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Forums » EVENT - The Grand Tournament » Day 2: Nature's alchemy

This event took place in a tent somewhere east of the festival grounds. The place smelled strongly of all sorts of herbs. Here nature's alchemy would take place. The tent had a hole in it so the sunlight shone down upon everyone.

Inside there was a very long wooden tables, behind which sat each contestant, almost hidden behind a huge stack of various ingredients. One of the contestants was a grey skinned Hobgoblin with dark green shaggy hair wearing thick spectacles and wearing the hides of various animals as a robe. He sat there with a cheeky smile sitting next to the other contenders of both Ahuachtli and Nishta. Beru was this little alchemist called. Possibly the nicest of all Hobgoblins in existence. He was just glad to be able to play with alchemy for a change and it showed."Good luck to both of you." He said to his two fellow contenders.

"The rules of alchemy have always been complex." The announcer, the most stereotypical wizard in existence, spoke in a gentle tone."But today we expect our contenders to create a substance in only a mere hour and demonstrate it. It can be poison, a healing elixir, anything. The better the effects of the supposed use are, the more chance you have at winning. Good luck to you all."
Requilla sat atop her tall stool on the right of Beru, she brushed her bangs to the side as she usually did when thinking of which concoction she should make. Lucky for her she had been provided with nearly every ingredient she could think of. Upon being addressed by Beru she gave a kind nod in return before speaking. "Thank you my good sir, the best of luck to you as well." Requilla said in her soft yet sultry voice.

The small priestess listened with great care to the words spoken by the wizard. "Any potion, draught or serum... What to make?" Requilla said as she glanced around hesitantly at all the available materials. "Oh my, this is a bit much to take in all at once!" She said in a nervous tone, true she was one of her nations most skilled apothecarians - but she was also a bit of a space case when she didn't know what to do.

She could patch up a warrior, bring back a Returned, cure any illness or plague that effected her people. But to have free reign and no direct path to follow? The thought alone was daunting to her.

"Hm, perhaps a soothing potion?" she said as she gathered the herbs and other flora she would need. She had often made this same potion for herself to add to her tea at the end of the day. The temples she worked at all had gardens dedicated to the gods they represented.
Castor stood by his stool rather than using it, sniffing the air curiously, trying to get an idea of what ingredients he had to choose from. It would have been easier to list the scents of plants that weren't there, but he really couldn't think of anything. They even had things from the very depths of the caves. He studied his competition with curiosity shining in his mismatched eyes, giving them a warm, sincere response, "Best of luck to the both of you."

Between being a member of the Castillian family and watching after the sickly princess he had much practice with both cures and poisons, but quickly settled into the decision to make the former. He had more experience calming symptoms than causing death. His mind quickly came to the thought of a ailment that had only recently affected the princess and he set to sniffing about the ingredients searching for the best parts with a grin. He would make the same sleeping draught/painkiller combination he'd made just a few weeks prior, only this time much more powerful. The same thing he used to calm the princess's nightmares and sick pains would be made strong enough to keep someone down through an amputation. It was a bit of a challenge, but that was the fun of it.
Beru stroked his chin at the amount of herbs were in front of him. He couldn't decide and seemed to be spending an eternity cleaning his glasses. That was until he noticed one particular ingredient: Scaleroot. A particularly nasty root that when it gets in touch with the bloodstream it can paralyse the nerve system in a manner of minutes while the increased circulation of blood can kill a man via a heart attack. Beru suddenly yelped as he realized what he could make! It was highly experimental, but it was basically a toxin that used Scaleroot's effects, only slowing down the increased circulation, meaning it'd take longer for the heart attack to set in. It's a perfect drug to use to force someone to tell the truth during questioning in trade for their life.

Beru finally got to work, grabbing a bowl together with some various other herbs, he starts to cut them into pieces and crush them to dust, almost as if he was cooking something.
((I AM in this event, aren't I?))

Sael pondered for only a few minutes before putting on gloves and beginning his work.

The first thing he did was apply cotton in his nose, and wrapping a mottled green-and-gray cloth over his mouth. He grabbed first a small plant with a withered purple flower. This he dropped, along with a few stalks of a wild grain, into a small boiling pot. As they steeped, Sael ground a wad of dried leaves into fine powder and added them into the basin after a few minutes.

