Soulless in Wermspittle

You who will read this when I am dead -- if indeed I allow this record to survive, -- you who have opened the box and have seen what lies there, if you could understand what lies hidden in that opal!

The Inmost Light, by Arthur Machen

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So Many Secrets...
There are secrets too dangerous to eliminate, too potentially destructive to not hold on to in case they are needed on some dread and distant day. These are indeed dreadful days, by no means distant enough any longer...

Like all such things, it began as a calculated risk. A discrete policy that proved effective. The practice grew over time into something of an unspoken tradition. It became the way things such as these were to be handled.

Some potentially embarrassing or incriminating things cannot be ignored, nor easily destroyed. Other things are best left in obscurity, lest they reveal far more than just their mere existence. In some cases that alone would be enough to ignite scandals, inquisitions, depositions and worse. Such things can always get worse. All things made have makers, and it is sometimes best for those in power to not have their involvement in sordid undertakings or failed experiments known. Reputations are such delicate things. Often in need of repair. Setting aside the detritus of failures most foul and things best not discussed is but one step in this process. Sending such things into the care of mute monks, prisoner-librarians, scribes and archivists locked away in obscurity, out of sight, out of mind, could work wonders.

There are occasions when it is necessary and prudent to retain such unfortunate records and dubious remains, if not for posterity's sake, then for some possible use or advantage in the great game of innuendo and blackmail that goes on underneath the cloaks and the daggers of more conventional forms of espionage and subterfuge. Banned books and the unpleasant evidence and remains of illicit medical experiments, as well as the unexpurgated diaries and journals of the once intrepid experimental investigators who delved into things forbidden, unwholesome, dangerous -- these sorts of things were sent -- discretely and secretly -- to Wermspittle. Things best not discussed, let alone left lying about, have often been secreted away in the depths of various private archives, locked behind the triple-gates of nondescript book depositories, buried in the stacks of obscure libraries open only to a very peculiar elite. Where better to hide such damnable things than in the midst of the damned themselves? Stricken from the record, removed from circulation, all sorts of crates, boxes and bundles of things concealed behind such bland and banal labels as 'books,' 'records,' 'files,' and the like were shipped off to this vague and mysterious place not marked on any of the usual maps. They sent these things away in order to forget. To put some healthy distance between themselves and the unfortunate events, the questionable excesses, the blasphemous digressions best not brought to light any time soon. They sent these things to Wermspittle and left them to fester, rot and ferment in the dark. And good riddance. Or so they thought.

I am no dealer in unproved theories; what I say I have proved for myself, and at a terrible cost. There is a region of knowledge which you will never know, which wise men seeing from afar off shun like the plague, as well they may, but into that region I have gone. If you knew, if you could even dream of what may be done, of what one or two men have done in this quiet world of ours, your very soul would shudder and faint within you. What you have heard from me has been but the merest husk and outer covering of true science -- that science which means death, and that which is more awful than death, to those who gain it. No, when men say that there are strange things in the world, they little know the awe and the terror that dwell always with them and about them...

The Inmost Light, by Arthur Machen

Duplicity and Revelations...
Amid the crowds of curious heretics, unscrupulous skeptics, the condemned exiles, insane geniuses and those who feel themselves beyond the reach of the scathing rebukes of the established faiths, the reach of the so-called Great Powers, or even conventional morals and propriety for that matter, there are those who seek out the deliciously bizarre, the outre, the savory secrets of others. Some do it for personal reasons, others for personal gain. Secrets are a form of currency in this dismal, dreadful place. Secrets are valuable. Some secrets are worth their weight in fresh meat in Winter. Other secrets have a use, a utility; they grant those who know them power. So secrets are much sought after in Wermspittle. Unearthed by desperate spades, lifted out of their sarcophagi-like cases and vaults like the dead plundered from their tombs. You work with what you have at hand.

One such suppressed secret was the formulation of the Opal of the Inmost Light. The so-called 'Gem of Souls.' For many years the secret remained safely ensconced in the storage cellar of a bankrupted private repository that had sat boarded-up and abandoned for decades. The roof had been damaged during the night bombings of the Great War. Red Weeds, specifically a rather unhealthy species of Red Creeper had infiltrated the stones of the back wall and dragged them down into a jumbled pile that blocked the alley behind the place. Hundreds, if not thousands of manuscripts were lost to the ravages of wind, rain, illiterate harpies and the cooking-fires of squatters. Foragers and Scavenger-Scholars picked their way through the mess in a determined competition that was mostly hidden behind muffled knife-fights, though sometimes things escalated, as when a particularly good trove of undamaged books or unopened boxes was uncovered and spells and gonnes took the place of knives and stealth.

A box was discovered. Changed hands five times. Each time through bloodshed and violence. Until it reached the desk of a disreputable scholar, a defrocked professor of galvanic chemistry kicked out of the Academy for his retrograde theories regarding the Violet Ray. An obsessive and a drunkard, the scholar was known to piss away his funds for obscure bits of arcane bric-a-brac no one else knew what to do with. So he ended-up with the box. It sat for several years. Neglected. Ignored. Lost beneath the untidy mound of rat-gnawed scrolls, broken-spined ledgers, oddly stained journals and other esoteric impedimenta accumulated over the wayward course of the scholar's last few years.

Eventually the money ran out. As it always does. One apprentice, his favorite, sold the scholar's blind-drunk body to the Butcher Boys one Winter. The rest of the traitorous apprentices divvied-up the remains of their former master's vast repertoire of scripts, tomes and such. They each carried off as much as they could carry before word got out and looters, scavengers and foragers showed up looking for an easy score.

One apprentice, Dubrezk is the only name they've since allowed to be recorded, wound up with the box that contained the notes, diagrams and details regarding the alchemical formulation of the Opal, and the ways and means of using it to capture and hold the Inmost Light. He, or she, (it is not recorded and indeed it is suspected that they were Eloi, and thus capable of switching genders as they wished), wasted no time in attempting the replicate the process outlined in the papers they had so fortuitously liberated from obscurity. The technique worked. All too well. It was the third subject that turned the tables and extracted Dubrezk's soul. Or so the story goes.

In that work, from which even I doubted to escape with life, life itself must enter; from some human being there must be drawn that essence which men call the soul, and in its place (for in the scheme of the world there is no vacant chamber)--in its place would enter in what the lips can hardly utter, what the mind cannot conceive without a horror more awful than the horror of death...

The Inmost Light, by Arthur Machen

Something too awful, too terrible to be allowed to remain...
Acting quickly, with a confidence and surety that the young apprentice had never demonstrated previously, Dubrezk gathered-up a bare minimum of personal belongings and disappeared. Some say that they were taken by agents of the Comprachicos, or that they fell afoul of the Corruption Trade. It is uncertain, unknown. None who might know about this will speak about it. The matter of the Soulless in Wermspittle is one that is best not discussed openly, especially in public.

Dubrezk may or may not still...live...if one can call the state of being rendered soulless 'living.' What is known, or at least believed by those who have attempted to make a study of the matter, is that Dubrezk had tampered with the original process after their initial success. Emboldened by the results of the first extraction, the former apprentice set about modifying the process. The second extraction had to be destroyed. No records survived that attempt. However the third extraction did succeed, only not in the planned and expected manner. Dubrezk was subjected to the extraction process personally. And they survived. After a fashion. In any case, someone, or something, calling itself Dubrezk is credited with having founded the Soulless.

They may have begun as a small cabal of apprentices, a circle of those who'd undergone the extraction process under Dubrezk's personal oversight. That is one theory. They might have built-up their power-base as a secretive cult operating on the fringes of the Academic community. No one is likely to ever be really certain. But one thing is very clear; the Soulless have become a force unto themselves, a faction that has seized upon a dark and awful power and made themselves the masters of a terrible science that they make available to those they deem worthy...at a horrific cost.

