Hadean Lands: Barosy - Walkthrough by metzomagic.com

Q. How can I gain access to the Barosy?
A. If you go to Grand Stair, Bottom and take note of this excerpt from the description:

We should have found something on our travels that can work wonders with brass mechanisms. Do you remember what it is? Well...

> recall clock tincture (found in Exoscaphe, cabinet sealed with white-fuse)
"WINFIELD'S CLOCK TINCTURE (to repair or realign clockwork): This ritual requires an
environment of precision and order. Place a measure of alum into the bound, and perform the
Sealing of Shamash. Add perfect mud; speak a syllable of counterbalance; add sublime spirit,
then a token of brass. Conclude with the Major Animus. The resulting potion embodies
perfection in brass, and will induce perfection in any brass mechanism it touches."

Note that: "The resulting potion embodies perfection in brass, and will induce perfection in any brass mechanism it touches." Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch to make that association, but I think it's the only way we're going to get that brass lock open :-\ First we'll need to make perfect mud:

> recall perfect mud (found in Deep Stacks, look through oculus)
"THE SYNTHESIS of JACKSON-MUD (a perfect balance of elemental earth and water): Begin
with a medium of simple sand, and the Hermetic sealing. Invoke the
Crystalline Tempering. Add one of the pure elements to the retort, and speak
the word of entension; then add the other, and speak the word of emulgence."

That requires elemental earth, and elemental water, which you can find in the Observatory. So to make perfect mud: Click here to show/hide ritual steps

And we also need to make sublime spirit, the recipe of which can be found in the Observatory Alcove, South:

> recall sublime spirit
"THE SYNTHESIS of SUBLIME SPIRIT (the eighth distilled essence of mineral oil): Place mineral
oil and nickel into a retort. (Thin pieces of nickel are best, as the surface area must be large.)
Invoke the sealing, followed by a word of entension (to prevent the oil from igniting). Introduce
elemental fire into the retort to begin the distillation. You may then easily extract the desired
fractions."

The instructions state: "Thin pieces of nickel are best, as the surface area must be large." So I ran the nickel rod through the wire-drawer first. You can create the elemental fire easily too:

That does it, but note that we have de-phlogisticated the gold rod in the process. Oh well. But now we can finally perform the clock tincture synthesis ritual. You can use the brass pin as a token, and that thick key from the kiln you're always carrying around is perfect for creating an orderly environment. Click here to show/hide ritual steps

Barosy
This is a long, dim chamber whose walls are immense stone slabs. It's like a burial chamber, but
with no smell of decay. There is only a sense of weight and time.

The iron gate stands open to the west. You also see a crevice between two slabs to the north; it
looks wide enough to wiggle through.

The dragon Baros is a mandala of alchemical runes inscribed across the entire end wall of the
chamber. This one, too, looks lifeless and inert.

A fragment of paper lies nearby.

If this is your first dragon, it's very likely not what you expected at all (I was expecting to have to fight a powerful creature... or something :-) Anyway, it's very important that you do the following with all the dragons you encounter, because you need the resulting info to figure out what's wrong with the marcher:

> x dragon
Circles of grey-glimmering runes cover a wall of the Barosy. This is Baros, one of the marcher's
four dragons. Baros is responsible for gravity, stability, and orientation within the Retort.

Something is wrong, however. By all accounts, the circles of runes should be rotating, eternally
reading themselves. The color is wrong too. Baros can't be dead (or you'd be floating off the
floor), but it clearly isn't working correctly.

You wrack your brains, trying to recall the Sergeant's lecture on the theory of dragons.

> recall lecture on dragons (obviously, you only need to recall this lecture once)
A marcher is built around four incredibly complex alchemical constructs, called dragons.
("Because they'll bite you on the arse if you're careless," runs the joke, but in fact nobody knows
the origin of the name.) Pneuma regulates light and air; Baros regulates stability and gravity;
Aistheta manages navigation; Syndesis binds the rooms of the marcher together and to its
destinations.

The dragons are the Retort's vital organs. Constructing each one took months of work by a crew
of trained rectors. The idea that they've gone wrong is deeply disturbing.

It's also very important to investigate a bit further, to figure out exactly what parts of the marcher aren't functioning correctly because if this dragon's impairment:

> x dragon through oculus
The oculus reveals Baros as a web of occult relations running throughout the Retort. It doesn't
look good.

A curved net of gravity lies beneath the entire marcher. It looks patchy and unstable. The
crawlway beneath the garden and Barosy is particularly knotted, and the south end of the chasm
is oscillating.

Aha. If we can fix Baros, looks like a crawlway between the Barosy and the Paper Maze, Center might become usable. Also, we should be able to get over the chasm bridge.