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vorpalanvil
Seeker
USA
90 Posts |
 Posted - 02 Nov 2012 : 06:50:32
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Outside of the occasional quick hit in sources like the Silver Marches, has anyone made or come across an extensive listing of useful plants for medicinal or "other" uses?
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"I'm a busy man! I got places to go, monsters to kill!" attributed to 1st level bard |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36779 Posts |
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George Krashos
Master of Realmslore
Australia
6647 Posts |
Posted - 02 Nov 2012 : 10:39:18
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Ed posted this a while ago:
MERENTHE:
This purple-black, opaque watery liquid tastes something like raw avocados or eggplant, and when ingested or insinuated, is a potent sleep-inducing drug that can bring “easy slumber” regardless of pain or nausea. It has no known side-effects except entirely quelling snoring, teeth-gnashing, and body movements during sleep, is effective on all known intelligent mammals, and the amount of the dose directly affects the length of slumber. It works very swiftly, and when “passing off” causes swift awakening with little or no drowsiness.
Merenthe is much used in healing, to keep wounded persons immobile, but also serves to more easily “govern” or “master” prisoners, flight risks, and formidable foes, and to disable sentinels without harming them.
The secrets of its making are widely-known in Calimshan, known to a few in the Vilhon, the Tashalar, Amn, and Waterdeep, and little known elsewhere (where prices are high; typically 60 to 80 gp for a standard-sized potion vial, which if entirely imbibed at one sitting by an average-sized adult human male will cause about 5-and-a-half days of slumber).
Merenthe first became popular as the main thing sold by the Calishite “witch” Merenthe Iyrdril, some three centuries ago. It is known to be a distillate of at least three ingredients, one of which is a powdered low-value (fairly common) gemstone, and two of which are plants; for one of those, merenthe uses the crushed and boiled leaves.
Merenthe is effective when mixed with some alcoholic beverages, but not all. It works in combination with all other beverages (though dilution of course alters the length of its efficacy). Cooking beyond certain temperatures destroys its effects, so it can only be hidden in some foods.
SARSSON:
This common, little-known herb has broad, short yellow leaves. It grows very close to the ground, as a “carpet” ground cover, in wet tropical regions (jungle, riverbanks, marshes, bogs) aboveground, and damp warm (near volcanic) caverns underground. It has a strong peppery, lemony taste, and can be used to make foul water palatable (not safe, just more pleasant in taste) and to complement meat; it “enlivens” uncoagulated blood on contact to bring forth a vivid, strong taste that some creatures (such as giant striders and certain carrion birds, like gorcraws) find irresistible.
TANGLEMOSS:
This lush, soft, green ground-covering moss resembles miniature pine boughs in configuration (needles sprouting from a stem), but is soft and delicate, sometimes being visually mistaken for dill and other “lacy frond” herbs and plants. Its name comes from its natural tendency to twine around (“entangle”) other vines, roots, and plants without strangling (killing) them, but firmly anchoring itself. It doesn’t “tangle” creatures, however small; its name is derived from its firm adherence to underlying rock or earth, and hence its usefulness, and tendency to flourish, in high-traffic areas such as paths, roads, and drainage spillways.
Tanglemoss is found everywhere north of the southern border of Tethyr, though it is rare in Amn outside of mountainous areas, and the Vilhon and everywhere north of that; the warmer prevalent climate of more southerly lands causes it to grow only in small, sickly brown clumps that soon wither and die. Dried tanglemoss is used as packing and insulation, because it doesn’t crumble and disintegrate for more than a season after death, but it has no other known uses. An old Moonsea North saying refers to someone in poverty as being “down to dining on tanglemoss soup.”
GLOWMOSS:
This once-common, but now increasingly rare due to over-harvesting moss absorbs heat and light energy, and glows softly in dim or dark conditions.
Its soft radiance is usually an amber-white or greenish-white hue (the exact colour is influenced by the mix of minerals the growing moss is in contact with), and it can be “fed” to keep it alive with moisture, salt (so, sea-breezes make it flourish) and light (torchlight and “cold magical glows” benefit it as readily as sunlight). Formerly much used as a light source in dark interior rooms by being hung in clumps in cages, its increasing rarity has led to this custom falling out of popularity.
Owners of glowmoss who understand its needs can readily illuminate a dwelling or structure by moving clumps of glowmoss from interior ceiling “light cages” to sunlit outdoor “reviving” locations, and back again, on a cycle that involves at least two tendays at a stretch of normal daytime periods of sunlight, and some water. Glowmoss need not be anchored on anything to grow or flourish. No known creatures find it edible, which has led some insects to lay eggs in it; to keep their homes from being infested by larvae falling out of glowmoss, most glowmoss users simply soak the glowmoss in buckets of water, agitate the moss vigorously by hand, and then hang it to drip dry before indoor, “in the cage” use.