For one night my wife consented to what I asked of her, consented with the tears running down her beautiful face, and hot shame flushing red over her neck and breast, consented to undergo this for me. I threw open the window, and we looked together at the sky and the dark earth for the last time; it was a fine star-light night, and there was a pleasant breeze blowing, and I kissed her on the lips, and her tears ran down upon my face. That night she came down to my laboratory, and there, with shutters bolted and barred down, with curtains drawn thick and close, so that the very stars might be shut out from the sight of that room, while the crucible hissed and boiled over the lamp, I did what had to be done, and led out what was no longer a woman. But on the table the opal flamed and sparkled with such light as no eyes of man have ever gazed on, and the rays of the flame that was within it flashed and glittered, and shone even to my heart. My wife had only asked one thing of me; that when there came at last what I had told her, I would kill her. I have kept that promise...

The Inmost Light, by Arthur Machen

A Shining Path into the Unnameable...
Opals. Gleaming and glittering with internal flame. There is no mistaking the Opals of the Inmost Light. They are unlike any other gem or stone known to lapidary, alchemist or sorcerer.

The elders and leaders of the Soulless collect the Opals of their subordinates. In effect they hold their follower's souls hostage, mounting the Opals in increasingly ornate jewelry, usually circlets, tiaras and elaborate crowns. The Soulless consider themselves to be Lord of the World. And they act accordingly.

Calculating and cruel, the Soulless have forsaken their humanity, sacrificed their own souls to the pursuit of personal power. Worldly power. They reject the afterlife, spurn the doctrines of transmigration and the like. Instead the Soulless have seized upon a process that others leave to blind chance, capricious gods or hungry ghosts and they have made it their own. They have subverted their own souls, uprooted and transplanted their vital essences into the synthetic Opals produced as part of their dark arts, and entered onto paths through darkness and mystery no others can apprehend, let alone ever hope to understand. The Soulless are not like anyone else. Their motivations are inscrutable, unknowable.

They are cunning, these secretive sorcerers. Heedless of bloodshed, immune to the pain they cause, unburdened by the pangs of conscience or morality. They have gazed deeply into the abyss underlying all life and allowed something foul and primordial to enter into the vacated shells of their flesh, to take up residence in the house of life itself. Their brains are remade along devilish lines. Their hearts are hardened, pitiless and inhuman. They despise humanity even as they build their own empire in the very midst of their most hated hosts.

To look into the eyes of the Soulless is to look upon something dreadful and indescribable. They harbor a nameless horror deep within. Something timeless, shapeless, ambiguous and amorphous. A black seething corruption that claims their bodies in time, leaving only the glimmering, gleaming Opals to go on, enduring beacons of wickedness eager to lead the unwary astray, to work their wills upon the lesser intelligences, fiercely unwilling to go quietly into the great good night.

His face was white with terror as he turned away, and for a moment he stood sick and trembling, and then with a start he leapt across the room and steadied himself against the door. There was an angry hiss, as of steam escaping under great pressure, and as he gazed, motionless, a volume of heavy yellow smoke was slowly issuing from the very center of the jewel, and wreathing itself in snakelike coils above it. And then a thin white flame burst forth from the smoke, and shot up into the air and vanished; and on the ground there lay a thing like a cinder, black and crumbling to the touch...

The Inmost Light, by Arthur Machen

Hard Candy (Corruption Trade/Wermspittle)

Sweet, wicked and all too cheap for anyone's good; there are over a thousand different types, sorts and kinds of candies and confections made from the by-products of the White Powder. Temptation made edible and immediately accessible, the various forms of Hard Candies available in Wermspittle have become a tradition, a custom, and worse--an addiction that affects most of the population. Few survive the harsh winters without resorting to Hard Candy. Very few. In some places specific types of Hard Candy have become an informal currency. For many, Hard Candy is the only option they have, if they wish to eat, once the Butchers run out of questionable meat.

It isn't the White Powder that takes such a heavy toll on the people of Wermspittle, nor even the violence, the miasmas, the prowling things just outside of sight; it is their reliance upon Hard Candy to survive the winter.

According to the Midwives...
Back before the Midwives' Rebellion, there was plenty to eat in Wermspittle, even in the winter. But something happened. In the midst of the riots, the lootings, the burnings and the chaos, someone orchestrated a methodical, calculated and well-planned destruction of certain things, mostly those sorts of things that tended to be overlooked by the mobs or the partisans. Overnight the things that had once made Wermspittle a prosperous source of plenty for all crashed and it came to an end. The warehouses were ransacked, silos and storage-bins were emptied or burned. Stockpiles ran out. Famine became a reality. Starvation made people desperate. Terrible things were allowed, where before they would have been reviled and punished. Only the Candymen, the dealers and distributors had anything left to eat and they exacted a heavy price for their favors.

Eat Your Heart Out
Hard Candy does offer those who eat it definite benefits, at first. Then things tend to go bad, then they get ugly. If used in moderation, it is possible to avoid the worst side-effects, as long as use is not prolonged beyond three months or so. Usually less. (One way to handle this is to look at the character's CON bonus; they can safely use Hard Candy once a day for 1 month per point of their CON bonus.)

Once-a-Day is Enough
Each piece of Hard Candy consumed within a 24-hour period will eliminate the need to eat for 1d4 days. It will also cause healing to take place at triple the normal rate and boost the immune system so as to remove all mundane diseases and give a +3 bonus on all Saves versus infection, poison, or diseases of a more sorcerous nature such as Mummy Rot.

Make one roll on the following table for each piece of Hard Candy consumed within a 24-hour period.
After getting the same result three times, make an additional roll on the next table.

1. Visual perception heightened, triple normal range, expands into infra-red and beyond. (treat as Clairaudience, Clairvoyance, and Infravision combined). Save or go blind for next 1d8 days, make the Save it only lasts for 1d4 days.
2. Gain Regeneration ability for 1d4 days. At end of effect, make a Save or begin to grow 1d4 tumorous growths or throbbing cysts requiring surgery to remove. Each of these nasty things absorbs 1 hit point per day of uninterrupted growth. They might become autonomous upon achieving more than ten hit points. If so, they will cause 1d4 damage per growth, as they rip themselves free of their host.
3. Gain +2 to hit with melee weapons for next 1d4 hours. When effect ends, make a Save or suffer -1 penalty to hit for 1d4 days.
4. Memory enhanced, can memorize spells or other things in 1/3 normal time, effect persists for 1d12 hours, at end of which time user must make a Save or lose all memories for 1d4 days.
5. Movement doubled for next 1d4 days. Once this runs its course, user must eat triple normal rations for 1d4 days or suffer 1d4 damage each day they eat less.
6. Features become malleable for next 1d4 hours. You can reshape your face. It will remain in the new configuration unless you roll this result again, in which case make a Save or your face will begin to melt (-1 penalty to CHAR).
7. Movement tripled for next 3d8 hours. At end of duration user must eat actual food or suffer 1d4 damage for the next 2d4 days. Consuming Hard Candy during this recovery period will force an automatic roll on the next table.
8. Sense of smell is heightened to extraordinary degree for next 1d6 days, after which make a Save or lose all sense of smell for 1d6 days.
9. Gain +2 bonus to DEX for next 1d4 days, user experiences incredible balance and moves at double normal rate when climbing. At end of the duration, make a Save or be incapable of movement for 1d4 days. Making the Save reduces their movement by one-half for 2d4 days.
10. Shrug off first 2 points of damage from all melee attacks for next 1d4 hours. At end of duration, make Save or suffer 2d4 damage, making the Save results in half damage.
11. No need to eat for the next 3d6 days, however you now must make a Save or become one of the emaciated wretches who must eat one piece of Hard Candy every day or suffer 1d4 damage or worse.
12. Transfer 2 points from INT, WIS or CHAR to STR, DEX or CON. Make Save or it is permanent. 

