Potent simples

A simple is a preparation of one plant, one fungus or one animal part, as against a compound of several. Everything in this chapter is one thing, prepared by one of the six methods in the second chapter, and doing one thing to a body that is worth knowing about.

They are arranged by family, by what they do rather than by name, because a practitioner who has read the waking reads the quieting faster.

Every entry here has an imitation, and the imitations are in the fifth chapter. A practitioner who cannot tell one from the other will treat the wrong condition, and the two do not resemble each other once the treating starts.

The measure

Every entry names its measure: one dose, defined per simple, because a mouthful of one thing is not a mouthful of another. A thumb’s width of dried lichen and three drops of a tincture are each one measure of their own thing.

Entries say what one measure does, what a second does on top of it, and where the line is past which a saving throw decides the matter. A simple does not do a graded version of the same thing at every dose. Several do nothing at all until the second measure, and several change what they do entirely.

Every entry also names what it adds to Craving, and what its excess is where it has one. The count itself — how it converts, the three degrees of addiction it converts into, and how one ends — is set out in the first chapter and is the same for everything in this book.

Overdose

Past a certain number of measures in one sitting, a simple stops being what it was. Each entry names its threshold and its consequence. Some are unpleasant. Four in this chapter kill, and each of those says so in its own entry, in plain words.

An overdose is the only thing in this chapter that kills a creature outright. What years of a substance do to a body is written in the entries that have it and counted nowhere. It happens too slowly to count in days.

Where it is sold

Every family table below carries a Sold column: the level of custom at which an entry is openly traded, from the seven a settlement’s houses and purses already sort into. An arrow widens the reading — Poor ↓ is sold at a poor level and every level below it, Comfortable ↑ at a comfortable level and every level above it — and a level with no arrow sells the entry there and nowhere else.

A level over a counter is a kind of seller:

The column follows danger rather than price, and danger runs downhill. The more a thing can do to its buyer, the lower the only counters that will openly sell it: nothing that kills is sold above squalid, and sister’s ease at 120 gp moves through the same lanes as the cut stock, a wealthy buyer sending somebody down rather than being seen. What climbs the ladder is the pleasant end of the catalog — the fine grades, the salon pipe, the things taken for enjoyment rather than at need. An apothecary who would sell the worst of it across a counter, at the stated measure, existed — she was one — and the trade does not run on such counters.

Below the poor level the arrows stop mattering: the two lowest levels sell everything in this chapter, the killers included, cut with whatever came to hand. What is bought there is not reliably a measure — it may be cut to nothing, or it may be twice what was asked for, and which of the two it was is discovered after it has been taken. Everything in this chapter that kills does so at a threshold counted in measures, so a buyer who does not know what a measure is has lost the only protection the catalog offers.

Three values in the column are their own rule. Anywhere is smallweed, sold everywhere by everybody, like beer — what follows the seller is the grade rather than the leaf, a street stall with Rushlight and a fine shop with Verrone, and both are the same plant. Hand to hand is the dear half of the seeing, sold over no counter at any level, because its buyer is buying a question as well as a simple and prefers the fewest witnesses to both. And — is thornapple, sold by nobody, being in every farmyard.

The prices in the family tables do not change with the level. What changes is whether anybody will sell it, how long it takes to arrange, and how many people know afterward.

“

I have sold milk poppy to a duchess and to a woman who cleaned for her, at the same price, in the same week. The duchess sent a man for it and the woman came herself in the rain, and the difference in what it cost the two of them was not in my ledger.

The waking

Simples that hold sleep off, or that a body simply comes to expect. The commonest family, the cheapest, and the one most people have taken without thinking of it as taking anything.

Smallweed

A broad gray-green leaf from a plant that grows wherever ground has been disturbed — spoil heaps, roadsides, the edge of a yard — and that wants no tending, no season and no skill to raise. It is cut in late summer and hung until it is leather. It smells of hay, and once lit of something sweeter and worse that gets into cloth and stays there. It tastes of scorched grass. The first of either that a creature takes in its life makes it sick and dizzy for an hour, which is the only warning the plant gives.

It is smoked in one of two forms, and they are the same leaf. Shredded fine and rolled into papers about the thickness of a straw, twisted shut at one end and lit at the other, it is smoked in a few minutes. Grown in a warm country, cured slowly whole rather than shredded, and wound about itself to a finger’s thickness and a hand’s length, it is a goldleaf, and is cut at one end and smoked over an hour. Unlit a goldleaf smells of dried fruit and cellar wood. Lit, it smells of smallweed, which is the tell.

A measure is one roll or one goldleaf, and it takes hold on the first draw. For 1 hour, a creature that is Addicted to smallweed does not suffer the Disadvantage of going without it. For any other creature it does nothing at all.

Rolls are sold made up rather than loose, in tens and twenties, with nothing taken off for the larger packet. Goldleaf is sold singly and in boxes of 3, 5, 10 and 20 at any grade, and a box costs its count with nothing taken off either — ten Cedar House goldleaves are 20 gp in a box, which is what ten cost bought one at a time. A box is a quantity and not a measure.

It is common enough to be sold under a maker’s name, and the name sets the price and nothing else. Every line below is the same plant doing the same thing.

Rolled, priced for a packet of ten:

Goldleaf, priced singly, one grade to a house:

Two of the eleven are priced by the name. Weald Gold is the Blue Hand’s leaf in a printed wrapper at twice the money, and Montarre is Almadera’s, grown on the next estate and aged the same three years, at four times it.

The same packet costs what the house it is bought in can charge for it, so a Blue Hand is 2 sp at a poor house and 4 sp in a comfortable one, and a Cedar House goldleaf is sold at a squalid stall for whatever the seller thinks can be got.

“

I have opened a Weald Gold and a Blue Hand on the same counter and asked the buyer to tell me which was which, and he could not, and he bought the Weald Gold. I do not think he was a fool. He was buying the wrapper and he knew it, and the wrapper was what he had come in for.

Each day on which a roll was taken adds 2 to Craving. Each day on which a goldleaf was taken adds 1. The leaf is the same and the count is the same, and what differs is how much of it a day holds: a day of rolls is a dozen or twenty, and a day of goldleaf is one. A creature that smoked twenty goldleaves in a day would arrive exactly where the roll smoker arrives, and would have spent forty gold getting there.

