Alchemy & magic

Two answers to the same problem, and neither is common. This chapter holds the preparations an officer of the Lazaret carries in a case, and the spells three separate groups have written about the broods and each kept to themselves.

Alchemy comes first because it needs nothing of the caster. Magic does very little about what these creatures do to a body; alchemy does more, slowly, at a price, and out of materials that have to be taken off the creatures themselves. That is why the order’s field work has always been a trade in jars rather than a laying on of hands.

Alchemy

Everything under this heading can be made by a character with no spellcasting whatsoever.

Materials

Every preparation is made from one of the three broods, and the differences between them decide what a cell, a house, or a party can realistically keep on hand. A harvest is one unit of working material. Harvesting one takes 1 minute with a blade and a container and requires no ability check unless the source’s stat block says otherwise.

An Inquiline harvest is tissue cut from one living Inquiline. The material can be carried, but remains workable only until 1 hour after it is cut. The creature must be willing, Incapacitated, or Restrained throughout the harvest, and it can provide one harvest between Long Rests.

A Sporophore harvest is one usable portion cut from one dead Sporophore whose body was not damaged by Fire. Each body provides one harvest. A living Rotgill Fleece is the exception to the death requirement and the usual harvesting procedure. Use its Sessile trait to cut it from the surface beneath it. The severed portion provides one harvest whether the check succeeds or fails. Sporophore material remains workable for 30 days.

A Necrophore harvest is wax, tallow, or wakelight taken from one dead Necrophore within 24 hours of its death. Each body provides one harvest, and the material ceases to be workable when that 24-hour window ends.

Sporophore material is the only kind that stockpiles, which is why every house keeps a cupboard of it and why the cheapest preparations are the ones most likely to be available. Inquiline material can travel only as far as its 1-hour limit permits. Necrophore material requires a fresh death, which is the whole cost of that line and the reason its preparations are rare in the hands of anyone who is not already killing.

The brood named on a preparation is the material it is made from, not the brood it works against. Several of the most useful entries here are made from one and used against another, because what a material does to flesh matters more than which creature it came off. Ashcap dries a body, so ashcap keeps a corpse from being worth laying in. Rotgill and crust stink and stick, so they keep small things from taking hold. Neither fact has anything to do with what the ashcap or the rotgill wanted.

Making them

The brood named in a recipe is the harvest it consumes under Materials. Every harvest must still be workable when crafting begins; once the work begins, it remains usable through the listed crafting time. The character must use alchemist’s supplies or a herbalism kit, but need not be proficient with the chosen tool. At the end of the listed time, make the Intelligence check against the listed DC. The check adds the character’s Intelligence modifier and, if the character is proficient with the chosen tool, their Proficiency Bonus. A failed check spoils every harvest used in the attempt.

Using a preparation

Use the existing rule for the equipment each preparation most resembles: a potion, a vial of poison, a flask of oil, or an improvised weapon. An entry states an exception when it needs one:

• Drinking a draught takes a Bonus Action, as drinking a potion does, and so does administering one to a creature within 5 feet.
• Applying an unguent to the user or to a creature within 5 feet takes a Utilize action. Anointing a corpse takes 1 minute.
• Lighting a fume takes a Utilize action. A fume must be set down or planted rather than carried, unless its entry says otherwise.
• Coating a weapon with a poison takes a Bonus Action and covers one weapon or up to three pieces of ammunition. The coating keeps its potency for 1 minute or until its damage is dealt, whichever comes first.
• Throwing a poison or dust replaces one attack of the Attack action. Treat a thrown preparation as an improvised weapon with a normal range of 20 feet and a long range of 60 feet. Make a ranged weapon attack using Dexterity, adding the attacker’s Proficiency Bonus only if they are proficient with improvised weapons. On a hit, apply the preparation’s entry; on a miss, the dose is expended with no effect.

A preparation is not magical and is not affected by a Dispel Magic spell, an antimagic field, or anything that detects magic. Nothing here can be identified by an Identify spell. Working out what is in an unlabeled bottle takes a DC 15 Intelligence (Nature) check and, for most of them, a willingness to taste it.

Draughts

Countenance

Draught, common. Inquiline. Not sold.

