I tend to go in depth in things that I want to explain, or actually have the facts to explain it.
Had been thinking of implementing Alchemy into my story (but its not the MC who uses it)
For those who have this in their story, how did you guys write it? When I think of Alchemy I'd immediately think potions and homunculuses.
And that's probably not all of there is to it.
If we're talking about medieval Alchemy, the common components are:
1. Transmutation
2. Extraction
3. Reduction
4. Combination
Transmutation is the act of changing something into something else. Such as for example, turning lead into gold. Most people you ask will say that it is impossible, but it's actually not. After all, to turn one element into another, all you need to do is change the number of its protons. Knock 3 protons from lead, it becomes gold. However, to scientifically do this, you need a massive amount of energy and a particle accelerator, to the point that the cost of making the gold far outstrips the value of the gold itself. Perhaps the philosopher's stone was not an actual stone, but a machine or substance capable of knocking off protons from elements. If you want to make alchemy magic, then based off this info, you could make it so that transmutation requires a massive sacrifice.
Extraction is the act of extracting something from something else. Often, this involves removing the things you don't need so that you can acquire the things that you do need. The smelting of iron is this form of alchemy. You use high heat to remove the slag (unneeded materials) from the ore in order to get the iron. Depending on your technology, you could get higher percentage of the available iron, as the slag will always contain a small amount of iron. If you want to make this magical, you can make it so that the user's mastery of Extraction increases the efficiency of it.
Reduction is basically the act of reducing something to acquire the proper quality or substance. For example, the creation of Aztec fake gold. What they did was, they allowed gold and copper together. Then, they use heat to reduce the copper from the alloy inside a solution of aluminium sulfate. The result is a metal that looks like gold, behaves like gold, but is fairly lighter than gold. If you want to magic this, you can make it so that the user can simply remove whatever they don't want.
Combination is the act of putting two things together. Such as for example, fake gold. The Aztec fake gold involved combining copper and gold. However, the fake gold used in the American West were basically lead plated in gold. That was why people would bite gold coins to see if it was real, because lead is softer than gold. To this day, athletes still bite their gold medal to ensure that it's real gold. If you can see teeth mark in it, that's gold-plated lead. If you want to magic this, do like that pen-apple-pineapple guy.
The above is the basics.
Alchemy is actually a lot more expansive, but for the sake of writing, Ai-chan thought it would just confuse you. Medieval alchemy included processes such as Calcination, Solution, Sublimation, Congelation, Digestion, Separation, Multiplication, Fixation, Distillation, Ceration and Projection. Creating living things was never the goal of medieval alchemy, but we owe it to them that we found out a lot about microorganisms and microscopic life. Perhaps the idea of homunculus came from some alchemist finding out that the goo they made moved over time because they've basically made a petri dish without knowing what a petri dish was.