time for a well-deserved alchemization break

[bramblepatch]

The Punch-Card Alchemy Meme
a meme of ridiculous inventory shenanigans



So. You've been around the block a few times by this point, right? Picked up some sweet loot? Want an upgrade on your equipment? Just need to take some time off and mess around with what appears to be an unspeakably advanced 3D printer that operates on pure whimsy thinly disguised as Boolean logic?

Yeah, I thought so. Shit, let's be Santa.

We're (loosely) working off of Homestuck's alchemy system here, although honestly I'm not going to ask you to mess around with the comic's alchemy phernalia or worry about grist costs or anything. I mean, if you want to go dive into the mspa wiki, be my guest? But in brief:

Punch-card alchemy allows you to create new items by combining attributes of existing items. This does not consume the originals, so feel free to use the same items as many times as you like.

It's not an exact science - the punch cards that encode the items don't carry a great deal of data, and what qualities get coded for is kind of arbitrary. Usually you'll end up with something that either combines the functionality of both items, or that "reskins" one item to look like the other. Sometimes the features are things that are thematically associated with the originals, rather than actually being present; combining things with a wizard statue might give the result a wizardly aesthetic, or might just straight up make the result magical.

The resulting item is determined by approximately equal parts symbolic bullshit, rule of cool, and the fact that it's really funny sometimes to make totally useless garbage by accident. Also, give your new equipment totally cool punny names. That's how you can tell it's a valuable and unique piece of shit.

How this is going to work:

1. Post your top level! Include a brief (or not so brief, I'm not the meme police) run-down of your character's current inventory. Unique items, practical supplies, useless junk that's collected in the bottom of their bag, whatever the character has easy access to. Give us something interesting to work with!
   
   
2. Tag around and suggest amazing - or terrible - combinations of other people's items. Or combine something they have with something from your own inventory! Go into as much or as little detail about the new equipment as you like.
   2a. Repeat, as desired. You know that impractical sword and that dumb-looking gun would make an exponentially stupider-looking awesome gunblade.
   
   
3. Congratulations on your cool new stuff! Time to admire it, or test it out, or just boggle vacantly at these shenanigans.

Comments

[hazardlight]

Suit yourself.

[She's just gonna. Crack that thing open while he fusses with combining the cards the other way.

Mmm. Spicy. This was not a mistake and you can't prove she regrets this.]

So what are you trying to do, here?

[fingersandteeth]

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure. Combining for the sake of combining, I suppose.

[hazardlight]

Hm.

[She glances through his stuff and combines her Dr Pepper with his Spell Tag to produce a bottle of Dr Plasm, a consumable that boosts ghost-type moves. And presumably manifestations too? Ghost stuff.]

[fingersandteeth]

Oh nice. That's way better than these.

[He holds up the Dr Pepper-flavored chips.]