41 Searing, Year 123
[Closed - Solo]
[Part II]
Hilana's first stop was directly to the Umbrium to get to Harataecia's Blood with her barrel of sunstars. The barrel had been Enmeshed with the element of air to lighten its weight and make it easier for the Vastiana to carry it, and she knew that the sunstars were going to be put set up to dry out in order to prepare them to have the toxins removed. It wasn't like with snakes, where one milked venom, sunstars and other invertebrates did not work that way. They would need to be dried, and then put in a solution that allowed them to collect the toxin from the sunstars. If she'd set them up at the citadel, they likely would have been poked and prodded, and Hilana would rather keep her secrets to herself. There was little that the girl wouldn't share, but some of Great-Aunt Eliana's recipes were one of them.
That had been a lesson that had been difficult for her to learn, but learn it she had, and that was that not everyone needed to know everything about you. They didn't need to know what she was doing, they didn't need to know what went into her crafts, and they didn't need to know how to remedy the one of which she was working on right now. In fact, it was far better that they didn't. If one's poisons were easily detected or duplicated, that didn't say much for her, now, did it?
Zosoar let her in when she knocked on the locked door, and Hilana nodded a greeting. "Salve, Zosoar. I got some sunstars," she smiled at her boss. He nodded in kind, indicating his head towards the back room, locking the door behind her as her long skirts swirled around her feet. The Vastiana took the barrel through and set it on the heavy table, opening it and removing the tongs from her rucksack. There was a metal drying rack where each of them could be placed and secured so that they could not try to go anywhere, not that it would matter. They would serve another purpose in this cycle, even if that purpose was to help produce a terrible concoction that would afflict the victims with paralysis.
Hilana fished the squirming starfish out with tongs, and one by one, each of them was secured upside down on the drying rack. Each of their limbs was clamped down with a pair of metal clips. This was a bit slow going, as they very much resisted this treatment, but the Vastiana was determined to get it done. It would have been ideal to have done this process in the Luxium, or even somewhere in the Expanse where there was sunlight, compared to the Umbrium, but she didn't need to broadcast what she was doing and with what. Discretion was a strong part of a poisoner's handiwork, and at least down here in this privacy, there weren't any birds or other predators who might think they had an easy snack waiting for them.
Zosoar came back in to the back room after she had been at it for nearly an hour to inspect her work. The man scrutinized the sunstars, poking a particularly large one with the dogs as it writhed in its bindings before he gave her a nod. That would do, the creatures were not going anywhere. He moved a circular lamp above the rack and touched a rounded crystal on it on it. The lamp began to admit a bright, sun-like light that was enough for Hilana to need to blink a few times to adjust to the light, and when she stuck her hand under it, she was surprised by how it felt like she was back topside. That was impressive. "We'll leave them for a few days. It will take time for them to be ready for the next step. There's more to do out there, though, and some of these plants need to be figured out." She followed him out of the back room - a botanist's work was never done.
Hilana wasn't due back in there for a few days, considering it was a part time job, but she did stop in the next day to check on the sunstars. They were still far too wet, even with the sun-lamp above them. She directed her aether to her Semblance rune on her scalp, and she was able to investigate the aura of the starfish. Not quite. But she could see that the process was underway, and it would take some time. And there were certain things you could not rush, not when you wanted them to be done a certain way to maximize their potential. Patience was a virtue. After talking briefly with Zosoar, she headed back out. There was much to do, and never enough hours in the day to do it... but she liked being busy.
It would be another three days before the sunstars were ready to be processed, and when they were, they were well and truly dried out. Hilana put on the negated gloves, covered the bottom half of her face with the protective mask, and settled down to painstakingly skin the sunstars. She knew from her Aunt that the most toxic parts of them were the skin and the internal gonads. She could have just crushed and ground the entire sunstar; but that would lead to a less pure product and it would not be as strong as it could be with the filler there. That would not do. It might for some that were satisfied with less, or 'good enough', but Hilana had a legacy to uphold, and a legacy of her own to one day make. And it would not be built on shoddy concoctions.
It was a very tedious process, but she was skilled enough with a scalpel that she could dissect the sunstars fairly steadily, getting absorbed into her work. They needed to be skinned first, working the razor-sharp scalpels to remove the dried skin off of what was left of it now that it had been dried, and it was not going to come off in one piece. That was fine, it didn't need to - she would be grinding them down anyway. The pieces of skin went into one bowl, the toxin-producing organs into another, and the rest of the carcass into a third. Once or twice the man came in to inspect her work, but he stayed out of the light and did not interrupt or seek to distract her. She was an industrious thing when she got down to business, and there was no point in disrupting her methods when she was getting it done.
