Sir, you are describing a production cabinet.

When an Alchemist graduates from the Imperial University, they are mostly doomed to House politics, using suggestions and alliances-within-alliances to enact plans to get resources, and oh my, one is near the end of their life and taking vitae before they can even begin work on their opus magnum. It's tempting to decline it all and become freelance.

I understand, you want a very small machine but are willing to make concessions for the physical manipulators of the transmutation engine. That is a production cabinet.

Tempting, but an illusion. One serves a master as harsh and fickle as any house noble--the almighty guilder. Without House resources, you are at mercy of whoever requires your services that day.

I know that you want a very fast machine. Alchemists can still do that in a production cabinet, and it's worth noting that other clients do not contact me for my skill in speed, in which case...no? Very well. Area minus machinery, if you insist...

It brings me here, to an almost-nonsensical machine, which I must do because that is the client's wish, and the client's wish is what the almighty guilder asks of me. And so I build.

We are taught that by mastering transmutations of the alchemical primes, the alchemist masters the universe. But while I sit in the dark, placing unprogrammed arms, I have to wonder if that is true. Maybe I am not the master, but the servant. Party tricks for scraps of guilder.

But I did just turn a shadow of a shiver and a whisper of warmth into a huge box of fireworks, so maybe I'm overthinking it.

- Alchemist Kazyan, /u/StillNotABrick