Next, Sael grabbed a large, orange flower, and dropped it in a jar with holes in the bottom. He grabbed another boiling pot and steamed the flower, until the jar contained a sizable cloud of steam. He pulled the jar away from over the pot and let the steam condense itself. He removed the flower and let the condensation drip into a third pot, which he boiled.

The end result was, after the water boiled away, an oil that had a higher boiling point than water.

The herbal brew was done steeping, so Sael let it into a cool bowl. He also added the oil, and used a rod of a strange metal to stir. The result suddenly turned deep blue.

Vashta brew! An excellent brew if the color speaks. Good thing I have my nose plugs in, or I would probably want to drink it... Despite the brutal consequences.

Vashta brew is made like a tea, and it contains a flower oil that is a powerful acid, so powerful it would eat away at anything it touches. But Vashta Brew's danger does not end there. The other ingredients give it an odor so pleasing that a person who smells it can't help but try to sneak a sip. This, of course, would kill anyone.
Requilla cleared some space in front of her and began grabbing handfuls of strange blue capped mushrooms with glowing stems, after she felt she had enough she poured them into a large mortar and proceeded to ground them into a paste with several handpicked spices. When the paste was of a waxy consistency she scraped out the bottom and poured the contents into a large pot.

She then gathered a large bouquet of small six-petaled flowers of assorted warm colors, after de-stemming the flowers she emptied them into another smaller pot of clear fresh water. She set this on a nearby fire to reach a rolling boil. Requilla then took a single root that when cut bled an orange ooze, she squeezed this root over the boiling pot of flower-water; the solution turning a vivid green.

She pulled the pot from the fire and poured its green contents onto the glowing waxy paste; the blue glowing wax instantly melted and mixed with the green boiling liquid and sent up a thick grey smoke that smelled oddly minty. Requilla then began throwing in handfuls of red berries into the smoking mixture, the smoke changed from grey to purple and smelled of both mint and berries. Not too long afterward the smoke cleared revealing a purple jelly like substance at the bottom of the large pot. Requilla poured this jelly into a cup and added a small sprinkling of sugar on top.

This soothing potion had a number of applications; when applied to the skin it would give off a soothing feeling on the application site as well as smell of a strange mint. If consumed it would cause a full body relaxing as all the cells in the body slowed down and began to take in the latent regenerative and rejuvenative effects. If enough was consumed all at once it could drastically slow a person's heartbeat and send them into a deep and painless slumber for several days. This was often used to sedate enemies or allow an injured person to heal more comfortably. The person under the influence of the potion would feel its lingering "feel-good" effects for a few hours after its initial purpose had been served.
Sael pondered for a second. The Vashta brew would melt nearly anything it touched, but it could be made more potent.

He poured the brew into a dark metal bowl and added water. The result was a lighter blue, translucent mixture. He then found the leaves he was looking for: Thick, dark, almost round stalks called Empaara leaves in Archaia. In these leaves there is a chemical that, similar to the Vashta flower, eats flesh. However, it does this in a different way: Instead of by destroying the flesh completely, it weakens the flesh until it falls apart. Enough of that chemical in the vashta brew and the eating power could well be exponentiated.

He put the plants in a press and expressed the juice from them. It pooled into a bowl, which started to smoke slightly. Quickly, Sael dumped the juice into the Vashta, which returned to the dark blue shade it had had before. Sael quickly scanned his ingredients, searching for a good catalyst before the whole bowl melted...

Aha! A root that was native to Archaia! (Sael was slightly surprised to find it here, but he supposed that it works.) This root has various chemical properties that slowed down any chemical processes. Archaians had tried before to use it as an aging cream, but for some reason the properties disappear as soon as it touches animal flesh.

The perfect catalyst for a weaponized Vashta brew.

Quickly, Sael crushed the root into a wet pulp and expressed the juice into a cup, which he poured into the brew. Suddenly, the bowl stopped smoking. Smiling, Sael poured the mix into ten little vials, which he set on a stand on his table.

One vial he removed to test, pulling out a slab of meat from the desk (Probably specifically designed for testing) and placed it in a copper bowl.

