Your Majesty. To serve is an honor.
And the PA and her highness the PR both.
Your, and their, wish is my command. What does your high(as a kite)ness wish of Lestat?
Any orders from the PR, or your princely consort?
What are the rates like? accommodation (I really don't need terribly much to sleep. A sofa will suffice just fine. I can bring my own pillows and sleeping bag to kip on quite comfortably, lol actually when I do fall asleep its usually after being awake most or all night, rather than falling asleep in my own bed. Its a big, soft-cushioned, comfy leather couch, shoes kicked off and me stretched out lying down with the laptop there to warm my middle as it charges, without being shut down so that the heat from the processor keeps me nice and toasty.
My mix of muscle relaxers, chlormethiazole, clonidine, gabapentin and 3 different pain meds make sure that theres not the slightest bit of discomfort, although there wouldn't likely be much if any anyway.. AND make sure I sleep in many hours and awake as rested as rested can be.
A big long cat-like stretch-yrrrrrwowwwf! is still just what the doctor ordered so to speak, but you can bet that is ALL thats needed, bar any regular meds that wore off during the night.
So just make sure the accommodation has a soft surface, provide me with a couple of cushions with which to support my two bad hips and bad knee, and I'll start polishing the glassware until I can near enough see well enough to shave in the reflection to get ready.
Best have something like a shed or garage available though thats isolated from the home itself. Some of the things I work with are DANGEROUS, or pack an awful (or much, much much worse than awful), teeth-curling stench. If you have neither then hire me your new royal alchemist a lockup thats out of the way of public view as much as humanly possible. A gun would be nice, but not a vital expense, I just can't easily take a pistol through customs, unless its something like a gauss pistol, disassembled into its bare boards, marx ladder(s), barrel and cap bank, or a PIKL stripped down into cap bank/selfsame sparkgap generator and lasers. Something thats not actually obviously a weapon at all unless put together.
But the more usual, typical kind of projectile weapon....well the average airport staff are on the lookout for those, no?
That sorted, all good, lets get your royal alchymyst installed in his workshop
I don't claim ot be anyhow superhuman and capable of absolutely anything, I am not, I've no FORMAL scientific education beyond my second spesh school (the first just didn't have ANY chem/physics dept nor qualified teacher. So your highness and the PR and your PA know what they are getting:) Everything bar a few years of secondary school, has been study, sweat and toil off my own back, paid for out of my own wallet, even when I was so young I could barely afford a chocolate bar a week on my allowance, I'd save up to buy supplies, and engage in selling scrap metal, or whatever else of value I could find, carrying car or truck batteries for miles on my shoulders if I could find one (yeah, I got showered in acid a fair few times doing that, but I wasn't about to let that put me off, especially because the local scrap metal merchant takes batteries in for the lead content and they aren't gutted before one receives one's chit in return to take to the office and exchange for hard cash) which means that the WHOLE weight, plastic shell, lead peroxide plates and sulfuric acid electrolyte (admittedly I sometimes had to drain it and clean it of lead as best as possible if I wanted sulfuric, sometimes the shops would give me funny looks, try to interrogate me, as to why a <10yo was trying to/buying several liter bottles of 98 percent conc. H2SO4)
But sulfuric is HEAVY, really, really heavy. And my occasional lucky find of a big fuckoff great truck battery, that meant a sizeable chunk of cash, especially when I was only little.
Then I'd immediately bugger off round the DIY stores for all sorts of chemical sundries, ammonia, ammonium salts for generating proper concentrated NH3 solutions/dry ammonia gas/annie; sodium chlorate, formic/sulfuric/hydrochloric/phosphoric acid and/or the pharmacies for things like potassium permanganate, glycerin, acetone, ethyl acetate, etc. etc. as well as if I was VERY lucky (some were very seldom, still to be had when I was just tiny) the treasured mercury thermometers to cool down (to get everything into the thermometer bulb) before cracking them open for their Hg content, wrapping in something like a plastic bag and given a sharp thwack from a hammer or stone does the trick just perfectly.
So yeah, its all come from dedication, and sheer autistic bloody-well-minded determination to succeed regardless of having to walk miles carrying massive chunks of lead and sacks of copper pipe/boiler fittings etc. to raise the funds that otherwise would have been limited to 30p a week at that age. Just enough for one 'beano' comic a week, at that age.
NOT enough to satisfy my insatiable, thirst-without-end for reagents, gas mask/filter canisters, blowtorch fuel tanks.