Completed Corruption Continues

[Adriana Sparrow]

Winter 36, 518 AV

She had returned. It had only been a few days since she was last at The Library. Today she came after her errands were finished, she went and visited her brother, fed him and left once more, wanting the rest of the daylight to read before the shadows descended.

The library was as quiet as ever and her book, Common Corruptions was perfectly still in the spot she left it. She sat on the ground, once more, and opened the book to the table of contents. Here the different poison families were listed with their accompanying page number. Last time she learned about Fungus, and today she would have to decide what else she wanted to learn.

There were some words she recognized such as minerals, though it did strike her as odd that a mineral could be poisonous. She passed over that family though, as she wanted to learn about something she could actually have access to. Adriana was no miner, and minerals were much too expensive for the homeless child. This would have no use to her.

She recognized the word Roots, of course, but that's seemed a bit boring, and difficult to find. You cant really see roots. There was one word, and she didn't know what it was, but for some reason it interested her. 'Aquatic'. She flipped to the page, just quickly to see if it was interesting. If not she would simply page back and pick something else.

But as she skimmed the page she realize something, "...made from any kind of material that grows lives or dwells in aquatic, or water, environments." Water? Like the rivers that snaked through the city and the ocean to the direct east? Adriana giggled a bit. Water might be just as common as the Fungus she previously learned about.

Code credit to Antipodes for original base code.

[Adriana Sparrow]

Aquatic. It was a strange word. Obviously it was related to water, but she couldn't quiet figure out how. Well, unless it mattered to the actual poison craft, it didn't matter to her. "Poisons can be extracted from live animals, plants or other materials found in water."

Now that was interesting. Animals and plants she could see getting poison out of. But other materials? Like sand or rocks? She couldn't understand how something not alive could have a poison? Though, when she thought about it, she understood she did not know a lot about this kind of thing and it was better to trust the book. But, honestly, she still didn't know how you can find poison within a non living thing.

"Much like the source, aquatic poisons are numerous and more diverse natural states than other poison families." She was getting a little tired. This section had a lot of words she didn't know the meaning of. She always thought of herself as smarter than the other street rats, and women in general, because of her ability to read. But now Adriana began questioning her intelligence with all these new words. She wondered if her father even knew these kinds of words.

There was something else strange about the one of the words. Next to 'diverse' was a pair of parenthesis, inside them a number. Perhaps it was a page number, Adriana thought. Sticking her finger in her current page, she flipped towards the back of the book, where the number, if it was a page, would have been. After a moment of flipping she found it. It took her a moment to realize what the page was, but then she got it. It looked like a list of words. She skimmed, and realized it was a list of definitions when she came across the words 'Poison Family', a phrase she had learned about the other day in this same book. Quickly, she found the word 'natural state' and beside it the definition. ": the natural form a poison takes, either solid, liquid or gas. States can change throughout the poison creation process. Effects how the poison is stored and delivered"

She read through the helpful definition a few times. Ran it through her head, and flipped back to the Aquatic page and read the word though the original sentence a few times as well. The definition, to her, was not as clear cut as she would have wished, so she needed to fill in the missing pieces with the other involved information, the other sentences. Once she was finished, though, she thought she had figured out the meaning. Basically, as Adriana understood it, natural state is how the poison came in its natural form, could be a solid like a dust or a liquid like oil or water. this 'state' determines how the poison is kept like in a jar or a vial, and how it can be delivered to the victim, through inhalation, like she learned in the Fungus section, or injection or ingestion.

Code credit to Antipodes for original base code.

[Adriana Sparrow]

Although Adriana was interested in poisons now, she still had absolutely no idea when or why she would use them on someone. She had an idea, earlier in the day, that she could make them to kill animals to eat by covering some bait in a poison... which seemed like a good idea at first, but would it then make the animal poisonous to her? Would the poison apply to her after it had been firsthand consumed?

The answers to these questions did not seem to be in this kind of book. So that was probably not an idea she would attempt, even if she could figure out how to actually make a poison with her own hands. For now, she returned to the book.

"One of the most common aquatic plants in the world, is also a source of poison... Common seaweeds contain a trace amount of the poison, which is released when the weed is burned." Adriana may not know that much about water plants, but she certainly knew what an seaweed was. In fact, it was something she often played with as a kid at the beach pretty regularly, since the plant often washed up on shore in large numbers. She hadn't been the the beach in a long time, though.

What she did know is that she had definitely eaten some seaweed before. Mainly when she was a curious kid and didn't think much of it, she sometimes enjoyed the salty taste. She didn't actively eat it, she didn't think it was an actual food. But when you're a very curious and carefree child it wasn't exactly a big deterrent. She couldn't ever recall feeling ill afterwards... And Adriana did not know what 'trace' meant, but she assumed it was a quantity word of some sort. Though the book did say the poison wasn't 'released' until its burnt, so maybe she wouldn't have gotten sick no matter how much she had eaten.

Sure enough, the page continued, "It takes about 1 pound of seaweed to burn enough to gather enough poison to act as a dose." Trace must mean a very small amount. She wondered how much ash she would end up with after 1 pound of weed.

Code credit to Antipodes for original base code.

[Adriana Sparrow]

There was not much more the book said about the seaweed. She read the rest of the page but the only thing she gathered was a bit about the poison itself. "Phantom's Shell, when applied to an injury, causes the victims skin to become more sensitive to pain" It was interesting, the difference in these poisons she was learning about. The fungus poison simply caused vomiting, but this one sounded horrible and near cruel depending on what happened to the victim afterwards.

Adriana was certainly afraid of a lot, and many of those things were people... But she was gathering that poison was not like fighting. She couldn't just turn and hit someone with a poison and they would die. Poison took time. It required patience and placement and planning. It was more like assassination rather than self defense. And she was really only practicing self defense at this point in her life. She was interested in the concept, but she had to admit that at least right now, poison really didn't have a practical use in her life.

Either way, there was certainly no harm in collecting and burning seaweed she came across in the future. She thought about it now, started planning. If she could gather enough seaweed, burn them, and somehow get them into the blod of an animal, then maybe she could test the poison, and therefore her understanding and ability, on a wild animal. Perhaps a rat or something else common in the city. She couldn't see a reason not to do that. At the very least she simply wasted just a tiny bit of time, best case, she learned something dangerous and interesting.

She flipped back to the list of terms in the back of the book. The section on the poison had mentioned the phrase delivery methods when talking about how to delivery the poison to the intended target. She thought she knew what t was talking about, but wanted to make sure just in case.

":the way in which the poison is introduced to the target. There are four delivery methods, ingestion, inhalation, injury and contact." Ah, so she was right on this one. She couldn't remember if ingestion meant to swallow, or to simply get into the body someway, whether through the mouth, or a wound, or whatever, but she figured it was through a wound, with the other methods listed. She looked more at the page before her. If she wanted to really know about this skill, she should probably know what all these words mean too.

Code credit to Antipodes for original base code.

[Madeira Dusk]

Grades Awarded!

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Adriana Sparrow

Skills

• Observation: 1xp
• Poison: 4xp
• Logic: 2xp
• Planning: 1xp

Lores

• Poison Family: Aboreal
• Poison: found in some fruit-bearing trees
• Poison: found in some fruit, sap, bark and leaves
• Toxicity and beside it the definition: the ability of the select poison to affect a target
• Poison: has a shelf life
• Poison: cyanide from apple seeds
• Cyanide: brief overview
• Planning: the practical uses of poison

Awards & Retribution


Notes
Since the first post made it within the challenge time limit, add 1XP to your overall score.