Remedies & Healing

A healer's craft is brewed at a Cauldron under ALCHEMY, from the leaves, mushrooms and honey you gather:

• Healing Potion — restores a great deal of health (it will not stop a bleed).
• Cleansing Potion — purges Infection and Poison from the blood.
• Numbing Potion — stills the tremors of Shock.
• Vigor Potion — restores spent Stamina.
• Spirit Potion — clears the mind and returns Focus.

A simple Bandage stops all bleeding at once; a scrap of Cloth staunches a single wound. Greenleaf eaten raw mends a little hurt in a pinch.

Fire-water is the crude remedy: a swig from an Alcohol Bottle chases off Shock at once, but leaves you DRUNK: the world sways, a climber's grip slips off the rock, and every effort costs twice the Stamina and Focus. A second bottle puts a stagger in your walk and a run can end flat on your face; a third takes the sprint out of your legs; a fourth leaves only a stumbling walk. Each bottle keeps you drunk a while longer, five inside a minute come straight back up (unless you have Resilience), and a sixth drops you where you stand, out cold and at anyone's mercy.

A gentler one is a Pipe packed with Swamp Weed: the smoke numbs Shock and steadies the mind, though it leaves the mouth dry.

A Splint sets a broken bone at once. Make it by hand from a Wood Stick and Cloth (it takes the Craftsman skill). A fracture from a hard fall, a heavy blow or a trap mends on its own in time, but until it does you cannot climb, and jumping or rolling on it can worsen it into a major fracture that leaves you limping. A Healer can splint another's break as well.