Benedict Jacka

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.

A common question asked by novice drucrafters is whether it’s possible to ‘recycle’ sigls.  Sigls are made of aurum, and there are well-known and well-tested drucraft effects that turn aurum back into essentia.  So in theory, shouldn’t it be possible to turn a sigl into essentia and then turn that essentia into a new sigl?

The short answer is ‘yes, but’.  In theory, it’s possible to sublimate and then re-shape a sigl, turning it into a new sigl and bypassing the Blood Limit and the Limit of Creation entirely.  In practice, there are some problems.

The First Problem:  Diffusion

The first issue that a would-be sigl recycler has to deal with is that free essentia does not behave like matter.  It behaves much more like a gas, which spreads from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure.  This means that as soon as a drucrafter begins to sublimate a sigl into free essentia, that free essentia does not wait around to be reshaped;  it immediately starts to spread outwards in all directions.  The drucrafter can try to gather this essentia, but this is rather like trying to gather up a spilt drink.

To turn this essentia back into a sigl, the drucrafter has to continually turn the free essentia into the construct and form of a new sigl, transferring it immediately from one state to the other without allowing it to diffuse.  Effectively this is like shaping a sigl (already a difficult task) while doing two other difficult tasks at the same time.  Even for an expert, this is close to impossible.  Usually the result is that somewhere over 90% of the essentia is wasted, what’s left isn’t enough to exceed the Faraday Point, and the sigl doesn’t work.

The Solution:  Wells

If essentia naturally diffuses, how can drucrafters shape sigls at all?  By doing it at Wells.  Wells are locations which attract essentia;  rather than diffusing, the essentia is pulled in, where it can be gathered and shaped.

(Some readers may note that the behaviour of Wells on Earth is very similar to the behaviour of a gravity well in space;  just as a gravity well draws in matter, a Well draws in essentia.  This resemblance is not surprising, since Wells and gravity wells are named after the exact same thing.)

So in theory, this allows a simple and straightforward method of recycling sigls.  Simply go to a Well, sublimate the sigl into essentia, then use the newly-filled Well to create a new sigl.  This, however, creates a new problem.

The Second Problem:  Admixture

There’s a reason that sigls are created at one Well, and not at multiple Wells.  The more uniform the essentia used to create a sigl, the better it works.  Making a Matter sigl out of a mixture of Matter and Life essentia is like trying to make a machine out of a mixture of metal and oak leaves.  The metal parts will work fine;  the machine as a whole, not so much.

Using matching Wells of course makes things much easier.  A Matter Well that’s been ‘refilled’ with Matter essentia is much more likely to produce a functional sigl.  However, even then, the variation in the essentia can cause difficulties.  Essentia from different Wells has subtle differences and reacts differently to shaping techniques;  the end result may work, but may also not.  As a general rule, the more powerful, delicate, or sophisticated a sigl is, the more likely it is that using mixed essentia inputs will cause it to fail.  Conversely, the weaker and cruder a sigl is, the better the chance that you can build one out of the essentia equivalent of scrap metal.

Of course, the best way to make sure that the essentia is compatible is to use a sigl (or piece of aurum) that came from that Well in the first place.  This can allow a Well’s essentia to be stored safely in aurum or sigl form, then returned to it when it’s time to shape a sigl.  With care, the efficiency loss from such conversion can be reduced to a very small percentage (though it can never be eliminated completely).

Logistics of Refilling Wells

Refilling Wells via sigls or aurum has both advantages, and disadvantages.

One advantage is that it allows a Well to be ‘over-filled’.  If you leave a D-class Well for long enough, it’ll eventually fill to capacity;  no matter how long you leave it thereafter, it won’t get any fuller.  However, if you make a D-class sigl, wait six months or a year, then come back, the Well will have filled again.  You can then turn the first D-class sigl into essentia and use the over-filled Well to make a sigl of D+ rank.  Houses of the UK are fond of using this particular technique in order to create sigls that are stronger than their Wells should theoretically be able to produce.

The drawback to this is that a D-class Well is rated D-class for a reason.  It won’t retain extra essentia forever, and the more you over-fill it, or the longer you leave it over-filled, the more of the essentia will be wasted.

