Business As Usual (Valerius, Inoadar)

by **Amolina** on February 23rd, 2014, 7:31 pm

When she was done with the disinfection spray she went on to the steeped lily pad tea with honey. She needed a name for this too, as it wouldn’t do to sell it like it was some simple tea people could as well make at home for a lower price.

Once again she took a slip of paper and the quill, and this time she wrote:

“Honey of The Lily”.

Content with this name she repeated the procedure a number of times and made a bunch of pretty small bottles with this label on it. Then she poured the tea into them and closed them. She went on to organize the bottles in a neat row on the shelf where she also put the spray. They only had one single spray…but they could make more one of those days if needed.

Her head was spinning. She must be more affected by the cold than she knew. It could be flu, even. But she was going to work on she thought. She didn’t want to seem weak. So it was time for her to do something more, before they noticed… But luckily Valerius seemed to be too blocked out by his own symptoms to care about what she did or not did, and Parnell had left the lab room. Good. This meant she could slack and try to gather new energy.

She sat for a while on a stool before she continued.

by **Amolina** on February 23rd, 2014, 7:33 pm

There was the first herb tea she had made. It had helped a bit but she wasn’t sure what is was made of. A pity. But this didn’t mean it couldn’t be used.

She took the quill and a bunch of paper slips again. This time she wrote :

“Random Pity”.

Looking at it for a while and pondering the name she felt unsure if it really was good…but she wasn’t able to come up with something else right now. It was a good name for people who liked gambling though. Perhaps they could sell it as a gimmick. Sometimes people just wanted to try something to see what happened.

She poured the unknown tea into the bottles, closed them and organized them on the shelf together with the other products already sitting there. Not bad! They had three products already, all of them cheap to make, and with good names in her opinion.

She left it to Parnell to name and label his own results and make his own bottles. It was best that way.

by **Amolina** on February 23rd, 2014, 7:36 pm

It was time to make a ledger. She rummaged through the old piles of paper and similar the previous owner had left until she found a worn old notebook with only a few pages left. The rest of them had been torn out. Torn out? Yes, they were gone, somebody had ripped them out for some reason.

Right now Amolina didn’t care. She just wanted to start a product ledger. It didn’t have to be so perfect, she could buy a more elegant and businesslike ledger and copy all the information to it. For now she just needed to make organized notes so they could keep track of what they had.

She took the quill again, dipped it in ink and wrote:

Products of the Nitrozian-Moletta Sanitary Station

• Tee-Whiney Disinfector : Spray it everywhere to prevent illness to spread
• Honey of the Lily : The sweet and flowery way to be healthy
• Random Pity: Try it, it may cure you. Secret recipe!

Satisfied with how it looked she decied to show it to her colleagues. She went to speak with Valerius but got no answer, just a Nitrozian glare that sent her walking back to the work bench to compose herself. It took some effort, as he had seemed to really, really , really dislike the whole idea. He didn’t say “Are you daft Miss Moletta, we can’t name our products that” - he just said something she couldn’t understand due to the cold distorting his speech. But she had a feeling he wasn’t impressed.

She settled for speaking with Parnell instead. Nolan Parnell could be a difficult person to deal with in many and various ways, but he used to be interested in things like business, sales and profit.

She would test her ideas on the poisoner. She picked the bottle of Tee-Whiney and put it on a small tray, then added one bottle each of Honey of the Lily and Random Pity. With the tray in one hand and the new product ledger in the other hand she would soon head to the next room, she just needed to sit down and rest a bit first.

by **Inoadar** on February 23rd, 2014, 7:59 pm

Inoadar - Proposition

"So I must whore myself out to you, to persuade you to treat my son?" the woman responded, her face masked in suppressed loathing. Inoadar was almost amused. This was not what he intended at all, but he wondered if, in the long run, the woman might find it preferable. He also could not deny his interest in such a bargain. But he did his best to put on an expression of suppressed shock.

"No, no! Dear me, is that what you thought I meant?" He gave a slight chuckle and the woman sagged in obvious relief as the boy looked in complete confusion between the two of them. Inoadar put on a more serious face as he continued. "No, it is not anything along that line, Ma'am. It is that we do...research...here as well as actual medical procedures. But this research requires...subjects. And we have been without them for a while now. He gave her a direct look on this last word and her face started to pale again. The boy continued to look confused between winces of pain as his arm throbbed.

"W-What...kind of...research...are we talking about?" The woman ventured slowly, carefully. She flashed a pained expression in the direction of her child.

It was time to turn the screws a little, Inoadar decided, "The kind that will pay for two or three hundred mizas' worth of procedures and medicines for this boy, who I assume to be your son." He made no attempt to suggest that this was not meant to pressure her to agree. He waited a chime as she wrestled in the moral hold he had her under. He was on the verge of describing the pain the boy would suffer without any of these medicines, and that it would only be passing out from the agony that would give him temporarily relief, when she stalled by asking for more details.