No house stocks it and no house will make one. The order’s position is that a preparation which leaves a case looking well and feeling well, while the graft goes on exactly as it would in somebody screaming, is worse than anything in the poisons below, because everything in the poisons below announces itself. The formula is in part IV of the True File and nowhere else that anybody has found. It changes hands for nothing, passed on by people who are handed one themselves every morning.

Inquiline tissue boiled down and strained twice. The result is clear, faintly warm to the hand however long it has stood, and never quite still: held to a light there is a slow drift in it that does not settle. It has no smell and almost no taste going down, then leaves something metallic in the back of the throat a minute later.

Suppresses the effects of the drinker’s current stage for 24 hours, beginning at once. Depth accrues as normal and the graft deepens as normal. No effect at stage 4. While it holds, the drinker does not present the marks of their stage, and no Wisdom (Medicine) check can identify the disease. A Detect Poison and Disease spell finds the graft regardless.

Vigil

Draught, uncommon. Inquiline. 90 gp.

Inquiline tissue reduced over a low heat for most of a day and cut with rotgill bitters to keep it from setting in the bottle. Nearly black, oily enough to coat the glass, and violently bitter all the way down. Officers are taught to drink it in one go.

The drinker gains no Depth from their next Long Rest. They also gain no benefit from that rest: no Hit Points recovered, no Hit Point Dice returned, no spell slots restored, and Exhaustion is not reduced. A graft cannot be slept away, and this is the only thing in the order’s cupboard that answers the problem. Officers escorting a case to a house live on it.

Ablution

Draught, common. Sporophore. 20 gp.

Crust and rotgill washed, reduced, and washed again. Cloudy white with a chalky sediment that has to be shaken back in. Tastes of chalk and salt, and smells faintly of a cold cellar.

Reduces the drinker’s Spore Load by 1d4. It works on the Load and nothing else. A disease already contracted at a full Load is untouched by it, and treating one of those is a separate formula in the same cupboard.

Lavage

Draught, uncommon. Sporophore. 100 gp.

Ashcap reduced to a colorless liquid that smells of hot stone and takes the skin off a lip. Given within a minute of a feeding, before anything has rooted properly.

Prosectors carry two and offer one immediately, leaving the patient to decide whether to drink it.

A creature that drinks a lavage within 1 minute of gaining a graft removes 1d4 Depth and takes 2d6 Acid damage that cannot be reduced or prevented. A lavage taken later than that does the damage and nothing else.

Theriac

Draught, rare. Sporophore. 600 gp.

A full day of reduction from three harvested portions, ending in a thick brown liquid that has to be warmed before it will pour. It tastes of very little and smells strongly of yeast, and a house making one can be identified from the street.

A creature that drinks a theriac and then completes a Long Rest reduces a contracted Sporophore disease by one stage. It has no effect at stage 4 and none on Spore Load.

Kenotic draught

Draught, rare. Inquiline. Not sold.

Living inquiline tissue, barely worked at all, suspended in clear fluid. Pale threads are visible in it, and they move. It is faintly sweet and slightly warm.

The drinker takes a graft, rolled for location and line as though a parasite had fed on them, with no parasite present. The formula sits in part IV of the True File, and most ostiaries refuse to make it: the book holds that a rite performed out of a bottle is not a rite, and a cell reaching for one has usually lost the clutch it needs to hold a Kenotics.

Unguents

Collyrium

Unguent, common. Sporophore. 25 gp.

Dried ashcap ground into rendered fat. A pale gray paste, gritty, that smells of a cold hearth and stings badly for the first minute. It leaves a gray smear under both eyes that takes hours to come off, which is how a village knows an officer has been working.

Smeared below the eyes. For 1 hour, the wearer can tell at a glance whether a creature they can see within 30 feet carries a graft or a Spore Load, and can name the line of a graft by the color it shows. It reads nothing about depth or quantity, and it reads a body under Countenance as clean.

House pitch

Unguent, common. Sporophore. 15 sp.

Crust and rotgill boiled down into a black tar. Tacky, slow to spread, and it does not wash out of cloth. The smell is resinous and sour and carries twenty feet, and every hand in a cell can name it with their eyes shut.

Worked into boots, cuffs, and door frames. For 1 hour the wearer has Advantage on saving throws against a contaminated area, and any latchkin attempting to attach to them has Disadvantage on the attempt. The first effect is the pitch itself, which seals cloth and skin against anything settling on them. The second is an accident nobody planned and every house now relies on: a latchkin cannot get a grip on tar, and the sourness reads to it as ground that has already been taken. An almoner does not wear it.

