Chapter 5
Weak simples
A weak simple is a preparation that looks like something in the sixth chapter and is not. Rosemary and mint rolled and sold as smallweed. Chalk and flour sold as a reduction that cost eight gold. A spent poppy head sold as the milk that was taken out of it a week ago.
They are here for two reasons. A practitioner meets far more of them than of the real thing, and the treatment for a creature that has taken one is not the treatment for a creature that has taken what it paid for. And a creature that took one and believes otherwise is in a condition of its own, which this chapter sets out.
Nothing here is sold as itself.
What one does
A creature that takes a weak simple believing it to be the thing it imitates gains that thing’s effect for 10 minutes, and no part of it afterward. A creature that knows what it is gains nothing at all.
The effect is the imitated entry’s first measure only. A second measure does nothing, no threshold is ever reached, and none of the imitated entry’s later clauses apply.
What one does not do
Nothing in this chapter has an overdose, a threshold, or a measure past which a saving throw decides anything. No quantity of any of it kills a creature, poisons it, or costs it an Exhaustion level. All four of the entries in the sixth chapter that kill are imitated here, and not one of the imitations can.
This reads beside the rule at the bottom of the sixth chapter’s ladder, which is that what is bought below a poor house is not reliably a measure. A creature sold an imitation of sleepwrack cannot die of it. A creature sold an imitation of anything cannot rely on it either, and both of those matter in the hour it is wanted.
The count still rises
Craving rises at the rate of the simple being imitated, for any creature that believes it took the real thing.
A body learns a habit from the hour, the ritual and the expectation, and none of the three requires the substance to have been present. A creature that smokes rosemary every evening for a fortnight, in the belief that it is smallweed, arrives at the same count on the same day as a creature that smoked smallweed, and its degrees arrive on schedule and behave exactly as the first chapter describes.
So a creature can reach the third degree of an addiction to something it has never taken. She records four such cases and says they were the hardest of her working life, because there was nothing in the patient to treat.
How one ends
An addiction to a weak simple can end by being explained, which no other addiction in this book can do. It requires the thing in front of the creature — the jar opened, the herb named, the same leaf burned beside it for comparison — and then it requires the creature to accept what it is looking at.
A creature shown that proof makes a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw. On a success the addiction ends at once, at whatever degree it had reached, with no days gone without and no further saving throws. On a failure it does not end, and the same demonstration will not work again; another creature may try later, with proof of its own.
A creature at the third degree makes that saving throw with Disadvantage. It has the most to lose by believing it, having spent the most.
On a failure the creature takes one of two positions, and the second is both the commoner and the worse. It disbelieves the practitioner — the goods were switched, the demonstration was a trick, the jar was not the jar it bought from. Or it accepts that what it had was false and concludes that what it needs is the real thing.
That second creature keeps its degree and its count and carries both into a substance that has a threshold. Everything in the sixth chapter that kills is waiting at the end of that decision, and a creature arriving there is arriving at the third degree with no idea what a measure is.
I have cured three men in an afternoon by opening a jar, and I have failed with a good many more than three. Each of the three was angry with me for a year afterward, which I had not expected the first time and expected thoroughly by the third.
There is no way to do it gently, and no way to do it twice. A thing either is what it was sold as or it is not, and a man who has spent four months of wages on rosemary would rather be ill than be a fool. The ones I lose do not go home and think about it. They go and find somebody selling the true article, and I have buried two of those.
Telling them apart
Every entry names its tell, and the tells are the useful part of this chapter. Most of them are a smell or an ash rather than a taste, because a practitioner is rarely offered a taste and is frequently offered a jar.