Things Turn Ugly
Prolonged use, a bad reaction, or overdosing on Hard Candy results in a roll on the following table.

1. Lose 1 point of INT, however you temporarily regain all lost INT points while under the effect of Hard Candy.
2. Your blood is now a weak form of Black Liquor. You are immune to the effect of the stuff, but all other forms of Black Liquor cause damage to you similar to boiling oil.
3. You can now See Invisible all the time, but you can only see invisible things now. Base 10% chance to attract attention of a Horla every wandering monster check.
4. Lose all sense of touch.
5. You can no longer see the color (1=Blue, 2=Red, 3=Yellow, 4=Green, 5=Orange, 6=Purple).
6. One half of all damage healed becomes hit points applied to the tumor-like growth developing within your abdominal cavity.
7. The bodily fluids within one of your limbs are congealing into a warm, viscous mass that will thicken into a raw lump of 1d4 pounds of Achromic Powder that will need to be removed before it poisons your blood and kills you within the next 1d4 days. You lose 1 point of CON, STR, and DEX each day the lump is allowed to persist.
8. Your skin is prone to molting. Some of the pieces that you've shed seem to disappear when you look away. Perhaps they have become autonomous in some way?
9. Gain +1 to DEX, suffer -1 to STR, as your bones have become pliable, flexible things capable of bending in ways others might find unsettling.
10. Your skin takes on a rancid smell and grows dark, with black splotches. Make Save or suffer -1 penalty to CHAR. Even if you make the Save, you gain a random mutation or defect. (see Table)
11. Your blood no longer clots right, instead of forming scabs, it clumps together in little quivering blob-lets that may or may not slither away. When injured, you take an additional 1 point of damage just from blood loss.
12. Large portions of your body have now become invisible. (Determine portions/extent randomly)
13. Transfer 1d4 points from WIS to STR. You can only reverse this while under the effect of Hard Candy.
14. Make Save every day or suffer effect of Feeblemind, unless you are under the influence of Hard Candy, then you're immune to all Fear, Feeblemind and related effects.
15. One limb selected at random is becoming a lumpy sort of tentacle, unless you make a Save, then it's only a finger or toe that is getting wiggly.
16. Your blood is now black and you heal a double normal rate all the time, unfortunately, every point you regain is counted against your original hit point total and when the new hit points exceed that amount, you lose one point of WIS and then must make a Save or else become a Loathsome Mass in 1d4 days. Perhaps you can find a cure before you collapse into a writhing mass of corruption? 
17. Save or your skin is covered by a Sallow Stain that seeps out from your very bones. Make the Save and you only suffer this effect whenever you are injured--your blood produces a Wet Spot (roll 1d10) if you make a Save, or leaves behind a Sallow Stain if you fail.
18. You suffer a loss of 1d4 points from CHAR or WIS, and your blood becomes a sweet, sticky green serum that attracts vermin within 360'. You regain the lost attribute points whenever you eat more Hard Candy, but the vermin will always come for you. Getting this result more than once carries a cumulative 20% chance of suffering the effects of a Verminomorphosis spell. Making a Save means the effect is random, akin to a form of verminicious lycanthropy, perhaps.
19. Congratulations; you get to roll 1d10 on the Wet Spot table and apply the result to your body in some gruesome, particularly uncomfortable way.
20. Become a Loathsome Mass...for 1d4 hours every time you fail a Save. Duration of transformation triples every time you get this result, with a Save required or else it becomes permanent. 

It is suggested that one does not combine White Powder or Black Liquor with Hard Candy, as that would probably be cause to make a roll on the above table, should the victim fail a Save.

Sallow Stains (Corruption Trade/Wermspittle)

Sallow Stains form wherever a Loathsome Mass dies and a Wet Spot dries out to leave behind a foul residue. Gritty alchemical salts, fetid drifts of strange dust, even bizarre crystalline formations can be found in the attics, cellars and abandoned properties of the Burned Over District or the deserted sections of the city where the Foragers are reluctant to go and only roving gangs of Feral Children and prowling Jellies know what lurks behind the boarded-over windows of the old shops.

Sallow Stains (D10)

1. A smallish clump of granular gray-white matter is lodged in the cracks and crevices of the slightly warped floor-boards. If disturbed, it puffs a small cloud of arsenic-laced White Powder into the air, enough to poison a space roughly in a 10' radius.
2. There is a strange pattern scrawled onto the floor, it looks a lot like a wild series of overlapping chalk-smears. Maybe it is someone's attempt to scratch some diagram or the like into the floor...using the coagulated corruption of a still-writhing Loathsome Mass. The whole thing reeks of unhealthy magics. In fact, there is a large (6HD) Loathsome Mass suspended within the diagram, outside normal time. The victim did not fully succumb to the Vile Transformation, at least not yet, and they are attempting to take control of the process and direct things towards a different outcome. Disturbing the diagram will drop them back into normal time. This thing can still cast a few spells, at least for the next 2d20 minutes...after that, they'll be just another Wet Spot.
3. The wall shows signs of extensive water damage, but with a dark green tinge to it. The stain grows thicker, more lurid and even begins to curdle off of the surface as it travels down towards the floor. The greenish matter at the base has a thin skin that is easily broken. The inner-stuff is foul-smelling, putty-like and incredibly corrosive to most metals. It does 1d4 damage per minute of contact and can only be removed with a borax solution or extensive scraping (inflicting another 2d4 damage).
4. A dried pool of iridescent blue pustules has solidified in the middle of the floor. It emits a low grade vibration that causes nausea and disorientation (Save or suffer effects of Confusion). This effect cannot penetrate glass or wax, but it is intensified by the presence of silver in any form. There is about (1d4) pounds of this stuff. It crunches, cracks and chips away with a typical scraper, pry-bar or chisel/blade-edge. However, doing so takes 20 hit points of damage to the stain to break off about a  pound of usable fragments. (Roll Wandering Monster Check for every half-pound collected.)
5. The off-white streaks of a crude mass of White Powder trails down the ceiling towards the far wall. It appears to have been colonized by a peculiar orange and pink fungus that drips a clear, sweet, syrupy liquid that forms a thin, slippery layer across the entire floor below the stains (Dex Check or fall). The fluid is exceptionally slippery and is harmless for 1d4 minutes, after which time it begins to oxidize exposed flesh, literally causing it to smoke, sizzle and burst into flames. The fluid itself is not flammable. The fluid will retain this effect if removed, as long as it is not exposed to lead or antimony, both of which will render it inert. The oxidization effect will also destroy leather, but it only dissolves wood, cordage or cloth, etc., reducing those sorts of things to jumbled masses of soft fibers that will harden into lumps within 2d4 hours.
6. All the surfaces of this space are covered in a flaking, noxious coating of phlegm-like material. It is toxic (causes 1d6 damage per minute of breathing-in the dried-flakes). It is a semi-petrified slime-mold that tried to colonize a deposit of White Powder and failed. If properly prepared, it can be used to create a poison that will cause the rampant growth of a fearsome slime-thing that will devour the victim from the inside within 2d4 minutes. The stuff is also explosive and every 10 points of impact damage done to it will require the roll of a D20, any result of a '1' or '20' results in an explosion for 2d4 damage within a 20' radius. The stuff will not burn; it only explodes when jarred abruptly.
7. Gritty gray powder coats the floor and part way up the walls. It has a tough crust at the edges, but once the center area is broken, it collapses into a swirling mess of lacerating gray dust that will remain in motion for 2d4 hours. Exposure causes 1d4 damage per minute caught within the swirling powder's 20' radius of effect. The powder will settle into the victim's hair, clothing and lungs, where it will slowly feed on their dead cells and grow into a larger mass of gray powder over time.
8. Black crust of bubbled remnants of a White Powder deposit that someone destroyed with a common low-level fire-spell.
9. A Galvanic Prod is jammed into the bulbous, burnt central lump of a warped and buckled section of the wall. A fine black ash covers everything. Touching the ash delivers a 1d2 jolt of electrical damage. The Prod holds this stain in-place and keeps it dormant. Removing the Prod will allow the stain to roll back in upon itself and form into a granular black slug-like mass of charcoal-like matter that will spew clouds of blinding ash and strike victims for 1d4 damage as it tries to escape. It leaves a sooty trail behind it.
10. Thick, green grit clings to the ceiling and upper walls. It is hard, crusty and gives off a metallic scent. If broken, the fragments exude a noxious ammonia sort of smell. It dissolves in water and is highly poisonous, inflicting paralysis and 2d4 damage if ingested (Save for half-damage/duration usually lasts 3d4 minutes). Contact also causes a greenish rash that will persist for 1d4 weeks. The rash will create open sores during the course of a given week that the afflicted fails to make a Save, once it runs its course the victim is marked with green traceries that swirl just beneath their skin and the schlera of their eyes, but they are immune to this substance from that point onward. It might have some anesthetic applications, if someone could refine it and eliminate the rash-effect.

