Completed The Path of Leash Resistance

[Inoadar]

OOC - continued from Here.

9th of Fall, 513

Inoadar limped back to the shop with his fungal sample and the blood from the tiger Kelvic that had named herself "Ariella". 'Another trip into the wild...Another fight with wolves...' he groaned inwardly. Really though, he knew, this time, he had only himself to blame. The wolves had been focused on the tiger. He could have ridden by unmolested. But obtaining a free sample was worth the effort and the damage. In his heart, as well, he knew...it had been fun.

He wasn't sure where he stood at the Kelvic Research Institute. His interrogation mission had been a set-up. Unsanctioned by the Black Sun or the Ebonstryfe. He hadn't known it at the time, though. Even though he had foiled a plot against Ravok's interest. There was really no lingering proof, and he had damaged KRI property. So getting a sample of Kelvic blood from there, for his lab use, would be a tricky proposition.

So he'd stepped into the fight on the tiger's behalf, gotten chewed up and spent some time cleaning wounds, introducing himself and gaining her trust. He'd discovered, as well, a medical application of Pillowsap poison as an anesthetic. He'd put her to sleep, so she didn't instinctively switch forms and shred him to bits while in the painful throes of cleaning and cutting away maimed flesh.

And in the process, he'd gained a sample of her blood, the other element in Wildleash poison besides the fungal sample he'd already collected. It saved him the trouble of a three day shoreline journey to the KRI, and the risk of being apprehended there as some sort of vandal. And all it cost him were a number of slashes and gashes. You will heal from wounds, not from imprisonment.

He knew he needed to set aside several measures of the paste he would obtain from this sample. He would probably go through it all in the process of perfecting his formula. He only hoped that by the time he was done, there would be at least a single dose' worth to test on some hapless Kelvic slave in town.

It wouldn't really hurt them, just make them morph uncontrollably for several chimes, fall unconscious for more, and then be utterly passive for a good bell or two. Sure, their master would probably beat them for screwing around. Of course he'd have to find a Kelvic without a collar. They were specifically crafted to take their animal form into account and choke them if they morphed.

Well, he would deal with that obstacle in time. For now, he made his slow, bandage-wrapped way back to his shop to begin his work again. The last time, he'd been interrupted by a Kelvic panther, seeking revenge for that very same KRI interrogation mission. 'Must have been a friend of that bird I questioned,' he reasoned to himself with a cruel grin. He knew "questioned" was a kind term for the torment he'd subjected her to.

[Inoadar]

He set to work, removing the mycellial layer he had collected from just below the clump of mushrooms at the base of the tree, just before he'd returned to find Ariella being attacked by the wolves. The mushrooms themselves held little of the catalyst he sought from this species of fungus. It was the layer of Hyphae filaments that corrupted the cell structure of the wood.

This property was fundamental to the Wildleash poison. As was the introduction of Kelvic blood. The fungal paste would break down the structural integrity of the cell walls and membranes of the compartments within the cytoplasm. This would render the host vulnerable to the nature of whatever catalyst was introduced into the waiting structural determiners.

Of course, this was only when the host had the natural ability for transformation at the cellular level. For a regular human, it would just create a temporary local breakdown of cell structure to a depth of maybe three to five layers of tissue. This was only because the cells DID breakdown, but the triggering of cellular remodeling was bound to the static stability of the unchangeable cell patterns of human tissue, whether skin, muscle, bone or even organs. In effect they broke down, and then replaced themselves with copies of the exact same types of cells.

There was a capability to expand the applications of this quality, but it would require discovery of creaures with natural, genetically-gifted abilities. In the meantime, the perfecting of Wildleash poison was all the goal Inoadar required. The first step was to make a paste of the fungal discharge that possessed the capability to bring about the cellular instability and structural breakdown. And that required the coaxing of the discharge of the fluid from the mycellium itself.

And for that he was going to need wood.

[Inoadar]

When he'd done his previous work on the Mycellial paste, it had been triggered from contact with what was really nothing more than compost. The blend of different structural cohesion levels, and its decayed condition, prevented the discharge from being potent enough to work properly. As well, it was not aligned in a consistent breakdown pattern, being in contact, as it was, with a variety of different species of decaying foliage.

This time, he would not only have an enzyme that was of uniform catalytic nature, it would be applied to a subject cell structure that would require its highest level of capability. It was ironic that his enemy, Barton, was to be the provider of the hardwood sample he would use, but the man was a manufacturer of wood furniture, so it was nonetheless logical. Not to mention the fact that it was not Barton himself that Inoadar would be dealing with.