A day on which a creature took both adds the higher of the two and not the sum. It is one count and one body.

Its excess is the smell and the light. A creature at the third degree lights one where it should not — indoors where it is forbidden, on a watch, in a wood at night, in the hour before a door it means to pass unnoticed — and it does not decide to. While a creature is smoking, and for 1 hour afterward, it has Disadvantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks made against anything that can smell. In darkness a lit roll is visible at 300 feet, and further at the moment it is drawn on. A creature at the third degree carries the smell in its clothes and hair whether it is smoking or not, and that does not wash out overnight.

A goldleaf cannot be put out and relit without ruining it, so a creature at the third degree does not cut one short and can be found wherever it can finish.

A creature that shares a goldleaf of Whole leaf grade or better with another creature, and spends the hour over it, has Advantage on Charisma checks made toward that creature until it is finished. A coarse one carries no such advantage, sharing one being no courtesy anybody notices. That is the only thing a goldleaf does that a roll does not.

What it costs over thirty years — the cough that arrives and does not leave, the wind gone by forty, the years off the end — is not counted anywhere in this book.

Overdose. A creature that smokes considerably more than it is accustomed to has the Poisoned condition for 1 hour. No quantity of it kills a creature in a day.

“

It is the only thing on my shelves nobody asks me about. They ask what the lichen will do to a heart and whether the poppy can be left off, and they buy smallweed the way they buy bread. I have sold it to the same men for thirty years, and I have heard what happened to their breathing, and not one of them has ever connected the two things in front of me.

“

I have sold a goldleaf to a man who would not have smallweed in his house, and I did not tell him what it was, and I have thought about that since. It is the same leaf and the same debt in better clothes. What his money bought him was the hour it takes to smoke one, which is not nothing, and is not what he thought he was buying.

Vapour

A brass vessel the size of a pear, holding a spoonful of sweetened spirit, warmed over a small lamp and breathed through a tube. It came out of an apothecary’s bench, where the same apparatus carries a steam to a chest that will not clear, and the trade found the other use for it within a season. The vessel costs 5 gp and lasts for years; a charge costs what it holds.

A charged vapour has smallweed steeped into the spirit, and one charge is one measure of smallweed. It shares smallweed’s count, because it is smallweed. A plain vapour is flavored spirit and nothing else — mint, aniseed, whatever the maker sells — and it does nothing at all, carries no Craving, and is the only thing in this chapter that a creature can take every day of its life for no cost.

What a charged vapour changes is not the wanting but the excess. It gives off a thin sweet steam that is gone in a minute rather than a smoke that stays in cloth, and it shows no ember. A creature taking a charged vapour does not suffer smallweed’s Disadvantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks, and there is no light to be seen at 300 feet. Everything else about the entry is unchanged: the count rises at the same rate, the degrees arrive on schedule, and the creature at the third degree is still at the third degree.

“

It is my own bench’s apparatus put to a use I did not intend, and I have been asked whether that troubles me. It does not. What it takes away is the smell and the ember, which are the two things that ever caused a man to be told he was smoking too much.

Drover’s cud

A tough gray leaf from the verges of any road cattle are walked down, chewed flat by drovers on the long stages and spat out at the inn. Dull green going gray, thick as leather. It smells of hay and faintly of pepper. It tastes of nothing much for a while and then sharply bitter, which is when a drover knows to spit it.

A measure is one leaf chewed for a minute. For 2 hours the creature has Advantage on saving throws made to stay awake. A second leaf in that time does nothing at all, which is the whole reason drovers hold it in such affection and apothecaries in so little.

Two measures in a day add 1 to Craving. There is no overdose; a body simply stops answering it.

Kindleseed

A hard black seed from a roadside spurge, useless raw and quite different roasted, which is a thing somebody discovered by accident and everybody has known since. Glossy black, chestnut brown once roasted. It smells of burnt sugar. It tastes bitter and oily, and it leaves the mouth dry for an hour.

A measure is a dozen seeds. For 6 hours the creature has Advantage on saving throws made to stay awake and gains no Exhaustion level from going without sleep. A second measure adds Disadvantage on Wisdom checks as the attention narrows to whatever is in front of it.

Overdose. A third measure within 6 hours: DC 13 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature takes 7 (2d6) Psychic damage and has the Frightened condition for 1 minute, frightened of nothing it can name.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 1 to Craving.

Emberfoot

A lichen the color of old brick, which takes the warm stone about a spring or a smithy’s outer wall and will not take anything colder. It grows flat and scaled, paler at the edge where it is newest, and wetted it darkens almost to black and the scales lift. It smells faintly of hot iron, and of bread once the water is on it. The taste is sour first, and then a heat that is not a burning but sits at the back of the throat and stays there a while after. Miners chew it dry. Smiths reduce it, being particular people.

“

Of its preparing

One will gather the lichen from the warm side of the stone only, and leave what grows below the water line, for that is a different thing and will gripe.

One will bruise a good handful in a mortar, dry, until the scales part; then one will set it in a pint of soft water and boil it over a slow and even fire until the third part be wasted, which is four hours or near it. One will not suffer it to gallop, for a hard boil takes the heat out of it and leaves only the sourness.

It is commonly said that a cantrip will hold the fire. It will warm the pot an hour, and the boil wants four; one who trusts it will cast it thrice and still come back to a cold pot, for warming is not boiling and never was. Steady Fire will do the work.

Strained through linen and stoppered, it will keep a twelvemonth. Unstrained it will keep a month and then it will turn, and one will know it turned by the smell of bread going out of it.

A measure is one mouthful of the reduction, or a thumb’s width of the dried lichen chewed. It takes hold within a minute. For 4 hours after taking one measure, a creature has Advantage on saving throws made to stay awake and gains no Exhaustion level from going without sleep. A second measure inside those 4 hours holds the waking and adds Disadvantage on Dexterity checks, as the hands go unsteady. A third brings the heart up: the creature must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or have the Poisoned condition for 1 hour.

