Sinister Potions - Much A-brew About Nothing

Locations make the adventure sometimes. It's all well and good to know what your players are doing, but where they have to go and who they interact with is arguably more important. The NPCs that they interact with are the sources of their gear, their information, and more importantly their conflicts.

In past posts, we've spotlighted locations that your players can go to for assistance and quests from kindly seamstresses and shady, but well meaning criminals. There's room for all kinds of NPCs, and the villain is my personal favourite.

Much A-Brew About Nothing

Don’t stay too long, even if it all looks inviting - Silent Laboratory by Cygames Inc

The alchemist shop at the end of the lane is as common as the greengrocer or leather worker's. The magical becomes somewhat mundane in the world of fantasy RPGs. For some, a shop that offers over the counter potions or common magic items to make manual labour that tiny bit easier is very welcome.

Many undergraduate mages work in stores like this while they study. It's good for their college credit an few wizarding organisations would take an apprentice on without “real world experience”.

One such alchemical shop, the Much A-Brew About Nothing, is nestled down a back street in the quiet end of a bustling town. The whole building has tilted a few degrees, and the wood furnishings across the front have rotted. The building shouldn't be standing, but it is.

The inside is just as grim. The smell of rotting wood mixes with the gargling sound of many beakers and glasses full of colourful liquid. The benches and worktables lining the walls on the front and left side of the store are covered in heavy glass containers filled with viscous liquids. The ones on stands have small flames under them, held and lit from nothing.

The Proprietor

Enid is a face anyone can trust - ‘Kindly Stranger’ by Ryan Pancoast

A very old human-appearing woman runs this store. She shuffles as she walks. Her hair is a mess of wiry white knots and her clothes are covered in stains of her potions. She shuffles about her workshop muttering. She refers to everyone as “my ducky” and is generally amiable. In my games, I called her Enid, but if you take on this location for your fantasy RPGs, feel free to call her whatever you desire.

When she has to interact with anything on or about her workshop, that's where the newts come in. Hundreds of dirty yellow lizards skitter from gaps in the floorboards, crevices in the brick work, or even in gaps in her clothes. The newts clamber over each other and do a lot of her heavy lifting. The little lizards clamber over each other to move her glassware and operate her many tools and utensils.

Enid offers magical wares, potions, and minor enchantments. Compared to the rates offered by other magical shops, she is incredibly cheap, and does her work very quickly. This should make many player characters very eager to come back for more.

The Unusual Brew

one of her many loyal lizards - Rootwalla by Roger Raupp

The more often players return to this store, the more strange things will inevitably become for them. Enid is inclined to give them quests, such as to source particularly rare magic items or reagents for potions. The requests will shift from rare plants and minerals, to living things, or samples of flesh and blood. As a group become less involved or interested in filling her orders, they'll fins that her form becomes monstrous, and the workshop full of lizards becomes a place to battle an insidious witch.

Closing Shop

The suggestions, of an insidious witchy shopkeeper and her aid of many newts, are simply suggestions. If you want to keep her kindly, or to say her wares are from a technological standpoint and she's helped by mechanical mice, then that works too. Now we want to hear from you. How would you use a character like this? What kind of quests would an insidious alchemist dish out? Let us know on our discord server, or the comments below.

Adam Ray contributes much for adventurers here on Apotheosis Studios. As co-founder of fantasticuniverses.com, he writes about card gaming and PC gaming to a corner of the internet he carved out himself. On Youtube, he can be found game mastering for No Ordinary Heroes, or editing the antics on The Hostile Atmosphere. Follow his Twitter @IzzetTinkerer.