Alchemical Medicine:

In Everwealth, where leeches compete with lightning in the war against illness, alchemical medicine stands at the uneasy intersection of science, superstition, and desperate hope. Rooted in the practices of the days before The Great Schism, scholars and rogue herbalists, it blends fermented reagents, blood-bound substances, and naturally occurring arcane catalysts into concoctions with wildly unpredictable results. It is not a field of certainty, each remedy a gamble, each dose a pact. Tinctures brewed in rust-stained basins, healing draughts laced with whisperleaf or powdered beastbone, and glowing syrups measured not by weight, but by the phase of the moon, these are the tools of the alchemist-healer. Their trade is equal parts alchemy and cautionary tale, often passed down in whispered receipts that read more like poetry than procedure. Most alchemical cures offer immediate relief but carry long-term risks, many of which are poorly documented or wilfully ignored. The infamous Fleshroot Balm will seal even grievous wounds in minutes, but causes the body to grow small, thorn-like protrusions around the healed area weeks later, leading some to speculate it induces a type of internal plant mimicry. Lanternlung Vapor, an inhaled smoke from powdered luminous bark, is praised for restoring breath to the dying, but many patients later report vivid hallucinations of being followed by burning figures. Some reagents are illegal in major cities like Opulence, but widely used elsewhere; Rotglass Dust, a byproduct of scraping arcane corrosion from ancient relics, is a potent fever suppressant, yet prolonged use often blackens the veins beneath the skin, marking its users with a telltale "deadnet" pattern. And yet, despite its risks, or perhaps because of them, alchemical medicine remains one of the only accessible forms of healing for commoners too far from city-funded physicians or too poor to pay for divine intervention. Traveling sellers, self-taught brewers, and backroom miracle-peddlers ply their trade along roads and alleys, offering vials of hope for the price of a copper, or a finger, or a secret never spoken aloud. Some work wonders. Some kill. But in a land as starved and splintered as Everwealth, that’s often a risk worth taking.