Make Salve (sage ability)

Make Salve is an expert-status sage ability in the studies of Alchemy and Medicine, allowing the character to prepare batches of healing salve for use. As most of the ingredients needed are commercially available, the principle difficulty is the collection and preparation of a precise red nettle leaf, which grows in high, dry places in most parts of the world. Knowing how to make salve permits personal harvesting of these herbs, but individuals who possess the sage abilities harvest herbs or cultivate ferns & mosses can also obtain these self-same nettles, thus greatly shortening the time needed to prepare a batch of healing salve. In any case, it requires a single individual a month to gather sufficient nettles for the creation of the recipe below.

To create a batch, the character must have access to a laboratory, with sufficient space for grinding, heating, drying and enclosing the materials without interruption. The overall process is involved and in some parts tedious, requiring a week's time and an apprentice of sorts with a minimum of 10 points of knowledge in alchemy or magic fabrication, specifically as a magewright's prentice.

Preparation

The recipe for a batch of healing salve is as follows:

Ingredients:

• 1 dram olive oil (60 drops)
• 3 lb., 12 oz. powdered mintleaf
• 3 lb., 12 oz. crushed nettle root
• 3 lb., 12 oz. myrrh
• 7 lb., 8 oz. aloe
• 60 vials holy water (4 fl.oz.)
• 60 carat ground opal

At the outset, the weight of fresh mintleaf and red nettle root must be cleaned, dried and reduced separately into powders suitable for the work, this requiring considerable effort while the overall mass is carefully mixed with precise amounts of oil to keep the vegetable matter from drying out overmuch. While dry, powdered mintleaf is fine for making a single salve, by the recipe expressed on the healing salve page, for the large amounts of the batch, the mint leaf should be fresh; the nettle root is lightly baked before crushing to permit a better powdered effect. This latter allows the large amount to be stirred in a large crucible until the earthy brown tone is obtained.

The surface of the crucible should be comfortably warm to the touch, but not allowed to return to room temperature before the holy water is added. A silver or bone rod must be used to stir the mixture at this time, allowing the divine energy of the water to transfer itself throughout the blend. Once this is done, with the character having that knowledge by the sage ability, the whole material is put aside and allowed to settle for a day. The process to this point requires typically four days of stirring and turning over of the materials.

The opal must be crushed in an iron press until firmly granular; as ever, this should be rolled into the myrrh and aloe; ideally, sixty individual balls are made and arranged, generally into four pans; a small divot is created into the top of each. This takes about a day. The mint-nettle mixture is spooned into this divot, which should begin to lightly smoke within an hour or two. Once this is witnessed, all the balls must be removed to an enclosed, dark place, where they remain for 48 hours. When opened, the pans should be full of healing salve, a nominal amount of which must be spread over parchment or cloth so that it may be applied or licked from the surface.

The overall yield is 45 to 60 healing salves, which is to say that some number up to 15 have been lost. The yield receives a +1 adjustment per 3 points of knowledge the character has above 60 in either medicine or alchemy; inevitably, "perfect" recipes of exactly sixty salves will be achieved more often, but never more than 60 are made by this process. It is not possible for one person to work on two batches at the same time. A week's rest must be taken after the creation of one batch before attempting another.

See Founding a laboratory