The bowl of skins would go into the portable oven to finish dehydrating, and while they heated up, Hilana turned her attention to the extracted organs. Those went into the mortar before she started crushing them up with the pestle. They did squish a bit, and that was to be expected as they were effectively turned into a paste. She made a few notes in her notebook as she went, before she added a vial of alchemically-treated liquid that would mount the substance in the mortar and effectively suspend and enhance it to adjust the texture of the final concoction. She didn't need to use both, but she would. The mortar was emptied into another bowl, and she cleaned that out to get ready for the skins. The first batch of skins was retrieved from the oven, emptied into the mortar, and a fresh batch on the tray before she ground that down to a fine powder.
A few trays later, she had her components, and so began the weighing and blending. This could have gone different ways - it could have remained a powder, if she used a dry binding agent, like a specific dried and pulverized seaweed, instead of oil that she had with the organs. The final product was thin and oily, faintly yellow in colour, and it was poured into glass vials the size of her finger before being stoppered. But this batch, at least, was going to be done this way. It would better go on weapons, and it could be coated onto other things, like utensils, and it would dry clear. What was done with it once it left the shop was none of her business.
"How did it go?" Lia wanted to know when Hilana returned to the Citadel, with a number of bolts of fabric for her from shops from the Under-Forum. The fabric immediately took up her attention once her sister set it on the table for her to investigate and inspect, as Hilana knew that it would, and she hung up her bag on the hook before pulling Tiaz out of it and letting her big python settle on her shoulders. He had been far more content to stay in her bag, but he didn't at all mind her bare shoulders and arms, settling down there. "Oh, this is nice. I like this--"
"You'll want your aura glasses for some of it," she smiled at her sister. "Someone owed me a favour, so I got some of that for you in exchange." There was no need to say exactly what the favour was. And with Hilana, it could have been a lot of things. They didn't bear mentioning.
It was one of the cardinal rules for poisoners. Don't ask, don't tell.
[Closed - Solo]
[Part II]
Hilana's first stop was directly to the Umbrium to get to Harataecia's Blood with her barrel of sunstars. The barrel had been Enmeshed with the element of air to lighten its weight and make it easier for the Vastiana to carry it, and she knew that the sunstars were going to be put set up to dry out in order to prepare them to have the toxins removed. It wasn't like with snakes, where one milked venom, sunstars and other invertebrates did not work that way. They would need to be dried, and then put in a solution that allowed them to collect the toxin from the sunstars. If she'd set them up at the citadel, they likely would have been poked and prodded, and Hilana would rather keep her secrets to herself. There was little that the girl wouldn't share, but some of Great-Aunt Eliana's recipes were one of them.
That had been a lesson that had been difficult for her to learn, but learn it she had, and that was that not everyone needed to know everything about you. They didn't need to know what she was doing, they didn't need to know what went into her crafts, and they didn't need to know how to remedy the one of which she was working on right now. In fact, it was far better that they didn't. If one's poisons were easily detected or duplicated, that didn't say much for her, now, did it?
Zosoar let her in when she knocked on the locked door, and Hilana nodded a greeting. "Salve, Zosoar. I got some sunstars," she smiled at her boss. He nodded in kind, indicating his head towards the back room, locking the door behind her as her long skirts swirled around her feet. The Vastiana took the barrel through and set it on the heavy table, opening it and removing the tongs from her rucksack. There was a metal drying rack where each of them could be placed and secured so that they could not try to go anywhere, not that it would matter. They would serve another purpose in this cycle, even if that purpose was to help produce a terrible concoction that would afflict the victims with paralysis.
Hilana fished the squirming starfish out with tongs, and one by one, each of them was secured upside down on the drying rack. Each of their limbs was clamped down with a pair of metal clips. This was a bit slow going, as they very much resisted this treatment, but the Vastiana was determined to get it done. It would have been ideal to have done this process in the Luxium, or even somewhere in the Expanse where there was sunlight, compared to the Umbrium, but she didn't need to broadcast what she was doing and with what. Discretion was a strong part of a poisoner's handiwork, and at least down here in this privacy, there weren't any birds or other predators who might think they had an easy snack waiting for them.