Chrism

Unguent, uncommon. Sporophore. 120 gp.

Ashcap in oil, thin enough to run. It stays warm in the jar and smells of dry ash and hot stone. On skin it does nothing. On a body it stiffens the surface within the hour and leaves it gray and light.

Anointed on a corpse dead no more than a day. The body dries from the outside in, and nothing of the Necrophore will lay in it for the next 10 days. Anything already laid in it dies. A party that carries chrism does not leave a colony anything to work with, which is the only reliable way to travel through worked ground without feeding it.

Sounding

Unguent, common. Necrophore. 35 gp.

Necrophore wax thinned with lamp oil. Yellow, slightly luminous in a dark room, and it smells of fat that has gone over.

Spread across a corpse. Over the next minute the wax sinks wherever something has been laid in, leaving dark channels that can be counted. A sounding tells whether a body has been laid in and roughly how much is in it. It says nothing about how long ago, and it does not work on a body treated with chrism.

Cerate

Unguent, uncommon. Sporophore. 150 gp.

Reredos, ground and blended into wax, which is the one useful thing that line has ever provided. Hard, pale, and odorless until warmed, when it smells faintly of stone dust. It sets across an open wound in seconds and holds.

Applied during the removal of a graft by surgery. The surgery deals half damage. A prosector who has run out says so before starting, and the patient is entitled to refuse.

Fumes

Compline

Fume, common. Sporophore. 8 sp.

Rotgill fleece dried hard and wound onto a stick. Burns badly, smokes heavily, and smells of wet rope. The cheapest thing in this section and the one most often in a pack.

Burned at a camp. For 8 hours, driftlings and spore veils will not enter a 30-foot radius. It does nothing to anything larger and gives no protection against contaminated ground.

Pastille

Fume, uncommon. Sporophore. 110 gp.

Ashcap pressed into a hard cake with a little fat. Burns white and fast, and leaves a bitter film on the teeth that lasts most of a day.

Burned in place. Suppresses the effect of a contaminated area in a 20-foot Cube for 1 hour. It does not clear the ground, kill what is producing it, or prevent the area returning the moment the smoke thins. Houses use it to move patients along a corridor and nothing else.

Wakelight taper

Fume, uncommon. Necrophore. 130 gp.

Necrophore tallow poured around a wick of the same. Burns pale green, gives no heat, and does not gutter in wind. The smell is sweet and thin and gets into clothing.

Burns for 1 hour. Any Necrophore creature within 300 feet that can see the light moves toward the taper by the most direct route available. A taper left burning at a distance is the cheapest way to clear ground. A taper is planted, never carried.

Poisons

Bloom oil

Poison, uncommon. Sporophore. 200 gp.

Orcshroom spore suspended in oil that separates within the hour and has to be rolled between the palms before use. Yellow-brown, smells of bread going wrong, and dries on the blade to a fine dust. The dust is what does the work.

Coats one weapon or up to three pieces of ammunition. The first creature hit makes a DC 14 Constitution saving throw, taking 2d6 Poison damage and gaining 1 Spore Load on a failed save, or half as much damage and no Load on a successful one.

Ankylotic salt

Poison, uncommon. Sporophore. 250 gp.

Reredos crushed to a coarse gray grit. Odorless, tasteless, and slow, which suits a poisoner who intends to be elsewhere when it takes effect.

Ingested, one dose. A creature that swallows it makes a DC 15 Constitution saving throw at the end of the next hour. On a failed save its Speed is halved and it has Disadvantage on Dexterity saving throws for 8 hours as the joints stiffen. On a successful saving throw, the poison has no effect.

Wakelight dust

Poison, uncommon. Necrophore. 300 gp.

Wakelight ground fine while the body is still warm. Faintly luminous, weightless, and impossible to brush off cloth.

Thrown. On a hit the target is marked for 8 hours, and any Necrophore creature within 300 feet that can see the target moves toward it by the most direct route available. Washing it off with water takes 10 minutes.

Adipocere

Poison, rare. Necrophore. 750 gp.

Rendered from a body’s own wax over a low heat, then set. Pale, firm, and odorless in the tin, though it warms to a paste in the hand and then smells sweet.