Inoadar paused a moment before accommodating her. "There are drugs and medicines that serve to alleviate a variety of different things. But very few work on several different symptoms at the same time. So the logical course would be to combine them. But often, there is advice about possible dangers in doing so. Some are even issued with warnings about not taking this or that, or not doing this or that, or avoiding this or that food..." He waved his hand as though he was discarding a number of other examples of warnings to mention.

"Would you believe me if I told you that a slowly increasing dose of, say, snake venom, will generate an antitoxin in your blood to that very venom? But how many people do you suppose would let me give them doses of some deadly snake venom? Or combine two drugs that "experts" have been reluctant to try combining for no reason than their guesses as to what "might" happen?" He paced a bit as he spoke, then stopped and turned to her.

"This is the sort of research I'm talking about, "experimentation", testing untested theories, checking rumors against factual results. There is even reason to hope that one could...enhance...the normal scope of physical abilities through such research." He saw the boy suddenly look interested.

"You mean like...magic?" the boy said, fascinated.

Inoadar raised his eyebrows as he cocked his head in a "who knows" sort of hopeful shrug. Then he stepped around the woman and looked at the boy while masquerading holding his arm and crying in pain. The boy caught on immediately and started moaning and rocking in the chair, begging his mother to agree, that the pain was too bad. That he couldn't stand it.

The mother looked back and forth in emotional agony, torn between the unbearable pain her son was enduring and the horror of unknown experimentation. In short order, however, her love of her child won out, and she agreed to be a test subject. Inoadar did not say anything to the effect of her not regretting it. He simply went and got the Pillowsap, the Krolar poultice, a flask of Sundyra water, some treated Iskyny and Azhiltu teas, a splint and his knife.

They had their first volunteer test subject. 'Ahhh kids, you gotta love 'em.'

x

by **Inoadar** on February 25th, 2014, 7:45 am

Inoadar - Proposition

Of course he still needed to keep his end of the bargain by treating the boy's arm. He did not think it should be too difficult if he could get the swelling down. The first issue was to put the boy out of his suffering, and the suffering to come. Inoadar brewed some Azhiltu tea to help the bleeding that would come, then used one of his darts to give the boy a jab of Pillowsap. He marked the vial, noting that he'd used less than the usual sized dose. If this vial was used only on children, it could probably be stretched to five doses.

He heated his knife over a flame and then fanned it several times to cool it. The boy was asleep in less than a chime. Inoadar figured cutting the boy's arm would be a quick way to see if the Pillowsap dosage had been strong enough. Blood welled quickly and the mother, who'd given her name as Taleena, reacted in alarm. Inoadar shushed her and explained that he needed the swelling to go down to be able to feel for the break. The Azhiltu would hopefully act as an indirect astringent, reducing the swelling by hindering the bleeding.

It was a surprising benefit that the weather was icy outside of town. There was far more ice available than usual, and cheaper too. That would help with the pain and swelling also, but was hardly useful at this stage. The swelling went down enough for him to find the kink in the arm where the bone was broken. But before he began trying to set the bone in line again, he washed the wound with Sundyra Water, a natural antiseptic and healing aid.

He recalled, when he found the off-center location of the break, that the skeleton at the IHL had shown two bones, side-by-side, in the forearm. The boy moaned, and Taleena grimaced in anguish as he braced the pull to separate the broken ends of the bone against the remaining intact bone in the injured forearm. It took him several tries to get the ends aligned, once even popping it out himself as he probed to see if he'd gotten it aligned.

Taleena had, of course, burst in anger and despair at his clumsiness. He didn't blame her, but neither did he bother responding with more than a glare to shut her up. What was done was done, he'd never said he was an actual "doctor".

Once reset, he retrieved a sling. But first he applied a Krolar poultice to help with the pain and speed healing. He also provided Taleena with several days' worth of both the poultice and some Iskyny tea, to help the boy sleep and provide an additional boost to the body's natural healing. Then he strapped the arm into the sling.

He also offered her several diluted doses of "Slammer", a drug that numbed the extremities. Even in diluted form it was quite expensive and the woman declined, fearing both the backlash of the additional cost to her status as "volunteer", and the unknown side-effects of taking the drug. Inoadar could understand this and told her that if she changed her mind, they could easily reassess the bounds of her servitude accordingly.

Then once the boy was awake again, he escorted them out and went to get more flu tonic.

x

by **Amolina** on February 25th, 2014, 9:14 am

Amolina woke up with a jolt. My, she had been asleep at work. She couldn’t remember how or when she had sat down on the floor, leaned agaist the wall and fallen asleep…she looked around groggily. There was a new odd smell in the air. She saw Parnell look around among the various flu tonics.

It was good that they had made this small progress. But they couldn’t go on dabbling ad hoc like this, she thought. It had been Parnell’s bright idea to try to persuade the old folks from a place nearby to volunteer as test objects they wouldn’t need to pay, but it wasn’t like he had put in much effort to use them for anything else than basic tests and information gathering, nor had Valerius. And she feared everything would backfire if they took it too far and the well connected elders started dying on them.

