Poisoners

Those who poison individuals or groups.

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Kholna

Kholnas are members of the Red Grith who use the power and magic of decay to find the tiniest organisms, microbes, and use them to poison or infect others. They access this, they create special lamps called putrelanterns.

To make a putrelantern, kholnas must must rewire their brains to understand concepts and possibilities that others cannot conceive, and to do this requires powerful chemicals and some weird technology. They are usually trained by the Red Grith. At some point in their training, when they are deemed ready, they are drugged (sometmes consensually, sometimes not) with a potent hallucinogen, locked in a chamber, and tested for three straight days. At the end of it, they are given a sedative, allowed to rest for an hour, then awakened with loud noises and asked rigorous questions until they pass out. There are less traumatic ways to do this, but this is the long-time practice that most are familiar with.

Once this is done, the kholna is shown the world via the light of a putrelantern, and if their mind is ready, they can see the microbial world. With this, they gain abilities that allow them to wield it via their putrelantern:

• Bodily decay: they can focus their light onto the body of someone or something that died of a disease to cause it to decay, releasing the disease into the world around it.
• Irradiative light: they can send a beam of light that is full of radiation, poisoning any who it touches.
• Prion storm: they can explode a small object, transforming it into a storm of deadly prions.
• Wasting spray: they can create a wide beam of light that causes any touched by it to weaken rapidly.
• Excitable shine: they can diffuse their light and allow it to cause any latent microbes or toxins within that which it touches to excite and begin to act. Kholnas are considered a particularly nasty kind of killer, and the Red Grith uses them sparingly.

PRO / ATH / STR +1 AWA +2 WIL +1 PRS -1 STH +1

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Infirmatist

Infirmatists commune with natural microbes to draw their powers and infect targets with disease for the Green Grith.

While most associate disease with infernal powers, there is an elemental energy derived from microbes as well. It is extremely rare, but those few who are aware of it can channel it by communing with natural microbes who generate this energy. There are obvious risks to this, so an infirmatist has to study and understand what they are communing with, especially since the most effective way to commune with them is consuming them or touching them.

By communing with the microbes, they gain the ability to communicate with them and encourage them. They can encourage them to only infect those they target and not spread to others. They can convince them to reduce the damage they do to a system - or increase it. And they can get them to scatter and flee a system as well. The steps to being able to commune with microbes involves first knowing that they are there. This is rare in Haenor. Members of the Green Grith teach each other germ theory for health reasons, and other infirmatists teach new ones how to wield the power. They must prove themselves friends of nature, show respect for the microbes (which involves hosting them), and meditative work.

After years of study and training, they gain the ability to influence and commune with different microbes and bacteria. Viruses, prions, and viroids are not alive and cannot be communed with or influenced. In fact, they are mostly purely infernal. Any bacterial or other microbial being is potentially a friend to the infirmatist, however, though those common in Haenor are much more likely. It takes about three years to commune enough with a microbe such that any microbe of that kind will respond to the infirmatist, but once they have done this - assuming they spend enough time on it - they will always be able to influence that microbe. the microbe must be present for them to influence it, however, so infirmatists will carry a vial of the microbe with them if they intend to use it. They gather them by communing with them and encouraging them into the vial.

Infirmatists have the following powers:

• Sense microbe: they can sense any microbe they have communed with and know it is there, and they can tell that other microbes are present but not identify them without communicarting.
• Chemical communication: they can silently communicate with any microbe within 10'.
• Verdigris rally: the infirmatist can silently call every microbe within 30' to gather around them.

But in order to wield them, to infect someone, they still have to be able to transfer the microbes into them via the microbes' method of infection. Thus, the infirmatist must be aware of how they work, and then they must have the tools to properly infect someone with them - perfume spritzers work for airborne microbes, food and drink for those that can be ingested, needles for bloodborne ones, and so on.

Which microbes the infirmatist has access to is determined in conversation between the GM and player, but it is one kind of microbe per three years of experience the infirmatist has.

PRO +1 ATH +2 STR +1 AWA +3 WIL / PRS +1 STH +3

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Sholtar

Sholtars are members of the Violet Grith who have learned to wield the energy of spirits to infect and poison others. All beings on Shem, which is within a part of the universe called the Spirit Realm, are spirits, but sholtars and other fey magic users concern themselves only with those aligned with fey energies, and only those who do not fit other species categories - to put it in non-canon terms, they concern themselves with spirits based directly on legends from Earth.

A sholtar gains their magic either by learning the Lore over many, many years or by making a deal with a powerful fey being, usually a spirit with some association with poison, toxins, venom, or disease. To do this, they must also make themselves immune to poisons via microdosing practices, which also takes a great deal of time. Once they are prepared, their abilities vary by patron:

• Arachne: spider-like abilities, moderate venom.
• Basilisk: petrifying gaze, snakespeech, and deadly venom.
• Dipsa: deadly poison, speed
• Gold-digging ant: metal sensing, painful poison
• Lamia: moderate poison, wisdom
• Lavellan: vile and deadly poison,
• Mandrake/Alrune: petrifying, poison, and screeching wail
• Midwinter spider [Christmas spider]: mild poison, tinsel weaving
• Moondrop spider [Pan Twardowski]: lunar survival, long webs, mild poison
• Myrmecoleon: strength, toughness, mild poison, roar
• Myrmekes: mild poison, strength, toughness, diligence
• Prophetic bee [Greek]: precognition, mild poison
• Pure mother bee [Potnia]: soulsight, nature wielding, mild poison
• Resurrected bee [Aristaeus]: mild poison, honey making, swarming
• Sacred bee [Albanian]: healing, mild poison
• Scorpio: painful poison, strength, toughness
• Simulium: river blindness disease, flight, blooddrinking
• Succubus: seduction, poison
• Thumbeater spider [Tom Thumb]: deadly poison, cannibalism
• Typhon: deadly poison, obliteration

There are many other options as well, so long as they are poisonous, venomous, or wielders of disease. Consult the GM if you prefer a different patron.

PRO +1 ATH / STR +1 AWA +2 WIL / PRS +1 STH +1

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Virosean

There are many kinds of assassin working for the Green Grith, wielding different kinds of elemental magic to kill their targets. Viroseans use their knowledge of plants to concoct poisons.

Viroseans are skilled herbalists. They know herbs and other plants that heal, that soothe, that clear the mind, that relax, that give hallucinations, that do many things, but mostly, they know plants that poison and kill.

Viroseans not only know which plants are poisonous and how to distill them to be used with weapons, food, drink, or other methods of transmission, they know how to tap into the elemental energy of plants to heighten the poisonous power. To do this, they must bond with nature by communing with all the greenery around them, preferably in a place with lots of plants. In the city, this means a park, a garden, or a rare town square. Some greenhouses will also work, but an apartment with a few plants will not. The virosean must have a deep knowledge of the plants they are communing with and focus on them via meditation and, preferably, by inhaling their fragrances, touching them (without harming them), and even perhaps tasting parts of them that can be safely consumed without harming either the virosean or the plants.

If they are a good keeper of plants and protector of nature, and if they succeed in their meditations, they will eventually, after many meditations, become attuned to the green and able to sense the elemental energy of plants. Once they are able to sense it, they can encourage it to strengthen or improve the plants they use in their work by making small offerings to the plants or by using special whispering chants.

They use this to make their poisons stronger, but the rest of their work - getting their target to be poisoned - is up to them. Thus, they train in stealth and subterfuge, use of darts, arrows, and knives, preparing foods and drinks, and other useful skills.

PRO +1 ATH +1 STR -1 AWA +2 WIL +1 PRS / STH +2