Injury poison, one dose. A creature that takes damage from a coated weapon makes a DC 16 Constitution saving throw, taking 4d6 Poison damage and gaining the Poisoned condition for 1 hour on a failed save, or half as much damage and no condition on a successful one. While Poisoned this way the creature can’t regain Hit Points.

Sallow tincture

Poison, rare. Inquiline. Not sold.

Tissue taken from a sallow-line parasite and thinned until it is indistinguishable from water. No color, no smell, no taste. It cannot be identified in a cup by any means short of a Detect Poison and Disease spell.

Ingested or injury, one dose. A creature already carrying a graft gains 1d4 Depth with no saving throw. A creature carrying no graft is unaffected and never learns it was dosed. The order has never made it. Part V of the True File names it in passing as something a hand should not need.

Magic

Three groups have written spells for these creatures, and none of the three publishes.

The Lazaret teaches some spells to its officers. The remaining spells are held in the counter-work at the first house, whose catalog has never left the building. The order argues about this restriction in writing because it publishes everything else.

The True File reaches a cell only as a copy in the founder’s hand, and most cells have never seen one. Its spells appear in part V.

A practitioner’s spell survives in a private notebook or spellbook, often wherever its writer last worked. These practitioners work alone, with no shared order or doctrine.

A Game Master places these sources. None is available at a shop, in a temple, or from a tutor. Finding a source makes its spell available under a class’s normal spell rules; it does not teach or prepare the spell by itself. A Cleric, Druid, or Paladin can prepare a listed spell after finding its source; cantrips still follow the class’s cantrip rules. A Wizard can copy a listed spell from the source into a spellbook, then prepare it normally. A Sorcerer or Warlock can choose a listed spell when a class feature lets them learn or replace a spell.

What casting costs

Most of these spells cost a slot and nothing else.

Instar, Preferment, and Second Assignment require the caster to carry a graft before casting. A caster without one can know or prepare these spells but cannot cast them.

Assumption of the Case transfers Depth to the caster and gives them a graft if they do not have one; Second Assignment transfers an existing graft between creatures. Instar adds 1 Depth after using an existing graft, while Preferment advances an existing case by one full stage.

Chantry Tithe can add 1 Depth to a graft the caster already carries. The payment is optional, and the spell works without it.

The disease rules apply to every graft and point of Depth these spells add or transfer. Nothing here suspends the Depth gained from a Long Rest. Preferment is the only listed spell that reaches stage 4 directly.

Reading a spell’s origin

Each description is followed by a note naming where the spell comes from. The three labels describe what a party can find and who can teach the spell:

• The order’s. Every officer leaves the school with some of it, and each of the three ranks is trusted with more. The officers’ stat blocks name what each rank prepares. A house can grant access to its own copies; the rest remain in the first house’s counter-work.
• The True File. A cell’s copy holds part V in the founder’s hand. A source might be a complete copy, a page removed from one, or a transcription kept by a former hand.
• A practitioner’s. A private notebook or spellbook, usually kept in the place where its writer worked. An abandoned workroom, an inherited spellbook, or a practitioner’s archive can hold one.

The cantrips

Anamnesis

Divination Cantrip

Casting Time

Action

Range

Touch

Components

V, S

Duration

Instantaneous

You read a willing creature or a corpse and learn whether it carries a graft, a Spore Load, or anything of the Necrophore laid in it, and which line is responsible. You don’t learn the stage, the Depth, or the size of the Load.

A body under a suppression of any kind reads as clean, and the spell gives no sign that anything is being suppressed.

Classes: Cleric, Druid, Wizard

The order’s. Every officer has it before they leave the school, and the first thing a house teaches about it is that a suppressed body reads clean.

Douter

Evocation Cantrip

Casting Time

Action

Range

60 feet

Components

V, S

Duration

Instantaneous

You extinguish every nonmagical flame in a 20-foot Cube centered on a point within range, and put out any wakelight in the area. A creature in the area that produces wakelight of its own emits none until the end of its next turn.

Classes: Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

A practitioner’s. Its writer tested the spell against Necrophore wakelight and recorded that the light went out.

Fair Copy

Illusion Cantrip

Casting Time

Action

Range

Self

Components

S

Duration

1 hour

For the duration, you show no outward mark of any disease you carry. Skin, eyes, color, and gait read as ordinary to anyone watching, and a Wisdom (Medicine) check made by observation alone can’t identify what is wrong with you.