A creature that has read this book, or that has an apothecary’s training, finds the tell without a check. Anybody else who examines the goods carefully and knows what to look for may need one, and the harder imitations are the ones prepared by somebody who has also read a book.
| Weak simple | Sold as | What it is | The tell |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hearthsmoke | Smallweed | Rosemary, mint and sage, rolled | Smells of a kitchen. The ash is white, not brown |
| Chalkroot | Emberfoot | Chalk, flour and ground pepper | No sourness at all, and it settles out of the cup |
| Falsecap | Hushcap | A field mushroom dried hard | Browns only at the edge; hushcap is fawn to the stem |
| Beetwater | Quickthorn | Beet juice in cheap spirit | Smells of earth. Quickthorn smells of almonds |
| Kelpwash | Sleepwrack | Shore wrack, dried and rebrined | Smells only of the shore; sleepwrack stings the nose |
| Poppy husk | Milk poppy | The spent head, after the milk is out | Bitter but thin, and it does not cling to the glass |
| Nightsoot | Nightsmith | Soot, yeast and salt | Washes out of the cup. Nightsmith never does |
| Cordial drops | Sister’s ease | Sugar, spirit and one drop of bitter | Thin and clear held to a light; the true is near black |
| Mealcap | Veilcap | Any fawn pasture mushroom, dried | No blue bruise at the handling |
| Chalkmilk | Queensmilk | A drop of sweetened milk-spirit | It clouds in water; the true drop stays clear |
| Stillwater | Mirrorwater | Plain spirit run once more | It warms going down; mirrorwater is cold to the throat |
| Vetchwater | Oathbane | Bitter water, dyed pale | Bitter once; the true is bitter twice |
Each is sold at the price of the thing it imitates, and each is worth a few coppers.
Five of them are worth more than a line.
Hearthsmoke
The commonest weak simple in the book, and the one a practitioner meets weekly. Rosemary, mint and sage dried and rolled in the same papers smallweed is rolled in, by somebody who has watched the real thing being made.
It is genuinely pleasant to smoke, which is why it sells to people who have never had smallweed and cannot be disappointed by it. Those creatures take no Craving at all, having believed nothing, and simply enjoy an evening.
Poppy husk
The one entry here that is not inert. The head has been scored and the milk taken, and what is left holds a little of what it held before — enough to be real and nowhere near enough to be milk poppy.
A creature that takes a measure ignores the effects of one Exhaustion level for 1 hour, whether it believes anything or not. It has no overdose, and a creature cannot take enough of it to stop breathing.
Craving rises at milk poppy’s rate of 4 for a creature that believes it took milk poppy, and at 1 for a creature that knows exactly what it has.
Cordial drops
Sugar, spirit and a drop of something bitter, sold in the small dark bottle sister’s ease is sold in, at sister’s ease’s price of 120 gp.
It costs a few coppers to make and sells for 120 gp. A creature carrying it as its emergency against pain has nothing, and finds that out in the hour it was wanted. A number of creatures who took what they believed was a second drop are alive because of it.
I have been asked whether I would sell a false cordial drop to a man I judged likely to take the real one to its end, and I will not answer it in a book that anybody may read. I will say that the question has been put to me twice, by people who had thought about it longer than I had.
Mealcap
The seeing is the easiest family in the book to counterfeit, because the customer does half the preparing. A creature that chews any dried fawn mushroom believing it veilcap gets veilcap’s first measure entire, by this chapter’s own rule — the weighted colors, the patterned world — for 10 minutes in place of 4 hours. Most buyers are at a fair, in the dark, well into the drink, and do not count the minutes.
A mealcap seller is therefore the least often caught in the trade: a buyer who saw what it paid to see does not come back angry.
Vetchwater
Bitter water, dyed pale to the true tincture’s color, sold in oathbane’s bottle at oathbane’s price. It is the one imitation in this chapter whose failure lands on a third party: the believer’s 10 minutes pass at breakfast, unremarked, nothing in it meets the evening’s drink, and the household that bought a pledge learns what it bought on the night the pledge mattered. She calls it the lowest fraud on this list — it sells a family the belief that somebody is protected, at the price of the protection.