Still, it was nothing if not prudent to disguise himself when he went to the merchant and asked if he could help himself to remains from the discard pile. He had put on a wig that featured bald spots, the kind made on a thin, rubbery base that stretched over the skull. The use of wigs, more than anything else, was the reason he always kept his hair cut short. He touched up the edges with putty and took a very watered down ink to the wrinkles that remained where the cap did not fit as snugly. The underside was just adhesive enough to be manipulated by his fingertips so that he could direct the wrinkles into vein-like patterns. Coloring them gave them an unattractive vericose look that caused people to lose any interest in checking them closely.

He also took just a scant drop of Hag's Mask poison, which gave him blemishes and a sickly hue to his skin tone. This also required some touching up to extend the look up into the "balding " portions of his skull cap wig. Then, with a selection of old style clothes, and a practiced stoop to his posture, he was just another old man loitering around the scrapyard at the merchant's showroom. The foreman gave him several end blocks from some planks of an imported hardwood just to be rid him.

Back at his shop, Inoadar took the blocks of wood and placed them in a wide box. He set the fungal mycellium layer atop the wood and closed it up, setting it in a cool dark cabinet. He then set to work on other, more routine, tasks. After a bell he checked for any sign of progress. There was none to be seen. He was not disappointed, he had not expected it to work this fast. he told himself that there probably WAS progress, but probably only a single layer of cells. He went back to work for another two bells and then broke for the day and went to a nearby cafe for dinner.

He checked it again when he returned and was pleased to find a few hyphae tendrils working their way into the surface of the wood amidst a slight dampness. His smile reflected the anticipation of countless Kelvic trainers, hunters and masters singing his praises for making available the production of a serum that would allow them complete control. He did not bother to imagine what the Kelvics would think of him, those that knew, anyway. They already hated him. He decided to check in the morning. He went back to his room at Tarsin's and slept the sleep of the righteous.

[Inoadar]

Was it the fact of the wood's hardness? He did not know, but there was very little discharge beneath the mycellium layer of the mushroom plate. But there WAS discharge, that was the more important thing. It was only his giddy anticipation, and subsequent disappointment in the degree of progress that brought on his frustration.

From his last attempt, he had retained the expectation to [/i]already[/i] have a pasty mixture of fungal enzymes and neutralized arboreal inhibitors, which he presumed was more than half dissolved cellular material. He wondered if the makers of parchment saw such a texture in their processes. But this time, what discharge there was seemed only milky. In fact, he needed to be careful with collecting it, lest it spill.

A thought occurred to him. If he was right, he would be negating the night's progress, but making a possibly vital discovery. If he was wrong, well, he'd lose only a fraction of the small amount of catalytic discharge he'd amassed so far and be no worse off as far as 'discovery' went. He scraped what liquid from the wood as he could into a glass vial, then took one his sheets of paper, not parchment, and laid it atop the wet area of the wood block. There was the almost immediate wet look that soaked through, but there was little other indication of any reaction.

He scowled and pulled the paper back up to discard it. His eyebrows shot up as he noticed that the wet area remained on the block of wood. He started at the hole in the paper, watching the wet stain slowly spread further out from the center, the newly created edges beading and dripping. He quickly slapped the paper back down on the wood and grabbed another vial. The potency, however, quickly seemed to dilute to the point of ineffectiveness, but for the effort, he had acquired a pudding-like bit of liquid.

He knew that parchment was made from different sources than paper. He tried again with parchment, but there was no noticeable effect. This was extremely puzzling to him. Did the reeds or grasses, or whatever it was used to make parchment, have an innate resistance to fungal invasion? he found this highly unlikely, but had no immediate answer. Equally puzzling was the fact that the liquid discharge he'd just gathered up now seemed to have no potency either. He even got out another block of the same hardwood and poured a puddle on it with what he'd gathered.

Infuriated with the delay to what he thought was already a very slow pace of progress. he simply put the fungal plate back on top of the original block of wood, locked them away in the closet and went back to routine processing of routine products for the rest of the day.

It was difficult to focus though. He got less done than usual that day, due to his mind constantly returning to this seemingly inexplicable lack of results, and puzzling over what could account for it.

