[G] [P] [EVENT] 742.04.01 | Odd Assistance

Rhamnus's quarters were filled with humming and whistles as he worked. He had so many pots and bottles full of various substances slowly cooking away on his stove, other bottles, jars, measuring devices and mortars and pestles crowded on his table. For now his model had been carefully moved to a side table in a safe corner of the room, far away from any of his current experiments. He still needed a few ingredients, but he'd sent Bitty off with a note to go fetch the assistant he'd chosen for the day's research.

Sure the young man was a candidate and seemed to enjoy the lazy routine of kitchen delivery, but with R'nya specifically asking him to do this particular task, he wasn't worried about snatching help from other places. Especially help that seemed to have rather interesting and useful talents.

When the harper walked into his quarters, Rhamnus gestured lazily towards a note resting on the table. "Hello, Ulli. I need you to very discreetly fetch those items for me. I've got the names, descriptions of what those should look like, along with where you can find them written down so that you can avoid bothering anybody. And that is really the important part. With how busy the infirmary is I don't want the patients or the healers disturbed with your rummaging. If for some reason you do get caught just tell them you're my assistant. And maybe, if you're clever and quick enough, you might learn something while you're here."

Ulliendis was confused when he received a note from a firelizard asking for his assistance. It didn’t help that it took him a moment to remember who Rhmanus was. Even once he recalled it was the delightfully odd Healer, Ulliendis was inclined to stay where he was. It was his free time and sometimes a boy just wanted to do nothing at all. But curiosity got the best of him and he found himself entering Rhamnus’ room. He quirked a brow at the directness of their meeting and scanned the list left for him.

He glanced up and gave Rhamnus a frown. “Really? You’re sending me to go collect a few items from rooms not that far from you? Items that wouldn’t be odd for you to be picking up, I might add?” He shook his head, not really following the logic but wandered out before a reply was given. Everyone was busy with the muffin attack the other day so he supposed it made some sort of sense and Rhamnus knew a small hint of his skills.

Ulliendis started on his task, grabbing the few easy items without much issue, quietly moving around the infirmary without attracting any attention. If you acted like you belonged, everyone believed you did. It was a bit harder when he didn’t know the area he was infiltrating since it was a sudden job and it required nosing around in the open instead of going to the proper shelf right away, but he seemed to be doing all right.

When it came to the private offices, Ulliendis kept up his look of knowing what he was doing and breezed inside the first one, going right to the cupboard and eventually finding the item requested. But since he was there… he poked around a bit more and pocketed something that seemed interesting and then moved on to the next and final room.

Those items took a bit longer to acquire thanks to a lock but Ulliendis made quick work of it and quietly rifled through the jars until finding the three that were needed. Since this healer liked locks, Ulliendis had to check the drawers on the desk and grinned when they were locked. Were. He poked around in them, finding a few notes that were boring and a few others about patients that raised his brows. That didn’t sound like a good prognosis for that one. Ooh! And this one would make for excellent blackmail if it was ever needed. It was too risky to take the letter but knowing of the affair was enough for now and Ulliendis locked everything back up.

He waved at a Healer as he made his way out of the infirmary and smiled at Rhamnus when he unloaded his haul on the man’s table. “I might have to come back some night. You Healers have all sorts of fun and naughty things.” He poked his nose near a pot and gave a sniff, recoiling a moment later. “What are you working on?”

Rhamnus shrugged as Ulliendis gave his initial objections. "I can't leave my lab unattended, and I don't trust anyone to watch it for me. And really most of the subtlety is for the benefit of the patients. They get antsy over the silliest things, especially when those things have nothing to do with their treatment." He gave the odd many pocketed delivery boy a soft shoo and got back to watching over his lab, mixing ingredients on occasion and adjusting the distance things were held over the flames as needed.

This was all very delicate work, requiring a keen eye and steady hands for some of the more precise measurements and dosages he was trying to blend together. Some of these compounds still needed items from the list, but there were a couple of things Rhamnus could finish up while he waited. By the time Ulliendis returned, he had a small vial of viscous liquid that smelled faintly of sulfur. He frowned as he swirled it around its glass vessel and held it out to his errand boy. "Be very careful of that, take a sniff, and then pass me that vial of vanilla I have over there."

Once he'd gotten the vanilla and the vial back he started mixing them into another container, swirling them both around, eyeing the liquid for any odd reactions, and sniffing it again with a frown before eyeing Ulliendis. "Hm? Oh, research into the attacks for R'nya. Presently I'm trying to find likely candidates for the poison in the muffins, so I would recommend against taking deep breaths around those. I normally focus on drug research and compounding, but right now I'm looking into things which can cause the symptoms afflicting the patients and seeing how they smell and whether that smell can even be masked."

