the UK and want a Life sigl, there’s a pretty good chance that YouHealth will be the ones to supply it.  YouHealth are the dominant player in all areas of Life drucraft in the UK – locating Life Wells, shaping sigls from them, and supplying them to medical drucrafters.

YouHealth have a bad reputation in the drucraft world.  There are persistent rumours that they’ve built much of their medical expertise via highly unethical experiments in parts of the world where you can do medical trials without much regulation or oversight.  YouHealth are also notoriously trigger-happy with libel suits, however, so few people are willing to go on the record with such rumours.

Gladeshire McKeon

Another US financial company, Gladeshire McKeon work through intermediaries, subcontracting various drucraft operations and then packaging them under the Gladeshire McKeon brand.  They compete with the British Houses for the upper end of the sigl market – their sigls are typically somewhat more affordable, although despite their best efforts, they’ve never managed to build quite as good a reputation for quality.  Their reputation isn’t helped by their high turnover of upper management – Gladeshire McKeon executives usually only last a few years before being replaced, often in a very acrimonious way.

Voyager

A Silicon Valley startup that began in software and pivoted into drucraft.  They specialise in locating, and pioneered many of the features that are now standard in Well registration apps.  Other corporations were quick to copy Voyager’s innovations, so they were never able to dominate the market as thoroughly as they’d hoped, but Voyager were able to make a sizeable amount of money along the way.  Nowadays Voyager have taken a step back from locating and spend most of their efforts selling their technology and expertise to other drucraft corporations, playing off their rivals against one another for their own profit.

A brief overview of some of the more important drucraft corporations currently active within the UK.  This section will cover British companies.

Cambridge Group a.k.a. Camlink

Camlink is the only British corporation (and one of the only corporations in the world) to own an S+ Well.  The Light Well is in the Cambridge area, and, though Camlink’s primary headquarters is still in London, its shaping department and many of its offices are based in Cambridge.

For a long time Camlink had a reputation for having some of the best shapers in the world.  This, along with some clever business practices, led to them becoming the largest and wealthiest of the UK drucraft corporations.  In recent years, however, they’ve been struggling, and their wealth has drawn heavy government oversight;  significant fractions of Camlink’s stock are held by foreign investors, and factions in the Board have been arguing for years that none of the UK’s S+ Wells should be owned (even partially owned) by any foreign companies for national security reasons.  As such, Camlink’s management decisions are closely scrutinised by the Board, and they’re frequently forced to make decisions for political rather than commercial reasons.  Their stock has fallen as a result and some believe that a corporate split-up might be on the cards.

British Essentia Services

A very old family-owned company dating back to the 1800s, BES has a long history of selling sigls to the British public.  Unlike most drucraft companies, they’ve never diversified or financialised;  their business is sigls, and they’ve stayed in their lane.

Many of the BES sigl designs are decades old.  Even their ‘newer’ sigls are typically based on designs from the last century, and some of the sigls that they provide through the Exchange are based on templates that haven’t substantially changed for over a hundred years.  Many consider their sigls dated as a result, and they do tend to be slow to incorporate new developments, but the positive side to this is a reputation for reliability – if you buy a BES sigl, you typically know that it’s a design that’s been thoroughly tested over a very long time.  BES sigls tend to last longer than their counterparts, though this does typically come with the tradeoff of a higher price.  As such, BES’s main competitors tend to be the Drucraft Houses, since they’re targeting the same sort of market.

Plastron

An energy company that started out in oil and gas with a small drucraft department as an offshoot;  over time, the drucraft department came to provide more and more of their business until nowadays they’re almost entirely a drucraft company with a vestigal energy department.  Plastron focuses on the ‘prospecting’ side of drucraft and does most of its business outside the UK.  They specialise in finding and exploiting Wells on other continents, particularly in high-conflict areas where most companies aren’t willing to go.  Their corporate headquarters is in London but they have many tiny regional offices dotted all around the world.

Linford’s

A London firm with a history as insurance brokers.  During the 20th century they became a major shaping company and had several famous sigl lines – as late as the 1980s and 1990s Linford’s sigls were still quite well-known.  However, a series of market reverses forced them to pull back, and over the 21st century they came to produce fewer and fewer sigls until in the 2010s they stopped selling to the Exchange entirely.  Nowadays Linford’s are primarily a locating company, and while they still have a small shaping department, this is mostly a relic of the past – they’ve shifted into more of a ‘middle man’ role where they make their money supplying information and Well locations rather than anything tangible.  Despite this, they’re quite active on the UK scene, and consistently rate as one of the Top 10 companies in terms of Wells logged with the Registry.

