The Alchemique Dagger
- Alicia Adams
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
The shape of this nimble needle dagger is based on an original housed in the Pitt-Rivers Museum. The super-thin blade makes for a light main gauche weapon at 335g, which moves with speed and elegance despite its comprehensive ambidextrous hand protection.
The blade has a slight flex, as the dagger is designed for measured drilling and controlled partner play. Its broader ricasso makes for a comfortable place to rest the thumb, aiding in angulation.
The dagger is named for the intriguing artwork engraved onto it with chisel and burin. This is based on an original artwork by Gothic CY Chan, inspired by the images of the Hand of the Philosopher or "La Main Alchemique", which can be seen in late 16th-Century alchemical texts.
Please see our pricing structure for an idea of what a similar dagger would cost.
∴ Specs ∴
Total length: 42cm
Blade length: 30cm from cross
Grip length: 8cm
Grip and pommel: 11.5cm
Quillon span: 21cm
Weight: 335g
Point of Balance: At cross
Ambidextrous
Blunt edges & rounded tip
Fencing safe flex
∴ Notes ∴
The hand-forged and heat-treated guard and pommel are antiqued to a deep grey finish. The guard comprises straight, square-section quillons, which flare slightly to the terminals, and a steel sail with hand-engraved alchemical imagery.
The blade features a broad ricasso section with hand-engraved linework, which ends in downward curls to either side of a needle-thin blade.
The pommel is a rounded cylinder, finished with a steel peening block.
The oak grip is wrapped first in linen thread and then in oxblood red kidskin.
∴ Gallery ∴
∴ A Beckoning blade ∴
You sit alone in the dimly-lit study, one leg up on the cluttered table, and the other crossed over it. Rocking back in your chair, you turn your dagger over in your hand, and survey the space around you.
The warm, dark cellar is a mess of alembics and retorts, braziers and crucibles, stacks of tattily bound books, and sheafs of ink-stained parchment, weighed down by a mortar and pestle. The swinging oil lamp illuminates scrawls and scratches across the plaster walls, symbols and numbers dancing in the half light. You take in a deep breath of warm, sulphur-tinged air, and sigh.
Tomorrow it could all be over. You’ll need to pack up, steal away in the dead of night, move on to some other town, some other patron, who doesn’t know enough about your work to feel threatened by it.
Your fingers tighten around the dagger as you think of the note you found. A threat disguised as a request, pinned to the cracked wood of the door. A demand that you cease your route of enquiry, sealed with the mark of Guild. And you know what happens to alchemists who disobey the Guild. They disappear, rendered to nothing, with all the skill of sublimation.
Yet to turn back now would be a crime against knowledge itself. You are so close. So close to a discovery that will change everything. But are you ready to pay the price for such knowledge? Are you ready to fight for it?
You lay the dagger down on the crowded table, crack your bony knuckles, and begin the ritual. On a scrap of parchment, you draw the usual symbols to prompt your meditation: a beckoning hand, urging you on in your enquiry, whatever the cost. The crown and moon for saltpetre. The key for common salt. The flask for transformation.
Your quill pauses for a moment over the thumb of the outstretched hand. You would usually draw the sun here, but it doesn’t seem right in perhaps your darkest hour. A smile flickers across your pale face, before you dip your pen and firmly ink the final symbol: not a sun, but a blade, slender and needle-sharp. The alchemical symbol of division. Of severance. Of cutting away what fails to serve.
