Category:Empoisonment

Empoisonment is the impairment, the incapacitation, or even the killing of a living creature by the use of poison, which is to say with a substance that is toxic to the creature in question, impeding, damaging or even destroying its biological processes. The corporeal undead may also be susceptible to rare and exceptional substances, these poisons impeding, damaging, or even destroying the necromantic processes constitutive of their continued existence.

Empoisonment is a method by which creatures or individuals, particularly assassins or blackguards, seek to gain an advantage in a fight.

Empoisonment is a method of professional killing that is favoured by some assassins and is practiced by court poisoners. It requires deep pockets however and so is rare, at least outside of Borca.

Poisoning with alcohol is both extremely common and extremely economical. Wilful self-poisoning is in fact the rule. But individuals may also be manipulated into impairing, incapacitating, or even killing themselves with alcohol. Some bards and rogues have a genuine talent for inebriating their victims to be.

Empoisonment can also be an execution: the killing with poison an individual condemned by the state of the commission of a crime. The act of so killing may or may not be intended to be quick and painless. Great skill is required to prepare a reliably lethal poison that can be stocked and efficiently delivered in adverse circumstances. The circumstances of an execution are usually such that shelf life and delivery present little or no problem. Nonetheless, considerable skill is still required on the part of a poisonmaker to prepare a reliably lethal poison. Alternatively, considerable skill is required to acquire a manageable creature that can make an attack with a reliably lethal poison. Either way, an executioner is not presumed by this method of execution.