Fair Copy suppresses nothing. Every penalty of your stage applies in full, and any examination that involves touching you, or any magic that reads a body rather than looks at one, sees through it at once.

Classes: Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

The True File. Its page sits in part V beside the daily Countenance instructions, where every cell with a complete copy can find it.

Latchwork

Transmutation Cantrip

Casting Time

Action

Range

30 feet

Components

V, S

Duration

Instantaneous

You make a ranged spell attack against one creature within range. On a hit, the target takes 1d10 Piercing damage and has Disadvantage on the next attack roll it makes before the end of its next turn.

Cantrip Upgrade. The damage increases by 1d10 when you reach level 5 (2d10), level 11 (3d10), and level 17 (4d10).

Classes: Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

A practitioner’s. It throws a splinter of grafted tissue, and the tissue behaves the way a graft does for as long as it is in the wound.

Unction

Necromancy Cantrip

Casting Time

Action

Range

Touch

Components

V, S

Duration

1 hour

You touch a corpse. For the duration, nothing of the Necrophore can lay in that body, and any attempt to do so fails without a roll.

Unction affects one corpse and does nothing to a living creature.

Classes: Cleric, Warlock, Wizard

The order’s. Officers use it to mark corpses against the Necrophore without spending a spell slot.

Level 1

Brood Inquest

Level 1 Divination

Casting Time

Action or Ritual

Range

Self

Components

V, S

Duration

Instantaneous

You learn the number of corpses within 60 feet that have been laid in by the Necrophore, and the direction of each. The spell doesn’t distinguish one from another, doesn’t say how much is in any of them, and doesn’t detect a body that has been treated to prevent laying.

Classes: Cleric, Druid, Wizard

The order’s. Cast as a ritual over a battlefield, it takes 10 minutes and reveals whether the ground is contaminated.

Countenance

Level 1 Abjuration

Casting Time

Action

Range

Self

Components

S

Duration

24 hours

You suppress the effects of your current stage of an Inquiline disease. For the duration you suffer none of that stage’s penalties, don’t present its marks, and can’t be identified by a Wisdom (Medicine) check.

Depth accrues as normal, the graft deepens as normal, and the disease advances on its usual schedule. The spell has no effect at stage 4, and it doesn’t hide the graft from a Detect Poison and Disease spell.

Countenance can’t be cast on another creature, and there is no version of it without a Somatic component.

Classes: Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

The True File. It is taught at the rite and is the first spell most hands learn. Casters who cannot make a slot for it every day drink the measure instead.

Exacerbation

Level 1 Necromancy

Casting Time

Action

Range

Touch

Components

V, S

Duration

Instantaneous

You touch one creature, which makes a Constitution saving throw, taking 3d6 Necrotic damage on a failed save or half as much damage on a successful one.

On a failed save, a target that carries a graft gains 1 Depth, and a target that carries a Spore Load gains 1 Spore Load. A target carrying neither takes the damage and nothing more.

Using a Higher-Level Spell Slot. The damage increases by 1d6 for each spell slot level above 1.

Classes: Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

A practitioner’s. It was written to study how a graft answers an injury, and it answers by taking hold harder.

Lazaret Sill

Level 1 Abjuration

Casting Time

Action

Range

30 feet

Components

V, S, M (a length of cord)

Duration

10 minutes

You draw a line up to 30 feet long across a surface within range. For the duration, no Tiny creature of any of the three broods can cross it, and no contaminated area can spread past it.

A creature of Small size or larger crosses the line without difficulty and without breaking it.

Classes: Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Wizard

The order’s. Houses keep the formula for officers who draw sills across their doorways each evening.

Level 2

Assumption of the Case

Level 2 Abjuration

Casting Time

Action

Range

Touch

Components

V, S

Duration

Instantaneous

You touch a willing creature and take up to 1d4 of its Depth into yourself. The creature loses that Depth and you gain it, exactly as though you had been fed on.

If you carry no graft, you receive one, in the target’s line, with the Depth transferred.

Assumption of the Case can’t move Depth away from a creature at stage 4.

Classes: Cleric, Paladin, Warlock

The True File. Hands cast it on a Ciborium who has a day of work left and no way to reach it, taking the Ciborium’s Depth onto themselves.

Bloom Interdict

Level 2 Abjuration

Casting Time

Action

Range

60 feet

Components

V, S

Duration

Concentration, up to 10 minutes

You suppress every contaminated area within a 15-foot-radius Sphere centered on a point within range. For the duration, creatures in the Sphere make no saving throws against contaminated ground and gain no Spore Load from it.

