Poison
From AeonRO
Contents |
Poison Rules and Regulations
Types
Some say that, when decided on poison use, assassins should be allowed to let their creativity flourish. Not to be a killjoy, but assassins are not known for being creative or otherwise groundbreaking in their strategies. Since the beginning of the vocation, the best way to kill someone in a given situation has been documented (if you know where to look) and often discussed between people in the field. Getting wild and crazy with all manner of fantastical ways to poison someone is fun, sure. Effective? Highly questionable. It should be understood that not all assassins use poisons, and perfectly successful ones, to boot. That being said, poisons are, as one might expect, a specialty of sorts.
For example (because everyone loves examples): Contact poisons - Poisons which must be administered through contact with the skin. Ingested poisons - Poisons which must be directly eaten or drunk to be effective. Injury - Poisons which are transfered by injury to get them into the bloodstream. Inhaled - Poisons which much be breathed in after being spread into an area of effect. Those are the four basic types of ways to administer a poison. I would be hard-pressed to think of any other common or respectable measure. So far, so good, right? Right.
Before moving on, allow me to discuss the advantages and limitations that exist for each type of poison.
Contact Poison
Contact poisons are, quite understandably, difficult to avoid, once you are within range. Preventing the absorption through one's skin is nigh-impossible-- let's go with impossible, on second thought-- once contact has been made. Even rinsing it quickly with water will not prevent at least a diluted amount from seeping through. The major disadvantage of this poison is how one might apply it. Using a weapon is an option, or one's own hands. Of course, the danger of getting it on yourself is very very very real. No, cloth will not stop it, and even gloves are at risk. Unless you are wearing a non-porous material such as rubber (and I would laugh at each and every assassin who did wear rubber gloves into battle), then it's tough noogies if you slip or your opponent touches YOU after being poisoned. I am sure we would all like to believe that skilled assassins are in no danger of poisoning themselves, but this simply is not true. The chance is always there, even if decidedly low as one rises in the ranks of skill in poison use. Additionally, these poisons have to be stored with extreme care and are -huge- pains in the ass to carry around. The best contact poisons are thus slow poisons to minimize these risks to someone employing them but are sadly very bad at doing noticeable harm to someone in a short period of time (which would be, in the case of slow poisons, a several hours at the least).
Ingested Poison
This is pretty simple. If they eat it, they're SOL. Getting them to eat it is the problem, and, usually, it requires heavy dosage to have any effect. Also, tasteless poison is exceedingly rare, so it will require some creativity to keep them from noticing a bitter tang. Can be both a liquid and a water-soluble powder. The very best, though, are ones that come in the form of something we usually eat, such as mushrooms. Real world Poison fact: the young Destroying Angel mushrooms are almost indistinguishable from the young common White Button mushroom up to an including taste once they reach the table.
Injury Poison
Again, pretty straightforward. Put it on an open wound, or use a weapon to cause the wound and administer it at the same time. In general, the poison will only be as effective as the wound. This means that it would have to be a pretty deadly cut to give the poison a high chance of killing the opponent. Nicks and needles might make a person sick, but the effect will be slow and not very extensive. Tends to be in liquid form. Real World Poison Fact: Poison darts have been astonishingly effective in guerilla warfare even as recently as World War II; in Borneo they were used to devastating effect against the Japanese occupation.
Inhalation Poison
These poisons have a good advantage over others, most of it being that, if the person breathes, they are likely to be affected. Inhalation poisons are known mostly for causing respiratory problems and weakening an opponent. Unfortunately, due to the spreading of the contagion into the air, their effects are rather limited, and the area of effect is almost never larger than several square feet. The employing assassin is also at risk of inhaling his own substance. Of course, flu masks and assassin masks might be worn, but those lack the filtering ability to truly prevent the contagion from reaching them. Without a specifically crafted gas mask, staying far and away is ones best bet to remain safe. Additionally, these poisons are even more difficult to carry around than contact poisons. When a gas, they have to be stored under incredibly high pressure as liquids, a process that is never easy and is probably even more difficult in a far less technological society like Midgard. When a powder, even the slightest air current could disturb some of it and spread it around the room. Real World Poison Fact: The most deadly inhalation poisons are odorless.
