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Description
Ld. Prof. Fensworthy Mettylbourne-Dremm was convinced that there was something unusual about the meteorific stone that he had uncovered near Puddleston-on-Ur, and had hastened back to his country estate at Beffleridge Kyn to test his hypothesis. The find also afforded him an excellent opportunity to test his Focalised Plasm Gauntlet, which utilised the recently-rediscovered alchemic sciences to compel a tightly compressed beam of Bell's Plasma, excited to incandescence by passing through two sets of orthorhombic crystals (the which had been bombarded with an alchemically-lixivated admixture of cadmia, white vitriol, and aqua-regia), to generate a controlled burn of the stone's superstrata. In theory, at least, the device would eliminate weeks of experimental probings. (As depicted in this re-enactment in the studios of photogryphist Luxet Tenebrae.) And in fact, the Gauntlet worked as brilliantly as he had supposed. The resultant pale pinkish smoke rising in silky folds from the 'meteor's battered surface told the Ld. Prof. all he needed to know: this was something so utterly new, so completely unexpected, and so thoroughly, delightfully unique in the world of Science that the Ld. Prof. became giddy at the thought of the acclaim and laudatory approbations that would shortly be his. Could actual canonisation by the Imperial Academy be far behind? As history came to understand, of course, the Ld. Prof. should have remained attentive to the Puddleston Stone a bit longer, and not have left it unattended upon his workbench, where it began to glow softly, yet forebodingly, from deep within its rocky skin...

Description
Ld. Prof. Fensworthy Mettylbourne-Dremm was convinced that there was something unusual about the meteorific stone that he had uncovered near Puddleston-on-Ur, and had hastened back to his country estate at Beffleridge Kyn to test his hypothesis. The find also afforded him an excellent opportunity to test his Focalised Plasm Gauntlet, which utilised the recently-rediscovered alchemic sciences to compel a tightly compressed beam of Bell's Plasma, excited to incandescence by passing through two sets of orthorhombic crystals (the which had been bombarded with an alchemically-lixivated admixture of cadmia, white vitriol, and aqua-regia), to generate a controlled burn of the stone's superstrata. In theory, at least, the device would eliminate weeks of experimental probings. (As depicted in this re-enactment in the studios of photogryphist Luxet Tenebrae.) And in fact, the Gauntlet worked as brilliantly as he had supposed. The resultant pale pinkish smoke rising in silky folds from the 'meteor's battered surface told the Ld. Prof. all he needed to know: this was something so utterly new, so completely unexpected, and so thoroughly, delightfully unique in the world of Science that the Ld. Prof. became giddy at the thought of the acclaim and laudatory approbations that would shortly be his. Could actual canonisation by the Imperial Academy be far behind? As history came to understand, of course, the Ld. Prof. should have remained attentive to the Puddleston Stone a bit longer, and not have left it unattended upon his workbench, where it began to glow softly, yet forebodingly, from deep within its rocky skin...