The following glossary defines all the terms and rules for how alchemy works in TT. For a basic overview see Alchemy Basics.
Administer: You m ust administer a potion (but not an elixir) for it to take effect. This takes one hand, your concentration (as per spellcasting) and 5 seconds per ingredient. This means that mixtures are no faster to apply than separated ingredients. You are combining the various ingredients, and combining them in the target, to form the effect of the potion - this is something you are able to do, only with ingredients you have prepared yourself, and makes extensive use of your experience with their exact properties. Elixirs should be applied instead. You may administer a potion to someone who has been HALTed, if they choose not to resist.
Apply: An elixir must be applied in order to take effect. This takes at least 5 seconds and one empty hand, or actually opening a container and consuming/dabbing on the contents (or convincingly miming the same) - whichever you prefer. You should then read the OOC label, and take the appropriate effect.
Base: One exotic ingredient. An incredibly pure, clear liquid suitable for conditioning with a magical or spiritual effect. If it is conditioned, it will remain so for the next 5 minutes or so, and must either be administered or prepared as an elixir in that time in order to remain effective. After 5 minutes passes, it will revert to being normal base.
Condition: You condition a base by exposing it to a magical or spiritual effect. Casting a spell on it, holding it in close proximity, etc. The resulting conditioned base will retain properties of the effect used to condition it, and may have wide-ranging applications in exotic potions. If you are working with conditioned base in the lab (for example, making exotic elixirs), you will need to have your lab near a source of the effect you condition it with. This may mean moving the source, or even the lab.
Consume: To apply or administer an elixir or potion as appropriate. In any case, it is used up, and you should implement the appropriate effects.
Container: Something which will contain and keep uncontaminated an ingredient, mixture or elixir. A small bottle of liquid is the most obvious choice, but a pot of powder or cream, or even a capsule of gas could be used. The physrep for something alchemical. Never drink from a physrep you are not certain is safe.
Elixir: A potion which has been prepared and stabilised to have a single effect, which anyone may apply. This is the archetypal 'healing potion' that an adventurer might take with them. Elixirs require twice the amount of each ingredient to make than the corresponding potion; for example, a potion of PURGE 4 ALCHEMICAL requires one Red Cobalt and one Bilious Sap. An elixir of PURGE 4 ALCHEMICAL would require two of each, but can still be made by someone who can only make size 2 preparations. They require careful preparation, and most alchemists are able to prepare far more ingredients than they are able to turn into elixirs. Even if the combination of ingredients is capable of producing more than one potion, a single effect must be chosen when the elixir is created, and this should be written on an OOC label which is attached to the container the elixir is stored in. The label should be folded or inserted such that it cannot be accidentally read, and may only be read by someone who can call RECOGNISE ALCHEMICAL. The supply of elixirs is heavily restricted as a metagame consideration, to ensure that an alchemist is required to be present to give the full benefit of alchemy.
Exotic elixir: An elixir which has been prepared to have the effect of an exotic potion. May be applied as normal, but will have a nonstandard effect. The OOC label attached to this elixir may (with ref permission) not correctly represent the effects of the potion, but they are what someone who calls RECOGNISE ALCHEMICAL will discover about it without further investigation, and what anyone who applies the elixir should obey until and unless instructed otherwise by a ref. Please involve a ref if you are interacting with an elixir you have reason to believe might have a deliberatly misleadling label.
Exotic ingredient: Something which falls outside standard alchemy, but still has a use. May be prepared and used in an exotic potion or an exotic elixir. Acquiring and using these is at ref discretion, and may well form a plot point. Base is an exotic ingredient, and every potion must contain at least one reagent, as well as any exotic ingredients you are able to find and make use of. This puts an absolute limit of three exotic ingredients in a potion. At ref discretion, it may very occasionally be possible to prepare an exotic ingredient during uptime, but never assume that this will be possible. Examples include troll's hearts, unusual herbs and conditioned base.
Exotic potion: A potion which contains at least one exotic ingredient. It will need to be researched before use, and the effects are not guaranteed to remain constant over time. In general, exotic potions are highly situational, and are researched in order to deal with a specific situation or plot, or in order to make best use of an exotic ingredient which has come into your posession. They are not necessarily power-balanced with other potions, and might be highly effective, but in exchange, their applicability is limited in both time and scope. This is a metagame restriction to prevent power-creep in the alchemy system, and you should work with the refs to find a satisfactory IC explanation for it.