Foragers II: Rumors (Wermspittle/Corruption Trade)

Bottom Of The Heap

Foragers are the most common and least respected of the various scavenger trades, except for maybe looter-crews, even though they aren't technically a trade, but more rather a loose association of enthusiastic amateurs. Foragers are the lowest-paid of the various scavenger trades. They literally make their living by preying upon the victims of the White Powder and the traces that they leave behind. They serve the Corruption Trade which is built upon the transfigured suffering of people converted into Loathsome Masses by the  alchemically-induced Vile Transformation, and the economically-useful by-products that stem from this horrific process. 

Loathsome Masses were once human beings with hopes and dreams, before their descent into madness, despair and ruthless personal commodification stemming from the terrible transformation brought about by the White Powder. But the best, or at least the most successful, Foragers learn to look past that aspect of their incredibly sordid business. If they want to get anywhere within the industry or they wish to ever secure a better position as an apprentice to a distiller or something better, they have to first prove themselves as clever, resourceful and hard-working...and something of a survivor. 

Gossip, innuendo and rumor are tradable commodities among Foragers. They don't have much else.

Rumors Circulating Among the Foragers

1. There's a cellar in one of the run-down old shops over behind the Pissing Wyvern Tavern that is filled near to bursting with a Type IV Gobbling Grout that someone has been feeding some bizarre new extract derived from White Powder. Best to avoid the area for a few weeks. Until after things blow over or blow up, whichever.
2. You can buy rune-cut chunks of Purple Amber from Shroedinger & Cave, down along Plattner Street. Cheap. These things will attune themselves to Weak Points if you leave one there for long enough, but even better, if you know the trick and the right spell, they can be made into keys or tokens that'll let you re-tune a Weak Point to another destination. There are some scholars over at the Academy who'll pay nicely for this sort of thing...if you can get past the guards, monitors, and defenses...or catch one of them out and about some night.
3. New-spawned Molgs can be captured with a couple of small mirrors and a bucket lined with wet moss. A little Dim Ichor added to the moss will placate them nicely. The flesh is tender and worth a fair bit to a Butcher, but the central eye-bud is worth a whole lot more to an Optickalist or one of the Gonnesmiths over on Grimaldi Street. Why a Gonnesmith would want these things makes no sense, but who questions good coins in Spring or a handful of salt in Winter?
4. Loathsome Masses can't dissolve galvanized pails. There's something about the zinc that messes with their juices...the only downside is that the stuff will become explosive if you leave it in such a bucket for too long.
5. There's a cantrip in the blue book on the third shelf behind the stuffed Aligatrix in Montrose's Book Shop, just past the old apothecary cases. I think it's on the fortieth page or the forty-second. It makes gathering-up Sallow Stains a whole lot easier. You can fill your receptacles in a tenth the usual time. Just don't let the old man catch you stealing spells from him. He can get mean.
6. Street Wolves won't follow you if you sprinkle Achromic Powder on the soles of your boots.
7. Some kid found another Crystal Egg in the attic of a place out behind the Basement Bog behind the crappy little Shanty Camp along Plover Alley.
8. There are Scaly-men prowling the Burned Over District. They seem to be looking for someone.
9. There's this insect, it's not an Ungezeifer or anything like that, so don't worry. It's taken-over the third floor of the old Roswell building and it's hiring. Not sure what they want done, but they pay really well. Or so people are saying.
10. Did you hear about Knute and Tanulf? They stumbled into an attic where the walls were covered with weird egg-things. They were lucky to get out of there with a sample. Or maybe not so lucky. Something has been hunting after them ever since. They're hiding out down below, but they're willing to cut anyone in on a share in what they've found if you think you can drive off or kill whatever is chasing them. I think they're too sick, or maybe poisoned to do much more than hold their own. For now.

Foragers in Wermspittle (I)

Foragers

Unlike the usual gangs of looters and scavengers, the Foragers either enter into the Corruption Trade or they get a lucky break and get the opportunity to join the ranks of the highly specialized hunters and urban-gatherers working the ruins of Wermspittle such as the sporemongers, dung-bundlers, worm wranglers, ordureists and vermin-trappers. 


Most Foragers aren't so lucky. They either become intimately familiar with the spoor, sign and traces of Loathsome Masses and their attendant by-products, or else they get dropped and have to try to eke out some sort of life among the cast-offs and refugees of the shanty-camps. A few, if they are still young enough, attempt to join the roving bands of Feral Children. No one is quite sure what happens to the rest. Some things are best left unexamined. Especially in the Winter.


Many would-be apprentices who've been brought into the Corruption Trade don't survive their first year. The competition among apprentice candidates seeking to escape from being a rank and file Forager is fierce and rife with sabotage, betrayal, and worse. It can make a real difference down the road if one has some friends in low places or if they have a few secrets up their sleeves -- the kind of secrets that can only come from real world experience and not just book-learning. They are a hardscrabble lot, ragged, oppressed and ruthlessly exploited by the Corruption Trade, but they still manage to survive. Somehow.

A Few Foragers You Might Meet

1. Jindru is a cute young girl, except for the livid scar across her left cheek that curls down her neck--the mark of an Eave-Leech that nearly killed her when she was still just getting started out as a Forager. That was two winters ago. She wears a ragged soldier's coat that has been roughly cut to be short enough for her to still walk in the thing. Her feet are bare, even in Winter, and she dreams of being able to take a bath someday.
2. Kusha is a hermaphrodite who was turned out from the Pinglassi Refugee camps clustered around the burned-out shell of Praetorius Asylum. They have found an old arsenal left-behind by one the old airship-crews. That's where they found the three pistols and curved dagger. Kusha flagrantly taunts the elders of the Pinglassi, deliberately violates their edicts and flaunts their authority any chance they get. It seems to be an obsession with them. With all of them.
3. Lemuel doesn't talk much, not since his tongue was bitten in half by a Gore-Worm when he tried to lick one on a dare. He soaks his fists in brine in order to not feel things that he hits and hits and hits.
4. Teish has long, black hair that would make an Eloi envious. Her mother tried to sell her into a brothel, but she ran away. Now she runs along the rooftops and manages to not be noticed by the bad things down below. Usually.
5. Barg is shorter than most, with heavily scarred hands missing their fingernails. They tend to stick to the shadows and never comes in from the cold, no matter what. No one knows for sure if they're even human, but they are very good at locating and gathering-up Wet Spots.
6. Gleemer always smiles, especially when she's pounding the brains out of someone's skull with the pair of hammers she always carries. She'll fight anyone. Anytime. People tend to just toss her some food or a skin of wine and hope she'll go away.
7. Tookinom is tall, gangly, exceptionally pale and can barely manage to speak anything that anyone else can recognize or understand. They have the most disturbing curdled-violet eyes and they stink of sorcery, but no one's ever seen them cast even a small cantrip.
8. Bozga is stout, heavily-built and olive-complected. She claims to be the daughter of some great warrior-queen from another world that everyone else is pretty sure she made up. She carries a two-handed sword that's at least twice too big for her, but she won't abandon it no matter what. Bozga never forgets a friend, and makes a point of killing her enemies at the first opportunity.
9. Shreem talks too much and has a nervous twitch. Some say he's Odd, others just think that he was touched by one of the Low Land plagues. Maybe his mother was exposed or infected while she was still carrying him. No one is sure. He talks to himself in three different voices and wields a small but wicked scalpel he salvaged from an old clinic. He won't go back there. Not for anything.
10. Trinda wears a makeshift mask and wraps herself in strips of old, musty tapestries and curtains. She moves quietly, discretely through whatever space she finds herself in, and leaves before anyone really registers that she was even there. The rats whisper her name in dread, as though it were a curse upon their kind.