Slowly, he dripped one or two drops of the mix into the bowl on top of the meat. Suddenly, the brew began burning the meat. Within only a moment, half the slab was gone, or severely degraded. The Empaara weakened the meat, making the Vashta's job tons easier as the degraded meat would eat away much faster. The brew destroyed the meat before touching the copper and returning to its dormant state. He poured the mix back into the vial using a funnel and re-corked it, setting the vial back on a stand. He set a glass bowl over the little glass bottles and set out a tray full of wads of cotton, with a sign that said DO NOT OPEN SAMPLE WITHOUT COTTON NOSE-PLUG: HIGHLY HAZARDOUS CHEMICALS. AUGMENTED VASHTA BREW (HIGH ACID) FOR TESTING ON MEATS ONLY!! written in various languages.
With the herbs squished to dust, it was time to get it to cook. In a small jar together with some animal fat he started to boil the entire thing, slowly adding in water from time to time, making the broth steam up. After a while Beru put his pinky finger in the broth, tasted it and then immediately spat the sample out. The taste was right. It would seem his Scaleroot toxin was done. All it had to do now was cool down and it was done.

While Beru waited for his potion to cool down he grabbed a couple of blueberries and ate a couple as he looked at everyone else with a big smile on his face. Luckily no one frowned upon that because there were many of them

Soon the time came to stop cooking and bottle up the alchemical reagents. The announcer spoke once more."When you are finished, please step forward and explain what you made to the audience and if at all possible, give a little demonstration.
I must apologize for my lateness, I’ve been rather busy so I haven’t gotten a chance to respond.)

Castor went through his herbs with a grin, sniffing out the most potent out of all his ingredients. Firstly he took several large red veined leaves and mashed them to a pulp with a root of sorts, then he carefully extracted the nectar of several pale purple flowers. Kratom, a valerian root so potent it nearly floored him and cave thistle, a good start. Next he sniffed out a few large poppies and repeated his actions with the cave thistle. The valerian would do good to knock someone out, but the poppy would keep them calm, so that they wouldn’t fight their drowsiness.
He frowned a bit looking up, his competitors had added strange foreign herbs to their mixes… by comparison his own felt common. On impulse he picked up a piece of wood and sniffed at it, bindwillow was a rather common weed of a tree in the deeper caves, named for it’s tangling branches. In it’s own it was rather useless, but often strengthened the effects of herbal mixes. He powdered them and added them to his concoction.
Curious as to his results, he took a sniff of the gunk and gave a contented smile, it was certainly strong enough. He fed the mixture into a covered container with a tube running out one end and set it on his still unused fire. Draught was the wrong word when he thought back on it, this was meant to be inhaled. He heated the mixture until steam began coming out the tube and took it off. Plenty ready to make use of it before it cooled down, though a bit drowsy from what of his steam he’d unintentionally inhaled.
Sael heard the announcement and picked a vial out from his line.

"This is Vashta brew. Perhaps you have heard of it, perhaps not. If you know anything of it, you know it is a lethal flesh-eating acid with a sweet and tempting smell. However, this is not normal Vashta. With a few added ingredients, I have made it at least ten times more powerful than a standard brew, and only effective on flesh." Sael uttered a few words in Archaian and summoned a reptilian creature about half the size of a man and about half as intelligent. It squawked awkwardly and waddled about for a moment before Sael calmed it with a few words. "This creature will be my test subject, although it's a bit brutal... See, Vashta's abilities are not simply that it is a deadly acid, but that it is a very attractive one. Even the most level-headed man would desire a taste regardless of the consequences if he could but smell the brew. Therefore, the live subject." Sael pulled out a copper bowl that was fixed to a pair of wooden posts so that the bowl stood at about waist height. It swung limp for a few seconds and Sael poured his little vial into the bowl. Thanks to his nose plugs, he couldn't smell it, but the reptile obviously could. Its eyes went wide with curiosity and it stepped toward the bowl, nudging it with its nose, before tipping it and allowing the augmented brew to pour into its greedy, waiting mouth.

The effects were both immediate and terrible.

Suddenly, the creature began leaping about and screaming, the vashta having already destroyed its teeth and tongue and getting to work on the throat. Within only a few seconds, the poor reptile was on the ground, curled up as smoke drifted from its nostrils and its head rolled away, the neck disintegrated by the extremely potent vashta. As soon as it hit the dust, the brew evaporated and disappeared, harming nothing more and leaving the reptilian's body intact aside from the already-existing damage.

The body was almost half-destroyed, the head completely gone, from only a few moments exposed to the acid. Sael bowed and put the vial back on the tray.
Requilla had finished with her potion well before most of the other participants had gotten halfway through their own. "I guess I have some time to kill?" She remarked seemingly to herself as she looked around at the others and admired their work from afar. Upon looking over to Sael, who had initially finished around the same time as herself, she noticed that he was making an alteration to his original product.

