Benedict Jacka

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.

Although strength in drucraft is most commonly measured by skill in the three disciplines, there are two other ways in which drucrafters can be ranked:  essentia capacity and branch affinity.  When combined with discipline skill, these give a fairly comprehensive measurement of a drucrafter’s abilities.

Skill, capacity, and affinity have little correlation.  It’s possible to have great skill while having very poor essentia capacity, and vice versa.  While training or talent in one can affect the others, the three measurements can be plotted on entirely different axes.

The First Axis:  Skill

Drucraft skill is the first and most important measurement of strength, and reflects which of the disciplines a drucrafter has achieved mastery over.  This mastery is reflected in their title:  tyro, novice, channeller, shaper, manifester.

Skill is universally considered the most important axis.  The other two can be a very valuable supplement to a drucrafter’s skill, but they can’t substitute for it.  No matter how great a drucrafter’s essentia capacity, or how good their affinities, none of if will be much use if they can’t sense or channel.

The Second Axis:  Capacity

A drucrafter’s essentia capacity is a measurement of how quickly they can process ambient essentia into personal essentia.  It is a physiological trait that is for the most part determined by a drucrafter’s size.

Essentia capacity effectively functions as a drucrafter’s ‘budget’ for active sigls.  A higher essentia capacity allows them to use more sigls at once.

The Third Axis:  Affinity

Drucrafters are almost never equally skilled with all the branches.  In virtually all cases they will have at least one branch that they find particularly easy to use, and at least one that they find particularly difficult.

Branch affinities become more important the further a drucrafter advances in skill.  When learning to sense, a drucrafter’s affinities are more or less irrelevant.  For shapers and manifesters, however, they can be very important indeed.

The Three Measurements In Practice

A good way to understand these three measurements is to compare them to human ability in physical fields such as athletics and sports.

• Drucraft skill is equivalent to skill:  training, technique, experience.
• Essentia capacity is equivalent to physical condition:  strength, fitness, reflexes.
• Branch affinity is equivalent to body type:  how well matched someone’s build, body shape, and characteristics are to the sport/activity in question.

So to take the example of, say, basketball, drucraft skill equates to skill in dribbling, passing, and shooting.  Essentia capacity is the equivalent of fitness, muscle strength, and reaction speed.  And branch affinity is the equivalent of just being tall.  A skilled player will always beat an unskilled one, but at higher levels, where everyone is skilled, being fitter or taller can make the difference, and the very best players are typically going to excel at all three.

General summary:

• A sigl or piece of aurum can be ‘recycled’ into essentia, and from there converted into another sigl.
• This process always involves a certain efficiency loss.

Factors that affect this efficiency:

Positive

• High shaping skill:  Although attempts have been made to standardise the process, an experienced shaper will always waste less essentia than an inexperienced one.
• Using pure aurum instead of a sigl:  Sigls are typically not designed to be reshaped.  A good shaper can turn them back into essentia anyway, but a lump of pure aurum is easier to work with.
• Using a permanent Well and a sigl created at that same Well (ideal)
• Using a permanent Well and a sigl of the same branch and of compatible essentia (still good)
• Using a shaping chamber (not ideal, but often the only option available)

Negative

• No Well or shaping chamber:  Almost always leads to a failed shaping.
• Inexperienced shaper:  Commonly leads to a failed shaping.  However, a bad shaper with a Well or shaping chamber can do more than a good shaper with nothing.
• Old sigl or aurum:  Very old sigls can be difficult to reshape, though sufficient skill/familiarity can compensate for this.
• Cross-contamination from mixed essentia:  Mixing essentia sources with poor compatibility usually harms the sigl’s attunement, and may cause it to fail entirely.

Note 1:  Efficiency can never reach 100%.  There is always at least some loss.

Note 2:  Negative factors have a greater impact than positive ones.  One strong negative will usually outweigh any number of positives.

