Recipe: Extended Potion of Inquest Slaying

Recipe: Extended Potion of Inquest Slaying rests on a brittle parchment, the coppery ink of its title curling around an etched skull with an inkwell-like glow. The page bears sun-warmed stains and margins stitched with runes whispered by long-dead apothecaries. Beside the recipe sits a tear-shaped glass bottle, its honey-amber liquid shivering as the lamp light catches it; a cork is pressed and sealed with a crescent-lacquered wax bearing an eye motif, a sign that its contents were meant to be watched, to be trusted in moments of danger. Inside, delicate green motes drift and pulse in time with a hunter’s heartbeat, like tiny lanterns that guide the way through a ruined laboratory. The scent is a layered breath: rosemary at the edge of a heat, burnt sugar lingering like a memory, and something colder—ice in a sealed corridor—that settles on the tongue before the potion is even raised. It speaks of more than alchemy; it speaks of a world where the Inquest’s shadow lingers in crumbled vaults and echoing corridors. The extended potion promises more than a momentary lift: it grants a longer window for potent strikes against those who bear the Inquest sigil, a boon to anyone who hunts relics and relic-hungry factions across map scars and storm-washed paths. When brewed by hands that know the old blends, it steadies a hunter’s breath, sharpens timing, and softens the sting of hurried missteps. In practice, it means you can carve through a squad of inquisitors with a measured cadence, your buffs stacking as you move from corridor to shattered corridor, your aim steadier and your patience longer. The lore hints at a path traveled by a master apothecary who fled after a night when arcane orders clashed in the city’s smoke; they left behind not just reagents, but a whisper—that potent slaying power, in the right hands, can coax truth from ruin. Market life, too, gives this recipe its own arc. In the Saddlebag Exchange, where affordable relics mingle with coveted drops, a copy of the recipe is traded for a handful of silver and a story. I watched a clerk tally a stack of faded sheets, seal one with a wax stamp, and press it into the palm of a trader who swore it would shorten a hunter’s grind for a few evenings. Prices drift with demand: a few silver coins if luck holds, and, when whispers of renewed inquest activity ripple through the docks, a touch more—sometimes a gold or two—when the edge is deemed essential for the night’s work. So the recipe is more than ink and glass; it is a hinge in a larger narrative, a crafted artifact that keeps the hunt alive, offering a moment’s advantage in a world where every minute counts against shadowed foes and old promises.