"Hm, I guess there is no harm in altering my potion..." Requilla said as she scrounged around for more reagents and ingredients. It took her all but a couple of minutes to acquire the new things she would add to the Soothing potion. Requilla took a handful of petals and seeds from a flower that looked very similar to a pale purple rose and tossed them into a boiling pot of water. She waited until the petals had turned completely white before scooping them out and allowing the hued water and seeds to boil further. To this she added a mixture of dark hued berries and honey that had been mashed into a slimy paste and poured it into the boiling pot.

Next she began to pound drier insects and various plant husks into a fine silvery powder that she also added into the boiling pot. For the next few minutes she waited until the boiling pot evaporated halfway before adding the entirety of her Soothing potion into the now roiling mixture of components. The once purple colored jelly took on the color of honey gold and was less viscous, so much so it looked like there was a heavy aqueous gas at the bottom of the pot. Requilla stuck a finger in, the mixture that should have been boiling hot was almost ice cold for some reason. Upon retrieving her finger out of the pot she saw a perfect formation of amber colored crystals imprisoning her finger tip. "Perfect." She said completely satisfied.

Dipping in a stone cup she extracted the aqueous gas and poured the contents into a glass round bottom flask. The amber liquid moved excitedly at the slightest movement of its container. "When you are finished, please step forward and explain what you made to the audience and if at all possible, give a little demonstration." said the announcer. Requilla placed the flask of her improved potion on a stand that would keep the flask from rolling away. Requilla would wait until the other potions and mixtures had been shown off before showing what her's would do.
((Is this thread dead?))
((Never again!))

Now it was time for Beru to shine."I have a good thing." The Hobgoblin with glasses spoke as he lead a member of the audience to the tribune. The young man drank the drink, and almost instantly held on to his heart."Ha, I lied. It's poison."

"What!?" The man yelled as he tried to get up."Yes! It's called a Scaleroot Concoction." Beru said proudly."It's a venom that slows down your blood circulation, making you prone to a heart attack. And the attack works very quickly, too. We use it back home for interrogation. Being that the blood is slow, the attack is too, and thus, it's pretty painful to sit through. But also very quick to heal. Genius, isn't it?"

The young man screamed bloody murder."Cure me! I can feel it happening! Oh, gods, my chest is about to burst!" Beru seemed to ignore it."However, the Scaleroot Concoction has one weakness." He said as he took some blueberries and shoved it down the young man's mouth."It's known to be a very weak root when faced with acidic substances. A simple fruit like a blueberry can stop the effects quite quickly."

It seemed like he was telling the truth. The young man was started to breathe normally again and seemed much less scared. He looked Beru in his stupid smiling face and then back off into the audience.

The judges were less than impressed. They quickly decided he would not win.

After a very short deliberation, the human judge got up."We have come to our conclusion. And despite the fact these poisons and venoms do their jobs... admirably, we have decided lady Requila be the victor of today's contest!"

The audience clapped politely. This was a good choice for a winner.


And soon after, Angus Heidman once again showed up, clapping as well."My lady Requila, I need not say the benefits of your calming medicine. I am very proud to offer this to you." He said as he unveiled the gift.

It was but a simple crystal at first, but it seemed to change colour every few seconds."This is a rare gem. It changes colour depending on mood and security. We feel that as a healer who wishes to test her medicines, this gem will allow you to see what effect it has on your patient. Use it well, my lady."
"Thank you very much. I am honored to accept this prize. But alas, it is now more than a calming potion. Watch..." Requilla said graciously as she took the amber colored concoction.

After tossing the open container in the air the contents quickly spilled out. As the liquid touched the air something strange occurred. The amber liquid solidified into solid amber, dazzling patterns of spilled amber twirled in the air before falling back to the ground. Requilla caught the bottle before it hit the ground.

"This is a stasis potion. When applied to the body or any other substance it reacts with the air and quickly solidifies, encasing what is within and prevents the effects of time, decay and sickness from affecting whatever happens to be inside." Requilla said as she poured some of the amber liquid on her arm, the are was instantly encased in a thick layer of clear amber colored crystal.

"Retrieving whatever is inside is as was as dipping it in lukewarm water." Requilla said as she dipped her covered arm in a cooling cauldron of water. As she pulled her arm out the crystal began to break apart and fall off of her skin. And with that she gave a bow.

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