Rhamnus gave his current vial a small shake as he held it up for inspection. "This one, is likely not it. It's a paralytic of sorts, impacts coordination and fine motor control, large dosages make it difficult to breathe, but I am quite certain it would be immediately noticed in a baked good."

Oooh, poison-making was fun! Ulliendis settled in, leaning his elbows against the table, and resting his chin on his palms. This would be an interesting lesson! The Hall needed more interesting lessons. Maybe he'd still be there if they did. No, that wasn't true. He liked most of his classes and learned a lot but the thrill was gone by the time he was asked to start journeying. Which was also odd. For the longest time he hated being in one place and yearned for the life of travel. Then once he had the chance, he didn't want to be uprooted. It was kind of nice settling into the Weyr. Then again, he'd only been there a few months so maybe the wanderlust would kick in again.

"Why are you mixing it with vanilla? Just as a scent masker? Or to help cover the taste?" He knew vanilla could be used for both given its potency but would that work in a recipe? Vanilla wasn't often used in large amounts for most recipes, as far as he knew.

"Wouldn't it make more sense to mix it with cinnamon and nutmeg? They're the ingredients that were easily recognised, right? And are you going to actually make muffins to properly figure it out?" That only seemed like the right thing to do given the muffins had given off no odd smell or taste.

"Will you taste test them as well? I bet you're immune to all sorts of poisons if you play with them a lot. That is a real thing, right? Dosing yourself to help lower the chance of dying sort of thing?" He knew that was true and had started taking small doses of the most common poison Lords would likely use since he was sixteen and the Hall decided he would be a good addition to their spy branch. But Rhamnus didn't need to know how much he knew.

The eager curiosity was something that Rhamnus had been expecting, and he gave Ulliendis a smirk as he took his newly acquired ingredients off to the side so that he could start measuring them out for the next experiment. The questions from the young man were a bit less expected though and they made they Healer pause for a moment as he considered. "Scent and taste are very closely tied. If it doesn't pass a scent test then I know it will fail taste... and nutmeg?"

Rham tilted his head, wondering how the Harper knew about the muffin ingredients. Was it that common of a blend or did he know something? "I may try nutmeg as well for further testing... for now starting simply is better. And I wasn't planning on tasting the muffins. Sometimes people can develop tolerances for toxins, but they can also end up with sensitivities so I would rather not risk it if I don't have to. It's really more of a device used in stories than anything practical."

He certainly wasn't going to mention that he had built up quite a tolerance for most of the things he worked with. That sort of talk encouraged stupid and risky behavior. Rhamnus gestured over to his equipment. "Well you seem curious enough, let me walk you through one of the most basic poisons out there. I'm sure you could probably find this information out on your own, but we'll also be discussing safety and how to treat a victim. Now then, be sure to take notes if you need them, I'm not fond of repetition." With a crack of his knuckles, Rhamnus started to go into proper procedures, walking Ulliendis through how to properly handle the dangerous concoctions safely and how to measure them precisely and properly.

Ulliendis pulled out a small notebook from one of his pockets and dutifully took notes. Mostly. He kind of knew the basics from his time copying requested books in the archives so he decided little doodles of Rhamnus at work would improve everything. He wasn't the most artistic of harpers but his little stylized characters of people were usually popular among his fellow students and now Candidates. So when he was told an instruction, Ulliendis jotted a quick note and then made a little doodle of the Healer and sometimes it even pertained to what he was doing.

When it seemed the lesson was over, Ulliendis gave his instructor applause. "You should teach regularly. Did you ever have that dream or were you always more hands on and in the field?" Ulliendis asked and then quickly flipped back to the first page to jot along the top of the page the date and 'lesson with Healer Rhamnus'. It occured to him that having notes on making a toxin while people died from such things wasn't the smartest move he could make that day.

"Now you blend it with various baking ingredients?" He had noticed the Healer's confusion over the nutmeg. Hadn't that been commonly mentioned in the muffin attack? Maybe only the cinnamon had. Oh dear.

Rhamnus snorted softly as he finished up the batch he was working on and shook his head. "I don't mind teaching someone while I'm doing things, but I've never been interested in teaching for its own sake. I'd rather just work on my research and experiments, or go out in the field and find new materials to test."

He carried the vial back to his other station where he had the vanilla set up. "And yes, blending is the next step. As I mentioned before we'll start with vanilla, and if we can't detect the poison through that we can move on to the other aromatic ingredients, even blend them together. Once we get something that seems a likely candidate we'll try baking it into a cookie to ensure that it's still undetectable after applying heat and going through the cooking process."