Bloom Interdict doesn’t clear the ground, harm what is producing the contamination, or prevent the area resuming the instant the spell ends.

Classes: Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Wizard

The order’s. Prosectors carry it in their field notes for recovering patients from contaminated ground.

Discharge

Level 2 Evocation

Casting Time

Action

Range

30 feet

Components

V, S

Duration

1 minute

One corpse you can see within range burns for the duration and is consumed entirely, along with anything laid in it and anything growing on it. The fire doesn’t spread and doesn’t harm a creature that touches it.

A corpse consumed by Discharge can’t be raised by any means short of a True Resurrection spell.

Classes: Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Sorcerer, Wizard

The order’s. Houses keep it with their treatment spells and require the patient’s consent whenever the patient can give it.

Efflorescence

Level 2 Conjuration

Casting Time

Action

Range

60 feet

Components

V, S, M (a pinch of dried spore)

Duration

Instantaneous

Each creature in a 15-foot-radius Sphere centered on a point within range makes a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, a creature takes 4d6 Poison damage and gains 1 Spore Load. On a successful save, it takes half as much damage and gains no Load.

Using a Higher-Level Spell Slot. The damage increases by 1d6 for each spell slot level above 2.

Classes: Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

A practitioner’s. It is a colony’s own shedding, worked up out of a pinch of dried spore, and it is the only spell here that spreads a brood on purpose.

Level 3

Chantry Tithe

Level 3 Necromancy

Casting Time

Action

Range

Self

Components

V, S

Duration

Concentration, up to 1 minute

For the duration, whenever a creature other than you casts a spell while within 30 feet of you, you gain 5 Temporary Hit Points and can move up to 10 feet as a Reaction.

Optional cost. If you carry a graft, you can extend the radius to 60 feet by taking 1 Depth as the spell is cast. The spell functions normally without this.

Classes: Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

The True File. The founder placed it in part V among the workings that feed a chantry graft with nearby spellcasting.

False Wakelight

Level 3 Evocation

Casting Time

Action

Range

120 feet

Components

V, S, M (wakelight taken from a creature dead within the last 24 hours, which the spell consumes)

Duration

Concentration, up to 1 hour

You create a cold, pale light at a point within range. For the duration, every Necrophore creature within 1 mile that can perceive the light moves toward it by the most direct route available, and won’t willingly move away from it while it can be seen.

The light is stationary and can’t be moved once placed.

Classes: Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

A practitioner’s. A False Wakelight placed nearby draws every Necrophore creature within 1 mile that can perceive the light toward it.

Glebe

Level 3 Conjuration

Casting Time

Action

Range

90 feet

Components

V, S, M (a handful of soil from contaminated ground)

Duration

10 minutes

You contaminate the ground in a 20-foot-radius area centered on a point within range. For the duration the area counts as contaminated ground of a line you choose, with a Difficulty Class equal to your spell save DC.

The ground returns to normal when the spell ends. Nothing grows there afterward.

Classes: Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

A practitioner’s. Its soil must come from ground that is already taken, so the spell records that its writer reached such a place.

Prosector’s Purgation

Level 3 Abjuration

Casting Time

Action

Range

Touch

Components

V, S

Duration

Instantaneous

You touch a willing creature. It loses 2d4 Depth and takes 4d6 Force damage, which can’t be reduced, prevented, or resisted by any means.

Prosector’s Purgation has no effect at stage 4, and the damage is dealt whether or not any Depth remains to remove.

Classes: Cleric, Druid, Paladin

The order’s. It is faster than the restorations, it hurts a great deal, and a house will offer it when a case is running out of time. Patients are told what it does before they consent, and the telling is part of the procedure.

Level 4

Instar

Level 4 Transmutation

Casting Time

Bonus Action

Range

Self

Components

V

Duration

1 minute

You must carry a graft to cast this spell.

The graft rises to just beneath the skin and stays there for the duration. You gain the following benefits:

• 20 Temporary Hit Points.
• A natural weapon. You can attack with it as an Action, and on a hit it deals 2d8 Piercing damage plus your spellcasting ability modifier.
• Advantage on saving throws against being Frightened or Charmed.

When the spell ends, you gain 1 Depth.

