SilverLightsune

Basic Information First Name: Ashley Last Name: Ashpaw Employee ID: #75659066 Title: First Lieutenant, Nanotrasen Medical Corps Gender: Female Nicknames/Alias: Has also been called 'Ash', 'Ashpaw' Picture: [File not found.] Age/D.O.B: January 27, 2538 Place Of Birth: Tantalsi Island, North Atlantic Ocean, Terra Species: Vulpkanin Blood Type: AB+ Alignment: Neutral Good...with wobbles towards Lawful or Chaotic sometimes. Affiliation: Registered civilian in the Trans-Solar Federation. Nanotrasen employee. Religious Beliefs: Inherited a respect for 'Racht' as an understanding of a superior divine will suffusing the universe and living through it. As a matter of practice she tends to consider herself agnostic, uncertain that mortals can come to certainty one way or another about the divine. Has hope for an afterlife, but would admit that she isn't sure it's more than wishful speculation due to the lack of strong proof backing arguments for or against the metaphysical. Has expressed openness to the possibility that bluespace is a shadow of an immortal realm and needs more investigation. Life History Detailed Information: Medical Record: Security Record Personal Relationships Faction Relations: Other Information: {Reserved for future use!}

Hello! This guide assumes you already have a fair grasp on the Guide to Chemistry provided at the wiki. Here I mostly aim to share things that maybe aren't as common knowledge, tools of the trade that I've learned from and handed on to other chemists. These might range from simple steps to more complex ones, but center around a theme that came up in a Discord discussion I had recently: Most of chemistry is about taking shortcuts. I'll be mostly coming from a MedChem perspective since that's what I tend to play, but I am quite well aware that I don't know everything. I'll try to make this list approachable for relatively new chemists. Suggestions to add to the list are welcome as long as they are working, general-purpose advice for chemistry that's not immediately apparent. So, let's begin. 1) Buckets are your friends. You start with two sizes of beakers. Small ones hold 50u, large ones hold 100u. You can essentially print small beakers by bottling and dumping liquids from the ChemMaster, while large ones are a little limited in supply among your roundstart equipment. However, from the start of the round you can get access to buckets, 120u containers, with a little bit of legwork or a little bit of luck. If Botany comes to you asking for unstable mutagen, you may be able to swing a deal for one of their starting buckets as compensation for helping. Otherwise you'll have to leave the lab for a bit and go hunting for supplies. Your closest option is normally to go ask Cargo to print you some buckets from their autolathe. (Four is a good number, for reasons we'll get to in a bit.) If for some reason Cargo can't or won't do that, in a pinch you can walk a little further to the Garden near Arrivals and steal borrow the two buckets from there, though that deprives any would-be gardeners of their tools to water plants. Why buckets? It's partly due to the expanded capacity being good in general, but also because the specific capacity of buckets makes the chemistry math work out nicer. The highest number of reagents to a chemical reaction I know about (Sarin) takes 8 reagents, and medicines use no more than 6 (Pentetic Acid, Epinephrine). In brief, 50u and 100u containers both divide evenly into 2, 5, and 10 - which means that you can use the full capacity of the container for any chemical recipe with 2, 5, or 10 reagents (or 'parts', for recipes where it's not an even amount of each). 100u containers also divide by 4 and 20, though making or measuring exactly the corresponding 25 or 5 units is often not convenient except for pure chemicals. If the recipe calls for a different number and combination of reagents that don't divide nicely, you're wasting some of the volume in the container by not utilizing it. 120u containers, on the other hand, divide evenly into 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, and 20. (20 is the largest number of required parts in a single reaction, Soapification.) Therefore, you can use the bucket's entire volume for recipes that use any of those numbers of parts. Almost every recipe listed in the Chemistry guide falls under this umbrella, meaning that if you want to complete a recipe in a single container and get the most you can out of it, the bucket is handily superior to beakers for most use cases. 2) Bulk chemical mixing with multiple containers. Alternatively, let's say you want to make large quantities of a particular chemical as rapidly as possible. One solution is to have four equally-sized containers. (This is why I recommend four buckets, above.) Set three of them on the ground or a table nearby where you can reach them easily; these are now your mixing containers. The remaining one becomes your working container. Now, you dispense or mix one chemical at a time in your working container. Evenly pour it into two or all three of your mixing containers depending on the recipe. If you fill the mixing containers completely and successfully mix all of them, then congratulations! You've roughly doubled or tripled your production with very little added effort! (Note: This will burn out unupgraded chem dispensers very rapidly.) 