Spectral Brine (Wermspittle)

Dangerous Work
Working with the White Powder, and the sorts of things it leaves behind is a highly dangerous operation. Volatile chemicals and delicate processes involving heating and cooling and re-heating under precise conditions are just the start, after one has acquired the raw matter to work with, such as what an apprentice might recover from a Wet Spot or Sallow Stain. Or even a Loathsome Mass. Though that is often far too dangerous an undertaking for the average apprentice to attempt, no matter how badly they are beaten or cursed or compelled by spells. However such things are gathered, the work of the distiller is fraught with peril and frustration as they must process the raw materials into those compounds that their masters find useful and salable.

Sinfully Wasteful
Not all the salts and weird, tarry waste-products produced in the distillation of Black Liquors and other compounds are suited to the specialized needs of the Corruption Trade, nor the gonne-smiths and powder-grinders who work with Achromic Powder and Salt-Shot. Some of the residues left-over from the various processes are too dangerous to just dump, though some do that very thing, often to their short-lived regret. It is not a very regulated industry. No one bothers about 'best practices,' or wastes overmuch time cleaning-up behind themselves--there are plenty of empty places out in the Abandoned Sections and the Burned Over District. Often the clandestine distillers move from place to place, leaving behind worse things than Wet Spots or Loathsome Masses in their wake.

Hundreds of new compounds that might revolutionize industry have been discarded and poured down the drain in the pursuit of the terrible White Powder and the known, reliable derivatives that those who control the Corruption Trade demand. There is no interest in producing anything other than the White Powder or the Black Liquors. Anyone caught experimenting with their master's product gets disappeared. 

Spectral Brine
One of the things left behind by these operations is the so-called Spectral Brine. Blackly luminous in the way that most salt-water is not, Spectral Brine is the by-product of reducing the accumulated ectoplasmic debris caught within the cheap tin traps set-out around the distilleries and labs of those involved in the Corruption Trade. The creation of White Powder arouses restless spirits, draws poltergeists and attracts ectovores like Ordrang. No one  knows why. Those who work with these materials must take precautionary measures, or else find themselves caught up in a whole mess of trouble. Very few exorcists or karcists work for the Corruption Trade. Those that do are more than a little suspect and often not only deeply troubled, but of dubious merit or ability. So far the stamped-tin traps introduced into the markets by refugees from Surlonna and Dalbriz have been a godsend to the distillers.

But, as with all such things and doubly in Wermspittle, the tin traps that capture and accumulate the stray bits of ectoplasm that roll off of the fluids involved in the distillation process and keep the lesser spirits and minor dead out of the way also leave the distillers with a surfeit of contaminated ectoplasm to deal with, ectoplasmic filth that rivals the nasty stuff surrounding an Ungezeifer. No one is sure who started the practice, but the distillers drain their traps into the dregs of their rendering baths and the scraped-off green grit left behind from the way the fluids degrade and corrode copper and other metals. The rancid ectoplasmic matter is left to mingle and mix with the alchemical waste fluids and debris. Once the mixture fills a barrel or other container, it is sealed and rolled out to a dumping ground, such as one of the middens or cess-pits some landlords have established in order to avoid paying the so-called  'dung tax' imposed by the Sewer Militia.

Sometimes the barrels and tanks of strange chemicals sink quietly to the bottom of the muck and mire. More often they rupture, and vile, black slicks of Spectral Brine leak to the surface, giving impetus and pseudo-life to a host of quivering, jellid horrors, not the least of which are the Gobbling Grouts, Faecomentals and Noctisludge...and possibly dozens if not hundreds of other, lesser-known things that have been given some vestige of life and autonomy and allowed to go off to prey upon the refugees and Unfortunates in the Shanty Camps all because of the waste products of the Corruption Trade colliding with the cess-pits of greedy and irresponsible land lords. Sometimes people really are their own worst enemy...

Wet Spots (Wermspittle/Corruption Trade)

Wet Spots are the still-active and quite dangerous residues of Loathsome Masses that are sought-out and salvaged by those active in the Corruption Trade in Wermspittle. Any particular Wet Spot can contaminate the unwary, but because of the peculiar nature of their origin, each Wet Spot is slightly different from each other. Some are more active, others are more toxic. All types, forms and sorts of Wet Spots are valuable to the distillers, the pharmamongers, the powder-makers and others engaged in the Corruption Trade.

Wet Spots (D30)

