Toxico Venom
A lethal, viscous dark-green venom harvested from the fang-reservoir of an ancient wyrm/worm skull atop the tower north of Ponterford — the external poison the Guardian of the Woods had been dipping its wooden needle-shards into. The GM dubbed it "Toxico" (a portmanteau of toxic + ichor, also heard "Hoxie"). Because it comes from a magical draconic creature, a gathered bottle reads as a magical item.
Its properties (tested by Lash): a necrotic, marked-for-death poison that festers flesh into bursting pustules; corrosive (rots an iron nail to dust); and, thanks to the wyrm's fire-breathing ancestry, ignitable into a magical toxic flame (harder to start and put out than oil). As a weapon coating it lasts ~10 hits/shots before drying out (best applied just before a fight). It is the raw material for the worm-venom antidote.
Session 39 (acquired)
- Harvested atop the venom tower: ~10–11 bottles in all, after Fenric cracked open the skull's internal reservoir (a "dunking-bucket" deluge). Alongside it the party took 5 dagger-sized wyrm teeth and ~15 lb of loose wyrm-bone for crafting (dreamt into a "dragon sword," lance or "ultra claw").
- The orc medicine woman Rhia Gagra, helped by Lash, reverse-engineered 1 vial → 4 antidotes; the party traded a second vial for a standing stock of 5 "marked-for-death" antidotes (three already spent curing the patient, Warmaiden Yngraf and Silithane).
- Jex earmarked some for poison-tipped arrows; Lash kept a vial for experiments (and abandoned a plan to use it to fake-burn the lumber mill).
Session 40
- The river-poison scheme. Faced with the crocodile man guarding the cave's underground river, the party plots to dump Toxico upstream of the cave and antitoxin downstream, so the villains drink death while the lower-river villages are spared (a poisoned animal/fish as an alternative delivery). Unexecuted, deferred to the raid.
- The wyrm teeth, earmarked. The five draconic fangs harvested with the venom are slated for a claw weapon — the Ponterford blacksmith gives Lash a fitting pattern to forge them into for the "cat man" Fenric.