As Rhamnus started to blend the toxin with vanilla he glanced over to eye Ulliendis curiously. "You seem to be catching on to things rather quickly... or you already have some familiarity with the subject. You seem the sort that eavesdrops and pays attention, what do you think about the poisonings that have been happening? Have you heard any interesting theories?" Rhamnus was curious about what someone who wasn't a healer would think, and if there were any interesting rumors he'd missed.

Ulliendis gave a little shrug and then a wide grin at Rhamnus’ observations. “I’m a Harper. I did my time in the archives like everyone else in that Hall. I copied some medical notes a few times and as boring as that can be, some of it does start to stick anyway. I’m just lucky I’m not the guy that got stuck being the copy master for ‘Fifty Shades of Bronze’. Do you know how many he’s done? He has that shit memorized now!” Ulliendis gave an exaggerated shudder at the thought. It was really a badly written story with a lot of plot holes but the Holders ate that shit up and more copies had been requested.

His joking nature slid aside as he studied the Healer and why he was so interested in knowing what he knew. It wasn’t like a motive would really help figure out the poison used, right? Maybe it was simply because Healers were stuck in the infirmary most days when the world wasn’t imploding around them and Rhamnus was now further entrenched. “It’s all pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Ulliendis started, purposely ignoring the comment about being the sort that eavesdropped or paid attention. “Goldriders have been the most targeted, followed by bronzeriders. I think some of the bronzeriders just happened to end up in the way of the targeted goldrider when you look at how many were mates or linked in some way.”

But the questions that remained were the trickier ones. “But why? Some think it’s a disgruntled former Candidate that aged out, maybe working with some drudges or others that aged out to help attack so many in different locations.” That did seem possible but only if they did have a network. It was far too co-ordinated and maybe a dragonrider or two were involved. “My theory is survival of the fittest. Maybe the brownriders have had enough of being shamed and they’re taking back power. Some of the golds haven’t been attacked or their mates were instead so maybe they’re deemed women that will help them. Maybe they’re in on it.” So many possibilities! Ulliendis’ eyes shone with excitement at what it could be.

"Fifty Shades of Bronze," Rhamnus repeated incredulously. It wasn't a book he'd read on his own but he had heard it mentioned by some rather chatty patients who worked through their nerves at having to see a healer by talking about anything and everything. "Well I certainly don't envy the man who has to copy that particular story over and over again."

Rhamnus took a sniff of the poisoned vanilla mixture and nodded to himself when he couldn't really detect anything particularly noticeable. He held it out for Ulliendis to take a brief whiff of before adding some other aromatic ingredients and then setting that aside to sit for a moment as he studied the other man. "Yes, yes, shiny golden hides being targeted is rather obvious. Though I suppose it also makes sense that some of the bronzeriders could have just been accidental targets through association."

He scratched his chin as he considered the possible motives that Ulliendis presented. "Interesting. So a former Candidate... without a dragon they would definitely need help though. I'd think it would be odd if that many drudges were participating, but maybe their leader is particularly charismatic." Rhamnus raised an eyebrow at the other theory that was presented though. "Survival of the fittest? So the ones who managed to dodge were just distractions then? Something to throw people off of the scent. That is quite the level of deception, though I do remember a time when brownriders were certainly capable of that."

These were very interesting theories, and Rhamnus found that he rather liked them. He took another whiff of his concoction before grabbing some ingredients to make a small batch of cookies. He talked as he worked, "I think you're onto something with the brownriders. And with some golds secretly cooperating with them. They would have the most to gain after all."

Ulliendis gave a shrug as he watched Rhamnus start prepping to make cookies. It was fascinating that the man was even doing that step on his own instead of asking a drudge to do it. But given there would be toxins involved, perhaps that was wise in the end. Besides, maybe the healer also liked baking in his spare time. Who was he to judge? “I’m actually surprised more people aren’t pointing at brownriders. I’ve only been here a few months and I’ve picked up some strings of conversations that show some still aren’t happy with their new place in life.”

From what his studying had shown him, brownriders typically seemed to be rather jealous and cranky sorts. They were so close to being a special shiny hide but missed out on any real power. And then all that nasty business down in Katila ended up earning brownriders what seemed to be a permanent mistrust where they weren’t even allowed Weyrsecond anymore. All because of one man, really. Ulliendis was sure there were others that helped add to the demotion but it had to have inspired a lot of rage and a desire for payback in at least one person.

“It’s possible that some of the goldriders that were attacked and survived or had their bronzerider mates take the hit are the ones in on it. What better way to have eyes directed elsewhere? Easy to believe goldriders are just as sick of the crap bronzeriders pull.” Maybe some didn’t even like their mates or were mated via their dragons. He needed to work on the theory a bit more but he felt it was a strong one overall and Rhamnus easily bought into it as well.