Poison Herbs

Overview

Every hedge holds a plant that heals and one that kills, and often they are the same plant at different strengths. Poison herbs are the wild poisonous plants that children eat for berries and foragers mistake for greens, and the remedies that harm: a healer's herb given too strong, forced too hard, or brewed for one people and given to another.

Cause

Three families of wild plant do most of the harm. The black-eyed berries, shiny dark fruits of shady hedges, tempt children. The spotted umbels, tall flat-flowered plants of damp ground with smooth, blotched stems, look much like the wild parsleys and carrots that foragers gather. And heart-leaf, a tall spire of drooping bell flowers, is a healer's herb for a failing heart that kills at a little more than the healing dose.

The rest is a matter of dose and kind. A strong dose or a forced preparation strengthens a herb's poison with its virtue, and a brew that strengthens one people may do little or harm to another (see Herbs). Different herbs affect different species in different ways, because each living pattern meets a plant's own differently (see Lifeforce).

Who It Strikes

Children and foragers take the wild plants, and cattle and sheep the umbels in a lean spring. Wrong remedies strike patients of every people, and fall hardest where peoples mix: on roads, in border towns, and in households where a Human healer doses a Kobold or a Halfling as if it were a large Human child.

Signs and Course

The berries bring a dry mouth, hot flushed skin, wide black pupils, and a racing heart within an hour, then raving and visions; the eater does not know the room. The umbels bring a creeping weakness that starts in the feet and climbs while the mind stays clear, until the breath fails. Heart-leaf brings sickness and vomiting, a slow and stumbling pulse, and a yellow-green haze over the sight. A wrong remedy is quieter: the fever that should have broken climbs, the bowels gripe, the patient worsens and no one suspects the cup. Most who live through the night recover within days.

Contagion

It does not pass. A family poisoned together shared a pot or a basket.

Treatment and Its Limits

The stomach is emptied if the eater is still awake. Toxin Draw and Purge Poison pull the poison out, at the cost of the healer's reserves or the patient's own. Organ Steady holds a heart failing from heart-leaf through the night, and Cure Affliction clears what remains. A wrong remedy is mended by stopping it, which needs someone to notice.

Mortality

The umbels and a strong dose of heart-leaf kill many who take them unhelped; the berries kill children more often than adults. Survivors seldom keep lasting harm. Wrong remedies rarely kill outright but cost lives indirectly, by worsening the sickness they were meant to cure.

Lore and Belief

Hedgerow children are taught "black and shiny, leave it be", and herb-wives say the spotted umbels grow where blood was spilt. Many believe a herb picked under the wrong moon turns poisonous, and that a remedy that harms was cursed by a rival. Healers of other peoples are often blamed, and sometimes rightly.

In the Medieval Era

Household healers know their own country's plants and peoples, and mistakes come at the edges. Medicinal herbs go out from the Elderweald and the Briarreach to buyers who may not know their strength, and herb-sellers are blamed for the deaths of fools. Healers of Vital Magic trained at the Hall of Living Pattern study which herbs suit which peoples, and their tables of dose by people are among the most copied texts of the trade.

Where It Appears

• Herbs
• Lifeforce: Plant and Animal Lifeforce
• the Writers' Guide chapter Magic in Ordinary Life
• the Writers' Guide chapter What Makes a People