Crux: The Venom Weavers

Analysis.  Contact successful.  Subject 52 collapsed within fourteen minutes.  Performed field autopsy.

Observation.  Contact poison 75 C is ten times faster than its prior fifty iteration.  

Professor: do you wish for me to continue this trial?  Or should I focus on 76 C?  I have several more scorpions in my internal containment bins.  If so, I have several more potential candidates.


Venom Weavers explore critical medicinal trials.  The nature of medicine research requires less than savory methods.  Ith has provided for them.  The unsorcerous of Ith have no rights, and often the Venom Weavers can utilize them.

In Baskets With Scorpions They Come.

Venom Weavers name comes from their practice of carrying venomous animals in woven baskets.  Often they weave medicinal magic into baskets.  Most folk tales describe their baskets as the source of curses and plagues.

Venom Weavers disagree.  Theirs is a interest in research.  For them, it's a science that needs critical effort.  They never chose the name Venom Weaver, preferring apothecaries or phlebotomists.  As servants of the Church of the Machine, theirs is a pursuit of knowledge that requires experimentation.

The last decade have seen a significant changes among the Venom Weavers.  From Crux, they begun to employ Android experimenters and vivisectionists.  The Venom Weavers have found ways to industrialize their research.  Android Venom Weavers often store countless poisons within their bodies.  Their wax android bodies have hollow bins filled with all sorts of venomous creatures.

Ith.

Before the establishment of the Sorcerous Republic, Venom Weavers worked inside the shadows.  Their practices of grave digging and poisoning test subjects, always has attracted negative attention in other nations.  Only Maliph provided them any sort of protection.  But the Khans often would enslave Venom Weavers they favored.  The Venom Weavers would clash with rival researcher sects in the Immortal Khanates.

But Ith's laws created an underclass.  Anyone without sorcerous ability in Ith has no rights.  For the Venom Weavers, this created a pool of test subjects.

The Venom Weavers do not seek to be cruel.  They try to be humane and quick in their experiments.  But there are a few dark methods that have to be explored.  All for the sake of finding new medicines and new cures.  They often pioneer methodologies, including surgery and bloodletting.

The University Doctors

At Crux University, the Venom Weavers work within the College of Chirugy.  Chirurgeons of all kinds study at the university.  The Venom Weavers and their research are highly respected.  Their persecution gives them an extra air among the Esoterium Machina.

Venom Weavers now enjoy the backing of the Chancellor.  Even though common people in Ith detest or speak of the Venom Weavers as torturers, they've presented a long record of consistent cures.  Chirurgeons trained by Venom Weavers offer their services at a premium.  Venom Weavers themselves are certain they can find ways to cure anything, if given the proper time and resources.

Aging, gout, cancer and other diseases are things they are certain they could undo.  They regard divine magic and religions that bogart it as fading tradition.  Venom Weavers imagine an era coming where even common folk can receive effective medicines.  Medicines and cures with no divine arbiters to keep them from it.  As such, they've always found some conflicts with healers of other faiths.

Clerics of the many other faiths scoff at the claim that they bogart medicines from the common folk.  The Venom Weavers disagree.  They are quick to point at the outrageous costs of divine spellcasting.  This is despite their practice of preying on the poorest for test subjects.  Venom Weavers aim to make medicine for all, no matter how many bodies they leave in their wake.

Baskets.

Venom Weavers specialize in using vapors.  They use these vapors to counter what they believe to be source of most maladies: miasma.  These days, they weave cures into complex baskets.  They contain vapors that the Venom Weaver activates upon tossing on the ground.

They have many vapors.  Most can cure a great deal of maladies.  But Venom Weavers also know their vapors can be poison.  Their poisonous medicines are their favored form of defense.  In fact, the Venom Weavers know how to best exploit the same miasmas they combat.

The Crone's Basket: Woven together with owl feathers and ginko branches.  When lit, the Crone's Basket creates a miasma that afflicts all around it with the symptoms of old age.  Bones creak and skin wrinkles.  Anyone that shares their zone with the miasma must make a Vigor roll against the Basket's Potency skill (as set by its creator).  If they fail, they suffer from the Old Age aspect while in that zone.

Choleric Basket: Woven together with pig intestine and rice paper.  When lit, a Choleric Basket's miasma inflicts Cholera on anyone who inhales it.  They must make a Vigor roll against the Basket's Potency skill.  If they fail, they suffer from Cholera as a Severe consequence.