Classes: Sorcerer, Warlock

The True File. Its page is kept in part V for initiated hands. Casting it exposes the graft beneath the caster’s skin for the spell’s duration.

Second Assignment

Level 4 Transmutation

Casting Time

1 minute

Range

Touch

Components

V, S

Duration

Instantaneous

You must carry a graft to cast this spell.

You touch two creatures, one of which carries a graft and one of which doesn’t. The graft leaves the first and takes in the second, at the same stage and with the same Depth. The first creature is free of it entirely, and the second gains it in full, including everything it had already become.

A creature that doesn’t consent makes a Charisma saving throw, and the spell fails against it on a successful save.

Second Assignment has no effect at stage 4.

Classes: Warlock, Wizard

A practitioner’s. It is absent from the True File. Its writer remains unidentified, and the four known copies are written in four different hands.

Sequestration

Level 4 Abjuration

Casting Time

Action

Range

60 feet

Components

V, S, M (a house key)

Duration

1 hour

You create a 30-foot-radius Sphere of still air centered on a point within range. For the duration, no creature of any of the three broods can enter or leave the Sphere, no spore or wakelight passes its boundary in either direction, and no contaminated area inside it spreads outside it.

Creatures that are not of the broods pass in and out freely, and carry nothing out with them that the spell would have stopped.

Classes: Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Wizard

The order’s. A house casts it when a case arrives that its officers do not recognize, buying 1 hour to examine the case.

Level 5

Extirpation

Level 5 Abjuration

Casting Time

Action

Range

Touch

Components

V, S

Duration

Instantaneous

You touch a creature carrying a graft that hasn’t reached stage 4. The graft leaves the body at once and the creature is cured completely, with no Depth, no stage, and no lasting effect.

The graft appears in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of the creature as the stage 4 form of its line, fully grown, hostile, and acting on its own Initiative from that moment. It has taken nothing from the body it left and is not weakened by the extraction.

Classes: Cleric, Druid, Wizard

The order’s. The formula remains in the counter-work at the first house. It removes a graft outright at every stage its spell text covers.

Laying-In

Level 5 Conjuration

Casting Time

1 minute

Range

Touch

Components

V, S, M (a corpse dead within the last 24 hours, which the spell consumes)

Duration

Instantaneous

You lay in a corpse. One hour later a Crypt Instar rises from it under your control and remains so for 24 hours. At the end of that time your control ends, and the creature behaves as any other of its kind.

You can have only one creature raised by Laying-In at a time. Casting it again ends your control over the previous one immediately.

Classes: Warlock, Wizard

A practitioner’s. Its instructions occupy an hour-by-hour account in a private notebook, beginning with a fresh corpse and ending with what rises from it.

Preferment

Level 5 Transmutation

Casting Time

Action

Range

Self

Components

V

Duration

1 minute

You must carry a graft to cast this spell.

You advance your own case by one full stage. This is permanent and isn’t reversed when the spell ends.

For the duration, you gain the following benefits:

• Your Speed increases by 20 feet.
• You have Advantage on attack rolls and on Constitution saving throws.
• At the start of each of your turns you gain 10 Temporary Hit Points.
• You can’t be Frightened or Charmed, and can’t be put to sleep by magic.

If you cast Preferment at stage 3, you reach stage 4, and everything that follows from stage 4 follows on schedule.

Classes: Sorcerer, Warlock

The True File. The founder wrote it, sent it to eleven cells, and was refused by six. The founder has never cast it.

What already casts them

Three creatures from the earlier chapters draw on this section. None of them changes Challenge Rating, and none of them gains a spellcasting block it did not have:

• Orcshroom Sporespeaker casts Anamnesis at will and Glebe twice a day. Nothing it knows comes from the True File — a sporespeaker works alone, from a tradition that has never been written down, and Glebe is the one that puts ground under its control.
• Psalter Tick can spend a stolen slot on Exacerbation or Chantry Tithe. The tick feeds on spellcasting, and Chantry Tithe rewards a caster for standing near other casters who are casting.
• Choirgall casts Anamnesis at will and Bloom Interdict once a day. A choirgall casting Bloom Interdict looks like help; it is protecting the casters it feeds on from the ground, so that they keep casting.

The three Lazaret officers in chapter 2 carry the order’s own share of this section, split by rank: the registrar surveys, the prosector works in the field, and the lector holds what a house does behind its own doors.