Potions

Creation

Potions are created by harvesting from creatures or cruxes powerful in their associated trait. Three potions of complementary types must be combined, at which point they animate. Placed on some orifice or wound, the compound enters and draws out the elements needed to create more of the dominant potion back into its container, at which point they separate like oil and water and can be returned to their individual containers. This process inflicts serious harm on the source - as such the process is only carried out on corpses, or those bound or willing participants. The caster may also be the source, and most potions available through legitimate channels are created this way.

Uses

Potions grant a temporary surge of power to the imbiber. In addition, magic item creation relies on potions. There are general qualities shared by the six potion types:

• Sanguine potions are deep, ruddy red, and as they increase in level grow brighter, purer red and sluice about on their own accord.
• Ethereal potions seem almost more mist than liquid, roiling and steaming amber vapors.
• Gnostic potions are pale blue, and glow with a faint silvery light. As they increase in level, this glow intensifies and astral motes appear.
• Lucid potions are clear and flow like water, but diffract light oddly and smell of ozone, so it is difficult to confuse the two. At higher levels they act like impossible prisms, casting off multi-colored rays.
• Visceral potions are thick and sludgy, with distinct veins of green and brown twining around each other. At higher levels the mixture seems to crawl about its vessel.
• Umbral potions are slate gray and move more like dust than liquid. At higher levels patterns spontaneously form and dissolve across their surface.