The Chromatic Chord

Made Poisons

The poisons prepared on purpose from herb, root, fungus, venom, and mineral, often strengthened by magic, and the slow and sudden deaths they are made to look like.

Overview

Most poison is an accident of the field or the larder. Made poisons are not. They are prepared by someone who knows what a root or a cap or a venom does and wants it done to someone else. The craft is old, quiet, and close kin to the healer's: the same knowledge of dose and kind that makes a remedy makes a poison.

Cause

Poisoners draw on the poisonous wild plants, roots, and fungi (see Poison Herbs, Deathroot, and Poisonous Fungi), on venoms milked or dried, and on mineral poisons of the smelter and the alchemist. Some herbs kept by poisoners look much like those kept by healers, and a forced preparation strengthens a plant's poison with its virtue (see Herbs). Magic can sharpen a poison further: Herbal Purge, overused, intensifies toxins as well as cures.

Who It Strikes

Poison strikes the person in the way: the heir before the second son, the ruler, the creditor, the inconvenient spouse. It also strikes tasters, servants, and children who share the dish. Because different herbs affect different species in different ways (see Lifeforce), a skilled poisoner chooses for the people as well as the person, and a mixed household may see one guest sicken and another shrug.

Signs and Course

The signs are the poison's own, and the poisoner's art is to make them look like something else. A sudden poison passes for a seizure of the heart or a bad night of food sickness; a slow one, given a little at a time over a season, passes for a wasting illness or old age arriving early. What gives a poisoning away is pattern: a sickness that eases when the patient eats elsewhere, that strikes after one cup and not another, or that returns with a particular visitor.

Contagion

It does not pass. A poisoning that seems to spread through a house has been given to more than one.

Treatment and Its Limits

Caught early, a poison is fought like any other: the stomach is emptied, Toxin Draw pulls it into a sacrificial medium, and Purge Poison drives it out through sweat or vomit; Cure Affliction is the broadest cure, and the slowest poisons need it more than once. Vital Sweep can find organ stress no one can see but cannot say who caused it. Protection fails where poison is already inside: Vowlight Ward turns blows, not poison in the blood. Some great houses bind resistance to one poison into their line by Inheritance Knot, a fraught rite that protects against the poison chosen and no other.

Mortality

A strong poison given unhelped kills most who take it; that is what it is made for. Those saved may keep a weak heart, a ruined appetite, a tremor, or a fear of every cup.

Lore and Belief

Courts call poison the coward's knife and believe in false protections: stones that cloud in a fouled cup, rings that warm, salt that darkens. None of them works. Folk say a poisoner's hands are always cold, and an herb-seller who sells to the wrong buyer is blamed as much as the buyer.

The songs are full of poisonings: the bride who poisoned the cup at her own wedding feast to avenge her brother, the taster who drank and said nothing so his lord would die beside him. Poisoners caught are boiled, burned, or drowned according to the place, and the most famous were never caught.

In the Medieval Era

Poisoning is a crime of houses where inheritance, office, or debt is worth a death. Great households keep tasters, watched kitchens, and trusted herb-sellers. The Vine Conservatory, an order of Nature Magic, studies poisons among cultivated flora, and its knowledge is sought by healers and poisoners alike (see Vines). Where magic was used to make or deliver a poison, it is judged as dark practice, by its harm (see Dark Magic), though a lord who wants a culprit seldom waits for a reader's proof.

Where It Appears

In the Writers’ Guide