Deathroot
The poisonous wild roots of the deep weald that look like the tubers the Elves gather, which kill untaught gatherers within hours, and the lesser sickness of bitter roots eaten unsoaked.
Overview
Deathroot is the name the edge settlements give to every root of the deep weald that kills. The forest's tubers feed the Wood Elves well, but among them grow roots that look and smell nearly the same, and the difference is learned from a teacher or not at all. A Human who digs for food in the weald in a hungry year is gambling, and often loses.
Cause
Several wild roots of the deep weald look much like the edible ones and are poisonous (see Root Crops). The poison is strongest in the root itself and does not boil out. A lesser danger lies in the good roots: some edible kinds are bitter until they are soaked and boiled, and eaten raw or half-done they gripe and purge.
Who It Strikes
The untaught. Outsiders, refugees, famine-gatherers, and children who dig alone are caught; those raised among the Elves of the weald, or taught by them, almost never are. What a deathroot does to a Human it does to a Halfling or a Goblin faster, for the smaller body holds less before it fails.
Signs and Course
The worst roots act within the hour. First the mouth and throat burn and the eater drools; then come vomiting and a cold sweat, a racing heart, and trembling that turns to fits. A gatherer who eats a whole root may fit and die within a few hours. One who eats less, or vomits early, fits through the night and lies weak and shaken for days. The bitter roots act more slowly and mildly: cramps, a purge, and a miserable day.
Contagion
It does not pass from one to another. A family that shares a pot shares the poisoning.
Treatment and Its Limits
Speed is everything. Those who know the danger make the eater vomit at once with salt water or a finger. A healer close enough can drive the poison out with Purge Poison or draw it into a blackening poultice with Toxin Draw, both fed by the healer's reserves or the patient's own, and Cure Affliction reaches what remains. But deathroot is eaten far from healers, in clearings and camps, and the fits come before help does. The true protection is the teaching: no one gathers in the deep weald without having been taught by someone who has.
Mortality
Of those who eat a whole root of the worst kinds, many die, and nearly every small child. Those who live seldom keep lasting harm beyond a fear of the forest. Bitter roots badly cooked rarely kill anyone but the very young and the starving.
Lore and Belief
The Wood Elves do not call it deathroot; they name each root by kind, and their children learn the poisonous ones before the good. To outsiders the knowledge seems guarded, and borderers tell that the weald keeps its deathroots for those who take without asking. Edge settlements say a gatherer who digs on the wrong day finds only poison, and some will dig only beside an Elf.
Poisoners of the basin towns buy deathroot from weald-edge diggers who ask no questions, and the Wood Elves have hunted down more than one root-seller who sold their knowledge to a murderer.
In the Medieval Era
Deathroot kills most in the Elderweald and the Briarreach in bad years, when the edge settlements' stores fail and families go into the forest to dig. Elven guides who teach the roots are paid for the lesson as for any other passage, and a settlement with no such teacher learns from its graves. Herb-sellers of the weald who trade medicinal roots outward sell only what they have named.