may 1st 2023
I. Summary
The buoyancy elixir can be consumed orally, in either solid or fluid form. Once ingested, the user begins to expand. Air or fluid taken in through the esophagus is held in the body's fat stores and the stomach, rather than being expelled. Inhaled air is stored only in body fat.
As overall size increases, any bones and ligaments which exceed a particular stress threshold are dimensionally shifted to an adjacent plane, allowing the body to continue expanding without restriction. Additional skin tissue sometimes appears, likewise the product of planar shift.
II. Background
Development of the buoyancy elixir was a combination of various areas of research. First was the distillation of pink starcap mushrooms (Amanita stellaluna). In their raw form, these can cause bloating of the abdomen in mammals, alongside visual and aural irregularities. Boiling the mushrooms beforehand allows them to be eaten with no side effects. Efforts at recombination, aimed at isolating the psychoactive properties, instead intensified the bloating effect (especially in combination with alcoholic beverages).
The second factor was study of the water retention elixir, described masterfully by K. A. Stemel. To summarize, this elixir causes the user to temporarily retain any consumed water in their body's fat stores, resulting in a temporary increase in size and weight. Study of the elixir's mechanism proved difficult, but by no means impossible.
The third and final factor was the planar theory of Seamus Apyda, Companion Alchemist, particularly as it pertained to the alteration of mass undergone by Changelings (especially Lycans). I began to wonder if certain parts of a living being could be dimensionally shifted without otherwise damaging the surrounding tissues, and whether the mechanism of the water retention elixir might provide a means of targeting one part over another. Both of these hypotheses proved accurate, after a fashion.
III. Observations
Proportional reduction of the starcap extract in the buoyancy elixir's recipe produces something more like the original water retention elixir, though with added tissue growth. In addition, the planar shift of new fat stores and skin tissue showed a surprising side effect: existing organs temporarily grew in size and effectiveness in at least one test subject. This effect was not seen in the ordinary buoyancy elixir. A colleague (name withheld) suggested that the added weight caused the organs to develop to cope with the strain - the heart specifically enlarging and strengthening, to allow blood flow in newly engorged fat and muscle tissues. Whether this is subconsciously influenced by the mind of the test subject, or whether it is an innate property of the new flesh, remains to be seen.
The additional tissues generally conform to the user's original tissues. Experimenation has shown that the newly formed skin, fat, and blood vessels are a close match to that of the original. Thus a user of the elixir with blue skin (such as a Troll) will grow additional blue skin; the primary difference is that the new flesh is of a paler hue than the old, likely due to its lack of exposure to Sunlight, or other environmental factors.
As Morlocks (Homo novus) do not store body fat in the same fashion as the other mammalian and reptilian species, the elixir is much less effective in Morlock users. The stored air seems mostly confined to the stomach, which can stretch more on its own than the abdomens of Gnomes, Humans, et cetera. Likewise, the greater flexibility of their skeletons means that planar shift in either direction is not usually observed. Further experiments are needed, though it is difficult to find willing subjects in the Le'varri homeland.
The elixir shows that it is possible to selectively target the body's fat stores for transmutation. As other processes are known to affect the user's metabolism - for example, speeding up movement and reflexes at the expense of accelerated aging - the recombination of a modified buoyancy elixir with a metabolic elixir or spell could produce a means of rapidly changing one's weight, in a more permanent fashion than the temporary focalization effect of a growth or diminution elixir. ■