Lancaster Security

As the name suggests, Lancaster Security specialise in sigls in the military and security field.  They mostly sell to the British armed forces but also supply other NATO militaries and private clients.  Nowadays their sigls are considered somewhat dated, but they can typically trade off their long history and contacts with the UK armed forces to land contracts with the UK’s Ministry of Defence.

Unlike most corporations, Lancaster Security does very little locating, preferring to keep their holdings in permanent Wells and make their sigls with the essentia they supply.  It makes them relatively unwieldy and unable to adapt to shifts in demand, but on the positive side it’s also largely insulated them from market fluctuations and has allowed Lancaster Security to keep plodding along as other companies have gone bankrupt.

The previous entry discussed the theory of essentia capacity;  what it is and what it means.  This entry will focus more on how it works in practice.

When Essentia Capacity Matters . . .

A higher essentia capacity allows a drucrafter to use more sigls at once.  Technically it would also allow a drucrafter to use sigls with higher Lorenz ratings, but since these are so rare, the main use for a high essentia capacity is to allow the drucrafter to use multiple sigls with Lorenz ratings of 1 or lower.

Using multiple sigls at once is difficult.  Using two is more than twice as hard as using one, and using three is more than twice as hard as using two.  New channellers quickly find that even if they might have enough essentia capacity to operate two or three sigls at the same time, they don’t actually have the skill to do so effectively.  The usual way to compensate for this is by using continuous sigls – since these require no concentration, a drucrafter can use one triggered sigl (and focus all their attention on that) while the continuous sigls do their own thing.

However, there’s a much simpler way to get around this problem – use one sigl at a time.

. . . And When It Doesn’t

The simple fact is that very few sigls have to be used simultaneously.   If you have a medical sigl that stops bleeding, a levitation sigl that floats you up in the air, and a torch sigl that floods an area with light, then with enough time and practice you could build up enough skill to use all three of them effectively at once.  But realistically, if you’re using a sigl to stem someone’s bleeding or levitating yourself off the ground, then you probably want to be focusing on that.  Yes, you could end up in a situation where you have to provide emergency first aid in pitch darkness while hanging off the side of a building, but it’s not all that likely.

And, indeed, this is what generally happens.  Medical sigls are used in hospitals, slowly and individually.  Industrial sigls are used in factories – again, individually.  The same applies to invisibility, flight, and so on.  Even if you want to use two sigls at once, in most situations, you can probably figure out a way to use first one and then the other.  And if either of those uses are important, you probably want to use them one at a time, so that you can concentrate on each.

So why does essentia capacity matter?

Environmental Differences

Essentia capacity matters very little if you’re somewhere safe.  If you’re not being threatened or rushed or pressured, then there’s very little reason ever to need to use two sigls at once.  But if you’re somewhere dangerous, then being able to use two sigls at once can be very important indeed.

However, the real reason essentia capacity is so valued is only partly related to ‘safe’ versus ‘dangerous’.  It’s that in a one-on-one duel between drucrafters, having a higher essentia capacity is a huge advantage.  If one of the two drucrafters can use two full-power sigls while the other can use three, then, all else being equal, the one who can use three will almost always win.  They can use two sigls to counter their opponent’s two sigls, while using a third to attack unopposed.

This, more than any other other reason, is why people care about essentia capacity.  It’s the playground question of “who would win in a fight”.  Lots of people argue that it shouldn’t matter – and indeed, much of the time it doesn’t – but “who would win in a fight” is something people do pay attention to, even if they may not admit it.  It’s roughly equivalent to height and physical prowess in adult men.  Very few will say out loud that they judge based on these qualities, yet men who are tall, strong, and fit still tend to get preferential treatment over those who are short, weak, and flabby.

The Working Range

Most people’s essentia capacity falls in between 2 and 3.  As a very rough guide, for men, 3 and above is high, between 2.5 and 3 is average, between 2 and 2.5 is low, and below 2 is very low (the term ‘essentia cripple’ is sometimes used, though this is considered insulting).  For women, the brackets are roughly the same, but about 0.3 to 0.5 points lower (so ‘high’ would be 2.6 and up).  These figures vary from country to country.