3) Simple machinery knowledge can make the chem lab better. Let's say that your chemical dispenser hasn't been upgraded and you've run out of machine charge despite a greenlit APC, or your use of buckets leads to an annoying situation where you constantly have 20 units that don't fit in the ChemMaster's buffer. With a little bit of elbow grease and some supplies, you can resolve both of these problems! You will need: - 1x Screwdriver - 1x Crowbar - 1x 100u container (e.g., large beaker) [optional; improve ChemMaster] - 1x High-Capacity Power Cell [optional; improve Chem Dispenser] The first two you can more than likely find within your department (Science has toolboxes and tools scattered around, Medical has a screwdriver in the break room and crowbars in the oxygen cabinets in the lobby) - though please do put them back when you're done so they're not just missing. Failing that, Cargo can print these and other standard tools in the autolathe. Next, you'll almost certainly have a spare 100u container at hand near the chemistry setup, especially if you upgraded to buckets. (If not you can make one, more on that later.) For the power cell, go check with R&D. More than likely they'll have the capability to make it, as the requirements to do so are not a high bar to meet. If you can't get it for whatever reason, don't worry - the purpose of the cell is to help refill the dispenser, and taking the time to visit R&D has let it recharge at least a little so long as the power's on. Once you have the tools and relevant components, head back to the lab. If you're not familiar with how machines are constructed, don't worry about it - I won't go into detail here beyond what's necessary to this explanation. Using the screwdriver then the crowbar on the ChemMaster will disassemble the machine into its components: a machine frame with some wires, a circuit board, a micro-manipulator, a sheet of glass, and two small beakers. Starting with the circuit board, add all these pieces back to the machine frame except for one of the small beakers. Replace this with your 100u container of choice. Once everything has been added back in, use the screwdriver on the frame again to reassemble the machine. If you did this correctly, your ChemMaster's buffer is now 150 units, more than enough to buffer an entire bucket and enough to buffer half a bluespace beaker! It's possible to use any two fluid containers in this process, but one small beaker and one large beaker tend to suffice. The process is similar for the chem dispenser, but the components are the machine frame, the circuit board, two matter bins, one capacitor, one micro-manipulator, one glass, and one high-capacity power cell. Swapping the power cell with a fresh one and reassembling the machine can let you keep on using the dispenser rather than waiting on potentially slow recharge times. This is usually less of an issue since if mining and R&D are on top of things the machines will eventually be upgraded, but if you're just racing through the machine's onboard charge then replacing the battery is the easiest do-it-yourself method to get a full charge back. 4) Fire makes things hot. Who knew? Aside from blowing up the chemistry lab (please don't), fire has a place in chemical mixing. You could use the provided heater, and if you want to I certainly won't fault you since you can let things heat while working on other matters. Alternatively, you can bring along a lighter. These can be found in vendors around the station, but consider adding it to your roundstart loadout. An active lighter, applied to a container, heats up the container and its contents. This heating can be done as fast as you can click and rapidly reach the necessary temperature for most reactions. 5) Making your own containers with chemistry. The reaction for plastic polymers makes several plastic sheets! These can be crafted into large plastic bottles to make additional 100u containers for whatever uses you might require. One of my favorites is making replacement containers for the cryotubes when I get around to making a chemical mix for them. Do everyone a favor and get the ash you need to make the plastic from burning paper rather than trying to boil oil. It doesn't require much ash and your life expectancy is higher with the paper option. Also, it's another reason to bring a lighter. 6) Automation allows processes to run in parallel. Certain tools at your disposal can be set up to run without further input from you. Two in particular are the chemical heaters and IV bags. While waiting on a container to heat to reaction temperature (if you're using the heaters and not a lighter), work on something else! You should have multiple beakers or buckets at your disposal, and time that your chem dispenser is fully charged is time wasted because it's not refilling while you do something useful. IV bags set to draw blood, predominantly useful for biomass (in cloning) and synthflesh (for medicines) are very much fire-and-forget processes. 200 units, the capacity of an IV bag, is roughly 36% of the blood in an organism...if you're willing and able to be a donor, you can set the bag to draw, stick it in your arm, and carry it around in your pocket until it fills. If using an animal, grab a chair and buckle it in so it doesn't wander off from the bag. When you're not drawing blood from yourself or a lab animal, giving the donor iron and saline-glucose solution allows the blood to passively replenish. (Side note, try to let those two reagents metabolize before drawing blood again, otherwise iron and saline-glucose end up in the IV.) Both of these take very little manual work for a regular quantity of blood. In cloning specifically, filling an IV most of the way with cryoxadone and getting a lab animal from Genetics is a quick roundstart task that pays dividends into the future. Pull one of the body bags from the table in Cloning, place the animal inside, draw blood into the mostly-cryoxadone IV bag, and zip both the IV and the animal into the body bag next to the cloning pod. This setup will produce synthmeat biomass for the cloner while effectively taking up no space since the closed body bag doesn't collide with passerby. More to be added! Credits for Additional Tips Thanks to the chemists who've helped teach me these, though I've forgotten many of the names since I was away for a while. Thanks to Woj recently for pointing out #2 to me. Thank you for reading! I hope this has been helpful.

