((Amelina Peirgarten's results are artificially decreased in effectiveness because Marinoor "won" the contest first, we just decided to let Amelina Peirgarten pass also, because there was only 40 minutes difference between winner and runner up sending in their ticket.)) The first to walk up to the palace, presenting the requested vials of blood by the Imperial Academy was a Maraya by the name of Marinoor. While she was in the middle of presenting her vials, another stepped up, Duchess Amelina Peirgarten. Despite having only called for one Alchemist, the chief researcher Francis Kade was called down, who eventually made the call to do a double blind test, permitting both to enter. The two were bidden to follow in his footsteps, as he marched his way past all the interior checkpoints. The inner Palace walls had turned into a fortress, there were barrack tents for soldiers everywhere, and racks upon racks of weapons, as well as large storages of food. This made sense of course, as the Palace had its own food supply and cattle herds further beyond the inner courtyards. Up the stairs, past the great gilded halls, the two were continually caught by the gaze of the hulking Imperial Guard that marched by like living tanks, all of them staring, some of them with purple draconic eyes from behind their helmet visors, yet all letting them pass. The two even passed by the inner water court, where they could observe the Emperor sitting in what looked like a chair on wheels, worse for wear, shielded by a parasol and having tea with a group of women, only one of them the Duchess Amelina could identify as the Ithanian Ambassador, and one that looked like a Songaskian priestess, before a servant hurriedly passed by and closed one of the lattice windows from which they could peer into the inner water court. Eventually the duo arrived in the Palatial Alchemy labs. They were owned by Francis Kade, but his field was in engineering, not Alchemy, so he had made little use of it. Francis Kade explained that through some means, the Palace had acquired a small set of Velheim Artifacts that had some "curious properties". Francis Kade went into a deeply technical explanation about the concept of so-called "Demon-Totems", but lacking historical or cultural understanding, this information was soon lost to the Alchemists. Francis explained that their use of the Arken Vessel years back gave them a new idea: Based on the events of the Clicker Crisis, it was proven that some substances are capable of "vacuuming" Essences, and that other entities had already shown the capacity to vacuum all corruption Essences that caused a person to be a Vampire or Cahal away with enough force, but that they as mundane peopole had never encountered a force strong enough to do this in a reliable manner. He posited, that with these Demon Totems, they might have a strong enough source to achieve this, but that Magic would dilute the results, and that engineering could not connect to metaphysical power sources inside objects, so Alchemy had to be relied upon. Francis relinquished a Demon-Totem for each, and set them to work on their side of the Alchemy lab, while locking the lab behind them and watching across a reinforced window on a higher gallery. The duo went to work laying out their vials, choosing their subjects, and noting down some theories. It was known to both that Url blood rejected Vampiric blood, like the opposite of a magnet, and that infected blood had a modicum of essence in it to further the blood curse. They did not know what the Old Gods blood was for, but Francis Kade explained that the Demon-Totems would only respond to Old Gods faithful Velheim blood, so the Old Gods blood acted like a key. The two came up with entirely different methods: Marinoor used a combination of inverted pop-fruit, thirriac-dust and pre-heated fire-lingis to create a shockwave-less and fire-less explosion that would immediately cause a vacuum of air in a small area. She contained this eruption by mixing the bubble gland of a Vannhestia, with the venom drip of a Petralysk, that would cause a rapid expansion of bubbles around the test samples, which would then solidify through the Petralysk's venom and turn to a thin membranous-like stone substance. After applying the Velheim blood to the Totem (which sure enough drew out some visible ghostly entity from this hand-sized item), she quickly deployed the membranous dome, and caused the inner air to turn into a vacuum, devoiding it of sound and substance. Marinoor reasoned that by creating a Vacuum, the essence could not become aware of any other things inside it, as without sound, vibrations, heat, or even air, it had no other option but to interact with the samples. Sure enough, the entity interacted with the blood samples, turning them into what Marinoor would label "Egator-Blood", or the Essence equalizer. Indeed, when tested on an unfortunate Vampire and Cahal that the Palace had captured, throwing one of these samples anywhere on their body, even when covered with cloth or armor, caused them to instantly be cured as the very infected essence was seeped from their skin, sucking into the Egator-Blood, before becoming inert. Duchess Amelina's result took a bit longer to produce, and she found in the end, was less effective. While Marinoor opted for the vacuum technique, Duchess Amelina opted for the path-finding way, by creating a conduit for the essence to travel on. She used slightly infected blood along with Mavanthian salt-crystals and Pyrignis shavings to infuse the Mavanthian salt-crystals with the blood, and then cause the crystals to rapidly expand and grow through the Pyrignis. In theory, this process would be as simple as attaching the nugget to the end of a string, and then run the string between the samples and Demon-totem, so the entity had a means to travel along this crystallized string to its target. Indeed, the crystalline path glowed in a deep crimson-red, reflecting the light into a dazzling display as the Mavanthian salt expanded and grew. The Velheim blood was applied, drawing out the entity, but Duchess Amelina quickly ran into a problem. Whether it was the blood she applied that wasn't as strong as the sample of Marinoor, or because her method was flawed, the entity seemed to slow down while moving along the crystalline structure, as if it was losing interest, or the essence inside the salt crystals just weren't strong enough to draw its attention. Duchess Amelina was quick on her feet to come up with a solution and hurriedly mixed the Url blood with bubble gland of Vannhestia, causing a rapid eruption of bubbles around the Demon-Totem that started expanding and eventually enveloping the Crystal-thread. Indeed, the bubbles, when mixed with Url blood, caused a repelling effect on the Entity as it tried to get away from the Url blood, thus pushing forward along the crystalline path to get away from the Url Blood. It eventually reached the intended samples, but the somewhat chaotic manner caused the entity to only interact with some of the samples. When tested, the samples had the same efficacy as Marinoor's samples, that is to say, the effect was the same. But Duchess Peirgarten had less end-product samples, as some of her samples went wasted. As Marinoor had completed her samples first and effectively pioneered the solution, Amelina's samples were also called Egator-Blood, but Amelina could keep her samples. Francis Kade inspected the results and was pleased with them, but also regretted to inform the two that these were the only Demon-Totems they possessed, and that they were hard to find on account of being hundreds of years old from a time without records. He also then pointed to the Demon-Totems that were utterly destroyed by the process of drawing out their entity, the wood having turned to dust. Francis eventually told the two that the Palace would permit them to keep the samples to do with as they pleased, and that the outcome result of this was that "at least it was possible", they had never intended to make a full reproducible Vampire cure. Furthermore, Francis theorized that the samples were probably actually better than the Sacrosanct, in that these essence entities tended to linger. He theorized that the samples would be effective at preventing infection of Vampirism or Cahalism anywhere between 3 to 5 weeks, but also theorized that they should not get careless with it, as the entity in the Demon-Totem was not as strong as say, an Arken or Superior Void Entity or Greater Demon, and that these could easily negate the preventative effects. He added that curing should be as simple as either throwing the substance on the subject, or having them drink it, and then spit it out, with the curing process taking less than 5 seconds and being effectively painless. Duchess Amelina Peirgarten and Marinoor eventually left the Palace: Amelina Peirgarten with 3 samples of Egator-Blood, enough to cure 3 people, and Marinoor with 6 samples, both of them returning to their respective stronghold locations.
