Solo New Concoctions

[Sayana]

Spring 85, 516 AV

The campfire roared merrily as Sayana set the last of the logs in place. She had a pot of water ready to be boiled and a collection of various herbs in jars. After a long day of foraging, she had a good supply of vyfox, some tolm, some connal, rhinedale sticks, and even some peppermint. She had even purchased a large amount of krolar paste when back in the city.

The Eypharian arranged the jars of the various herbs into groups. The vyfox and krolar paste worked well for healing external wounds, like cuts. Whereas tolm and connal both offered internal relief as well as helping the patient sleep. She paused a moment and then added the vyfox leaves to the tolm and connal. Where the white flowers helped with wounds, the leaves of the vyfox plant helped internally.

Sayana looked at the rhinedale for a moment then set it aside in its own category. The rhinedale was only good for burns, so unless it was one nasty burn wound, it wouldn’t help to contaminate the other herbs. Lastly there was the peppermint. She hadn’t yet determined any real medical properties to the plant, however it certainly smelled nice and could make a good tea. She decided to place it with the internal medicines since they were most likely to be ingested like a tea.

She decided to start with the rhinedale since it only involved one herb. With two sticks in her left hands, she took out of pair of daggers and began whittling away at them. Each small twig she cut off, she carefully set inside a jar. The bark was fine and she cut it away as she made long slivers of wood from the rhinedale. Once she had many thin shavings of the wood, she piled up the tinder in one of the jars and use another stick to set it alight. There was a quick burst of flame to the kindling in the jar, but in less than a chime it had all burned out. Grey-white ash remained and the jar was blacked around the edges as a result.

Sayana set the jar aside to cool then reached for the pot of water.

“Petch!” She cried out as she burned her finger tips upon the hot metal. Immediately she stuck her fingers in her mouth to numb the feeling. Then the irony hit her that she had just been about to make the rhinedale paste.

Instead of reaching for the pot this time, she dug around her bag for a large spoon and ladled out a spoonful of water into the jar of ash. As she stirred it about, she realized that in her haste she had made it far too liquidy. Regardless, she stuck her fingers into the mixture and swirled them around. At first, the warm liquid didn’t offer much relief, but after a chime or two there was a slight numbing effect and the pain eased a little.

No longer faced with the acute pain of the burn, Sayana prepared some more rhinedale sticks like before and made more of the ash. She was surprised just how much ash was needed to thicken the mixture into a paste but at last she got it to a consistency that could easily be spread upon a burn. Next time, don’t use so much water. A little goes a long way.

[Sayana]

After she had sealed up a large portion of the rhinedale paste in a jar, Sayana took out the vyfox leaves, the tolm and the connal. Tea, unlike a paste, could have ample water. It also needed plenty of hot water to better extract the healing properties of the herbs. She was about to reach for the pot of water once more, but then thought better of it and found a large stick to hook under the wire in which the pot might typically hang from a hearth. Using the stick to lift the pot, she maneuvered it so it would sit on a bed of hot coals without interrupting the rest of the fire.

With the water in place and soon to boil, she placed half a dozen vyfox leaves into her mortar and pestle. It took some effort to grind up the leaves into smaller pieces. At first it just seemed like she was squishing the leaves to no real effect. But eventually they began to break down into something smaller and almost powder-like. She poured it into a new jar for the ‘tea-mix’ and repeated the process with the tolm and connal. It was hard to guess what the right quantities might be so she just chose similar amounts of each.

Lastly was the peppermint. Now this she could actually test quite easily and too much peppermint would overpower the tea. Starting with two leaves, she ground up the mint and added it to the rest of the dried tea powder. After stirring it up with a spoon, she added some hot water to the jar and let it steep.

It was hard waiting patiently for the tea, so Sayana got up and began gathering more wood for the fire. Around the campsite were various fallen logs, but many of them would be rotten through and no good for a fire. However, several trees had dead branches on them that would not have been exposed to water or rot. They snapped loudly as she broke them off, then added them to the fire careful not to upset her pot of water. With a whoosh, the fire took hold of the fresh wood and she smiled fondly at the flames.

By now, she could test the tea and she first started by smelling it. There was only a faint minty scent to it and she wondered if she hadn’t let it steep long enough. With a small spoon, she sipped some of the tea after blowing upon it. There was something but the mint was hardly there. Taking two more mint leaves, she doubled the dose after grinding them up in the mortar and pestle.

Several chimes later, it tasted much better and almost had a calming effect. Oh of course… it aids in sleeping. If she managed to perfect the recipe, she might even try to sell it to a massage parlor like the Soothing Waters. As it was, she would simply be mixing up a large batch for Stormhold Salves.