Ingredient: Component of a potion. Something an alchemist has prepared, and can make use of. Your ingredients are personal to you, and only you may use them (unless prepared as an elixir). The fact that the ingredients are tied to you, personally, is a metagame restriction, to prevent power transfer and the resulting imbalances, and you should work with the refs to find a satisfactory IC explanation for the result.
Lab: You lab is the area in which you prepare your alchemy. You are assumed to own or have access to all of the equipment you need, with the possible exception of those for exotic alchemy. You may move your lab around over downtime without too much trouble, but won't generally have access to it during the course of interactives. You may be inconvenienced if you blow it up.
Mixture: Several ingredients stored together in one container. May be administered as any potion containing precisely those ingredients, or combined with other ingredients (or even mixtures) when administering. The only benefits to making a mixture is removing the need to find several different containers before you can administer a potion.
Poison: Specifically, an ingestive poison. This is a potion (or elixir) which may be administered to an item of food or drink. This will have a single effect, which will kick in a while after someone consumes at least a third of the poisoned item (when a ref notices). The item will respond to DETECT ALCHEMICAL while poisoned, but doesn't otherwise appear abnormal. Cautious consumption while explicitly looking out for poisoning may (ref discretion) result in the character detecting the poisoning by taking a reduced version of it. After someone has consumed enough to be affected, the rest will be inert. The poison will go away after 30 minutes, even if not consumed. Don't (OOC) add anything to food or drink someone else may consume without knowing about it, for safety (and to prevent ruining perfectly good drink). You may pour these down someone's throat, if they are unconscious or under the effects of FREEZE, but someone who is HALTed may resist.
Potion: An alchemical effect. Also the recipe for an alchemical effect, and the physical ingredients which will accomplish it. It is possible to create different potions from the same combination of ingredients sometimes, and the potion generally refers to the effect you are trying to create. (Which spell you are trying to cast, as it were). A potion need not be stored in a single container, but all of its ingredients will need to be combined at the target in order to accomplish its effect. It is not proper to refer to an elixir as a potion, but people do so anyway.
Prepare: Refers either to the lab work required to refine reagents from cheaply and readily available materials, or to the work required to make an exotic ingredient ready for alchemical use, or to the work required to refine and stabilise an elixir from already prepared ingredients. This also includes putting the result inside a container. In any case, the result will lose potence and become unusable within a week. You may be able to recover and reuse an exotic ingredient if a preparation containing it decays, but this is at ref discretion. Preparation will not cost you any money unless exotic ingredients are involved, in which case any cost is at ref discretion (but will be unusual).
Reagent:One of the five universal alchemical ingredients: Red Cobalt, Bilious Sap, Cerulean Sand, Actinic Fog and Ferrous Tar. Exotic ingredients are not reagent.
Research: The process by which an alchemist learns to prepare an exotic ingredient, and to create exotic potions or elixirs from them. Timing and expense is at ref discretion. Conveying your discoveries to another alchemist is not as simple as just writing down the ingredients used, but you will be able to massively speed up the process of them doing their own research. It may also be possible to discover new (non-exotic) potions, and have them added to the main lists - but this should be viewed as the gradual rounding out of the system, within the scope already established, and not a sensible thing for an alchemist to focus their energy on. You should expect responses on this front to be slow, since they will need to be considered in light of long-term game balance.
Venom: Something nasty which is applied to a blade, spike, or other weapon. Preferably one which looks as though it might pierce the skin. The potion description will let you call VENOM for the next strike (or several strikes) with that weapon. When you call VENOM, you should first add two degrees of damage to the call - so if you normally strike for HALF, you instead call VENOM DOUBLE . You may not use VENOM on a weapon with which your natural damage call would be NOTHING, nor may you stage down to NOTHING (you may, however, call VENOM TOUCH if you have a relevant skill). Some venoms will have additional lasting effects, these will kick in after the encounter is over, and will only ever apply if you lost hitpoints to the call with VENOM attached (or took a VENOM TOUCH to an unarmoured location). You should check with a ref after combat, and see if there are any lasting effects. Likewise you should always tell a ref after combat if you used a venom with any lasting effects. A venom will last for 5 minutes after being applied to a weapon, or a specified number of blows, whichever comes first. Remember that blows with the VENOM call may not be NEGATEd by DAC. If you are briefed or statted as being resistant or immune to venom, you will subtract one or two degrees of damage from the associated call, and should also mention it to the ref when checking for lasting effects (in general, resistant will reduce the duration to just the following 5 minutes (encounter), and immune will remove any lasting effects).
A list of the effects available with different combinations of reagents can be found here.