Brood & Bloom shipped with three broods of parasites and the order of physicians that catalogs them. It now has the people who disagree with that order, the medicine both sides carry, and the magic nobody publishes.
The library goes from sixty-one creatures to sixty-seven, and gains nineteen alchemical preparations and twenty-three spells. It is still free to read in full, and the spells are now castable in the console.
A cult, in six stat blocks
Chapter 3 is The Hands of the Host. Its founder was an officer of the Lazaret who spent eleven years copying case records, drew the opposite conclusion from them, published it as doctrine requires, and then walked out with a hundred and forty pages. What he published was an argument that a graft is not an affliction but an offer.
Six creatures cover a cell, wide enough apart to appear at any point in a campaign:
| Creature | CR | What they do |
|---|---|---|
| Almoner | 1 | Uninfected. Arrives during an outbreak with real medicine |
| Postulant | 2 | The newest grade. Digs, carries, holds doors |
| Sexton | 6 | Keeps the ground, and gets bodies to it before the day is out |
| Ostiary | 8 | The doorkeeper. Performs the rite and keeps the clutch |
| Ciborium | 12 | The third grade, seated, counting the depth of its own case |
| The First Graft | 15 | The author. A tired administrator who asks about your symptoms |
None of them is built to open a fight. An almoner met early and liked does more for a campaign than any encounter that starts with a drawn weapon, and hands surrender readily, talk freely, and treat capture as a chance to explain the book.
The Ciborium is the one to read twice before running it. It tracks Depth the way the disease rules do, spends it to seed the party, and takes it back off anybody standing near it, including its own hands, who thank it for the attention.
Nineteen jars
Chapter 7 opens with alchemy, and none of it needs a spellcaster. Every preparation is rendered from one of the three broods, and the differences decide what a party can keep on hand: Sporophore material stockpiles for a month, Inquiline material lasts an hour off a living parasite, and Necrophore material needs a fresh death.
There are draughts, unguents, fumes and poisons, from an 8 sp fume that keeps driftlings off a camp to a 750 gp injury poison. Three of them have no price at all.
The costs come from the equipment the rules already price, so nothing here needs a rule of its own. Drinking a draught is a Bonus Action, the way drinking a potion is. Coating a weapon is a Bonus Action and holds for a minute, the way Basic Poison does. Throwing one replaces an attack, the way Alchemist’s Fire does.
Twenty-three spells, and who has them
Three groups have written spells about these creatures and none of the three publishes: the order’s counter-work, the cult’s own workings, and whatever a lone practitioner leaves in a notebook. Each entry says which, because it decides what a party can find and who will teach it.
| Level | Spells |
|---|---|
| Cantrips | Anamnesis, Douter, Fair Copy, Latchwork, Unction |
| 1 | Brood Inquest, Countenance, Exacerbation, Lazaret Sill |
| 2 | Assumption of the Case, Bloom Interdict, Discharge, Efflorescence |
| 3 | Chantry Tithe, False Wakelight, Glebe, Prosector’s Purgation |
| 4 | Instar, Second Assignment, Sequestration |
| 5 | Extirpation, Laying-In, Preferment |
Three of them cannot be cast without carrying a graft, which the cult considers proof of everything it teaches. Extirpation is the one to be careful with: it ends a case outright, at any stage short of the last, and puts the fully grown parasite in the room with you.
These are live in the console. Brood & Bloom is the first library besides the two SRD sets to ship spells of its own, so a cult caster’s spells resolve against real entries rather than showing a bare name. Four of them leave something on the board and offer to apply it; the rest are yours to adjudicate, which is the same line the app draws everywhere else.
What moved
The book was rearranged to make room, so a bookmark may have shifted:
- The Lazaret has its own chapter now, at 2, instead of sharing chapter 1 with everything else.
- Growth and reproduction moved out of the appendix and into chapter 1, next to the rules it explains.
- The three broods are chapters 4, 5 and 6.
- Appendix C is a new index: every preparation with what it does, and every spell twice over, by level and by the class that can learn it.
Three creatures from the earlier chapters picked up spells. The Orcshroom Sporespeaker casts Glebe, which makes contaminated ground where there was none. The Psalter Tick can spend a stolen spell slot on Chantry Tithe, which rewards it for standing near your casters rather than retreating from them. The Choirgall casts Bloom Interdict, which looks like help and is not.
The Lazaret officers carry the order’s own counter-work, split by rank. The registrar surveys, the prosector works in the field, the lector holds what a house does behind its own doors, and they have gear lines now.
Reading it
The whole library is on the site, and the print edition is 101 pages. Turn it on in the console under Settings, and its creatures join Add creature with everything else.
The terms have not changed. Stat blocks, spells and mechanics are under CC BY 4.0 — share and adapt them, including commercially, with credit and a note of any changes. The lore, the chapter text and each creature’s description are © 2026 Nicola Mustone, all rights reserved.