| Secret of the Still |
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| character knows how to create INFUSIONS, powerful alchemical concoctions. The alchemist pays a REASON cost for his infusion when it is created. Complex infusions take great skill to create: each stage past the first incurs a cumulative penalty die to the creation check. |
| Cost: 1 REASON per stage past the first. |
| Secret of the Funnel |
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| Activate this Secret to rearrange or remove the stages of a finished infusion. The player also has to reroll the Effect value of the infusion; failure ruins it. Each moved or removed stage causes a penalty die to this check. The funneling process may also be used to reverse engineer and master an infusion from another alchemist’s notes, although the Story Guide may mess with the exact composition and order of the stages during the process. |
| Cost: 1 REASON to move a stage, 2 to remove a stage, 1 to reverse engineer a stage and 1 mandatory to reroll the Effect. |
| Requirement: SECRET OF THE STILL |
| Secret of Metastasis |
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| Activate this Secret to cancel the penalty dice caused by alchemical apparati such as the STILL or the FUNNEL. The player makes the choice to activate metastasis for each roll separately. |
| Cost: 1 REASON. |
| Requirement: SECRET OF THE STILL |
| Secret of Botany |
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| A concerned naturalist can get more out of HERBALISM (R) than just simple Effects: He can cause penalty dice instead of bonus dice with his herbal Effects. He can create herbal incenses and pastes to deliver the Effect in different ways. The LIMITED EFFECTS variant rule does not concern his Effects. He can create first-stage INFUSIONS. |
| Secret of Laboratory |
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| The character owns a dedicated laboratory for his alchemical work. As long as the character has access to the lab, he can reduce the upkeep costs for his alchemical and herbal Effects by the value of a suitable Ability check whenever he refreshes Reason. Each useful Ability may be checked separately for each Refresh; suitable Abilities might include ALCHEMY (R) and HERBALISM (R), and perhaps others. |
| Cost: 1 Reason per Ability checked. |
| Secret of Fire Fruit |
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| A cook with this Secret can use COOKING (I) with such exotic skill that it resembles alchemy. He can create orally delivered first-stage infusions out of foods and spices. Such cooking infusions are impossible to recognize as drugs (which they really aren’t). Often their effects are delayed by digestion unpredictably, and a victim might not even realize that they are being poisoned. |
| Secret of Iron Stomach |
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| Natural inclination or deliberate acclimatization has made the character resistant to ingested poisons and other harmful substances. The player may pay Vigor to cancel out infusion stages in addition to those cancelled by the ENDURE (V) check. In addition, the player may create Effects with ENDURE (V) to represent immunities to specific poisons. |
| Cost: 1 VIGOR per cancelled stage. |
| Secret of Serpent Blade |
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| The character knows how to boil an infusion into a sticky paste suitable for treating weapons. The paste preserves well and takes effect once the weapon pierces skin. |
| Cost: 1 VIGOR per treated weapon. |
| Secret of Serpent Fog |
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| The character knows how to mix an infusion into an air-weight vapor that takes effect through the lungs. |
| Cost: 1 INSTINCT per roomful of fog. |
| Alchemical Imbuement |
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| A piece of equipment with this imbuement provides the effects of a specific INFUSION constantly at a level equal to the equipment quality; the infusion has no maintenance cost. |
| Secret of Addiction (specify) |
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| The character is addicted to the specified substance and will have trouble doing well unless satisfied regularly. The addiction affects one of the character’s Pools, causing normal Pool refreshment to return only one Pool point for the character. A full refill, instead, is gained by partaking of the addiction. However, this only works once per session, extra satisfaction only returns one Pool point per scene. (For multiple addictions in one Pool, all have to be satisfied for full satisfaction, but each can be satisfied independently for partial.) Addiction can be broken by long-term denial and RESIST (R) check, but the Secret remains and becomes active if the character ever indulges again; only extraordinary measures (a QUEST, say) can remove an addiction altogether. |