1. A man-sized splotch of glistening wetness slowly seeps down the wall. The gellid material is congealing into a thicker, more bubbly mass towards the floor. The upper edges have crystallized into a half-strength form of White Powder that has peculiar greenish inclusions in it.
2. A foamy puddle of blood-tinged translucent fluid sits in the middle of the sagging floor. It will drain 1 STR from anyone coming into unprotected contact with it. If this puddle gains more than 6 STR points in a given encounter, it will acquire a more Jelly-like form and seek to drain STR from anyone it encounters. It cannot affect glass or wax, but it will dissolve flesh and most organic materials, including floorboards, at a rate of 1d4/minute.
3. A rancid streak of curdled fluids and nasty-bits has accumulated along the base-board of this wall. There is a slightly leathery outer-crust to the stuff. The really fluid part of it has infiltrated the wall and is in the process of making its way down towards the cellar. The cast-off residue is still moist and pungent. Disturbing it will require a Save to avoid the unpleasantness of this stuff spewing vomit-like back out of the wall and causing 2d4 damage and exposing those hit to a clearish fluid that will drain all color from anything it touches. The fluid turns glass into a brittle, black ash-like material, but only drains color from everything else. The scent of this material seems to attract Unseen Beasts and Horla. It also might prove of interest to the Rattong...
4. A thick, viscous bulge hangs pendulously from the ceiling, dripping a peculiar black liquid. The slowly cracking and splitting surface of the ceiling will give-way in 1d4 minutes, causing a vile deluge of horrid fluids and residues to come crashing into this space. 
5. The violet fluids of this particular Wet Spot seem to have a strange affinity for all forms of leather, hide or skin. On contact, the fluid saturates the affected material, staining it a grisly-looking mottled purple reminiscent of a bruise. The materials affected gain a permanent +1 bonus on all Saves against other Wet Spots, Loathsome Masses and all Jellies. Should the fluid affect living flesh, it destroys 1 CHAR, bestows the +1 bonus to Saves, and will cause 1d4 damage until completely removed (which will require vinegar and salt). Most Apprentices are advised to carry extra sets of gloves or old boots along, just in case they run across such fluids.
6. The floor appears to be covered in blood. Wet and rippling as if it were leaking from behind one or more of the walls. The red fluid is not entirely blood. It is a nascent Corpuscular Ooze that will drain 1d4 damage (blood loss) from anyone it can spatter itself upon within a 10' radius. If this particular ooze can reduce to zero hit-points or find a nice, unconscious (i.e. helpless) victim, it will drain CON from them until it is strong enough to go prowling for its next meal. 1 CON point drained in this manner will give the ooze 1d4 hit points. Every 12 hit points gained in this manner will get re-rolled as 1 Hit Die (d8).
7. Sticky black goo covers the walls and part of the ceiling. It looks like massive back-spatter from someone striking a puddle with the flat-side of a shovel. Contact with the sticky stuff causes 2d4 damage and the victim must make a Save or begin to hallucinate terrible nightmares for the next 2d4 hours. Each hour spent screaming and writhing around in agony requires an additional Save or the victim loses 1 INT, which the black-stuff absorbs into itself. The black goo can only absorb 1d4 INT per day, after which it will attempt to seep through the walls/floorboards and go dormant for 1d4 days as it digests and assimilates the INT into itself. Should this nasty stuff succeed in integrating 3+ INT, it will achieve a feral, horrific intelligence.
8. Iridescent blue moisture has condensed across the windows and walls of this space. It causes 1d6 damage on contact and will begin to flow together into a single, large blue glob if disturbed. The Glob is completely non-sentient, but extremely volatile, even explosive. Open flames within 20' will cause it to explode for 6d6 damage in a 30' radius.
9. Red-tinged froth has been spattered across the wall in a loopy, spiraling pattern. The red-stuff causes 3d4 damage, but then dries instantly into a scabrous mess that flakes off of the wall. The scabby-stuff causes 1d4 damage if touched by bare flesh, and causes a painful red rash. It has a number of alchemical applications and is worth a lot to venefices or those engaged in toxomancy.
10. White cream oozes down the wall like a smear of cake frosting. It reeks of rotting flesh and attracts rats like a magnet. Unfortunately, it also drives all rodents within 300' into a blood-thirsty frenzy. Those rodents that eat this stuff gain 1d20 hit points and begin to transform into Ratterlings.
11. Green scum surrounds a pool of clear fluid that smells of stale sweat. Contact with this fluid will turn organic matter three conflicting shades of green and force a Save or else begin to dissolve for 1d4 minutes. The damage is minimal (1d4), but the material that sloughs off of the victim is quickly assimilated into the fluid and will incubate at the bottom of the pool like a peanut-shaped blob that will require 1d4 days in order to develop into a small 1 HD Skin-Crawler that will always have a slightly empathic connection to its 'parent/donor,' which often causes them some bad dreams and disgusting feed-back of sensations, especially when the things feed.
12. (2d6) Refugees have already found this Wet Spot and have begun to tap it for use in some sort of cobbled-together mobile distillery-rig.
13. Make Save or fall through floorboards--this Wet Spot has weakened things severely. Make this first Save, and the floor will collapse in front of the character(s). If they do fall, then upon hitting the floor below they must make another Save. Failure means the character(s) takes double damage as walls begin to collapse. The Wet Spot is pretty-much spent at this point, so there's not a lot worth salvaging from the mess. All this noise and ruckus will attract a lot of attention...wandering monsters, Vigilantes, Street Patrols, all sorts of possibilities might just present themselves.
14. (1d4) Writhing Corpses are scattered around the remains of a mostly defunct Loathsome Mass. Each corpse has 1d6 hours before they erupt into full-blown Loathsome Mass-ness.
15. Brown sludge seeps up from the floor boards whenever anyone walks across the floor. It has a peanut-buttery consistency and gives off a powerful almond-like aroma. It is a powerful contact poison, rich in arsenic-compounds. (Save or take 3d4 damage. Needs to be removed with alcohol.)
16. Slightly crusted patch at center of floor. Disturbing it will bring an immature Ochre Jelly forcing itself up through the cracks in the floor. It will have 1d4 HD and only do 1/4 normal damage.
17. Off-white and thick like porridge, this Wet Spot has seeped out of the walls to form a glistening mass of pseudo-stalactites hanging off of every surface. This material has absorbed some peculiar materials from the cache left here by some long-gone experimenter or bootlegger. It is now some sort of glue that causes 1 point of damage per minute of contact, and can only be dissolved in milk. If it is applied to leather, paper or fabric, it will either cause it to adhere with a waterproof seal or thicken-up into a material suitable for use as a type of flexible armor. If boiled in milk, it will create a decent soup-base that also has the bonus effect of paralyzing Gore Worms.
18. A wretched yellowish trickle that smells like rotten lemons leaks out of a crack in the wall. Save or be incapacitated by intense nausea for 1d4 minutes. This liquid is a primary component for a restorative  elixir that can be used to help victims recover their emotions after Gloomswallow attacks. Often against their will.
19. Orange oatmeal-like stuff is oozing out of the corner, down by the floor. It gives off a sweet-smell that is cloying and disgusting. The outer edges of this mass dry-out and form a brittle crust that breaks apart like the paper of a hornet's nest. The orange fluid seeping through all this debris causes 2d4 damage and is a powerful attractant for all manner of Jellies. (Roll for a Wandering Jelly every 10 minutes spent within close proximity to this stuff.)
20. A Yelg-Froth is bubbling through the wall. It will be on this side of things within 2d4 minutes.
21. The bones of an unlucky apprentice lie off to the side of a small, slowly dying and drying-out puddle of stuff the consistency of rendered lard. The entire floor is coated in the accumulated White Powder left behind by this former Loathsome Mass. The apprentice's bones are not quite right any more. They have been changed in a strange manner after having been marinated in the Loathsome Masses' juices for what looks to have been several months. 
22. The floor is covered by a 1d4-inch-deep Drab Jelly.
23. A sizzling pink blob will lurch out of the corner, right where it wasn't only a moment ago, to attack the shadow of whomever comes within 10' of any particular corner in this space. The attack will cause the loss of 1 CON on a failed Save, otherwise the target suffers 2d4 damage and the sizzling pink blob slips back across the transplanar threshold, not to be seen again for 1d4 days. Anyone suffering damage from this sneak attack gets a free attack on the thing in return. Weapons will come away coated with a sticky, half-melted cotton-candy-like substance that does 1d4 damage on contact for the next 1d4 days, then dries-out into a pretty pink powder that might have some use to an alchemist.
24. Milky-gray fluids congeal at the edges of this room. The distinctive Wet Spot left in the wake of a deliquescing Loathsome Mass is obvious, but there are complications, namely a colony of some unidentified mold or fungi that is bulging-out the walls and ceiling, fit to erupt outwards if someone just jostles the surface or even makes too much noise all at once. The burgeoning mold colony might only be some form of Yellow Mold, but it could be something more exotic and nasty...
25. This room's walls all appear to be half-molten as the plaster has sloughed off with the yellow-green mass of phlegm-like matter slowly dribbling out from behind it all. 
26. Gruesome slop coats the floor like spilled wax jostled from a tin lantern. Small tendrils slowly wave and flutter as they extend upwards towards any and every light source. Each tendril anchors a trapped spirit struggling to be free of the weird mass. A disturbing amount of free-floating ectoplasm surrounds this Wet Spot like a spectral back-wash of half-visible filth. This mess requires the attention of a karcist, exorcist or someone else similarly skilled in the ways of ectoplasmic ecologies and spiritual enslavement. Touching the weird mass results in 1d8 damage, and requires a Save or the victim will find a small portion of their spirit adhering to the thing, and it just gets more messy and unpleasant from there.
27. A smoky-looking pool of black-tinged clear fluid sloshes slowly across the floor like a shapeless dog all to happy to see you. It will attempt to engulf one victim. (Save +2 or suffer 2d4 damage. Roll a second Save at -2 penalty; failure means that the stuff has engulfed the victim and they will drown in 2d4 minutes, unless they receive assistance.) This smoky-fluid will cause a permanent loss of 1 WIS after engulfing a victim for longer than 5 minutes. If it manages to kill its victim, it will completely saturate their body, causing it to bloat horribly, and incubate within the corpse for 1d4 weeks, after which time it will tear itself free of the unnatural, necromantic womb and begin a career as an unliving Profane-Putto that has stolen the memories of their victim...and rendered the body unrecoverable.
28. Glistening green wetness fizzes and swirls in the dimness. If exposed to bright light, it will evaporate into a Toxic Miasma (in this case something much like a Stinking Cloud, only with volition and the ability to inflict disease upon victims).
29. The rotting carcass of a Blatherer lies across the still rippling Wet Spot. Finally, something got that thing to shut up. The fluids in this Wet Spot have curdled into a translucent purple gel that reeks of plums and turpentine. The material is extremely toxic to Blatherers and will cause others to lose their voice (Save +1 or the effect is permanent).
30. A Vilg has been nailed to the floor with wickedly barbed copper spikes. Its belly is grossly distended like a bubble about to burst. It has been deliberately exposed to a Wet Spot that was still active enough to have slowly converted it over into a Loathsome Mass, and you're just in time for the half-sized Loathsome Mass to burst forth. All in the name of science, of course. Someone is watching this from a distance. This is an experiment, after all. It was rather a stroke of luck that you wandered along when you did...