I know that MedChem, close to my heart, generally isn't the most exciting job on board, but I find enjoyment in trying to optimize my work. Figured I'd start a chronicle here of noteworthy occasions in my efforts towards going from relatively unknown around the server to legendary chemist robust veteran in the lab. At round start, I found that I was Chemist 2 (at least, for convenience that's what I'll call the one who spawns outside the lab), which was a bit disappointing as I prefer the 'southern' workstation which Chemist 1 starts at. When I arrived, my partner didn't seem to be doing much, took a while to respond in talking, and only walked slowly. I figured that SSD might be on the horizon, but he left the lab less than ten minutes in and I didn't see or hear from him again. I was trying to avoid stepping on his toes even while starting to handle the set of medicines I usually stock and handle requests at both desks (Botany, Virology, the rest of Medical). Word of a meth lab being run in SciChem was trickling over comms along with news of narcotics pills being left on the floor in several areas for those foolish enough to take them. Patients started trickling in before long. I was asked to analyze a recovered pill (learning about the handheld chemical analyzer in the process) and found that it contained five narcotics and toxic compounds, then disposed of it by grinding down and voiding the individual components. Other than trying to deal with a spike of overdoses, it seemed like it would be a usual day of making medicine. While making a trip to Cargo, once I'd made most of the general-purpose medicines I usually make a few of before obtaining a bucket, I heard about a gateway exploration which involved spiders and venom and in general hadn't been going so well. I had to make a second trip almost immediately after getting back to the lab for strange reagent components, but once the reagent was made I realized that something might be needed to clean out narcotics and possibly also venom from patients' systems. I started making calomel, which is intended to rapidly purge all other chemicals. Just after I turned on the heater to finish the recipe a doctor came by and said that antivenom was needed urgently. Since the calomel finished during our dialogue I was able to hand it off almost immediately. A minute or two later the same doctor returned and credited me with saving the patient's life by my forethought; this was the first moment of feeling like I'd done something awesome during the round. Once that particular incident had settled (I did have to chase after someone dragging the unconscious detective to the cryotubes, who was also suffering from more than 50u of venom) I settled into my usual work in Chemistry. I made backlogs of usual medicines and occasionally dealt with requests from both the front desk and the rest of the department, getting to run my show solo. At about forty minutes in, I thought about how much synthflesh I should backlog. For reference, my method regarding synthflesh is to make 20u patches en masse, ignoring styptic powder (brute damage) and silver sulfadiazine (burn) since synthflesh heals both with little efficiency lost (though I'll make civilian-grade patches for the public fridge if medical expects an overflow of patients). In the past, I've gotten up to 50 of my 20u synthflesh patches and called it good, since the odds of that many being used in the remainder of the round is fairly slim. Further, making them from my own blood was generally a nuisance though one I accepted as efficient enough. Today would be different. This round, I decided to also improve on my practical abilities by trying the blood-collecting capabilities of an IV drip and a monkey (the geneticist handed me a farwa cube, but I just shrugged and called it good enough). I had seen chemistry partners do this before, including a few whose abilities I admired. The simplicity of setting up the blood draw surprised me. The efficacy of this method surprised me more. Knowing that I would have a intermittent reliable source of blood so long as I kept the farwa supplied with iron and saline-glucose, I set out to make more synthflesh than I originally intended. The process was very much a grind, probably one I wouldn't carry out again. However, since I had relatively few distractions (a few bottles to botany, a few to virology, eventually a request for 'milk patches' in an apparent quest to reanimate a skeleton) and two chemical dispensers, I set out to work at this self-imposed challenge. I ran both chemical dispensers dry, eventually having little choice but to take a break. It was a good opportunity to get hot chocolate, considering that 70 minutes into the round I had made one trip to