The following is taken from a book containing a magically recorded transcript of Professor Etto, esteemed researcher of witchcraft, discussing the hypothesis and eventual outcome of her latest experiment.

This is Professor Etto, I’ve just completed the last minute checks of my equipment and the test subject, and it appears that we’re good to move forward with the first experiment of what I am dubbing the ‘synthetic doll’ project. My goal is to establish a method in which one could create a doll entirely from scratch, without the need of a subject to convert. If this is successful it could redefine the very nature of dollmaking, not only would witches no longer have to deal with finding a compatible candidate, not to mention the dire side effects of converting an unwilling one, but it could also result in significantly reducing, if not completely eliminating, the amount of… waste, let us call it… that comes from the parts of the subject’s body and soul that were discarded in the conversion process.

The theory is simple: take the core components that make up a doll’s being, and for any elements that would come from a living subject, find a purely magical substitute. Now, choosing the energies that would be used for said substitute is where things started to get tricky, but I believe I’ve come up with a recipe that, if nothing else, will serve as a proof of concept, and a baseline to develop better formulas from in future attempts.

Attempting to recreate the personalities and emotions that would develop from converting a soul is admittedly more than I’d be willing to attempt in this first test run, as that would exponentially increase the factors involved in the experiment, and by extension the complexity involved in pulling it off, so for now the goal is to create a more autonomous servant without any distinct traits that can act as an assistant in my lab, and once we’ve found a stable formula for that we can begin to look at creating dolls with more personality. That being said, even that basic model would likely be appealing to witches who struggle to deal with more unruly dolls.

As for how the experiment itself will run, I must admit that engineering is not my forte, but I have created a device to harness the required magical components using an incantation I performed earlier today, and channel them into a test subject. The subject in this case is a wooden mannequin I had custom made by a local craftsman. Wood is admittedly a cheaper material than a witch would normally use for her dolls, but cheaper materials mean I can order more bodies, which results in more experiments without increasing the budget. I have also attached a wig to the mannequin’s head. A doll without a personality won’t care if it has hair or not, but if it’s going to be wandering around my lab then I would personally prefer it to have some.

Now that the experiment has been thoroughly explained, I believe we are all set to begin. The doll body has been placed in the middle of the device, seated between the two prongs that will channel the magic, and all that’s left is to activate it. I’ve double checked the numbers, and I’m confident that at the very least something will happen, but if my hypothesis is correct and I’m successful in animating the body, this could be big for the future of witchcraft. I’m now activating the device, and will continue to record the results as they- [loud zapping and booming sounds, the transcription pauses at this point]

Okay, looks like the transcription has started up again. Activating the device seemed to have caused some kind of magical chain reaction, the energy levels were far beyond the expected output and caused a large burst of light. It may be wise to wear goggles for future iterations of this experiment, I’m probably lucky I didn’t go blind. The mannequin appears to have been affected in some way from the magical exposure, but does not appear to have become animated in any noticeable way. I shall begin my examination of the body to determine the extent of the changes, but one immediately obvious symptom is that it seems to have… gained weight… or at the very least has taken on an appearance that suggests such. Perhaps the volume of magic was too intense for the body to handle, and it expanded in an attempt to contain it?

Other than that… no clear signs of damage of any kind, not even cracks or other marks in the wood where the change in shape was the most drastic. Joints appear to be intact and moving correctly despite the changes… I can still sense a large amount of magic in the vicinity, but that could easily be residual energy from the earlier reaction, more thorough tests will need to be run in a different location. Wig is still firmly attached to the head… [minor sounds of struggle] Very attached, in fact, it doesn’t seem like it can be removed easily… Hold on… The wig is… changing colour? I’m not sure what’s caused this phenomena, but the roots have started to turn pink, and the pigment is continuing to spread along the strands. I may need to double check my formulas, I’m not sure what factors involved in this experiment could have possibly caused such an effect. The wig is now entirely bright pink, and- wait… the eyes, which for the record were painted on, are starting to turn pink as well… It’s almost as if- [a small popping sound can be heard, followed by two sets of screams]

