Escaped gaming meme

[mithriltabby]

As long as I’m waiting for a build, I might as well take a trip down memory lane.

Sar’s Odious Salve

An onyx jar with an inset carved skull out of green malachite. Quick magical study will show it has a very unusual enchantment on it— detailed study shows it to be transcendent in its source of power, with the kind of fingerprint associated with a god rather than a more abstract realm like Nature or Chaos. The magic is a highly exotic combination of techniques from Healing, Illusion, and some very advanced Summoning.

The contents of the jar are a horrible, noxious bluish-green slimy goop full of gritty mustard-yellow lumps; there are occasional motions under the surface as if there are grubs writhing within, though no amount of searching the goop will turn up anything (which is even more worrisome). The smell combines all the worst aspects of a midden, a tannery, and a slaughterhouse.

The jar is a potent healing item, calling upon the powers of the obscure trickster god Sar, normally associated with fixing, diplomacy, bribery, and connections. It works by scaring people into getting better— the “no thanks, I feel better already!” response. The magic very subtly causes the wound or disease to not be as bad as it had previously appeared. People panicking in attempts to get away from the vile stuff never seem to take harm, and are usually better for the experience.

Circumstance	Difficulty
Understands how it works	2
Doesn’t think the healer will actually use it	3
Believes the healer has a good reputation	5
No reason to trust the healer	6
Distrusts the healer	8
Thinks the healer is incompetent or insane	10
Panicking to get away or other good roleplaying	+2
Flesh contact	+2
Oral contact	+4

Anyone to whom the salve is applied— it doesn’t have to actually touch them, just threaten them— must make a Willpower roll. The amount by which they miss the Willpower roll, plus the Action Result of an Intimidation check by the healer, will be the effective Action Result of the use of Healing-sphere magic on the character. If they make the Willpower roll, controlling their sense of horror and disgust, the item has no effect. (All these numbers are calibrated for Feng Shui, where Willpower is a stat ranging from 2 to 10 for humans and the average roll is 0, most humans have 35 hit points, and an excellent Intimidation skill is 15; adjust to suit for other systems.)

If the jar runs out of goop, more can only be made by filling the jar with any useless snake-oil patent nostrum available from a complete quack— any combination of such things will do if a single source isn’t enough. No matter what gets put in, it will transform overnight into the horrid Salve.

The item is very effective for healing large numbers of people, though the morale effects are generally poor relative to having caring, kind healers attending to your injuries.