Miss Jekyll's Serum (Wermspittle)

Sometimes, just sometimes, it would be easier to be someone else. Or maybe not...

"Human beings are not our enemy. Our enemy is not the other person. Our enemy is the violence, ignorance, and injustice in us and in the other person. When we are armed with compassion and understanding, we fight not against other people, but against the tendency to invade, to dominate, and to exploit."

Thich Nhat Hanh,

Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

Art thrives upon restriction. All that evil needs to flourish is for good men to do nothing. Those are two statements that bear an uncanny appropriateness to the fate and final disposition of Eustace Jekyll. That such a lovely, if haunted, some would even say Odd, young woman should ever have studied science or medicine was a mistake. Her disposition towards obsessiveness led her into all manner of academic controversies and her radical insistence upon pursuing the 'truth' no matter what the consequences took her to many a strange meeting in lonely places where she was exposed to heretical teachings, suppressed transmissions, clandestine attunements and discredited teachings. Miss Jekyll took to these things like a fish to water. Bizarre theories and outre hypotheses she collected as though they were trading cards or porcelain dolls. But, as her instructors warned her repeatedly and often; such things should be left to the clear conscience of an impersonal investigator for, in the hands of an idealist or a madman, they would surely lead to tragedy and terror. And in the case of the unlucky Miss Jekyll, they certainly did lead to horrors unforeseen and heartbreak most keen. Those who would follow in her footsteps along the particular path to damnation first revealed by Miss Jekyll's unsanctioned explorations into the nature of good and evil would do well to heed her example as to how she ended her career even more so than how she began it. But alas, most such earnest and eager students only look at how it all began, and few ever look past the events of that tragic night when Miss Jekyll first beheld the face and form of the one she called 'Wilhemina' in her bedroom mirror.

Strong Mind, Stronger Opinions
Miss Eustace Jekyll had been extraordinarily precocious as a child. Her parents found themselves unable to control the exceptionally head-strong girl, so they sent her off to the Academy in Wermspittle where she studied sorcery, alchemy and surgery. Her parents had hoped that she might become some sort of engineer, brewer, or something respectable that she could take-up when she came back to her ancestral estate in Wollstonecraft, but instead Eustace became caught-up in student politics, academic Hermeticism, and the pursuit of the once-forbidden arts. For the space of a full year she was the rising star, the belle of the ball and the most gifted student to ever grace the hoary halls of half the laboratories and libraries she found opened before her like treasuries with their doors cast wide before her progress. But as is ever the case with such things, Eustace eventually was caught-up in scandal, slandered by her rivals, and brought low by the secret hatred and poisonous jealousies of those she had out-shone in her innocence and naivete. Politics are fickle and popularity can go rancid like butter left too long on the table. It was a hard lesson for the young girl -- she was a Prodigy of barely thirteen when everything went terribly, horribly wrong and she left the Academy in disgrace amid wicked whispers and salacious gossip.

Disrepute and Dissolution Denied
Life is harsh for those who fall from grace and good standing. Eustace was incredibly ill-equipped to handle her rejection, her failure, her upset and displacement from the only life she had ever known. Within a space of three weeks she was evicted, penniless and abandoned by all but a few of her friends and colleagues, but even they could do little to help her for fear of retribution. Her family had turned their backs upon her. She had been disinherited over the muttered allegations of vague scandals that horrified her parents almost as much as the not-so-veiled threats of her enemies to bring ruin to the family if they did not cut her out like a cancerous growth. Eustace was summarily removed from the rolls. Her memberships were revoked. She was marked. She had been black-listed. It was social suicide to retain the acquaintance. Openly associating with her could dash one's career aspirations. So she was on her own in the middle of Winter in Wermspittle.
Some enemies can be incredibly cruel in their vindictiveness. But few know the depths of hell quite like a young woman scorned and who has already had everything that ever mattered to her taken away.

No Retreat, No Surrender, No Redemption
Eustace was a brilliant student. She had rocketed up the ranks as an apprentice and made an indelible impression on more than just her enemies and detractors. One such person was her first master under whom she served her first apprenticeship. She had proven a very adept forager and always seemed to know how to find the best Wet Spot samples, the richest Sallow Stain deposits, and the most viable bits of Black Corruption taken from Loathsome Masses no other apprentice had spotted or realized were just under their noses. More than once it was remarked that the girl seemed to have an uncanny affinity for the stuff, or at least a tremendous talent for locating and acquiring the best for her master.

Old Nick was only too happy to have little Eustace back on his pay-roll. In just a few short weeks she had more than doubled his working supply and began to help him to improve his distillation processes. Within a month Eustace was running the rig and Old Nick left her well enough alone.

It didn't take long after she had lulled her old master into a false sense of complacency that Eustace began to conduct her experiments with all the illicit substances available to an unlicensed distiller who produced Black Liquors for the Corruption Trade.

Off The Record
From her extensive personal diaries, journals and very detailed records from each of her experiments, comes a fairly complete account of the descent of Miss Eustance Jekyll into infamy, insanity and the hideous exchange of personalities that led to her development of the strange serum of misanthropic metamorphism for which she will now and forever be known. But the popular account is by no means the full story, nor the complete truth of the matter. There are things that Miss Jekyll held back, things that she kept in a set of smaller, sorcerously-locked personal journals to which only a very few have ever had access. Unfortunately, being the strong-willed and politically-oriented young woman that she was, Eustace took steps to insure that her most private journals would only ever fall into the hands of like-minded students. She was meticulous in transcribing no less than five different copies of her secret journals, each one having slight differences in what she revealed or shared, knowing full well that each would in time find its way to another student, that her work might have a chance to live on through some one else. To this day the Librarians at the Academy and the various private libraries that surround it continue to keep a look out for these mysterious, ensorcelled journals in the vain attempt to keep them from re-igniting Miss Jekyll's madness and plunging yet another soul into the black gulfs of her sanity-blasting experiments.

We Have Met the Enemy...
Buried with an otherwise unassuming collection of formulae, notes, and a dozen or so minor spells, there are the working secrets of Miss Jekyll's infamous serum...and her cribbed notes detailing a different line of inquiry for each journal. Not only did she leave behind the missing piece to re-assemble her work, or to replicate her experiments, but she made sure to provide specialized instructions and guidance for how to take things farther, deeper, along even more rarefied paths only a very few have ever attempted to explore.