[Sayana]

The last mixture was probably the most useful, as it combined the healing properties of the krolar paste with the purification of the vyfox flowers, but it was not as obvious how to effectively combine them. Sayana started by grinding up the small white flowers using the mortar and pestle. She tentatively mixed some of the powdery clumps into a dab of paste, but it mixed poorly and gave it a grainy quality. She also wasn’t sure how well the flowers would work for purifying when simply ground up.

After a bit of thought, the Eypharian chose to add some boiling water to the remaining ground up vyfox. She only added the water in moderation and stirred the mixture to dissolve the powdered herb. However, when she tried to blend it with another sample of krolar paste, it either left the paste far too watery, or somewhat grainy like before from the residual powder that had sunk to the bottom.

Frankly, she was beginning to make a mess. She was trying this, that, and the other to try to get a good consistency for the paste so it might blend together seamlessly. With her next attempt, she tried to crush the vyfox flowers into a much finer dust. She spent a good deal more time with the mortar and pestle to get rid of any larger flakes of petals. Once she had a sizeable quantity of the vyfox powder, she added only a dribble of very hot water.

Aha! She had managed to replicate the effect of the rhinedale ash mixing into a paste, but this time with the vyfox powder. Pleased with the results, she stirred it about with a spoon so that it would turn into a paste of its own. Where there were pockets of dry powder or lumps, she used the back of the spoon to scrape it against the side of the jar and continued to smooth out the paste.

Sayana now had two distinct pastes: the krolar paste she had purchased and the new vyfox paste. They were slightly different in consistency, but when she combined a dab of each and rubbed it together between her fingers, they seemed to blend far better than they had previously. Taking out a fresh jar, she measured out two portions of krolar paste to one portion of vyfox. The vyfox was merely a purifying agent and didn’t contain the bulk of the healing. So she figured that ratio would be sufficient.

She mixed the two until they were well blended. She was actually rather pleased with how it had turned out, despite all the time spent grinding up flowers to a fine powder. At some point she’d have to test the mixture, but even as is, it was far better than the alternative. Putting clumps of white flowers on a wound was far from ideal and the paste with dual properties was just that much easier to apply.

Pleased with her work, Sayana set aside the jar for Mistress Sahfri.

[Sayana]

Sayana returned to the Stormhold Salves the next day with several prepared mixtures. She had a few jars of the krolar and vyfox paste and the herbal blend of tolm, connal, vyfox and mint. Plus the rhinedale paste. When she presented the concoctions to Mistress Sahfri and explained them, the Eypharian shopkeeper surveyed them with a critical eye.

“The healing paste could be more uniform in consistency.” Sahfri noted and gestured for Sayana to follow her into the back of the shop. Here she rummaged around for a wire strainer and set it over top of an empty jar. “Try using this to smooth it out,” the herbalist said and indicated the devise with her mid hand.

Sayana looked curiously at the fine wire strainer then took a spoon to scoop out some of her paste into it. The pasted hardly passed through the strainer, and it was only after Sayana began squeezing it through the thin wire mesh using the back of the spoon, did it begin to drop into the jar below. Sayana glanced up momentarily at the herbalist, then continued her work stirring and pressing down to smooth out the paste. By the end, there were still lumps that remained. These she threw out when she washed the strainer. But the end product was of much better quality.

“As for the rhinedale ash, remember not to add any water until it is needed for the burn. The ash retains its medicinal properties far better when it is dry. This paste, I’ll have to use up within the next dozen days at the very latest.” Mistress Sahfri explained. Sayana simply nodded and promised that she would find more and return it as ash.

“Mistress, if I came back with some azhiltu, would you teach me to make a dye from it?” Sayana asked tentatively. She knew it could be done and had enjoyed the results of the deep red dye.

“If you can bring back a basket of the flowers, whole and untouched, I’ll show you how to properly dry them and make the dye. The Cobalt Mountains are probably a good place to start rather than the woods.”

Sayana grinned eagerly and knew what her next goal would be.

[Sayana]

Sayana set out on her white horse into the Cobalt Mountains the following day. She travelled light, wishing to cover as much ground as she could. While she did bring some basic trail rations, she didn’t even take a tent. Perhaps it was a mistake.

The first night she regretted the lack of supplies. Syna was beginning to set and still she had not found the elusive azhiltu flower.

“This way Stardust,” Sayana called as she urged her horse along a narrow ridge of the mountainside. It was perilously steep and the tundra horse knew it. Sayana kept cooing and beckoning the creature but still it didn’t move except to paw at the unstable ground.

