A Beginner’s Guide to Drucraft #31: Sigl Recycling (I)

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.