As all novices know, a drucrafter can’t control any bit of random essentia floating around in the air.  They can only control their personal essentia;  essentia that has taken on the psychic imprint of their mind and body.

All living creatures have a reserve of personal essentia.  Essentia capacity measures this reserve’s effective size.

Personal Essentia

Personal essentia is crucial for two out of the three drucraft disciplines.  It allows a drucrafter to channel (by directing their personal essentia into their sigls to activate them) and to shape (by forming the kernels of sigls).

The turnover rate for personal essentia is very high.  It is constantly created (as new essentia flows into a creature’s body and assimilates to it) and lost again (as it drifts away and become un-attuned).  Since essentia is everywhere, this constant cycling is not usually an issue – a living creature’s personal essentia reserves will continually rise and fall, but this naturally evens itself out, like water finding its own level.  This ‘evening out’ process happens constantly, from minute to minute, typically without the person in question ever noticing that anything is happening.

However, all this changes once that personal essentia is spent on something.  A normal person can’t possibly deplete their reserves of personal essentia, since they have no way to spend it.  A drucrafter, however, can.  At this point, their essentia capacity suddenly starts to matter.

The Lorenz Scale

Essentia capacity is measured on the Lorenz scale, named after the drucraft researcher who formalised it.  The Lorenz Scale is calibrated to the Lorenz Ceiling, which is the maximum amount of personal essentia input that a sigl can accommodate before its efficiency drops sharply.  The Lorenz Ceiling is defined as a 1 on the Lorenz Scale.

Most sigls have a Lorenz rating of 1.  Thus, a drucrafter’s Lorenz rating measures how many (ordinary) sigls they can sustainably use at once.  Sigls with a Lorenz rating of less than 1 consume proportionately less of a drucrafter’s ‘budget’;  sigls with a higher Lorenz rating consume proportionately more.

Reserves and Rates of Change

Although essentia capacity is commonly viewed as a reserve, or a pool, it can be more accurately viewed as a rate of change.  It’s not a measurement of how much personal essentia you can hold, it’s a measurement of how quickly you can replenish it.  So if you have an essentia capacity of exactly 3, this means that:

• using 1 standard-rated sigl at once is easy;
• using 2 standard-rated sigls at once is easy;
• using 3 standard-rated sigls at once is possible but difficult (you would have to channel very efficiently, and might need to pause to take breaks)
• using 4 or more standard-rated sigls at once is impossible (you would run out of essentia almost immediately).

What Determines Essentia Capacity

Essentia capacity is primarily physiological.  It’s a physical trait, like height and weight, and can be measured quite precisely with modern instruments.

While many factors seem to affect essentia capacity to some degree, the strongest correlation is with a person’s skeletal mass:  the combined weight of their bones and skeletal muscles.  Note that this correlation, while strong, is not one-to-one;  there are some rare drucrafters with a high skeletal mass and a low essentia capacity, and vice versa.  Total body mass is sometimes used for a quicker estimate, but this produces a less accurate result since fat tissue and parts of the body that are metabolically inactive seem to affect essentia capacity to a much lesser degree.

Average essentia capacity in the United Kingdom is 2.8 for men, and 2.4 for women.  These values vary across the world in rough proportion to average height and body size.

Changing Essentia Capacity

Because of how essentia capacity is viewed (see next section), significant efforts have been spent researching ways to increase it.

These attempts have for the most part shown limited success.  By far the most effective methods to increase essentia capacity have proven to be drucraft training and strength training.  Channelling practice can slightly (but reliably) increase a body’s efficiency in assimilating essentia;  physical training and conditioning to increase muscle mass has a similarly positive effect.

These increases, however, are quite small.  Such training virtually never produces an increase of over 20% (10% is more normal) and in any case brings diminishing returns.  No matter how dedicated, all drucrafters eventually reach the point where they are forced to accept that they have pushed their essentia capacity as high as it’s going to go.

More invasive techniques have been tried, but these tend to come with unwelcome side effects, and as such, their use nowadays is frowned upon;  common consensus is that the benefits of trying to force a higher essentia capacity simply aren’t worth the costs.  However, given how much value is placed on essentia capacity, there’s always someone willing to take the risk.