Essentia in a Well naturally harmonises over time.  If a Matter Well is refilled with a reasonably compatible (though not identical) source of Matter essentia, then left to settle, then eventually the essentia will attune to the Well and become uniform.  This requires time and careful tending, but a patient and skilled Well tender can, with sufficient work, use this technique to recycle a sigl with a fairly high success rate.

Alternatives

All of these techniques assume you have access to (and ownership of) an appropriate permanent Well.  For those who don’t, there is an alternative:  they can build their own.

Kinetic Barrier

Type:  Triggered
Appearance: Gold, faceted square
Rank: C to B+

Creates a field in front of the sigl that converts the kinetic energy of momentum into free essentia, slowing or stopping any object that enters.  Typically used as a shield;  projectiles fired towards the wielder slow to a stop and drop to the ground.

The speed at which a kinetic barrier can drain kinetic energy is dependent on the sigl’s power – a C-rank version might completely stop a subsonic round, slow down (but not stop) a supersonic round, and do almost nothing to a rifle shot.

Different models project the field in different ways.  Some are designed to create a vertical shield, others create a curved partial sphere, and some create a full sphere that encloses the wielder completely.  As you would expect, the greater the coverage, the more power the sigl draws and the higher a rank it needs to be.

Balancing a kinetic barrier’s drain speed, coverage, and cost is a trade-off.  Typically you can get at most two out of three.

Since the effect is triggered, it’s useless against an attack that the wielder doesn’t know is coming.  As such, many consider this sigl suitable only for drucrafters who expect to know in advance when they’re getting into a fight (most likely because they’re going to be the one starting it).

Kinetic Shield

Type:  Continuous
Appearance: Gold, faceted sphere
Rank: C+ to A

A more advanced version of the kinetic barrier designed to operate automatically.  Projects a field around the user that slows down anything entering that field moving above a certain speed.  These sigls generally (but not always) are designed on the assumption that they’re meant to be defending against bullets – as such, they’re optimised for slowing down small things moving at a high speed, and don’t do much against bigger things, such as cars, falling objects, or people.

Has the big advantage that it works automatically, so it’ll still protect you if you get shot in the back.  The price you pay for this is a small constant essentia drain (or a large one if you’re under active attack), but most drucrafters consider this a worthwhile trade-off.

Always made as a sphere – in theory could be made with any kind of coverage, but in practice if you’re going to spend the resources to make this powerful and expensive a sigl, it makes no sense not to have it also provide all-around protection.

Versions of this sigl tend to be split into continuous and hybrid models.  Continuous models are designed to operate constantly with no input from the wielder (usually because it’s assumed that the wielder can’t channel or is bad at it).  Hybrid models can be triggered manually, allowing the wielder to control the amount of essentia flowing through the shield and reinforce it against specific attacks.

Probably the single most popular defensive Motion sigl.  Guns are by far the most common lethal weapon in the modern age, and anything that can defend against them is highly prized.   

Missile

Type:  Triggered
Appearance: Yellow, faceted
Rank: D+ to B+

A more powerful version of the Slam sigl which charges an item with kinetic energy.  Like the Slam sigl, this works by compressing air, but with the aim of imparting the kinetic energy to a projectile.  The air behind the projectile is heavily compressed, then released;  kinetic energy shapes a ‘barrel’ of force that means that the expanding air and projectile can only travel in one direction.  If the Slam sigl is the equivalent of an unloaded air gun, this is the equivalent of a loaded one.

Due to how a missile sigl works, it’s necessarily single-shot, with reload speed being dependent on how quickly the wielder can feed ammunition into their hand.  On the positive side, it’s also quiet, concealable, and accurate;  the mundane weapon whose performance it most closely matches is probably a crossbow.  At rank C and above, it’s potentially lethal to a human target.

Due to how subtle a missile sigl is, it’s quite hard to threaten someone with it – you can’t point it at someone to scare them the way you can a gun, meaning there’s little reason to carry this sigl unless you’re planning to actually use it against a target.  It’s less of a weapon for police or security, and more of a weapon for soldiers or assassins.  Unsurprisingly, this gives it a fairly bad reputation, and in most countries higher-power versions are sold only under licence.

