Sorry I'm just going to skip over 143 pages of reading material, ask my question.

Is the alchemy system going to include true chemistry?
I would think it would... but that's not what I'm really seeing from what others are saying.

While I was gone for 10 years I kind of fell in love with real chemistry.

So I was wondering, could we make true chemistry preparations with the alchemy skill?
I know this probably wasn't planned, so I'll just dive in with a large number of useful cross-uses and go from there.

Ashes burned white, become potash (KoH) and can be used as an alkaline substance, an alkaline substance can be a contact poison, as well as used for the preparation of herbs, bar soap when prepared one way, liquid soap when prepared a different way, unstable explosives. Reacts with certain metals such as aluminum, copper, brass, and bronze. Reacts with water, and will cause it to boil when stirred together. Non-reactive to steel and glass. Burns flesh, and becomes an alkaline solution capable of burning flesh and eating away at peoples bodies much the acid trap does.

Chicken eggs, or boobrie eggs, can be used in cooking, also the vitamins in the yolk can be used in part as a burn remedy to accelerate healing, can be mixed well with vegetable oils to produce mayonaisse, can be added to soap to produce a slicker bar, the shells can be boiled in water, painted, and glazed and used for cheap artistrydecorations in place of ivory. Egg yolks can also be used to make egg tempura, mix it up with some pigment and you can paint a wall or a statue, or a fresco in your home? Outside your home? The possibilities.

Mayonaise can be used to make food, can be also used to process cleaned skins, hides, pelts into finished leather. Takes longer than traditional tanning solutions, and requires aggressive intervals of regular kneading in a waterproof bag. Possibly for this reason it teaches more? Hides/skins/pelts need to be wrung out and stretched to dry afterwards. Mayonaise can be added to soap to create a creamier, silky bar.

Salt, usually people mine for salt, but as the Crossings is near a large body of salt water, salt water could be scooped into buckets and poured into a pyramid for drying. Once dry it would become salt crystals. This can be then ground into fine salt crystals and added to a soap recipe to make a hard bar of soap, or to a salt cellar at a dinner table, or a cooking recipe.

Charcoal, made from burning select logs or sticks in a closed container or steel barrel, also creates some ash/potash this way. Charcoal vines created from the sticks can be used for sketching, practicing artistry by sketching buildings, people, places (like the bank), and note taking (instead of a stylus), drawing schematics on paper. Ground Charcoal can be added to soap to produce a black soap. Too much charcoal will produce black bubbles, it can also be used to make unstable explosives.

Soap, is glycerin and is used in making explosives. This is why all natural soaps are shipped via ground. I happen to love soapmaking as my 'new' hobby of 3 years now, and it's led me to learn a lot about chemistry. Soap is created from a mixture of potash, water, oils, and practically anything can be added to it at about 3% to produce different effects, you can artistry soap to make gorgeous irridescent bars with different pigments. If you catch Sircha or Racha in game I'd be happy to talk your ear off about soapcraft and chemistry until I get pulled away by my fiance' and house duties, or until you run! My hobby is orientated towards 'practical chemistry' and I watch a lot of videos on how to do a number of interesting and easy things!

Glow in the dark mushrooms, likely found in mining tunnels these can be dried and ground down into glow in the dark pigment, which comes in green (most common), some separation done to produce yellow, also violet, blue, and then with some neon gas added to blue you can get the color red. Then you can add some water, put it in a small glass vial, wrap a leather cord around it and now you have a glow in the dark pendant necklace to light your way around dark places without torches or magic, the glow goes out after about 45 minutes but you just shake it and it'll come back for a shorter and shorter duration of time, it'll need to recharge in natural sunlight. Now of course I suppose you could get a larger glass globe or vial and attach it to the top of a staff, or maybe in a shield on your arm, if you don't like the pendant idea.

Explosives, okay so this is moving more towards 17th century, buuut, I've seen lots of 17th century stuff like orlogs in game so I'm not too concerned about 'breaking' anything. So explosives would be stuff like dynamite that you could use to blast rock. It would be dangerous to use of course, but if you got trapped somewhere it might be a good way to get out of a bind, or kill yourself.

That's just what I had floating around in my head at the moment. I'm not going to go into what I've learned about mead-crafting, beer crafting, and wine crafting just yet, or the cheeses and yogurts but I'm feeling a little tired from writing all this.

~Sircha/Racha you know you love me!