Overdose. A fourth measure inside the same 4 hours calls a DC 15 Constitution saving throw. On a failed save the creature takes 3 (1d6) Necrotic damage, gains 1 Exhaustion level, and its Speed is halved for 1 hour.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 1 to Craving. Its excess is that a creature at the third degree takes a measure at the start of any task it expects to be long, and there is always another task.

Wakerush

A river sedge with a hollow three-sided stem, cut at the waterline and infused. Pale green going straw as it dries. It smells of cut grass and pond water. It tastes green, cold and slightly soapy, and it is the pleasantest thing in this family to take and the hardest to stop taking.

A measure is a cup of the infusion. For 8 hours the creature has Advantage on saving throws made to stay awake, gains no Exhaustion level from going without sleep, and needs no food in that time. A second measure extends nothing and adds Disadvantage on Constitution saving throws.

Overdose. A third measure within 8 hours: DC 15 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature gains 2 Exhaustion levels when the wakerush ends, whenever that is.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 2 to Craving. Its excess is sleep: a creature at the third degree does not take a night off, because a night off is a night behind.

“

Wakerush is the reason I began keeping the count at all. It does everything it promises and it asks for the whole of it back, and the people it has cost most were sober, careful, hard-working people who were simply behind on something.

Quickthorn

The inner bark of a black thorn that grows in hedges nobody planted, tinctured in aqua vitae for a month. Deep red-brown in the bottle. It smells of almonds and iron. It tastes of almonds and then of blood, and it acts before the bottle is stoppered.

A measure is five drops on the tongue. It takes hold at once. For 1 hour the creature has Advantage on Initiative rolls and on Dexterity saving throws, and its Speed increases by 10 feet. A second measure in that hour adds Disadvantage on Wisdom and Charisma checks; the world arrives faster than judgment does.

Overdose. A third measure within 1 hour: DC 16 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature takes 14 (4d6) Necrotic damage as the heart is driven past what it will take, and drops to 0 Hit Points if this damage reduces it below half its Hit Point maximum.

Each measure adds 2 to Craving. Its excess is money — a creature at the third degree spends what it has on it, and then what it has not.

Larkwort

A small yellow flower dried and smoked, taking hold in the time it takes to exhale. Pale gold, brittle. It smells of honey when dry and of scorched honey when burning. It tastes sweet and leaves the tongue faintly numb.

A measure is one pipe. For 30 minutes the creature has Advantage on Charisma checks and on saving throws against being Frightened, and Disadvantage on Wisdom checks. A second pipe in that time replaces the Advantage on Charisma checks with Disadvantage, as the talk runs past where anybody wanted it.

Overdose. A third pipe within 30 minutes: DC 14 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature has the Poisoned condition for 1 hour and cannot stop talking, which has cost more people more than the poison has.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 3 to Craving. Its excess is company: a creature at the third degree will not sit down with anybody without a pipe lit, and cannot settle to sleep without one.

Nightsmith

A black fungus from the roof timbers of forges, gathered where the smoke has been going up for thirty years or more, and decocted at length. Black, and it stains everything. It smells of soot and yeast. It tastes of ash and salt.

A measure is a spoonful of the decoction, taken an hour before it is wanted. For 12 hours the creature has Advantage on saving throws made to stay awake, gains no Exhaustion level from going without sleep, and has Advantage on Intelligence checks. A second measure in that time gives no further benefit and imposes the Poisoned condition for the remainder.

Overdose. A third measure within 12 hours: DC 17 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature dies, and she says plainly that she has seen it and that it is not quick. On a success it gains 3 Exhaustion levels and is Unconscious for 1d6 hours.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 3 to Craving. Its excess is work — a creature at the third degree takes a measure before anything it cares about doing, and comes to believe it cannot do the thing without one.

“

Nightsmith is the finest thing in this family and I have sold perhaps two dozen doses in my life, all of them to people I knew by name and had refused at least once. It will carry a scholar through a fortnight. What it does after the fortnight is in the seventh chapter, and I have written that part at length.

The quieting

Simples that put pain down, or sleep up. The family a practitioner uses most and worries about most, and the one that fills the seventh chapter.

Bell-bind

A hedge convolvulus with a white trumpet flower, the root dug in autumn and infused. Pale, starchy, unpromising. It smells of raw potato. It tastes of almost nothing, which is why it goes into so many other things.

A measure is a cup at bedtime. The creature falls asleep within 30 minutes and sleeps 8 hours, and its Long Rest is not interrupted by ordinary noise or discomfort. It is woken normally by anything that would wake a sleeping creature in danger.

There is no overdose worth the name; a second cup simply tastes worse. Three nights running add 1 to Craving. Its excess is that a creature at the third degree cannot fall asleep without a cup, and will lie awake the whole night rather than try.

Marrowmoss

A gray moss from the north side of standing stones, worked into rendered fat and rubbed into a joint. Grey-green, greasy once made up. It smells of earth and tallow. It is not taken by mouth and tastes, she notes, exactly as bad as it looks.

A measure is a thumb of the unguent rubbed in. For 4 hours the treated limb aches less. A creature with an injury that would impose Disadvantage on checks using that limb ignores that Disadvantage for the duration. It heals nothing and knits nothing.

Overdose. None by this route. A creature that eats it — and she records two — has the Poisoned condition for 8 hours and learns not to.

Three days’ use adds 1 to Craving.

Hushcap

A fawn mushroom with a skirt, found in beech mast, dried hard and chewed slowly. Fawn going brown, leathery. It smells of dust and old paper. It tastes of nothing and then, some minutes later, of sweetness.

A measure is one cap. For 6 hours the creature has Resistance to the pain of injury: it does not gain Disadvantage from wounds and cannot be forced to make a check or save to withstand pain. It also has Disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks, being some distance from its own skin.

Overdose. A second cap within 6 hours: DC 14 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature has the Unconscious condition for 1d4 hours and does not wake for damage.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 2 to Craving. Its excess is that a creature at the third degree takes a cap at the first ache of anything, including aches it would not have noticed before it started.