Missile sigls are usually designed to work with a specific projectile type, such as a sphere, pellet, or flechette, though there are higher-end generalist models designed to be able to accept any kind of ammunition.

Hurl

Type:  Triggered
Appearance: Yellow, variable shape
Rank: D+ to B+

A very simple and straightforward sigl that projects a surge of kinetic energy into whatever the wielder touches, hurling them away from the wielder (hence the name).

Similar conceptually to the missile sigl, but designed to throw larger objects at lower velocities.  Unlike the missile sigl it doesn’t charge up a pocket of compressed air or use kinetic energy to form a barrel;  this makes the sigl relatively inaccurate, but it also makes it much simpler to shape and much easier and faster to use.

Most commonly used as a self-defence weapon to push opponents away.  Typically this is intended to be used defensively against attackers who’ve closed the distance to the wielder, but there’s nothing actually stopping a drucrafter from using it aggressively by closing the distance themselves.  Lower-level models will typically give a target no more than a few bruises, but higher-level ones can easily break bones.

Can be used in conjunction with Matter sigls to throw large objects;  this tactic is generally considered rather ineffective in practical terms, but is sometimes employed for intimidation purposes.

Slam

Type:  Triggered
Appearance: Pale yellow, faceted
Rank: D to D+

A basic self-defence sigl that compresses air into a cylinder before releasing it outwards in a concussive blast.  The effect is rather like firing an unloaded air gun, but much stronger.  Since the air immediately begins to disperse once no longer directed by the sigl’s essentia, the range is very short – a few feet at most.  Still, within that range, it’s effective enough at what it does, hitting with the force of a moderately strong punch.

Given its low rank and power, this is a surprisingly difficult sigl to make;  it requires far more finesse than most D-rank sigls and is correspondingly more expensive to buy.  However, despite this, it’s reasonably popular as an entry-level self defence sigl due to how safe it is for the wielder to use.  Motion sigls like knife and mighty blow can be just as dangerous to the wielder as their intended target, but with a slam sigl, it’s almost impossible to hurt yourself with it, making it a good choice for someone who you don’t really trust to carry around a lethal weapon.

Mighty Blow

Type:  Triggered
Appearance: Pale yellow, teardrop shape
Rank: D to C

Probably the easiest and most straightforward Motion sigl out there, this is widely believed to be the first Motion sigl ever created.  It boosts the kinetic energy in a strike, making it swing faster and hit harder.

This sigl is most effective when used on tools such as a hammer or axe, or on weapons such as a sword or club.  It can also be used to enhance a punch or a kick, but this is dangerous – the extra momentum means that the wielder’s hand or foot will strike with immense force and is quite likely to be injured in the process.  Even at D-rank this is likely to lead to broken bones unless the wielder is careful.

Can theoretically be made at any power, but in practice almost never made above C-rank due to the risk of self-damage to the wielder.

Jump

Type:  Triggered
Appearance: Pale yellow, teardrop shape
Rank: D to D+

Produces a surge of kinetic energy, allowing a wielder to throw themselves through the air.  The early models of jump sigl were designed as a pure telekinetic effect, but this tended to work rather badly, and modern designs are instead designed so as to enhance a high jump or long jump (hence the name), which drucrafters have found tends to lead to far fewer injuries.  It turns out that having someone jump and then boosting it (so that they fly 2x or 4x as far as their own muscles could take them) works much better than just telekinetically hurling them through the air.  Note however:  while this sigl lets you jump safely, it gives you no corresponding ability to land safely.  Injuries from use of this sigl are common.

Can be made at virtually any rank, but once you go above a rank of D+, the UK (as well as most other European countries) no longer permits you to call it a Jump sigl.  This is because at C-rank and up, this sigl lets a wielder jump so high and so far that they need a Featherfall sigl (or equivalent) to land without broken bones.  Any jumping sigl of rank C and above is legally required to be sold under a different name and with extensive safety warnings.

Featherfall

Type:  Triggered/Continuous
Appearance: Pale yellow, ovate
Rank: D+ to C

Slows down the wielder’s movement by transforming the kinetic energy of their momentum into free essentia.  The main use of this is to prevent damage from falls by reducing the wielder’s terminal velocity – a fall of five feet and a fall of five hundred feet both result in the same impact.