SWORD-SHE: Female mercenary. This term is generally applied to individuals who make their living as hireswords and advertise this fact, and tends to be most often used by humans, when speaking of good-looking female humans, or females of forceful personality.
Tanglemoss doesn't do well in more southerly lands than Tethyr because of climate, but can be found in all more northerly areas (though it's rare east of The Sea of Fallen Stars, where other plant varieties crowd it out, and is sparse in Amn for unspecified reasons).
And yes, merenthe is a drug in the sense that it's a subtance deliberately taken to alter bodily processes and/or symptoms. It isn't addictive, however, so there's no "withdrawal" or craving or addiction, or behaviours associated with such.
Yes, there are many, many herbs, potions, and even diets and thorras (“teas” or more properly tissanes made by boiling the leaves of various plants; a “thorra” is the Realmsian term for purely medical-use drinks that aren’t primarily sustaining or pleasant to the taste) used across the Realms to try to increase chances of, or “ensure,” pregnancy. I don’t have time just now to delve into all of the old wives’ tales/wrong or exaggerated-efficacy means, or the poisonous ones, but I can tell you about one of the most popular effective ones: the (fictitious, not real-world) Realmsian herb “halvalondur,” which is a once-common, now uncommon and increasing in rarity (due to overpicking, for this use) little clover-like groundcover plant found in most Northern grasslands. By “northern,” I mean roughly the same range as for tanglemoss: halvalondur is found in Tethyr and anywhere north of that, from islands off the Sword Coast as far east as the Vilhon and Chessenta, in usually-fully-sunlit open grasslands only.
It is used by harvesting the blossoms, and females then eat them raw (they need not be fresh, so they can be harvested in Mirtul and the two months after that, kept in glass or clay jars sealed from the air with pitch or clay). This apparently makes females more likely to conceive, if they are at the right stage of their cycle. However, neither milk nor dairy products (such as cheese) nor alcohol should be ingested just before, with, or after the halvalondur blossoms, or they nullify the fertility effect.
Many of the herbal fertility treatments are thought to favor this gender or that, but the wisest sages (and elves who have studied the forest herbs more closely than anyone else) are almost all of the opinion that such thinking is either wishful or empty claims, rather than fact.
There are no "guarantees" about anything medical or medicinal in the Realms, by anyone who's sane, unless they're deliberately setting out to deceive. None of the herbal remedies and treatments popular from the 1320s onward in the Realms (the mapped and "known" part of the Realms explored thus far in the published canon, at least) are widely suspected of causing mutations or defects; there are some older herbal concoctions that did, or were thought to, and they fell out of favour as a result.
As magical experimentation (under the urging of Mystra's clergy, Chosen, and other servitors) has picked up in the 1300s, purely "by hand" herblore experimentation has waned, and as a result no knew "big innovations" in herblore have become known from the 1320s onwards (that's not saying there haven't been any, rather that they haven't become widely known, with all the attention on either magic spells and potions, or "philtres" and other drinkable medicines peddled by the caravan merchants (most of which would in real-world terms be deemed "snake oil" more than truly efficacious).
-- George Krashos |
"Because only we, contrary to the barbarians, never count the enemy in battle." -- Aeschylus |
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vorpalanvil
Seeker
USA
90 Posts |
Posted - 02 Nov 2012 : 12:05:27
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| Thanks for the update. With all the minute information available on certain sources you (I) never know What questions have been asked of whom and when. Hopefully I get a few more responses. The main problem is, I have a wizard character from the far, farrr east (Hail celestial!) with the herbalism proficiency (2ed) who has only been in the west about a year or so. Somehow I'll have to come up with a random way of determining his knowledge of western medicine. Don't even ask me what a pain it was to roll up his spellbook. Again, thanks for some solid lore. |
"I'm a busy man! I got places to go, monsters to kill!" attributed to 1st level bard |
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vorpalanvil
Seeker
USA
90 Posts |
Posted - 02 Nov 2012 : 12:09:14
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| Seriously Wooly, every time you respond to one of my posts my eye is drawn to your link to the codes of conduct link you have and I think to myself immediately "what did I say now?" |
"I'm a busy man! I got places to go, monsters to kill!" attributed to 1st level bard |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36779 Posts |
Posted - 02 Nov 2012 : 12:19:13
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quote:
Originally posted by vorpalanvil
Seriously Wooly, every time you respond to one of my posts my eye is drawn to your link to the codes of conduct link you have and I think to myself immediately "what did I say now?"
Heh, it's just the default moderator sig. Keep in mind my sig also contains "I am the Giant Space Hamster of Ill Omen!" -- a line that has inspired a lot of nicknames for me. 
Some even call me the Furry Hamster, which is a bit perplexing for me -- aren't all hamsters furry?  |
Candlekeep Forums Moderator
Candlekeep - The Library of Forgotten Realms Lore
http://www.candlekeep.com -- Candlekeep Forum Code of Conduct
I am the Giant Space Hamster of Ill Omen! |
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