Herbalism and Natural Remedies:

Herbalism in Everwealth is a craft of instinct as much as knowledge. Passed from hand to hand through oral tradition, whispered ritual, and blood-soaked experience, it is the medicine of the forgotten: farmers, wanderers, swamp witches, and aging grandmothers with more stains than letters to their names. True herbalists know the land like a second tongue, and their remedies, though often crude, can soothe, bind, or even reverse ailments when magick and coin are far out of reach. The sap of the frothfern, when boiled with ash and goat’s milk, draws out venom from snake bites. Dogwart, a foul-smelling weed, can be chewed to dull pain or fever. Shadeberry oil is used to reduce swelling, though improper handling has left more than one healer with melted fingers and a coughing fit that never left. Yet, in Everwealth, the same soil that nurtures healing also grows poison. For every honest herb, there is a twinleaf or lookalike that twists the gut or stills the breath. Silvercaps, mistaken often for hearthmoss, can paralyze a child within hours. And the Weeper’s Root, used in mourning salves for calming grief, is known to cause hallucinations of the dead if taken too often, a fact some exploit, bottling visions as if they were cures. In cities, herbal knowledge is often outlawed unless licensed by The Scholar's Guild or regulated by trade syndicates. In rural places, it remains raw and sacred, tied not to science, but to survival, memory, and faith. Natural healing is not romanticized here. It is dirty, uncertain, and deeply regional. What cures in the highlands may kill in the low, and those who dabble without deep training are often mourned before the body stops twitching. Still, in a world where hospitals are rarities and alchemists are either charlatans or shadows, the hedge-healer remains a quiet cornerstone of Everwealth’s survival, welcomed with coins if available, game if not, or simply a desperate knock at the door when the night runs too long.