cargo (buckets, radio), one trip to the bar (wine for strange reagent), grabbed an IV and morphine (for hydrocodone) from medical, and spent the rest of the time in the lab starving while pursuing this project in a maddened frenzy of overachieving. Somehow I managed to find time to make oculine for a fellow Vulpkanin who had apparently been blinded as an eventual result of eating the narcotics pills earlier. As other chemists reading this are probably aware, oculine is relatively involved to manufacture and its components do have to be mixed in a certain order to prevent incorrect compounds from forming. I also watched the doctor who'd asked for milk patches go by a few times with a corpse. While I wouldn't say that he had a true skeleton, the corpse he was trying to bring back certainly was pretty nearly stripped to the bone from all the damage taken. To my chagrin, that doctor ended up using around 20 of my precious synthflesh patches in an effort to restore the body. (Amazingly, eventually he did succeed with strange reagent.) I know that our dear paramedic also picked up a number of patches; in total I'm going to estimate that another 20 patches were used for general medical purposes during the round. Why do I tell all this? Well, my initial goal was to exceed the 'high bar' of 50 synthflesh patches I would usually make. Perhaps I'd even shoot for over 100 if I didn't get too distracted. I reached a hundred somewhere around 80 minutes in and my mania grew even while handling the other requests I've mentioned above. My friend Cath, frequent virologist but this shift's bartender, came through medical around 100 minutes in (I was providing her with certain drink components) and I showed her the fridge, telling her to make special note of the 150+ patches in the first slot. She told me I was mad; I told her that I was brilliant. I was hoping to scrape 200 patches before the inevitable crew transfer shuttle call at 120 minutes, but the skeleton doctor kept using them. Still, by pushing ahead with both the farwa's blood and my own, I eventually got where I wanted to be by the time I unbolted the medical fridge from the floor and dragged it to the shuttle. This is the top of the fridge menu at the end of the round: The moral of this story is that with an IV blood draw on a small creature, the resources of an entire chemistry lab, and a manic desire to overachieve hard work ethic it is very possible to make around 5000u of synthflesh (including the patches that were used up) while still carrying on normal chemist duties and saving someone's life by listening closely to comms. Why would you do this? Unless you're slightly deranged when it comes to self-imposed challenge like me, I have no idea. Also, if you're still reading this, thanks for sitting through my narration. Peace!

Nanotrasen Employee ID: #75659066 Name: Ashley Ashpaw Age: 28 Gender: Female Race: Vulpkanin Blood Type: AB+ General Occupational Role(s): Medical Supplier/Chemist, high candidacy match Malady Manager/Virologist, high candidacy match Floral Caretaker/Botanist, moderate candidacy match Slime Rancher/Xenobiologist, moderate candidacy match Queen of Medbay/Chief Medical Officer, moderate candidacy match Genome Tinkerer/Geneticist, low candidacy match Underpaid Practitioner/Medical Doctor, low candidacy match Biography: Much of the following is derived from Ms. Ashpaw's own narration. Born Ashley Lys Ashpaw to Kestrel and Dk'mafh 'Ashpaw' on January 27, 2538, a second-generation Terran (first generation Terran-born) Vulpkanin. She grew up nearby on the artificial island Tantalsi in the north Atlantic, not far from the island capital Minora. Though she knew faces from many different races from a young age, her sense of a 'big city' came from Minora, which taken together with the rest of the population of Tantalsi barely exceeded half a million. Also from a young age she observed her parents, both involved in ecological sciences as advisors in Earth's revitalization project, and displayed a curiosity about the various natural sciences. Ashley was taught by her parents starting at age 14 [Clearance: CentComm] after her boredom in a chemistry class lab started a panic over a jury-rigged incendiary container of firefighting foam and smoke powder. The incident has since been removed from local public record. Though her interests didn't exactly follow their broad ecological scope, she went on to shine in a variety of local academic events and later completed a master's degree in Organic Chemistry. Her thesis, 'Comparison of Thermodynamic Properties of Sapient Derived Hair and Fur', is publicly available via the University of Minora. Shortly before degree completion she met with Nanotrasen Recruiter K. Din (#67290390) and signed