Dulcet root

A pale forked root from wet ground, decocted for six hours until the liquor goes syrupy and faintly gold. It smells of aniseed and cellars. It tastes intensely sweet and then bitter, and the bitterness is how one knows it is finished.

A measure is a spoonful. For 8 hours the creature ignores the effects of one Exhaustion level, and has Advantage on saving throws against being Frightened or Charmed. A second measure adds the Poisoned condition for the duration.

Overdose. A third measure within 8 hours: DC 15 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature has the Paralyzed condition for 1d4 hours, awake throughout, which she notes is the detail people are not told and should be.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 2 to Craving. Its excess is fear: a creature at the third degree takes a spoonful before anything it expects to be frightened by, which comes in time to be most things.

Sleepwrack

A brown weed from tidal rock, gathered at the spring low and infused. Olive-brown, rubbery, smelling strongly of the sea. It tastes of salt and iodine and is thoroughly unpleasant.

A measure is a cup. The creature must succeed on a DC 15 Constitution saving throw or fall Unconscious for 1d4 hours. On a success it is not affected at all. Damage does not wake it; an hour of vigorous effort by somebody else will.

This is the surgeon’s draught, and the entry says so: it is taken to be cut, not to rest.

Overdose. A second cup while the first holds: DC 17 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature stops breathing and dies within a minute unless somebody with the means and the wit intervenes.

Each use adds 2 to Craving. Its excess is the worst in the chapter, because a second cup kills: a creature at the third degree ends any day it did not like with one, and does not always remember whether it has had one already.

Milk poppy

The seed head of a tall gray poppy, scored at dusk and the milk gathered at dawn, dried and then tinctured. The gum is white going brown; the tincture is dark and bitter. It smells faintly of hay and strongly of itself, which is a smell nobody who knows it mistakes. It tastes appallingly bitter through any amount of honey.

“

Of its preparing

One will score the head shallow and across, and one will come back at first light, and what has wept out overnight is what one has. It is a day’s work for a thimble and it cannot be hurried by any means I know of, and I include the eighth chapter in that.

One will tincture it in clean aqua vitae, never in wine, and one will label the bottle with the date and with what it is, in letters somebody frightened can read. I have known three houses where the unlabeled bottle was the whole of the tragedy.

A measure is three drops. For 4 hours the creature ignores the effects of two Exhaustion levels, cannot be forced to make a check or save to withstand pain, and has Advantage on saving throws against being Frightened. It also has Disadvantage on all Wisdom checks and its Speed is reduced by 10 feet.

A second measure within 4 hours gives no further relief and adds the Poisoned condition.

Overdose. A third measure within 4 hours: DC 16 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature’s breathing slows and stops. It falls Unconscious and begins making death saving throws at the start of its next turn, with no wound to find and nothing to stanch. On a success it is Unconscious for 1d6 hours.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 4 to Craving. Its excess is that a creature at the third degree takes a measure at the first sign of pain of any kind, including pain it is only expecting.

“

I have never once regretted giving milk poppy to somebody dying and I have regretted nearly every other time. It is the best thing in this book and it takes the most, and a practitioner who is casual with it will find out which of those two facts arrives first.

Sister’s ease

A tincture of milk poppy reduced and redistilled until a measure is three drops of something several times its strength — an apothecary’s improvement on an apothecary’s drug. Nearly black, syrupy. It smells and tastes of milk poppy and worse.

A measure is one drop. It acts at once and does everything milk poppy does, for 1 hour, without the Disadvantage on Wisdom checks — which is precisely the problem, because nothing about it announces itself.

Overdose. A second drop within the hour: DC 18 Constitution saving throw, with the same failure as milk poppy and no warning beforehand. This kills more practitioners than patients, and the entry says so.

Each use adds 5 to Craving. Its excess is milk poppy’s, arriving sooner and with nothing to announce it.

“

I made this. I am not going to pretend otherwise in my own book. It was for a woman with a crushed leg and four days to live and it was the right thing on that occasion, and it has since been copied by people who had neither her circumstances nor my arithmetic.

If a reader takes one thing from this catalog let it be that the strong version of a good thing is not a better good thing. It is a different thing, and it wants a different sort of care, and I did not understand that at forty as well as I understand it now.

The seeing

Simples that change what a creature sees, or show it something else in place of the room. Nothing here holds sleep off or puts pain down. They are taken to look, and the family does not resemble the rest of the catalog in what it asks: its counts are small, and three of its seven entries carry none at all. A body does not come to expect these the way it learns to expect the rest, and she records plainly that she cannot say why.

Nothing in this family kills by its own hand, and most of what goes wrong under it is answered by the first rung of the seventh chapter’s ladder: water, warmth, and somebody sober in the room until it ends.

“

People come to my counter for this family with a different face. Nobody has ever asked me for milk poppy with their chin up, and the veilcap buyers look me in the eye and tell me at length, and what they are buying, as near as I can make out, is for something to mean something. I sell it. In forty years I have not settled whether it works, and I notice that nobody has ever come back and told me it failed.

Seven entries, from the one sold at every fair to the one never sold at all:

Veilcap

A fawn mushroom on a slender stem, up in dunged pasture a few mornings after autumn rain and gone by noon of the third day, dried hard and chewed. Fawn going gray, and it bruises blue where the fingers handle it. It smells of meal. It tastes of meal and of mud, and nobody has ever claimed to take it for the taste.

A measure is one cap. For 4 hours the world patterns itself: colors carry weight, sounds carry shapes, and whatever the creature looks at looks back with intent. It has Disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks for the duration, and it automatically fails any check made to see an illusion for what it is. A second cap in those hours deepens nothing and lengthens nothing; a body answers veilcap or it does not.

Overdose. A third cap within 4 hours: DC 13 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature takes 7 (2d6) Psychic damage and has the Frightened condition for 1 hour, frightened of one particular thing it saw, which it can name and cannot stop seeing.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 1 to Craving. Most of its buyers take it twice a year, at a fair or a festival, and their count never moves at all.

Mothlight

A papery gray-white lichen off old orchard bark, in scales like a moth’s wing folded flat, dried and smoked in a short pipe. It smells of dust in the jar and of incense burning, and the smoke is thick, sweet, and pale enough to hold light — a pipe of it in a dark room seems to give more than the embers account for.

