I have a soft spot for dated, broken transmutation engines.

This find from an antiques shop is so old that few records even remain of this type. They were called "needle machines", one of the many designs that existed when the veil of mysticism was finally lifting on transmutation--when alchemists became alchemical engineers. Long, poetic inscriptions are written on the barrel of this narrow tube as if it were sacred, but one can tell by the words that the author's heart was no longer in it. It takes only one reagent on one end of the bore and one output vial on the other.

We didn't have pistons or track, back then. We barely had gripper arms, and Van Berlo had not isolated the cardinals yet. Alcaro was a small shop at the time--instead of instruction tape, I turn this brass dial to advance the instruction pointer. Even so, the dial's teeth are ruined from age. Only four of them catch, limiting it to four instructions per arm.

But it's not useless. We used these back when we only knew gold and salt were elemental, to spin thread and restabilize salt. I gave it new proxies, new arms, new track, a bath of cleaning solvents--and the ancient needle sews one more time. 

How we think of production alchemy today, in the age of research desks, is how we thought of machines like this in the age of production cabinets. We speak of Critelli as a founder, but this makes me wonder how far back our legacy truly goes.

- Alchemist Kazyan, /u/StillNotABrick