Zosoar came back in to the back room after she had been at it for nearly an hour to inspect her work. The man scrutinized the sunstars, poking a particularly large one with the dogs as it writhed in its bindings before he gave her a nod. That would do, the creatures were not going anywhere. He moved a circular lamp above the rack and touched a rounded crystal on it on it. The lamp began to admit a bright, sun-like light that was enough for Hilana to need to blink a few times to adjust to the light, and when she stuck her hand under it, she was surprised by how it felt like she was back topside. That was impressive. "We'll leave them for a few days. It will take time for them to be ready for the next step. There's more to do out there, though, and some of these plants need to be figured out." She followed him out of the back room - a botanist's work was never done.
Hilana wasn't due back in there for a few days, considering it was a part time job, but she did stop in the next day to check on the sunstars. They were still far too wet, even with the sun-lamp above them. She directed her aether to her Semblance rune on her scalp, and she was able to investigate the aura of the starfish. Not quite. But she could see that the process was underway, and it would take some time. And there were certain things you could not rush, not when you wanted them to be done a certain way to maximize their potential. Patience was a virtue. After talking briefly with Zosoar, she headed back out. There was much to do, and never enough hours in the day to do it... but she liked being busy.
It would be another three days before the sunstars were ready to be processed, and when they were, they were well and truly dried out. Hilana put on the negated gloves, covered the bottom half of her face with the protective mask, and settled down to painstakingly skin the sunstars. She knew from her Aunt that the most toxic parts of them were the skin and the internal gonads. She could have just crushed and ground the entire sunstar; but that would lead to a less pure product and it would not be as strong as it could be with the filler there. That would not do. It might for some that were satisfied with less, or 'good enough', but Hilana had a legacy to uphold, and a legacy of her own to one day make. And it would not be built on shoddy concoctions.
It was a very tedious process, but she was skilled enough with a scalpel that she could dissect the sunstars fairly steadily, getting absorbed into her work. They needed to be skinned first, working the razor-sharp scalpels to remove the dried skin off of what was left of it now that it had been dried, and it was not going to come off in one piece. That was fine, it didn't need to - she would be grinding them down anyway. The pieces of skin went into one bowl, the toxin-producing organs into another, and the rest of the carcass into a third. Once or twice the man came in to inspect her work, but he stayed out of the light and did not interrupt or seek to distract her. She was an industrious thing when she got down to business, and there was no point in disrupting her methods when she was getting it done.
The bowl of skins would go into the portable oven to finish dehydrating, and while they heated up, Hilana turned her attention to the extracted organs. Those went into the mortar before she started crushing them up with the pestle. They did squish a bit, and that was to be expected as they were effectively turned into a paste. She made a few notes in her notebook as she went, before she added a vial of alchemically-treated liquid that would mount the substance in the mortar and effectively suspend and enhance it to adjust the texture of the final concoction. She didn't need to use both, but she would. The mortar was emptied into another bowl, and she cleaned that out to get ready for the skins. The first batch of skins was retrieved from the oven, emptied into the mortar, and a fresh batch on the tray before she ground that down to a fine powder.
A few trays later, she had her components, and so began the weighing and blending. This could have gone different ways - it could have remained a powder, if she used a dry binding agent, like a specific dried and pulverized seaweed, instead of oil that she had with the organs. The final product was thin and oily, faintly yellow in colour, and it was poured into glass vials the size of her finger before being stoppered. But this batch, at least, was going to be done this way. It would better go on weapons, and it could be coated onto other things, like utensils, and it would dry clear. What was done with it once it left the shop was none of her business.
***
"How did it go?" Lia wanted to know when Hilana returned to the Citadel, with a number of bolts of fabric for her from shops from the Under-Forum. The fabric immediately took up her attention once her sister set it on the table for her to investigate and inspect, as Hilana knew that it would, and she hung up her bag on the hook before pulling Tiaz out of it and letting her big python settle on her shoulders. He had been far more content to stay in her bag, but he didn't at all mind her bare shoulders and arms, settling down there. "Oh, this is nice. I like this--"
"You'll want your aura glasses for some of it," she smiled at her sister. "Someone owed me a favour, so I got some of that for you in exchange." There was no need to say exactly what the favour was. And with Hilana, it could have been a lot of things. They didn't bear mentioning.
It was one of the cardinal rules for poisoners. Don't ask, don't tell.