The Eypharian was feeling the urgency of the setting sun and reached for her djed. Grasping at that tickle in the back of her mind, she pulled and twisted at the magic, inserting feelings of warmth, security and most of all ‘home’. “This way Stardust.” She repeated but adding the silky glint of magic to her words. It was a hard sell but eventually the horse managed the tricky spot along the slopes.

At last she found an overhang in the mountain side. It was far from what one would call a cave, but it was more than nothing. She secured the horse’s reins by slipping them under a heavy rock then went out to gather wood for a fire. Fortunately there were still plenty of trees and they were not yet above the treeline of the mountains.

As she collected wood in the immediate area, she gazed curiously at some strange looking plants in a patch of sunlight. Only when she drew near did she realize that some of them were beginning to open up like ferns. Perhaps a relative to the Fauxsil plant? She wasn’t near a stream or marsh but she curiously picked one up and bit into it. A little bitter, but also a little sweet and tender. She took another bite and avoided a beetle that was crawling upon it.

A little surprised at her find, she gathered up the forest fiddleheads along with her firewood and returned to the overhang where she had left her horse. After a quick meal of the young ferns mixed with seeds and nuts, she went about building a rough wall to her meager shelter. There were fallen branches she could lean up against one side of the overhang, and she laid them densely with smaller sticks and leaves to protect against the wind. Despite it being nearly Summer, the night was cooling off and the westerly wind made it chilly. She pulled off some green branches as well, hoping that the array of leaves would block out most of the chilly breeze.

At last she settled down in the rough shelter with her horse. A cloak served as a blanket and a pile of leaves made up for a pillow.

[Sayana]

She awoke feeling damp with dew but after a quick breakfast of hard bread, she was off. This time they climbed much higher along the slopes and there were several more places where Stardust faltered at the terrain. Halfway through the morning she saw a most beautiful sight.

Spread out like a blanket upon the rocks was an array of purples and deep reds. For a moment she almost thought it was a trick of the light or that Syna was starting to set. But as she clambered up the rocks, she realized it was a large patch of flowers. Azhiltu.

Leaving her horse down below, she found a bag and carefully plucked the flowers from the mountain ledge. She didn’t take all of them, but made sure there would be more to grow and populate another year. But to be sure, it filled her bag. After briefly orienting herself to where the Syna was and where she was sure the sea lay, Sayana headed back to the city of Syliras.

At Sayana’s appearance at Stormhold Salves, Mistress Sahfri produced a wide cloth sheet that was fitted to a wooden frame. “We’ll be harvesting the seeds using this, and to speed up the process of drying we’ll be doing it over a bed of hot coals.” The herbalist pointed to the hearth and Sayana was pleased to see that the fire had burned low so that it consisted of only glowing embers.

Sayana got to work spreading the coals out evenly using a fire rod. Next she plucked just the flowers of the azhiltu plant and discarded the leaves and stems. At Sahfri’s instruction, she carried on to first spread out all the maroon flowers on the cloth in a single layer, leaving the purple ones in a bowl. Slowly she drew near to the hearth and held out the drying rack above the hot coals. Every so often she’d give it a shake.

It took at least fifteen chimes for anything to happen, but jubilantly she saw some of the little seeds shake free from the flowers. Slowly more and more of the flowers released their seeds until Mistress Sahfri confirmed that they were ready to prepare the dye.

First came a lot of grinding of the seeds. The mortar and pestle certainly made it easier. Then they boiled the seeds in water. At first not much happened but then a brilliant deep red infused the pot of water. Lastly, Sahfri asked Sayana to add two spoons of salt. At first the Eypharian frowned at the request, but then the herbalist explained that it was to ensure the dye would properly stick to whatever was being dyed. Sayana strained the dye using the same piece of cloth, catching all the tiny seeds, and returned it to the original pot.

By the end, Sayana was most thankful and Mistress Sahfri explained that the same could be done for the purple flowers for a more purple dye. She left the pot of red dye boiling for a little longer to concentrate the mixture and at last Sayana bid her good day and set out into the night air.

[Dove Brown]

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Sayana

Skills

• Herbalism 3
• Medicine 2
• Philtering 3
• Carving 1
• Cooking 1
• Wilderness Survival 2
• Foraging 1
• Dyeing 1

Lores

• Preparing Rhinedale paste
• Carving: whittling sticks into shavings
• Boiling water makes for a hot pot
• Peppermint aids sleep
• Rhinedale keeps better dry
• Dyeing: salt for a mordant

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