on to begin after completing her studies. Departing from Earth for the Nanotrasen Training Station Galakiir, she left her parents, two younger brothers (Fenrix & Zefan), one younger sister (Kenti), and few but close friends. In her months at Galakiir, she completed a number of certification courses. [Clearance: Security] She was also warned after using hydroponics materials to grow and distribute glowing watermelons and tomato smoke bombs. In the time since, she has been assigned to various duties aboard the NSS Cyberiad. During breaks in her employment, Ashley has been furthering her academic pursuits. She expects to begin the review process for her doctoral thesis sometime in 2564, pursuing NT-funded research into retroviral engineering. [Clearance: CentComm] Cut from the publicly reviewed and available part of this thesis are her notes on viral interspecies gene splicing and bioweapon research. This research was conducted at the behest of her superiors, taking place at Site TR-14 with experimentation carried out upon captured EOCs. It should be noted that while Ms. Ashpaw complied and remains loyal, this appears to have severely strained her emotionally. More thorough investigation of her loyalties is recommended. In light of her efforts, competence, and hopefully upcoming doctorate, she was promoted to First Lieutenant in the NT Medical Corps in late 2563. Though this title is often only honorary, it recognizes her regular qualification to serve as Chief Medical Officer or stand in for the position, whereas she only held the position provisionally in the past. Awarded Qualifications: - Board of Directives' Scholarship, University of Minora (awarded annually, 2555-2561) - Master's Degree, Organic Chemistry (University of Minora, Terra/Earth, Class of 2561) - Cleanest Employee of the Month (NT Training Station Galakiir, July 2561) - Nanotrasen Emergency Preparedness Certification (NTS Galakiir, August 2561) - Nanotrasen Horticulture Certification (NTS Galakiir, November 2561) - Nanotrasen Xenobiology Certification (NTS Galakiir, February 2562) - Rank #1 in Nanotrasen Employment Diversity Training out of all Employees with ID #75659066 - 2nd Lieutenant, Nanotrasen Medical Corps (NSS Cyberiad, May 2562) - 1st Lieutenant, Nanotrasen Medical Corps (NSS Cyberiad, November 2563) - Cryostar Medal, Nanotrasen Medical Corps (NSS Cyberiad, April 2566) Observed Qualifications: - Capacity to memorize information - Capacity to home in on relevant information across wide communication traffic - Respect for departmental authority - Gracious to those she asks something from - Display of forethought - Paranoia(?) - Moderately responsible - Allergic to failure (qualification pending further testing) - Positive attitude - Displays more focus in roles which require reduced sapient interaction - Competent instructor for new or recently reassigned employees Employment Records: Notable points include - - Various pharmaceutical internships during college - Formally began employment with Nanotrasen on July 1, 2561 - Completed additional training in emergency preparedness, horticulture, and xenobiology by February 28, 2562 - After psychological review, stationed to the NSS Cyberiad, predominantly to serve as a pharmaceutical chemist - Has spent time in various roles as noted in General Occupational Roles - Occasionally gets assigned to unrelated job due to clerical errors, at which point it might be added here if she displays aptitude - Once synthesized 5000 units of synthflesh in one shift - Once also synthesized over 3000u of cryoxadone in one shift - Took part in a demographic/cultural study run by station psychologist - As a chemist in a severely understaffed medical department, performed brain surgery based off prior rudimentary experience. Narrowly managed to not kill patient in the process - Participated in chaplain-run seminar on recognizing and dealing with vampires, which ended halfway through when the engine broke loose and had to be neutralized by CC - Has trialed as Chief Medical Officer. Fully qualified as CMO. By necessity, learned quite a bit about surgery along the way. Exhibits levelheadedness under pressure, but may not be qualified to handle the stress for long periods of time - Has made highly beneficial symbiotic synthetic virus in the span of approximately ten minutes since shift start, claiming that her record is just under eleven minutes - Received assistance from station therapist after recurring nightmares about terror spiders. Has gained some therapeutic tools to help cope, but still having regular appointments between shifts to help deal with stress and paranoia - Took break from station service to work on doctorate, review of which is still pending as of writing - Awarded the