Comes in triggered and continuous models.  Triggered models are much more flexible, allowing the wielder to slow themselves to exactly the speed they want to, when they want to.  The problem is that this requires the wielder to realise that they’re in danger, stay calm enough to channel into the sigl, then maintain concentration and continue to channel into the sigl until they touch the ground – not necessarily an easy thing to do while in free-fall.  Many drucrafters have died due to not activating their featherfall sigls in time.

As such, continuous featherfall sigls are more popular.  Continuous featherfall works by ‘capping’ the wielder’s top speed, activating automatically if the wielder is moving sufficiently fast relative to their surroundings.  The exact size of the cap is chosen at time of creation, and there’s a long-running debate among Motion shapers as to the best figure to choose;  the higher the number, the less likely the sigl will activate when you don’t want it to, but the more a fall is going to hurt.

Continuous featherfall sigls have drawbacks.  First, they can’t tell the difference between moving fast by accident, and moving fast because you want to – as such, they have a habit of activating at the wrong time.  Second, they require a constant flow of essentia.  So long as the sigl is not actively working to slow the user, this flow is small, but even so, most wielders of featherfall sigls elect to take them off much of the time to avoid annoyances.

The third of the branches, Motion essentia grants control over kinetic energy.

Capabilities

Motion drucraft allows its wielder to convert essentia into kinetic energy, and back again.  To a tyro, this seems to happen out of nowhere;  only a drucrafter can sense that the energy is being converted, rather than being created or destroyed.

Motion drucraft can be conducted on a macro-scale or on a micro-scale.  Macro-scale Motion drucraft focuses on moving or stopping larger objects (‘larger’ in this sense meaning anything that can be seen by the human eye), while micro-scale Motion drucraft instead works to speed up or slow down the rate of motion of microscopic particles within an area, causing a change in temperature.  Although both come down to altering kinetic energy, they behave rather differently in practice.  Macro-scale Motion drucraft is sometimes referred to as telekinesis or attraction/repulsion, while the micro-scale equivalent has been called pyromancy/pyrokinesis or cryomancy/cryokinesis.

The kinetic energy created by a Motion sigl can be channelled outward into an object, or inwards into the wielder’s body.  The latter is far more hazardous, and as such inward-directed Motion sigls are less popular.

Since absolutely every kind of human activity involves some kind of movement, Motion essentia is commonly considered the most broadly useful of all the branches.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The main advantage of Motion essentia is, as mentioned, how omnipresent it is.  There aren’t many activities that don’t involve moving around, so Motion specialists rarely have difficulty finding applications for their branch.  It’s obviously highly applicable to travel, and is generally considered the most directly useful branch for combat – human beings have been using kinetic energy as a weapon since before recorded history, or for that matter the invention of language.  The amount of energy that can be produced with Motion sigls is fairly large compared to the other branches, allowing even relatively weak Motion sigls to be effective in a fight.

The main drawback to Motion drucraft is its range.  Just as with all other branches, Motion effects are produced at the sigl itself.  This isn’t so much of a problem with Light effects (since the radiation, once created, can be beamed straight outwards) and it’s generally not a huge drawback for Matter ones either (since if you’re crafting or repairing something you’re probably holding it in your hands anyway).  However, if you’re dumping large amounts of kinetic energy into a target, there are some obvious drawbacks to holding the object in question.  Motion shapers have learnt to work around this to some degree by creating sigls that project their effects over an area, but since the sigl’s essentia has to spread to cover the area in question, such a field always has a sharply limited range.

Motion drucraft has one other drawback;  it’s not the best at being subtle.  While micro-scale Motion drucraft can be done fairly invisibly, larger-scale applications tend to be crude and highly obvious.  As such, Motion drucraft tends to be viewed as something of a blunt instrument.

Associations

Motion essentia is associated with travel, invention, action, agency, and change.  Its associated celestial body is Mercury.

Distribution

The USA is the strongest country for Motion essentia by quite a ways:  they have the strongest individual Motion Wells and produce the most Motion sigls by volume.  Russia comes in second, closely followed by South Korea.  Singapore, Mongolia, Brazil, and the UK all have good Motion resources as well.