Journals of Vershak Djen

Description

Author: Vershak Djen

Source: Aspect Book Wood pp. 66-67

The Journals of Vershak Djen are the personal diaries of an Exalted sorcerer-engineer, dated to the early days of the Dragonblooded Shogunate, who was directing a project to extend the lifespans of the Dragonblooded. The Journals are kept in the libraries of the Heptagram, and while only fragments survive these are still read (despite difficulty in unravelling the theories and technologies employed) as part of studies into the combination of medicine,, biogenesis, and magitech engineering.

Excerpts

"Another setback today. We lost Xiao in an uncontrolled Essence eruption.

I think we are going to need to make signifi cant progress on the vim inhibitor and Essence feed designs before we can make this damnable thing work. If I had a talent of jade for every test subject that’s burst on the platform like a tick I would simply buy my immortality.

All jollity aside, I have reached the limits of the current system and they are simply insufficient. The deveneration chambers require a certain amount of power just to start the humeric oscillators turning. Below that level, the bloody thing is just a big stone bed with some unusually pointy accoutrements. The problem arises in the move from active status to functional. At 8 motes per second, the dais is active but dormant. It has power, but not enough to generate the fields necessary to engage the revivification coils and begin the wear-reversal process. At 9 motes, there is vim-field bleed-through of catastrophic proportions. Given that, our recourse is either to discover some means of harnessing Essence at the submote level, thereby allowing us to calibrate the total vim feed much more accurately (strictly impossible given our understanding of the nature of Essence), or to increase the sensitivity of the vim inhibitors by an order of magnitude or more. Our choice is clear. We must redevelop the vim inhibitors to function at a much finer degree of sensitivity. My will to do so, however, flags.

I have been at this project for almost nine years now, and I am not convinced mastery of such things is possible. Furthermore, I am less and less convinced that it is right. Three hundred years is not so bad, really. We certainly have it far better than the mortals. Do we really need to have more if it means thwarting the will of the Dragons themselves? I don’t know. The others will no doubt curse me for a superstitions fool, and no doubt, I will laugh with them and fold. Duty is duty, and this pays the bills better than lancing boils in an apothecary.

Whatever happens, I’m going to need more slaves. We wasted eight of them on that last test, and Xiao besides. And I’ll be damned if I’m cleaning up the lab myself."