Availability
This is one of the more important aspects, and one that is completely (no, really, completely) looked over, by and large. Are poisons easy to obtain? The simple and truthful answer is, "no." Now, you might be wonder why this is? For our first argument, it is expensive for an alchemist to do his dirty work. Experiments are not cheap, and they are not always successful. Creating poisons is after all a process that would be refined in alchemy practice, even if it's all you know. Resources are limited, and not in abundance. Not to mention common sources of poisons might be the target of eradication by some institutions or 'controlled substances' by governments. Even more important is the black market aspect of any poison producer. The added danger of trafficking the substance would increase its cost, as would any middlemen between the creator and the consumer. For this reason, obtaining poison on the fly is simply not done. It takes time to place an order or find a suitable contact. Preparation is key to availability, as you do not buy this stuff over the counter. Moreso, the exoticism of the poison is even more limited. Poisons that do more than simply make someone sick or weaken them upon effect are exceedingly hard to come by. Keeping this in mind, finding a poison that does anything ELSE is almost unheard of, unless you have amazing connections (connections that warrant GM approval or ranks in Influence usually), or the poison is rather weak. Poisons any common or moderately skilled assassin makes in their back yard are very unlikely to be up to snuff for serious activity. It is for this very reason that, in general, assassins do not make their own poison.
Poison in RP
If you are poisoned, there is a pretty high chance you can get the antidote. It may cost you a bit of money, but if you are being targeted by an assassin willing to use poison (an already risky venture), you probably have a bit of dough sitting around. That said, when contact or proper ingestion of the poison is made, the assassin should notify the player of the effects and when they can expect to suffer them. However, an assassin character should not assume that they can 'auto-hit' with their poisons, and claim things against a character without some specific warning. For example- if you spike someone's drink, you could make a passive note of them slipping something inside. The character in target could accidentally knock the drink down with a stray elbow, they don't necessarily need to know your intentions or your actions, and they have the chance to avoid a situation they're not comfortable with. Let's face it, some people will play assassins for the sake of being a jerk and poisoning anyone they come across (even if these guidelines explicitly say that's not even feasible), it's only reasonable that victims have a venue of escape if they don't wish to participate.
In the terms of a violent confrontation, you could vaguely state it looks like your blades are coated with something by their unnatural gleam. The target doesn't need to know what the poison is, and by these guidelines, one can assume safely it's likely not deadly unless the wound inflicted is rather severe in itself.
Poison that is death on-touch is as much a nono as an instant death bolt from a wizard for reasons that hardly need to be explained here. Being creative is fun, but having your character killed from a needle thrown from some shadow is not. If the poison is not of the mundane type that simply sickens on effect, then you can bet your bottom dollar it needs to be cleared with a GM before use. If your assassin has a special poison unique to them, it needs to be cleared with a GM and might entail influence ranks and a post for public viewing. Simply saying "he knows how to craft poisons" is a dangerous game we are going to do everything to avoid. Again, as a general rule, the poison will -not- kill unless ridiculous amounts are ingested/applied or done so in a manner that would more than likely be fatal anyway.
Real-World Poison
What is poison? This really is a question more people who are interested in the use and application of poisons ought to ask, and understanding the answer will lead some to understand just how unbelievably difficult it IS to poison someone both successfully and without them or other people noticing. Poison is, essentially, something that screws up the body badly enough to inhibit function; easy, right? Not quite, because if it were easy we'd be falling over dead all of the time.
