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ID: 253166, 253167

Spoiler warning! This page contains details about Fallen London Actions.

From: Rely on your Esurient Smith

This is not his typical subject.

Unlocked with Experimental Object 1 - 100, 201 - 300 or 400+

Success

Useful insights

(see table below)

Description summary:
The description varies with Experimental Object

Experiment	Research Description
30	He reviews your work in a gloomy frame of mind. This is not his area, but he has a few suggestions.
40	The Esurient Smith helps with the heat treatment of engine parts and ensures the proper composition of alloys. The parts he makes are exquisitely fitted to minuscule tolerances, even though the finer points of mechanics sometimes challenge him.
210, 230, 250, 260	His comments on map work are always oblique and faintly threatening. Trying to place a street on the map makes him anxious. […] He repeatedly tells you that a mapped object has moved since it was written down.
240	The map work makes him sweat. He is fascinated with Parabola, but also terrified of it. And there is some specific landmark that he continually draws and erases again, a place that must and must not be found.
410	The Esurient Smith's notion of an experiment is to put a skewer through the empty centre of the Focused Albatross. What he draws out again is a corkscrew, beautifully wound, entirely bloodless.
420	The Esurient Smith loves the Warbler. Its heads, so appropriately enumerated! […] It does talk a great deal […] He tries resolving this by feeding the Warbler beetles dipped in honey. "An inventive solution!" […] "But I am not as peckish as you."
430 - 470	His comments on animals are typically focused on how they might best be carved, and the knives and forks required to produce an elegant fillet.
480	He admires the Scarlet Egg very much for its colouration, and suggests that all the other eggs littered around London would be improved if treated to a similar dye. The contents do not concern him.
485	The […] Smith makes much of the […] colouration ("like footsteps on dark water") and membrane ("the skin of the lost and forgotten") […] Later, you catch him attempting to carry the enormous egg out of your lab by himself. "It should go in the well," he stammers […]
490	The Esurient Smith carves a perfect round porthole […] This process exposes a fossilised eye, dead and glassy, the colour of malachite. Shamed, he replaces the removed bit of shell […] After twenty-four hours, the shell has become seamless again.
495	The Esurient Smith devotes himself to forging a knife and saw set appropriate to this particular surgery. […] he has been testing his success with a series of weasels. […] the last has transformed into... would you call that a kennel?
510 - 540, 610	The Esurient Smith's chief interest in bones has to do with the forging of bone saws. He is highly useful whenever you need to take a cross-section, and has less insight about any other matter.
810-830	Do you need core samples? How about cabochons, beautifully cut for insertion in the handle of a blade? The Smith can provide those, but little else.
910, 920, 950, 960, 990	He knows something about metals and their reaction to heat and cold. Other sorts of reaction are outside his ability.
930	The Esurient Smith tastes the drug, smacks his lips, and says "All right for some!" You only just stop him dumping the rest of the stuff into the waste bin.
940	He tips the glittering powder from side to side. "You know this isn't metal?"
970	He glances at some of the samples you've taken from the egg. "Not metallic," he says.
980	The Esurient Smith studies the metal of the coin for a good long time, scowling. "Behaves like ore sometimes," he remarks. "It will have been refined and stamped into this coin."
1010, 1020	All his equations and proofs centre on the applicability of the number seven. What is its mystical meaning? Can it be substituted for every constant? When he gets stuck, he writes the number again and again, and then lights the page on fire
1030	Every number is seven. […] The question you are asking will be answered when you have turned out your head. Turn out your head. Turn it out! Like a sack! You stop him in the midst of a serious attempt to pull your ears off your skull. […]
1040, 1045	For once, he does not mention seven, or blades. He does murmur a good deal about the lights who are coming, emissaries, arriving even now in the Neath; those who come before the law, and wear its feet.
1050	The Esurient Smith looks at the paper […] "Masonry is not my line," […] "But I have a brother." This is news to you. The Esurient Smith is not the sort to mention family members. In fact, he does not seem like the sort to have family members.
1210	Plants displease him. They are not difficult or interesting to cut, it seems.
1320	Artefacts displease him. They are not difficult or interesting to cut, it seems.
1340	The Esurient Smith contemplates the ushabti in silence. He nods to himself, then begins to test various implements on the creature's stone 'skin'.
1350	[…] None of his blades so much as scratch the surface […] the damage happened to this material before it was made into a cuirass […] once the surface of something much larger, only recently cut down to protect a human-sized body […] a great effort just to shape it.
1610	A boat can be a kind of weapon, the Esurient Smith muses, if driven at the right speed...

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•  You've gained (⁵/₃ × Equipment Level) x Laboratory Research