Now when she was a 1/3 shareholder and had a say in things she was going to end the cooperation with that old folks home and start to recruit test subjects in better ways. Seamus, Anita and Lorenzo would likely be against it, but she would tell them the project had gathered lots of data during the first part of winter and was now proceeding to a new phase.

She got to her feet. The flu made her feverishly resolute.

“Here, have a look at this product ledger Parnell” she said to the poisoner. She handed him the notebook. “I made a few things we can sell and named them.”

It was also best to get the change of direction for the research done at once. She fetched a paper, took the quill again and wrote a letter to the old folks home where she explained that the first part of the research where their cooperation had been greatly appreciated now was completed. They would perhaps be contacted again in the future, she wrote, but for now the project would go on to other kinds of work.

She showed the letter to Valerius and explained to him that it didn’t give anything more to spend time on first group of test subjects and that the risk for the Nitrozian name had gone up as the testing could have made the old volunteers a bit more frail, actually. They didn’t want lots of sudden deaths to happen among these test subjects, as they were well connected in the noble district. They needed to dismiss this first crew of subjects now and change direction from mass tests to niched research she said.

Valerius didn’t say much but she assumed he shared her concern for his familiy’s reputation. He nodded, perhaps in agreement, or perhaps because of being ill. She took it he agreed and after folding the letter she went out to find one of those kids on the street to task with delivering the message.

This done, she returned in and informed Parnell about the changes she had made to the project. She hadn’t asked for his opinion before the reorganization. There had been no need as there already was a 2/3 majority backing up her decision, or so she assumed.

“It was a good idea Parnell, but we have gathered lots of basic test data already. Now we need to get to work without being disturbed. We can’t have them milling around here all the time. And the cost for their consumption of painkillers is going up too. Besides I'm tired of being tasked with being some kind of general social caretaker for them. So, from now on, if you have tests that remains to be done on any of them, you can contact them individually and arrange the meetings you need.“

by **Inoadar** on February 26th, 2014, 9:50 pm

Inoadar - Epilog

Amolina found Inoadar in an agreeable mood. He had his own clipboard in hand and was jotting down notes of his own.

"Noose Vine Tea" - Stuffy nose and head congestion relief, when not combined with any other herbs.
Addition of Batonal improves flavor somewhat and adds digestive "stability".
Addition of Tolm relaxes body pains to a degree and aids in sleeping.
Honey rather than sugar to improve flavor significantly.

Note: Addition of mandrake for sore throat not advised - the ingredients already contained seem to have a nullifying effect on the small amount of mandrake it would be safe to include. Any more could be toxic.
However, Hommos could be substituted, but then that portion must be gargled, rather than consumed.

He looked up as she entered, giving her list the once over with an approving nod. "I was in the process of a similar task...uh...Are those just working titles? I suppose if you expect to sell to more women than men it won't matter. They seem a bit...cute...to me. Do you recall what was in that 'Random Pity'?"

He waved off any answer she might have given as he turned to his own big news. "Later...I have a new "volunteer". Her name is Taleena. She's the mother of a boy whose broken arm I just set. She agreed to work off the costs of the drugs and meds I used to get it done relatively painlessly. I figure she's on the arm for a good two hundred mizas' worth of "research". I knew being open to non-citizens was going to be lucrative. They have nowhere else to go. Now we can be rid of those damned old folks! If they were a bunch of nobodies I wouldn't care, but I have had my doubts that they would survive many tests anyway."

He gave her his usual calculating grin. "I couldn't agree more, sweetheart. I don't mind seeing the end of those old farts. I figure we can get all the test subjects we need this way. Now...I just need another Kelvic..." he walked off, plotting.

x

by **Verin Rush** on March 20th, 2014, 12:55 pm

Amolina

Knowledge :

Micellaneous :

Inoadar

Knowledge :

Micellaneous :

Valerius

Knowledge :

Micellaneous :

____________________________________________

Notes

*Its curious to see how much contempt these... colleagues have for each other; it makes for a very entertaining read. You all seem to play off of each other really well.
*A lot got done here, particularly for Inoadar and Amolina... well done! (The omelette made me hungry...)
*I've categorised the Herbs as such just to keep them neat and tidy, but if you have a different system of labelling just... let me know or change them or whatever

*Valerius, just a reminder to subtract your expenses for last Season

*(1) Amolina, I'm going to send you a PM regarding the Herbs

Feel free to PM me with questions, comments, or concerns, if you have any.
Also, remember to either delete your grade request or edit it as 'graded'.
Thank ye!

Skill	XP
Cooking	+5
Impersonation	+2
Observation	+4
Organisation	+3
Philosophy	+1
Rhetoric	+1

Skill	XP
Acting	+1
Herbalism	+3
Medicine	+1
Negotiation	+3
Observation	+2
Persuasion	+1
Philtering	+1
Poison	+1

Skill	XP
Cleaning	+2
Herbalism	+2
Observation	+2

Completed Business As Usual (Valerius, Inoadar)