NTMC Cryostar on April 7, 2566 in recognition of medical professionalism and strongly developed pharmaceutical skills Security Records: - Has accidentally blown up Medical Chemistry at least six times during course of employment; claims to now know the location of flammable substances in workplace - Penchant for crafting homemade grenades as a chemist; as of late these have contained cleaning foam or quick-set metal insulation - Unverified reports of using xenobiological engineering to create mice scouts, uplift command staff pets to sapience, and warp space-time - Tendency to carry a station bounced radio at all times if permitted - possibly afraid of the station's communication network going out? - Sometimes yells at crewmates for not closing authenticating doors after passing through - Has seen a Syndicate agent chem-lab partner kill himself over regret that his loyalty had to be so divided; this may have led to uncertainty in her own loyalties - Repaired internal bleeding and several fractures for a member of the Wizard Federation without knowing the patient was an EoC; claims that healing was her responsibility under oath as a medical professional - Has previously barricaded herself in her own lab and welded all the vents shut after terror spider nightmares led to paranoid behavior; currently getting counseling for this - Regularly refuses to make narcotics or other potentially harmful products when asked to do so, despite threats from outside parties. Only does so with express permission from the CMO - Undergoing substantial stress leads her to increasingly erratic behavior - NT Loyalty: Skeptic-leaning - Adherence to SOP: Slightly Above Average Medical Records: - Gets her job done quickly and efficiently in front of chemical dispenser (While this is likely true to some degree, it should be noted that Medical employees are not to frivolously alter their own records) - Occasional ordinary workplace injuries - Occasionally rescued from pressure vacuums in both MedChem and SciChem - Once recovered by station reclamation team from suspension inside a functional cryotube while a parasitic entity in stomach counteracted mending; does not directly recall event but has mentioned likely related nightmares - Requires treatment for fatigue during extended shifts - Mild nyctophobia, which seems to be getting worse - Possible referral to station psychiatrist due to presence of both lonely nature and interest in pyrotechnics - Possible referral to station psychiatrist after having seen a chemistry lab partner suicide due to his regrets for his Syndicate involvement - Ever since being assigned to CMO position, gray is slowly creeping further into her fur. Low-stress positions recommended after protracted shifts - Sought help from station psychiatrist after recurring nightmares about terror spiders - Ms. Ashpaw has had a cybernetic heart since an on-station accident. [Clearance: CC] She fell victim to abductors but has no memory of the incident, only its fallout. References to the event and her forgotten time appear to cause her additional anxiety. Addendum: This has happened twice now. - She has shown increasing unease, concerned about the perils of space, becoming high-strung and easily distracted when thrown off the routine of her work Personnel Photo (Appearance text): A 5'9"/1.75m Vulpkanin, predominantly furred in shades of light blue. Her forepaws and hindpaws both display a transition to an ashy gray hue, slightly darker near claws. She has a fairly lithe build, though her confident stance is disturbed by minor twitchiness. This may be an extension of her alert senses (tall blue ears, slightly glowing violet eyes, sharp muzzle, among others) or may be a sign of paranoia. Commendations [admin editing only]: Reprimands [admin editing only]: Other Notes: Ashley has known a version of Poly which repeatedly suggested the genocide of Tajaran, Unathi, and Vulpkanin. She harbors at best a cold suspicion against the bird.

Greetings, reader(s)! I'm Silver. You could call me Ashpaw as well if you'd like, though that would be mixing up IC and OOC a bit. Been interested in SS13 for quite some time, but so far I only seem to have time every once in a while. Though when that 'while' comes around then I manage to pull off several shifts in a weekend. Maybe I'll be able to change that somewhat going forward. Still a rookie by most standards, though I would consider myself a reasonably proficient chemist and a not terrible botanist or scientist. Still trying to learn all the time, still trying to ease into new jobs. Does anything else belong in an introduction? It's been so long since I was last on a forum...I suppose if there is, the viewer(s) can let me know. Good fun, have luck, don't die! - Silver