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Midgard Alchemy: The Fellmire Covenant

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Midgard Alchemy: The Fellmire Covenant

Before Maillon was transported from Bemmea to the Fellmire and before the Fellmire was stricken by Herkest Galbrion’s vampiric fog, it was populated by bog folk. Over centuries, some of these people learned secrets of magic and alchemy from the hags who dwell in the swamp. This led to the formation of the Fellmire Covenant, a tradition of magic users devoted to protecting the people, creatures, and environment of the bogs outside Maillon using their ancient knowledge, magic, and alchemical techniques. Any class can be associated with or join the Fellmire Covenant, but many are druids or warlocks.

Their organization is not very hierarchical. They usually work together in covens of three. A coven will be associated with three other covens which gather each new moon to perform rituals, exchange knowledge and conduct covenant business. Each group of four covens has a superior who guides them, bringing the total number of the group to 13. Once a year, all the covens convene in a secret place in the Fellmire. Their ritual gatherings are done unclothed, which is their tradition and also serves the practical purpose of making it difficult to hide hag marks. The Covenant expels any members found to have fallen under the thrall of a hag.

The Covenant are skilled alchemists and together know many alchemical formulas. They often brew potions in their cauldrons with the entire coven present. Some of their formulas are considered dark and gruesome as they originate with hags who are notorious for their cruelty, but the Covenant seeks to find and substitute more compassionate techniques where they can. Their formulas involve nature, incantations, and their own version of numerology.

Their relationship with the Chemysts of Maillon falls just short of being adversarial. The Covenant regards the Chemysts as being careless to the point of reckless in their treatment of the Fellmire as a dumping ground for magical experiments and waste. The Chemysts in turn are dismissive of the Covenant and typically consider the Fellmire as being uninhabited. Their alchemical styles are far enough apart that they have difficulty exchanging knowledge or techniques with each other in the rare events it occurs to them to collaborate. That said, they do cooperate at times. Chemysts will seek advice from the Covenant about navigating the Fellmire or the properties of its unusual flora and fauna. Covenant members will gather resources by selling wares at the Bottle Market.

Here are some signature formulas known by the Fellmire Covenant, another alchemical themed feat, and a magic item currently in their possession.

Formula: Potion of Clairvoyance

Formula, rare

To make this potion, you need simply follow these instructions:

  • Bring a cauldron of cranberry wine to a simmer inside a tent with a hole in the top. Add further ingredients when you can see the moon through the hole.
  • Add three handfuls, one at a time, of dream lotus seeds to the cauldron. After each handful, stir the pot thirteen times with a birch rod in a counterclockwise direction.
  • Add three live psychedelic toads to the cauldron. Between adding each toad, stir the cauldron thirteen times in a clockwise direction.
  • Slowly stir the cauldron while chanting, inhaling the fumes that will emanate from the mixture. When you begin to see visions forming on the surface of the mixture, cool it with baboon blood.
  • Jar the mixture in one or more potion flasks, adding a hag’s eye to each flask. When the eye dissolves, the potion is ready.

Formula: Potion of Giant Strength

Formula, legendary

To make this potion, you need simply follow these instructions:

  • Slaughter the strongest ram of a flock by decapitating it. Shear it, remove the skin.
  • Wash the skin with boiling water and whey from the milk of a giant goat, and then dry it.
  • Tie off the neck and legs and fill the sack with air and hang it in an area for smoking meats. Then wash it a second time and dry it in the open air until it becomes supple.
  • Fill the sack with giant goat whey. Mix in 13 dung beetles, the heart of a giant devil catfish, and one or more small toes of a true giant.
  • After a week, split open the sack and filter through the whey to find the toes. You can take one sliver of toenail from each toe and add it to a shot of whiskey to make a potion of giant strength of a type corresponding to the type of giant the nail came from.

Moira’s Cauldron

Wonderous Item, rare

This cast iron cauldron has three ogre heads fashioned around the rim, with iron loops through their noses to hang.

You can use an action and speak the command word to cause the cauldron to belch forth a red haze that lightly obscures a 20-foot radius for 10 minutes. Each creature who has bled a drop of blood into the cauldron within the last 24 hours who breaths the haze enters a frenzied state for 1 minute. While frenzied, a creature has advantage on attack rolls that rely on Strength, though attack rolls against the creature have advantage, and they cannot be charmed or frightened.

Once the cauldron has been activated, it can’t be used again until the next dawn.

Feat: Alchemical Enthusiast

You have used so many alchemical substances that you have developed some tricks to using them, and your body chemistry has slightly altered, providing the following benefits:

  • Increase your Constitution or Intelligence score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
  • You can drink potions as a bonus action.
  • With 1 minute of work, using alchemist’s supplies, you prepare and use a small amount of a potion in a special way, such as by injection, mixing a catalyst chemical, or dropping it into your eye with a dropper. You gain the effect of the potion without consuming it. Once this feature has been used on a potion, that potion can’t benefit from this feature again.

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