First, most things need to be able to INTERACT with the body in order for them to screw the body up, and there's LOTS of stuff that can be applied all over the place, eaten, inhaled, what have you, that won't do anything unique. There's no end to the amount of sediment you can eat without becoming poisoned by them, and injecting pure acid into someone's veins, while probably extremely painful, is probably significantly less fatal than injecting a syringe full of air. Because poisons don't really work by doing generalized damage (like hitting them with a rock) but rather by damaging something in a very specific manner because, to the body, anyway, it looks like something familiar, they're almost all organic compounds. The ones that aren't are usually exceedingly simple substances that are relatives to elements we use commonly (like arsenic, an elemental relative of nitrogen) or are usually elementally inclined to take forms we tolerate just fine (like chlorine, which, while its covalent state is exceedingly deadly to us, tends to remain ionic and teams up with its best buddy poison, sodium, to make table salt) and even then very, VERY rarely work quickly (arsenic, chlorine, the heavy metals, and all sorts of other things that are bad for us have to be called slow poisons since we have a natural tolerance to trace amounts of them and so they must build up in quantity in our bodies before they start to hurt us).
The deadliest poisons are all organic; made by living things for living things. Anything that makes poison has very likely used it on us for millions of years, and those of us who were able to notice it somehow were the ones who lived to have kids. We have developed certain senses to send a warning shout to us if we're in danger, which is why we can usually smell dangerous gases and can almost always taste poisons. Almost nothing immediately bad for us is tasty or appealing, which is why great pains have to be taken to disguise the presence of poison in something. Combining this with the fact that, being manufactured by living beings, new organic poisons tend to be hard to come by, finding a brand-new, exotic way of biologically doing someone in is pretty difficult. It is not, however, impossible.
So, let's say we do that! Let's find a new poison, not an inorganic one. The way one does this is by venturing into a place in the wilderness that has creatures biologically related to mankind yet doesn't have many human beings; this caveat is necessary since there are plenty of things that exist that are quite poisonous to other animals, even other mammals, that we find not only edible but quite delicious (imagine the shock someone would have when they tried to poison their target with cacao) yet if there are even a modest number of human beings around then the poison has at the very least been discovered by the locals. Then one sits down (metaphorically, at least, since you probably want to minimize the chances of being eaten) and observes the native life for a depressingly long time and eventually figures out what uses poison, as opposed to strength, speed, stealth, or being too much trouble, to avoid being eaten by our close relatives. So one goes over, harvests one of these whatevers for study, and then dies because one wasn't careful enough. Ooops! Try again next life. I guess it's good that you saved often, so you can load from where you made your mistake! (/textadventure)
After another depressingly long time, one is able to figure out by (usually unethical) meticulous experimentation what the poisonous substance happens to be and how it is administered. Then one must experiment with the substance further to see its capabilities in humans. While doing all of this one must be certain not to accidentally die from exposure. If we have had no evolutionary exposure to this substance we might both have no resistance to it and no way of detecting it while it simultaneously manages to kill us. Congrats! You've just discovered a brand new poison and you may have only spent fifteen to twenty years of your life doing so! And if you're extra-lucky, it won't dissolve or become inert or innocuous within a few days of having harvested it from the thing that produces it!
The moral of this story: People who accidentally discover deadly poisons tend to be the first ones to die from them. Those who discover them on purpose invest a lot of time and resources into the pursuit and almost never hit a payoff. Even if they manage it, they'll keep their monopoly on the poison for maybe two or three uses before someone else invests a lot less time and money learning the secret from the original researcher than the original researcher did learning the secret in the first place. Furthermore, almost all assassins lack the inclination to dedicate huge sections of their lives to such research, since if they did they could probably find much less dangerous work as botanists.
Deadly Poison is really only useful if you want to kill someone quietly from a long way away. Even the Borneo poisons weren't really fatal; what they did was weaken their targets enough so that old-fashioned machete raids would finish the job. It's not useful to put on a weapon because you'd either need to dump a ton of it on or become very adept at managing to hit your opponent with only one part of whatever sharp object it is you're using, it's usually detectable because we've evolved defenses to stuff that kills us without being loud about it, and the only kinds that are relatively easy to apply such as gases or contact poisons are every bit as dangerous to the poisoner as they are to the poisonee.
Known Specific Varieties
See Flora