The previous article in this series discussed how permanent Wells can be used as a way to ‘recycle’ sigls;  by returning the essentia within a sigl to the same or a compatible Well, the Well can eventually be used as a kind of reprocessing tool to turn one sigl into another.  This, however, is a slow and delicate process that requires a permanent Well, not to mention a significant amount of skill and patience.  So what if you don’t have a permanent Well, or the expertise to use it?

This was the position that the drucraft corporations of the UK found themselves in when they tried to move into the sigl recycling business.  Their solution was that if they couldn’t use existing Wells, they’d make their own.

Well Substitution

The idea of creating an artificial Well is not new;  given how valuable sigls are, the idea of producing A- and S-rank Wells on demand is of course one that drucrafters found enormously appealing.  Historical attempts to do this, however, mostly ended in disappointment.  Although drucraft researchers successfully pioneered ways to create artificial Wells with reasonably high success rates, they eventually were forced to realise that, in doing so, they were spending more resources than it would have cost them to use ones that existed already.  While their artificial Wells mimicked the retaining effect of natural ones, it was much harder to get them to fill.

However, once the Golden Age of drucraft research was underway and the demand for sigls continued to rise, some enterprising drucrafters realised that if all you wanted to do was recycle a sigl, an artificial Well that only retained essentia would work just fine.  From these early experiments came what are now referred to as ‘shaping chambers’.

Shaping Chambers

A shaping chamber is to a natural Well what a man-made reservoir is to a lake or a pond.  Since they’re typically built at locations convenient to the corporation in question, rather than in accordance with the flows of essentia across the land, they don’t fill naturally.  However, if you’re only planning to use a shaping chamber for recycling (which is generally all drucraft corporations use them for anyway) this isn’t a problem;  in fact, it’s an advantage, since it creates the equivalent of a ‘sterile environment’ with minimal cross-contamination.

Shaping chambers are, as the name suggests, usually built in the form of rooms.  The size depends on the chamber’s intended capacity.  A shaping chamber only intended to create D-class or D+ sigls might be the size of a living room, while one intended to create A- or S-rank sigls would be the size of a factory floor.  The edges of the chamber incorporate trace amounts of low-grade aurum, and the overall architecture is designed so as to draw essentia inwards to the centre.

Return on Investment

Even more so than in the rest of the drucraft world, shaping chambers are built for entirely economic reasons:  they exist to make their owner money, and nothing more.  Shaping chambers are thus rated on their ‘Three Cs’:  capacity (how large a sigl they can make), CP (conversion percentage, which measures how much of the input aurum is converted into a sigl as opposed to being lost in the recycling process), and cost (how expensive the shaping chamber is to build and maintain).  Higher capacity and higher CP means higher cost.  Shaping chambers are usually viewed as long-term investments expected to lose money over their first few years of operation but make it back thereafter.

Efficiency

Shaping chambers are relatively inefficient.  Even the best ones have a lower conversion percentage than a Well recycling a compatible sigl, and a much lower CP than a Well recycling a sigl made at that same Well.  And in practice, most corporations do not use ‘the best’ – high-grade shaping chambers are expensive, and this expense can only be justified if the corporation in question expects to use the chamber many, many times.  Since the bottleneck in sigl production is (as always) the supply of essentia, this means shaping chambers sit idle much of the time.  As a result, many corporations choose to economise on their shaping chambers, accepting a lower CP in exchange for a lower up-front cost.  Smaller drucraft corporations are likely to just avoid the whole business entirely and sell off their recycled sigls instead.

The main benefit to shaping chambers is how indiscriminate they are.  Someone hoping to use a recycled sigl to refill a permanent Well has to spend a significant amount of time matching the right Well to the right sigl, and even more time monitoring the Well to make sure the essentia is harmonising.  Shaping chambers, on the other hand, will accept basically any sigl or piece or aurum, no matter its origin.  The efficiency on the conversion may not be very good, but you’ll always get something.