A measure is one pipe. For 30 minutes every light the creature can see wears a halo, the dark between lights is a kindly dark, and nothing in either is worth being afraid of. It has Advantage on saving throws against being Frightened, and Disadvantage on attack rolls, having lost interest in the outcome. A second pipe within the half hour extends the whole of it to 1 hour and adds Disadvantage on Wisdom saving throws.

Overdose. A third pipe within 1 hour: DC 13 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature is Charmed by every creature it can see, for 1 hour, and it remembers afterward exactly what that was like.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 2 to Craving. Its excess is the dark: a creature at the third degree keeps to it, arranges to sleep by day, and stops lighting lamps in its own rooms.

Dreamvine

A twining hedge vine with milk-white flowers that open at dusk, the flowers gathered the same evening and tinctured, since dried they are nothing. The tincture is faintly gold. It smells of the flower, green and cold. It tastes of very little, and it is taken at bedtime.

A measure is three drops. The creature sleeps its ordinary sleep and completes a Long Rest as it otherwise would, and it dreams in order — whole, sequential, and kept: on waking it remembers the night entire, in the sequence it happened. The dreams are its own. Nothing in the vine sends anything, and she is plain on the point: a creature that dreamed an answer had the answer.

Overdose. None found. More of it deepens nothing; a night holds the dreams it holds.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 2 to Craving. Its excess is the mornings: a creature at the third degree wakes disappointed, goes to bed early to get back, and comes to prefer the ordered nights to the disordered days.

“

Half my dreamvine goes to diviners, and I sell it to them with the same sentence every time: the vine is a scribe and not a messenger. Some of them thank me. The ones who come back weekly have generally stopped hearing the sentence, and I have watched a sensible woman rearrange a year around what a Tuesday told her.

Ditchking

The dried milk of a heavy brown toad that winters in field drains and is found nowhere else, wiped from its back where it beads when the toad is handled, dried on glass and smoked. A toad gives a scraping a season and the toads are few, which is most of the price. The dried milk is amber, glassy, and nearly scentless. Smoked, it tastes of burnt sugar and then of nothing, because the creature has left.

A measure is one scraping, and it acts on the first draw. For 10 minutes the creature is entirely elsewhere: it has the Incapacitated condition, perceives nothing of its surroundings, and cannot be roused by anything short of damage. It returns all at once, unharmed, and the reports agree with one another to a degree she found remarkable — a light, a largeness, and being glad.

A second measure the same day does nothing at all. A body answers ditchking once between dawns, and no preparation she tried moves that.

Overdose. None. A larger measure buys the same 10 minutes.

It carries no Craving. She kept the count on eleven regular buyers across twenty years, it never moved for any of them, and she offers no explanation.

Loomsight

A gray root like a knot of cord, from a low plant of high field margins that flowers once and dies in the digging. It is three years growing to a usable root, and the root does not divide. Decocted for a morning, it gives a liquor the color of weak tea that smells of wool and rain, and tastes woolen too, and faintly sweet.

“

Of its preparing

One will take the whole root or leave the whole root, for it does not divide: cut, the virtue is out of both halves by morning. And one will make peace with the arithmetic before one digs, for the plant is three years growing and dies in the lifting.

Hasten the Root will raise one from seed in an afternoon, and what one has raised is one plant, which is one measure. The spell spares the three years. It does not change the count.

A measure is a cup. For 1 hour the creature attends, completely, to what is in front of it. It has Advantage on Wisdom (Insight) checks, and Charisma (Deception) checks made against it are made with Disadvantage. For the same hour it is nowhere else: it has Disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks against anything other than what it is attending to, and on Initiative rolls. A second cup within the hour adds nothing and costs the stomach the rest of the day.

Overdose. A third cup within a day: DC 14 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature takes 7 (2d6) Psychic damage and has the Incapacitated condition for 1 hour, attending to everything equally, which is attending to nothing.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 2 to Craving. Its excess is the asking: a creature at the third degree will not read a face, weigh an offer or judge a stranger without a cup, and has stopped trusting what its own eyes do for free.

Greencrown

A green flower in the shape of a small crown, on high heath, open for one week at midsummer and worthless dried — the week is the price. It is infused fresh, a whole flower to a cup. The infusion is green as bottle glass. It smells of cut stems, and it tastes bitter, long, and organized, which is her word and the only one she offers.

A measure is the cup, and everything about its sale assumes what every seller of it insists on: a minder, a quiet room, and an empty day to follow. For 8 hours the creature is taken apart in front of itself. It has Disadvantage on all ability checks for the duration, it cannot maintain Concentration on a spell, and it goes nowhere without being led. At the end it must make a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw: on a success it keeps the whole of the 8 hours, in order; on a failure it keeps fragments.

Overdose. A second cup, that week or that season, does nothing. The flower spends a body entirely on the first.

It carries no Craving. Almost nobody takes greencrown twice in a year, and most never take it twice at all.

“

I have sat as minder nine times and drunk it once. Mine was thirty years ago, I have the whole of it still, and I have never wanted the second cup — which I can say about nothing else on my shelves, and which I count the most honest fact in this catalog.

Thornapple

The one entry in this family under its real name, because what it does is what the plant does and no slot in the catalog asked for it. A rank waist-high weed of farmyards and middens, with a white trumpet flower that opens at evening and a spined seed pod the size of a hen’s egg. Every part of it acts, the seeds hardest. It smells rank and green. It is not sold so much as met, and the entry exists because meeting it goes badly.

A measure is hard to state, which is the first thing wrong with it: pods vary threefold in strength, and the line between the effect and the overdose runs inside a single pod. A creature that has taken it is, for 8 hours, somewhere adjacent to the world. It has Disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls, it automatically fails any check made to see an illusion for what it is, and it holds conversations with creatures that are not present and accepts them as present. It does not know it has taken anything. That is the mark of thornapple against the rest of the family: veilcap shows a creature more than is there, and thornapple takes away the part that could tell.