As she reveals candidly in her private journals, Miss Jekyll would never have pursued the peculiar ambitions awakened in her by her betrayal and ruin wrought by her rivals and enemies. Nor would she ever have made the progress she did without access to the materials only a producer of Black Liquors have at hand.
The other essential ingredient to making Miss Jekyll's serum work is not something that anyone can swallow or put into a bottle. The one thing that most of those bumbling about with her other records and notes almost always overlook or miss entirely is the pivotal role her full-length mirror played in the process of metamorphosis brought on by her serum. A mirror. Without a suitable reflective surface, the psychological tensions brought on by the serum's revision of the subject's nervous system and then entire corpus, from the inside-out, they inevitably are driven insane. And not just casual loopiness, but full-on frothery most foul, the kind and sort of madness no one comes back from, as indeed those attempting the use of Miss Jekyll's serum without the adjunct of a mirror before them never, ever recover.
Ah, but with the use of a suitable mirror! Miss Jekyll's serum not only restructures the subject's body, it completely transforms their essential self, bringing forth all manner of repressed or suppressed traits, tendencies, truths and more. The experience is excruciating, liberating, cathartic and ultimately destructive beyond all imagining, at least to the subject who is now transformed into a completely Other identity that can be of any gender, size, shape or appearance save one--they can never, ever be changed back to who or what they were previously.

It is curious that in her private journals, Miss Jekyll never mentioned Wilhemina, whom some conjecture was either a spirit guide or her alter ego or 'other self.' Instead each of the five private journals is signed 'Helen.'

Dangerous Knowledge
The private journals of Miss Jekyll are rare magical books that will only appear before a suitable candidate; some lonely prodigy harassed by her peers and more often than not something of an outsider -- the classic profile all authorities fear and keep an eternal vigil against lest they somehow do something terrible, because all know that the darlings of the social scene would never, ever do terrible things. Snort.

Vicious Rumors, Esoteric Exaggerations
Miss Jekyll may or may not have 'died' in the course of her work on her serum, but dozens of less gifted or just plain unlucky students who've tried to follow in her footsteps have paid a terrible if not the ultimate price for their not reading her notes thoroughly and realizing that she left an essential piece out so as to prevent anyone too stupid to come up with the serum in the first place all on their own from turning it over to unscrupulous third parties. It wasn't altruism that made her do this, far from it. Miss Jekyll considered herself to be beyond good and evil. She wanted to make sure that her legacy survived long past the fleeting notoriety and fame that her rivals and peers might have achieved. And in that she succeeded quite well. To this day Miss Eustace Jekyll is still whispered about, egregiously slandered and a figure around whom a great deal of urban folklore and student mythology has grown up. She outlived her enemies, outshone her detractors, and has become both a romantic, tragic figure adopted by dozens of socially awkward girls (and a few boys as well) that she would never willingly have associated with during her tenure at the Academy. There are even little shrines and lonely make-shift memorials set up for Miss Jekyll or Wilhemina scattered about the campus. Whatever her ultimate fate, Miss Jekyll's legacy, her reputation, and her work live on.
It is a shame and a tragedy, quiet unrelated of course, how so many of the class-mates of Miss Jekyll have suffered tragic accidents and gruesome deaths. It is as if they were somehow cursed, but of course there is no sign of any of the standard forms of maleficia being involved.

Inspirational Reading: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1886 and available online via Project Gutenberg, The Literature Network, The University of Virginia, or you might prefer the Annotated Version available at Wikisource. There are also a ton of resources related to this famous text available via the Internet Archive, some of them illustrated, if that matters. The morbidly curious might find the Hammer horror movie Doctor Jekyll, Sister Hyde (1971) of some interest. Though the trailer might well cure that particular ailment. In any case, don't blame me if you go and watch the whole movie; you could just sit through the movie adaptation of Carrie instead, but who really needs to see that movie ever again? You might instead read a bit of Mary Shelley's work or watch the movie version of Virginia Woolf's Orlando (with Tilda Swinton), if you'd like to get some clue of what might lay ahead for 'Wilhemina,' and one could do worse than to consult Mr. Machen's Great God Pan for some hints as to what could potentially be in store for 'Helen.' Enjoy.

The Industrialization of Corruption (Wermspittle)

Business as Unusual
It has long been a maxim to 'Find a Need and Fill It' among many entrepreneurs. It is no less so within Wermspittle, only the opportunities available are sometimes a bit more extreme or strange, or in some instances quite horrific. A case in point is the industrialization and commodification of corruption. Not the political kind--that is an industry unto itself. By 'corruption' we mean the spectrum of by-products generated through the alchemical process known to as the 'Vile Transformation' brought on by the so-called 'White Powder.'

One's Misfortune is Another's Fortunate Opportunity
Those refugees, vagrants and others who are down and out and who have reached the end of their tether, the Patients who cannot or will not be helped by Midwives nor Medical Practitioners, the Unfortunates who are degenerating before everyone else's eyes, the terminally infected or plague-poxed, those cursed by the unrelenting wrath of implacable forces; there are many who are find themselves in untenable positions, with no clear way out and no help either offered nor proffered. The Almshouses were burned more than a century ago, the Charities are over-extended, and if misery could be bottled and sold it would make someone very, very rich indeed. In fact it does just that.

White, Black, and Shades of Gray
Long ago it was discovered that the after-effects and residues left in the wake of the Vile Transformation brought-on by the 'white powder' possessed a number of qualities that could be harvested, processed and put to various uses. An entire underground industry has developed around the Vile Transformation and its various by-products. It might be considered risque among the upper classes to sip absinthe drizzled with a particular brand of Dim Ichor or Black Liquor, but no one respectable will ever admit to their involvement with the Corruption Trade. It is a filthy business, even less publicly acceptable than secret slave-breeding and hybridization efforts or clandestine transplanar researches or unsanctioned medical experiments--all of which are known to be taking place 'somewhere' within the city, but just never quite within reach of what passes for law enforcement these days.

A Terrible Criminal Enterprise
Those who are behind the Corruption Trade are well-placed within society, they have connections, and they know how to use their ill-gotten gains to great advantage, often ruining the careers of those who get too close to uncovering their secrets or discovering the true extent of the rot that has wormed its way deep into the heart of Wermspittle. More than one troublesome, nosy busy-body has been forcibly dosed with the white powder in order to teach them a lesson they'll never forget. Understandably, very few people want anything to do with attempts to stop or disrupt the Corruption Trade. It can be more than a little hazardous to your health--it could destroy your life, body and soul.

A Vile Form of Urban Farming
As with most such endeavors, it often all comes down to money. Simple economics. There is more money to be made in maintaining a productive mass than in simply trying to scrape-up whatever can be recovered from a Wet Spot or lingering Sallow Stain. Somewhere, out there amid the empty blocks of Wermspittle, in certain cellars or attics, there are farms of Loathsome Masses that the foragers and their masters are milking for their horrific fluids in order to produce terrible, addictive and soul-killing Black Liquors and various quite questionable patent medicines that they then hand over to unscrupulous peddlers and bar tenders who put profits well before any sort of human consideration.

A Hierarchy of Masks
The Producers all answer to middle-managers who, in turn, answer to higher-ups whose identities are shrouded in secrecy and sorcery. They could be anyone. The main bosses who run things tend to remain behind the scenes and work through various agents, representatives, factotums and enforcers. No one knows what evil lurks within the midst of this ambiguous collection of masked and obscured members of the privileged elite who have built their fortunes upon the degradation, despair and destruction of their fellow humanity. Perhaps someday a vigilante will succeed where so many have failed before. Where there is great evil, no matter how deep-set or seemingly secure it might appear, someone will eventually find a way to fight it, to reveal the festering sickness that poisons all it touches...but where does one find such a hero? When will someone set things to rights?