[Inoadar]

For several days this frustration continued. He checked the wood block to find the same results. There was never anything thicker than the fluid he had already obtained. The depression in the wood deepened slowly but steadily as the fungus worked its way in. It was doing exactly as it should be doing, but the pasty discharge was not occurring. And anything he tried mixing with the fluid either did nothing but simply get wet, or dissolved, but only ever thickened to the point of the runny pudding he had already achieved several times. Nor was there the telltale "dry leaves" smell. Not from the discharge anyway. But he had kept this result in a small jar, hoping to find some purpose for it.

It happened that the next day he was working on some basic root toxins. He had stripped the skin from a central root during one process and laid them aside. The skin had tiny hair-like protrusions similar to the hyphae filaments beneath the fungus' joint platform base. His mind was still very much on the problem he was having achieving the paste like consistency naturally. He could always add something to thicken it. But that was pointless. It needed to happen naturally, as it had before, when the Kelvic had attacked him in the shop and gotten its blood mixed with the paste.

What had been different that time? He knew that the paste had been weakened by the number of different blendings he had tried. And had ultimately reasoned that it was not just the number of attempted blends, but the variety of them. Each type of matter had a different chemistry and cellular structure. The invasive hyphae adapted and generated an organic catalyst to break it down. By precipitating too many triggered reactions to too many types of matter, he had negated much of the compound's ability to neutralize the innate mutagenic inhibiting factor in any one cellular structure's stability.

This was the very reason he had chosen the hardwood for its superior cellular structural integrity. So the catalytic enzyme would be driven to be as potent as it could be. Then he would let this singular cellular corroding approach stand so as not to dilute its potency by contact with any other additional substances to develop breakdown responses to. But now he was getting nothing. The discharge was never pasty, and it did not become pasty, no matter what he blended it with.

In a fit, he accidentally knocked over the jar with the runny-pudding liquid in it. It spilled across his pile of root casing debris. He cursed and grabbed the end of the skin, lifting it carefully out, so as not to splatter it any further. He was right on the verge of wiping the whole mess into the trash when he noticed that an unlikely "wad" of the liquid had clung to the root skin. It did not smell of dry leaves, but it was of a decidedly pasty consistency.

[Inoadar]

He was a mix of excitement, confusion, impatience and frustration. 'Why is it pasty now?' He wanted to be celebrating a breakthrough, but he didn't know what it was. This was the same runny pudding that had failed to react to anything he'd mixed with it. So it had to be the root that held the secret. But what secret? He'd tried roots already, several of them.

He carried the pasty mass over to his desk and began making notes about the variables and qualities of the roots he'd worked with. He'd tried a variety of root tips, knowing the tip was where the potency of most root-based poisons was found. There were a few that collected in the layer below the skin, or in the core, like many vines. But this was the outside. And only the casing, dirty and fuzzy with root hairs...

Something that had nagged him suddenly burst through. 'The root hairs! THAT'S what's been missing! It all came clear to him now. The one time he'd had his success, he had formed it from the fungus growing in a loose composted soil. He'd reasoned that the blend of various decaying matter had been the reason it was weak. But that was beside the point. When he'd shaken and scraped away the dirt and decayed leaves and such, the little hyphae filaments had remained. The loose matter had not been dense or packed enough to pull the hyphae loose. But the block of wood he was using now was too stout to give them up. They'd torn off every time he'd lifted the mycellial plate from it.

He realized now he'd been too impatient. The wood containing the filaments was what was on the right track. Not the liquid he was gathering when he lifted the block. He should have let that remain, to aid in the softening of the wood. He needed them combined. That was what would form the paste. The last time it had been a blend of that liquid, as generated by contact with the composted matter, and the crushed mycellial layer itself. But the root hairs had been present.

Still, he scowled in doubt. 'They are so tiny, and such a small percentage of the pasty mass. How could they make so much difference?' An idea began to form. 'What if they are still alive? Still poised to break down cell structures? The paste nothing more than a medium to maintain their activity. If that's true...'

He turned back to the closet where the wooden block was. He tapped the affected spot with his finger. It was spongy. He shook his head in amazement. He had never checked this aspect of it. He had only collected the liquid. He went and got a metal spoon and began scraping.

[Inoadar]

The wood was chunky as Inoadar scraped it free, the tiny tendrils of fungal invasion looking like worms or larvae. It was not pasty throughout, but the more solid pieces were set amidst looser matter. He realized he ought to have let it sit a couple more days. He picked through it and withdrew the larger pieces, setting them aside. Even the squishier part had slivers of solidity floating in it. He strained these out and piled them back, with the bigger chunks, into the scraped depression in the wood. He replaced the fungal pad atop it and decided not to check it for several days.

