The Black Robes then tested all the volunteers. Girls too. Anyone who responds to the chemical treatment could one day wear the Machine Armour. So the Mendellist brothers took our blood and our night-pot soils. They let us breathe the holy smoke and see how quickly our faces turned green and how quickly we puked our guts out. They gave us serums and watched as our muscles twitched and how our veins would bulge, almost bursting out of our limbs. They tested us on numbers and letters, too. Mind was as important for the soldiers of the Lord as the body, they said. An unlearned yokel can not calculate the trajectory of a mortar or how many grains of blackpowder a grenade would need, and what good are they to the Duke then?