Overdose. A second pod, or a strong first one: DC 15 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the duration becomes 1d4 days, and the creature gains 1 Exhaustion level at the end of each of them. It does not kill by its own hand. She records five deaths under it, and every one was a drowning, a fall, or a night outdoors in winter — the window taken for a door, the pond taken for a path.

Its Onset is an hour, the widest window in the chapter: a creature made to vomit inside it takes none of the above. It carries no Craving, and she records no creature that took it twice by choice.

The steadying

Simples that still what shakes. The waking holds sleep off and the quieting puts pain down; this family answers the tremor, the flinch and the fear, which are none of those things and spoil more fine work than all of them together. It is the family bought by people who are well, for the days their work will not allow them to be otherwise.

Nothing in it kills at any dose she could establish. Its counts are small and its buyers are steady people, which is exactly how its cases arrive: a creature that needs its hands every day takes the entry that steadies them every day, and a count of 1 climbs like any other.

Six entries, from the twig chewed at every market to the drop sold four times in her life:

Hedgenail

A hard gray twig-bark stripped from the hedge maple, chewed like drover’s cud and doing for the hands what the cud does for the eyelids. It smells of sap and tastes of green wood, drying the mouth as it goes.

A measure is a thumb’s length of bark, chewed. For 1 hour the creature’s hands do not shake — not from cold, not from fear, not from the morning after, not from want. It grants nothing else: no Advantage, no courage, only stillness in the fingers, so a creature whose shaking would spoil a task simply does not shake. There is no overdose; more of it is more chewing.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 1 to Craving. She sold more of it than of everything else in this family together, most of it in the first hour of the morning, and she knew what most of the morning hands wanted it for.

Steelthread

A pale root like drawn wire, from stony ground, dug small and chewed in the minute before it is wanted. It smells of iron and earth. It tastes of iron too, and numbs nothing; the work it does is further in.

A measure is a thumb of root. For 1 hour the creature has Advantage on saving throws against being Frightened. A second measure in that hour flattens more than fear: the creature can’t take Reactions, nothing arriving fast enough to startle it into one.

Overdose. A third measure within the hour: DC 14 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature’s Speed is halved and it has Disadvantage on Initiative rolls for 8 hours, everything in it answering slowly.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 1 to Craving. It is a soldier’s root, issued in some companies by the sergeant, and she notes that the sergeants she knew issued it for one hour and one purpose and kept the pouch themselves.

Doveheart

A gray-leaved herb with a drooping white flower, of old gardens rather than the wild, infused. The infusion is pale and smells of the flower. It tastes faintly of almonds and of nothing much, and it is drunk warm.

A measure is a cup. For 4 hours the creature’s body does not do fear’s work: the heart holds, the breath holds, the hands hold, and it has Advantage on saving throws against being Frightened. A second cup within those hours adds Disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks; a heart that will not rise does not raise alarms either.

Overdose. A third cup within 4 hours: DC 13 Constitution saving throw. On a failure nothing rouses the creature to speed: for 8 hours it cannot take the Dash action and has Disadvantage on Initiative rolls.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 1 to Craving.

“

Doveheart is bought in the week after a funeral, when the visitors stop coming and the house goes quiet. I sell a fortnight of it at a time and no more, and when I am asked why, I say the flower is scarce, which is not true. What is scarce is anybody sitting with them, and a fortnight is how long the cup takes to become the sitter.

Linewort

A trailing wort from the feet of old walls, lifted whole and tinctured whole for a month, and the month in aqua vitae is most of the price. The tincture is green-gold. It smells of crushed stems and spirit, and three drops taste of nothing at all.

A measure is three drops. For 1 hour the creature has Advantage on ability checks that turn on a steady hand: Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) checks, work with Thieves’ Tools, a surgeon’s Wisdom (Medicine) checks, a fair copy, a stone setting. The hand must be doing craft. A bow drawn at a living creature is not craft, and the entry is plain that linewort has never improved one — attack rolls take nothing from it. A second measure within the hour adds nothing and sours the stomach for the rest of the day.

Overdose. A third measure within a day: DC 14 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the steadiness inverts, and the creature has Disadvantage on Dexterity checks and attack rolls for 8 hours.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 2 to Craving. Its excess is the trade: a creature at the third degree does not open the shop, lift the knife or pick the lock without its drops, and on the other days its hands believe they cannot.

Greymantle

A black root of standing bog water, decocted for 8 hours to a liquor like strong tea gone cold. It smells of peat. It tastes of peat and of ash, and it is drunk in one mouthful because nobody sips it.

A measure is a mouthful. For 8 hours the creature cannot be Frightened and cannot be Charmed, and it has Disadvantage on Charisma checks and on Wisdom (Insight) checks — what reads other people was part of what was quieted. It is given to the terrified, and taken ahead of the things nobody is steady for. A second mouthful within the 8 hours adds the Poisoned condition for the remainder.

Overdose. A third mouthful: DC 15 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature gains 1 Exhaustion level and its Speed is reduced by 10 feet for 8 hours.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 2 to Craving. Its excess is the flat: a creature at the third degree doses ahead of anything it expects to feel, weddings and burials alike, and is present at neither.

Queensmilk

The milk of a small blue flower that grows above the treeline and nowhere below it, a drop to a flower, gathered in the one month the slopes allow and tinctured. What it costs is the mountain. The tincture is white as its name. It smells of snow, which is to say of almost nothing, and it tastes cold and faintly sweet.

A measure is one drop under the tongue, and it acts at once. For 10 minutes the creature is immune to the Frightened condition; fear it already carries is suspended for the duration and returns when it ends. A second drop extends nothing. Ten minutes is the flower’s answer, however many drops ask.

Overdose. Three or more drops within an hour: DC 15 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature takes 7 (2d6) Necrotic damage as the heart is held too still, and gains 1 Exhaustion level.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 3 to Craving. Its excess is the volunteering: a creature at the third degree seeks out what ought to frighten it, having lost the feeling of the reason not to, at 3 gp the minute.

“

I have sold queensmilk four times to men with a date, and I knew the date each time, and I charged them nothing, which is between me and my ledger. I have been asked whether that is mercy. I have concluded that it is, and I did not conclude it quickly, and I notice the question is only ever asked by people who have not stood at the foot of a scaffold with a full bottle in their coat.

