The Apothecary ยท Chapter 15
Making, Finding, and Running Poison
Buying
| Availability | To buy it |
|---|---|
| Common | Pay the price |
| Restricted | A licence, a prescription, a trade, or a plausible story: an Average Deception or Negotiation check. Otherwise as Illicit, at double price |
| Illicit | An Average Streetwise check to find a seller in a city, Hard elsewhere |
| Military | A Hard Streetwise check, at three to five times the price, and someone will be looking for it |
| Rare | Found by story, not by shopping. The GM decides who has it and what that person wants |
The GM may spend 2 Bane from a check to buy from an unlawful seller to make the dose weak (Potency 1 lower), and a Calamity to make it something else entirely.
Gathering
Plants and fungi. A character in the right country spends an hour and makes a Survival check against the poison's Potency. On a success the character has one dose, plus one for every 2 Boons. On a Calamity the character has picked the wrong thing: for a medicine, that is a poison.
Venom. Milking a live creature takes an action, a container, and a Survival check against the Potency, with the creature Restrained or handled by someone who can. A dead creature gives one dose with an Average Medicine check, within an hour of its death. On a Calamity the gatherer is exposed.
Brewing
Preparing a dose from raw material takes a Poisoner's Kit or a laboratory, a day, materials worth half the listed price, and a check against the Potency.
| The substance is | Skill |
|---|---|
| A poison or a gas | Craft |
| A medicine or an antidote | Medicine |
| Fantastical | Craft or Lore, as the Universe's alchemy says |
Each success beyond the first makes one more dose from the same materials. On a Calamity the maker is exposed.
Substances with no listed price, and all Military gases, cannot be brewed by a character. They are made by states with factories.
This book gives no recipes. The check is the whole procedure.
Running Poison as the GM
Tell the players the clock is running. The first failed check should come with a description that makes the danger plain: the numb hands, the dimming light, the smell of almonds. A poison the players never learn about until the last check is a single-roll death by another road.
Put the answer in reach. Every poisoning needs something the characters can do before the Course ends: the antidote in the poisoner's pocket, a healer one district away, the plant's name in the victim's own herbal. Decide what it is before the first check.
Use the Onset. The long Onsets in Chapters 7 and 10 are a gift. The characters learn at breakfast that the wine at dinner was dosed. The first check is at noon.
One poison per scene. Two different clocks on one character is bookkeeping. Two characters on one clock is drama.
Adversaries follow the same rules. A poisoned Nemesis gets resist checks, treatment from its own people, and two successes to shake it off. Players who poison a villain's cup should expect a clock, a court physician, and a hunt for whoever did it.
Subtle is a mystery engine. A death recorded as a fever is a case with no investigator. The first character to make the check to notice has opened it.
Poison in an Adversary's Hands
| Adversary | Typical use |
|---|---|
| Minions | Blade Venom on arrows, or Poison Smoke. One poison for the whole group, bought once |
| An Elite | One dose of something from the right chapter, on the first weapon drawn, and an antidote on the belt |
| A Nemesis poisoner | A Subtle poison delivered before the scene starts. The scene is the players finding out |
| A beast | The Poison X quality on its bite or sting, or Monster Venom |
An adversary who carries a poison usually carries its antidote. Searching the body is an action.
Converting Existing Material
| A book says | Use |
|---|---|
| "Poison X" on a weapon or a creature | The Poison X quality in Chapter 6: Blade Venom at X Wounds |
| "Use your Universe's poison rules" | Any Injury entry from the chapter for that period |
| "Delivers a sedative dose" | Sleeping Draught, Tranquilizer Dose, or Sleeper Dose, by period |
| "Fatal" with no further rule | A Lethal poison of Potency 4 with a Course of 5, at the Interval the story suggests |
| "Immune to poison" | Immune to every entry in this book that is not a caustic |