Two hours post experiment, and the results are… promising, but not entirely conclusive I’m afraid. The doll is indeed animated, but its behaviour so far is outside the expected parameters, even if not entirely unheard of as far as dolls are concerned. There are many things that stick out, but most notable is that it has not only displayed the capability to experience emotions, despite the fact that it shouldn’t have been possible based on the magic used to create it, but it seems to be able to experience those emotions quite strongly. From the moment it woke up it has displayed high levels of distress, confusion, and disorientation. Is this a side effect of not having any memories or experiences to draw from due to not originally being a living being? Perhaps there is simply a step in the conversion process that I have not properly accounted for, something that normally provides the doll with the context of what it is, its purpose, and who it serves.

Which brings me to my next point, it doesn’t seem to be bound to me in the way that a doll is usually bound to the witch that created it. It didn’t know who I was, and when I told it my name it was able to repeat it back to me instead of calling me miss. Its will doesn’t seem to be tied to my own in any observable way either, although it is at least willing to listen to me, and co-operate with figuring out what’s going on. It’s even capable of referring to itself in the first person, a trait that’s exceedingly uncommon in dolls.

That’s where things become much more difficult to determine. This doll has already displayed a lot of unusual behaviour in the past two hours, but technically speaking none of it falls that far outside the standard deviation of how a doll can act. All of these things have been recorded in dolls under various circumstances in the past, such as one converted from a subject who wasn’t a good fit for dollhood, or one that was unwilling to be converted in the first place. My understanding is that these traits are also much more common in combat dolls, both due to the kind of conversion they undergo, and the experiences they’re exposed to, even though neither of those should be factors here. Dolls not bound to a witch aren’t exactly uncommon either, although that’s usually attributed to the doll outliving its witch, it’s extremely rare for one to act that way from the moment of its creation. All this being said, it’s almost unheard of for a single doll to display this many unusual behaviours, but I still can’t rule out that it’s just a case of it being an unusual doll, and considering how I created it, it was always going to be an unusual doll in one way or another.

Unfortunately, that just makes it even harder to figure out where to go from here. How much of what I’ve recorded so far can be attributed to miscalculations in my formulas, or the device not being calibrated properly, or even the very fact that it’s running off a fake soul meant to simulate the real thing at only the most basic level, and how much can be attributed to mere chance, and the natural risks that come with dollmaking? Personally speaking, I’m still unsure how that doll is even capable of most of what I’ve recorded here, the magic I used shouldn’t have been able to give it anything resembling emotions, and yet it started crying mere moments after coming to life.

There’s a lot that still needs to be looked into, the high levels of magical energy still haven’t dissipated, but seemed to follow us, or more specifically it, into other parts of the lab, and I need to figure out why its eyes look so animated, so real. Just to reiterate, they were merely painted on before I ran the experiment, another change to its body that I can’t currently explain. Why did both the eyes and wig turn pink? The current hypothesis is that it’s related to all the energy in and around the body, but why did only those parts change? Why did its legs suddenly detach from its body when it tried to get up and run away? It was fortunate that they reattached with little effort, but they were solidly connected when I examined them just minutes earlier.

I can at least take solace in the fact that I was successful in creating a doll without needing to convert someone, even if there are still so many questions that I am currently unable to answer. I have managed to calm the doll down, at least enough to be able to explain who I am, and the experiment that created it, but there will likely be a lot of tests involved in its future, both to explain all the unexpected phenomena surrounding this doll, and to determine where the synthetic doll project will go from here. That will be all for today, I will continue to update this log with new findings as my research continues, but for now I’m going to have to head out to get some clothes for the doll. The outfit I had prepared was not meant to fit someone of its… current size.

SyntaxSpeedway

Thanks for reading! This was meant to be a oneshot, but it coming out bigger than I expected, combined with life stuff stopping me from writing for part of the week, led to me splitting it up so that I’d have something out this week. The rest of the story should be up in the near future!