The numbing

Simples that take feeling out of a part, or out of the whole, and put nothing in its place. The quieting covers pain from above, with sleep or with distance; this family removes it where it stands, the way snow does. Its law is stated once here because every entry below is a case of it: numb is not healed, and what a body cannot feel it cannot protect.

Half of it is a surgeon’s shelf, and it is cataloged in a surgeon’s order, mouth first and whole body last.

Frostnettle

A nettle of cold stream banks that stings the other way: the sting numbs. Dull green, downy, and safe to grasp, which surprises everybody once. It smells of any nettle. Chewed, it tastes of nothing almost at once, because tasting is the first thing it stops.

A measure is one leaf, chewed. For 1 hour the mouth feels nothing. A creature having a tooth drawn, a cheek stitched or a jaw set inside that hour makes no check or save against the pain of it, and is not moved to cry out. The tongue is numbed with the rest, and the creature’s speech is thick for the hour: it has Disadvantage on Charisma (Performance) checks and on any check that turns on clear speech. Casting a spell with a Verbal component is unaffected. Swallowed, it numbs nothing further; the stomach takes no instruction from it.

There is no overdose, and it carries no Craving. A creature that chews it all day has a numb mouth all day, and bites its own cheek to ribbons without noticing, which is the family’s law at its smallest.

Setter’s draught

A decoction of one thick gray bark, made strong, kept stoppered, and swallowed immediately before a bone is set. It smells of a wet fence post. It tastes so bitter that the taste is part of the procedure, and it acts before the cup is down.

A measure is a cup. For 10 minutes the creature feels deliberate work on its own body as pressure and not as pain: a set, a relocation, a cauter, a barbed head cut free. It makes no check or save against the pain of the procedure and can hold still for it, which is most of what a setter needs. It is not sleep, not courage and not strength; the creature is present for all of it.

Overdose. A second cup within an hour: DC 13 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the numbness takes the legs too, and the creature’s Speed is halved for 1 hour.

It carries no Craving. Nobody wants the occasion twice.

Eelsalve

The rendered skin-fat of a gray fen eel, which numbs what it touches — the eel’s own defense, and a fen fisher knows it through three pairs of gloves. The salve is pale, faintly blue, and smells of the fen. It is not taken by mouth, and the one recorded attempt is not repeated in this entry.

A measure is a thumb of salve, rubbed into one limb or one stretch of body. For 4 hours the part feels nothing at all. A wound there imposes no Disadvantage and forces no check, and the creature can walk on a foot it should not walk on, or row past blisters into meat, and finish whatever wanted finishing. The part takes what it takes: when the 4 hours end, the creature makes a DC 12 Constitution saving throw, and on a failure the use has torn what was knitting — it takes 3 (1d6) Necrotic damage, and any Disadvantage the injury imposed returns and remains until the injury is healed.

Overdose. None by the skin; a second thumb is the same numbness on more of the body, and the same accounting after.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 1 to Craving. Porters, rowers and fen folk use it by the season, and the seventh chapter sees their feet in the winter.

Stonebalm

A dense white unguent of one mountain moss, worked cold, smelling of cold fat and mint. It is the waking half of a surgeon’s shelf: sleepwrack for the body that must be absent, stonebalm for the body that must be present — answering questions while it is cut, or too frail to be risked against sleepwrack’s saving throw.

A measure covers a hand’s breadth of skin. For 1 hour that area feels nothing: a blade drawn through it calls no check, no save and no flinch. It numbs the skin and the first finger of flesh below it, and no deeper — bone feels what bone feels, and the entry says so because surgeons plan around exactly that line.

Overdose. More than an arm’s worth of skin covered within an hour: DC 14 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the cold reaches further in than it was asked to, and the creature gains 1 Exhaustion level and has Disadvantage on Dexterity checks for 8 hours.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 1 to Craving.

Winterset

A knotted white root dug from under snowmelt, decocted long, drunk warm. The liquor is gray. It smells of wet stone. It tastes of earth and then of nothing, spreading a painless cold outward from the middle of a creature to its fingers.

A measure is a mouthful. For 8 hours the creature does not feel cold: not weather, not water, not iron at midwinter. While it lasts, the creature automatically succeeds on saving throws called for by extreme cold. The cold it did not feel still happened: when the winterset ends, it makes every saving throw it was spared, one for each hour, all at once, and takes the consequences of those it fails.

Overdose. A second mouthful within 8 hours: DC 14 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the numbness generalizes, and the creature has Disadvantage on Dexterity checks and Dexterity saving throws until the winterset ends.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 1 to Craving. Ice-cutters, winter sentries and mountain guides buy it by the flask.

“

The men winterset kills are the ones it worked for. A fool on mirrorwater meets his mistake in an hour, and a sensible man on winterset meets his at dusk, all together, five miles from the fire. I sell it with the arithmetic said out loud — one saving throw for every hour, payable at the end — and I make them say it back, and even so.

Mirrorwater

What a still does to hushcap. The caps are fermented to a mash and the mash is run through the still three times, and what comes over is clear, faintly oily, and smells of nothing at all. It tastes of cold. As sister’s ease stands to milk poppy, mirrorwater stands to hushcap: the strong version of a familiar thing, which is a different thing.

“

Of its preparing

One will ferment the caps a fortnight in a stopped crock, and one will not open it to look, for what one smells at the opening is the fortnight leaving. One will run the wash three times, and the still wants a small even fire for eight hours at each run, which Steady Fire will hold, or a boy with nothing else to do will hold worse.

And one will label the bottle and shelve it far from the drinking spirits, for it is clear as water and it is not water. I know of a wake at which that lesson became general by midnight, and it was a long night, though nobody died of it, which is more than a bottle of sleepwrack could say.

A measure is a thimble. For 1 hour the creature is a short way behind its own eyes. It has Resistance to Psychic damage, it cannot be forced to make a check or save to withstand pain, and it has Advantage on saving throws against being Frightened or Charmed. It also has Disadvantage on attack rolls, Dexterity checks and Wisdom (Perception) checks, and its own body reaches it as news from a neighboring room. A second thimble within the hour gives it the Incapacitated condition for the remainder.

