Recipe: Extended Potion of Undead Slaying

Recipe: Extended Potion of Undead Slaying lies on the counter like a fragment of a storm-tossed sea, a parchment slab pale as bone with ink that glints when the oil-lanterns swing. The handwriting curves and tightens, as if the scribe pressed the quill through fear and fascination in equal measure. A round seal of deep red wax holds the bundle together, stamped with a skeletal hand that clutches a thin bottle, as if guarding a well-timed secret. When you lift it, the texture changes under your fingers: the paper is fibrous and a little grainy, the edges browned by travel, the surface faintly resistant as if the recipe itself had learned to endure every crossing. There’s a trace of resin on the lawed script, a herbaceous scent that hints at midnight gardens and the ash of burned runes. The illustration inside is a careful little map of ingredients—ash-gray powder, a drop of moonwater, a shard of bone that gleams with a pale luster—each icon whispering its part in a method that begins with breath and ends with a spark. This is not merely a set of instructions; it feels like a memoir told in signs. The first line speaks of long caravans and the quiet fear that follows a necromancer’s march, of alchemists who learned to pair common woods with uncommon courage. The author’s hand hints at a pact—to keep the undead at a respectful distance, not by bravado alone but by a patient craft that reads the world’s necrotic whispers and renders them plain to the eye. The potion’s lore threads through ruined cities and fortified tombs where lanterns hiss and shadows sigh. It’s said that those who carry this recipe understand the balance between haste and patience, between the lash of a blade and the brand of a cure, and that the potion’s Extended touch lasts longer than its shorter kin, granting a hunter’s resolve to strike with precision against undead’s brittle armor. In practice, the extended brew becomes a quiet ally on longer expeditions, especially when the road winds through crumbling mausoleums and echoing halls where revenants loom and syllables of warding hum in the air. The potion’s effect—an amplified, durable mitigation of necrotic resistances—lets a party press forward, turning what could be a slow, anxious siege into a measured push toward daylight. It invites a certain ritual: you plant your feet, you steady your breath, you drink, and you walk through a corridor of cold stone with the certainty that the night won’t swallow you whole as you answer the undead’s pale challenge. Prices drift through the market like sea fog, gliding from stall to stall on the backs of whispers and memory. In conversations threaded through Saddlebag Exchange, the recipe surfaces with a nod and a quiet bargaining, a reminder that some power is earned as much as learned. A trader will point to a line of copper and silver that glitters in lamplight, explaining that the value lies not only in the recipe but in the road-worn trust of the buyer who will carry it into the next conflict with care. The parchment, after all, is a compass as much as a guide—a map toward safer skies when the night refuses to yield. And so the Extended Potion of Undead Slaying keeps moving, tucked into a satchel, its story growing longer as it travels from hand to hand, always ready for the next passage through shadow.