# Making, Finding, and Running Poison *The Apothecary, Poisons, Drugs, and Chemical Agents for Exodus NDS. Source: https://exodusnds.com/sourcebooks/the-apothecary/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 |