He took the strained mush and placed it in a metal dish. He set this over a burner at a slightly higher gap than usual. He watched it carefully, rolling and kneading it with a stone pestle as it heated. He held a litmus strip over it to gauge when the fumes rising from the mass were steam and when they changed to smoke. At that point he would roll it or spread it and scrape it together to bring new moist areas to bear against the heat. He did not want to burn it, but he wanted to work all the moisture out of it.

After ten or fifteen chimes, he had it dried to a thicker paste. The smell of dry leaves, getting stronger with each stirring, now completely erased the smell of wood. He had it now. He needed only to blend the Kelvic blood he had obtained from the tiger girl he had fought beside on the shore back on the 8th. He took an eyedropper and opened the lid on the vial he had placed the blood in several days before. It hissed as the airtight seal was broken. He did not honestly know how many drops were required per what mass of fungal paste to achieve optimum effect. But for now he just wanted to see any effect at all.

He dripped three drops into the paste and was astounded by the effect. There could be no doubt now. The blood didn't just sit on the surface or run down the side, waiting to be blended in. Nor did it just soak in where it first hit. Within moments of hitting the surface, the entire ball coalesced with the color of the blood until a uniform crimson shade encompassed the entire thing.

Fascinated, he let another drop hit the ball. The darker color raced in streaks around the surface and then, again, spread and faded into a uniform color, a slightly darker crimson than before. He could barely contain himself, he needed to try it our right now. He needed a Kelvic.

It dawned on him that he had missed the Kelvic sale at the KRI by several days now. He cursed, realizing it would be a full season before they would be available again. He was not about to wait that long. Professional pride demanded he learn right now if he had succeeded.

[Inoadar]

Inoadar prepared a dart with a dose containing a more liquified version. He knew this may well be weaker, but then again, the exact mixture was pretty much all that remained to be tested and refined. The more pasty consistency he simply applied to his dagger blade.

He stepped out into the city walks and bridges, scanning around for a likely subject. He knew that he could probably get this done at the Kelvic Research Institute, but he not only didn't want to take the time to go all the way there, he didn't want them to know he'd worked it out. They may just apply some kind of pressure to establish a contract before agreeing to let him test it. It was not that he wouldn't want to do that very thing, but he wanted to negotiate from a position of strength, having already established the formula, NOT from one of coming begging for favors and relying on them to accommodate him.

No, he would simply offer to pay some citizen to allow him to test on his Kelvic slave. It took longer than he expected it to. It wasn't that he had any problem finding anyone with a Kelvic, but many were bonded, and he had real trouble convincing the owners that the concoction wouldn't hurt them.

'Don't think of it as a poison, Ma'am. There are no lasting effects!'... and ...'No, sir, there will be no pain!'... and ...'I'm sorry I called it a "beast", Ma'am, but I've been attacked by them before..and..what?...NO, I didn't deserve it!'

But eventually, he did find a man with a dog Kelvic who seemed to believe that it truly was just in the interest of science. His interest, however, was only in the area of money, and after several rounds of negotiation, Inoadar agreed to pay him 30 gold mizas per test.

After eight tests, and 240 mizas, Inoadar determined that the best he could achieve with the dart-applicable consistency, which was, by necessity, thinner, was a quick acting, but short duration effect. The forced shape changing advanced into the unconsciousness in less time, but the subsequent waking passivity was only 30 to 40 chimes, instead of the full bell or more he got from the thicker, wound applied version. Strangely though, the actual unconsciousness lasted longer with the thinner "dart" formula, extending to nearly five full chimes.

He thanked, and paid, the man, disappointing him by declining his generous offer to be available for any further required testing, checked his notes and began assessing how much he could expect to charge for this new product. Perhaps NOW he would make an appointment to visit the KRI. He would definitely consider getting a Kelvic of his own.

[Abstract]

Grade Awarded!

Inodar

Skills

~ Planning - 2
~ Disguise - 1
~ Herbalism - 1
~ Poison - 2
~ Observation - 2

Lores

~ Poisons: Wildleash Poison

Other

- 240gm

Notes

Errr, I don't know if anyone in Mizahar knows about cells at all, especially on that level of detail. Remember that their scientific knowledge is limited

Otherwise, excellent descriptions!