Overdose. A third thimble within the hour: DC 15 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature has the Unconscious condition for 1d4 hours and gains 2 Exhaustion levels on waking. On a success it is Incapacitated for 1 hour. It does not stop the breath at any dose she could establish, and that fact is why the wretched end of the trade shelves mirrorwater beside sleepwrack: the one forgives a second thimble, and the other does not.

Each day on which a measure was taken adds 3 to Craving. Its excess is absence: a creature at the third degree is behind its eyes at supper, at trade and on watch, and what it withdraws from first is whatever asks the most of it.

The souring

Preparations a body is meant to dislike. Nothing in this family is taken for pleasure, almost nothing in it is asked for twice, and a practitioner reaches for it more often than for everything above it together: it is the shelf that empties a stomach, expels what has moved in, and sets a body against a thing it could not set itself against. Nothing in it counts a Craving, for the reason on its face, and nothing in it kills.

The emetic’s window and the charcoal are the seventh chapter’s; this family is where the rest of that shelf is made.

Blisterwort

A pale roadside wort whose crushed leaf, worked into fat and laid on the skin, raises a clean blister in an hour. The old practice is called drawing: the paste goes on over whatever ails, on the reasoning that an illness pulled to the surface is an illness half out.

What it raises is a blister. She cataloged it because it is asked for weekly, and prepared it because refusing sends the buyer to worse hands. In forty years of laying them she observed the same course every time: the blister rises, the illness goes the way it was always going to go, and the two are strangers. The blister itself is clean, heals in days, and does no harm beyond its sting.

“

I have laid blisters on forty years of chests, and I know what they do, which is nothing, and I lay them anyway. The ones I turn away go two doors down, where the man mixes arsenic into his, so that the customer can feel it working. A clean blister and a kind word do no harm, which is more than can be said for the man two doors down.

Turnkey

A twisted yellow root, infused strong. A creature that drinks a cup of it vomits within 1 minute — entirely, without a saving throw and without harm — and a swallowed measure of anything whose Onset has not passed comes up with the rest, which is the window the seventh chapter sets out. A second cup has nothing left to do.

Turnkey out of the ground is nearly tasteless, and a tasteless drench that empties a creature is not a medicine but a means: dosed into a rival’s cup it is a humiliation, and worse uses are on record. Hers went out dyed dark and bittered, every bottle, and she names the practice so that a buyer offered clear, tasteless turnkey knows what that bottle was prepared to be.

Blackdraught

A purging bindweed root decocted to a black syrup. It smells of molasses gone wrong. It tastes sweet for a moment and then like what it is, and there is no honey that hides it.

A measure is a spoonful. Within the hour, and for 8 hours after, the creature’s bowels empty — thoroughly, recurrently, and at short notice. It has the Poisoned condition for the duration. It is given after bad meat and spoiled water, and against a swallowed harm whose Onset has passed, on the reasoning that what cannot be brought up can be hurried on; she gives the charcoal first and the draught after, and the seventh chapter carries the order.

It has a second clientele that is not ill: the draught is taken in courses, by the fashionable, for cleansing, on the theory that a body accumulates what a purge removes. What it removes is the week’s meals.

Overdose. A second spoonful within a day: DC 13 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature gains 1 Exhaustion level from the water lost.

Wormfern

The second entry in the catalog under its real name, and for the same reason as the first: what it does is what the fern does. A deep-green fern of shaded rock, the root lifted in autumn and decocted. The liquor is brown-green and bitter beyond reason, and the bitterness cannot be eased with oil, for the reason in the overdose.

A measure is a cup, taken fasting, followed within 2 hours by a purge — blackdraught serves. The fern stuns the worm and the purge evicts it: a creature carrying an intestinal worm that takes the full course is rid of it. A cup without the purge stuns the worm and removes nothing.

Overdose. A second cup within a day — or a first taken with oil, with butter or with spirits, any of which carry it out of the gut and into the blood: DC 14 Constitution saving throw. On a failure the creature has the Blinded condition for 1d4 days; on a second failed overdose within a year, the blindness is permanent. She is exact about the oil because the mistake is natural: the course is bitter, and oil is how bitter courses are eased.

Sweatbark

The bark of a low tree of warm springs, infused, drunk hot. It smells of resin. It tastes of resin and salt, and within the half hour the creature is sweating as though worked.

A measure is a cup. For 1 hour the creature runs wet, and it has Advantage on the next saving throw it makes within that hour against a disease it already carries. It cures nothing by itself. A fevered creature given it is hotter before it is cooler, and she gives it with water standing by, cup for cup.

There is no overdose worth the name; a body holds only so much sweat, and thirst arrives well before harm does.

Oathbane

A pale tincture of one bitter vetch, taken each morning by a creature that means to refuse drink, and the nearest thing this book holds to a promise in a bottle. It is 12 gp for a bottle of thirty mornings, and the month of tincturing in aqua vitae is most of that. It tastes bitter twice — once on the tongue, and again a minute later at the throat, which is the tell the fifth chapter’s trade has to beat.

A measure is three drops in the morning. Until the creature next finishes a Long Rest, drink disagrees with it: any serving of any drink at all calls a DC 13 Constitution saving throw, and on a failure the creature has the Poisoned condition for 1 hour and is violently, publicly sick. The saving throw repeats for every serving. Nothing about it lowers the wanting: Craving and the degrees run exactly as the first chapter counts them, and the tincture adds no successes toward the saving throws that end an addiction. What it does is put a fact in the body where the evening’s argument was going to be.

Overdose. More of it is not more of it: a second measure the same morning changes nothing, and no dose of oathbane alone harmed anybody she treated or heard of. The harm it does is the harm it is for, done as designed, to a creature that drinks against it.

“

I sell oathbane to the hand that will take it and to no other hand. A man who swallows it at my counter of a morning has made himself a promise and hired me to hold it, and I am glad of that trade. A wife who wants it for the soup is asking me to poison a man on a schedule, and it does not matter whose good it is for. I have shown three of them the door, and I have thought about all three since, and I would show them the door again.