Amalgamate

Descend into an underground world where people trade their limbs for others’ to escape a growing curse. Explore strange ecologies and societies that have grown over sunless centuries. Battle strange foes and recruit stranger friends to help tear down the monarchs and see the stars again. ~~~~ Game dev logs and worldbuilding from a lil hand-drawn dark fantasy RPG~~~~

[amalgamate-game-official]

Chalcedony / The Capital

Circles on circles, a city constantly building upon itself, new heights, new bodies, and new investment opportunities, skyscrapers arising and then being cannibalized and fed to the newest project. Vision and clout spend better than Calcar, better than gold, the earliest foundations of the town have been eaten away so much that, if not for the undercity constantly strengthening pillars and holding it up, this ‘last height of humanity’ would surely collapse in on itself.

The outermost rings reek of jealousy, the middle hunger, and the innermost a constant, choking paranoia and fear. The Queensguard and their sectioned headquarters at the edges keeping the town just barely from killing itself. At the center, a staircase, going to the edge of the world.

Only the best of the best can live here, can afford to or be allowed to physically. If your forme and style veer too far from the current standard, merchant or permanent resident, you may wake in the Officer’s waiting room with some better options picked out, if they like you. Or a guard station by the outer limits if they do not.

At the top of it all, the staircase reaches the tip of the Queen’s abode, our Astra Memoria, an inverted complex of crystal and glass, positioned upside down at the height of our tallest cavern. Her and the chosen few keeping so close to the surface, keeping watch on the world above so that once it’s healed, once it’s truly ready for us, she will set us free.

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Gwindel Underground

Every engine must have its fuel, and more than the miners down south keeping the lights lit, more than the dying mages in the greens and the worn fisherfolk breaking themselves for their food, what the Capital needs most to live, is people they can step on just below, and eat when they need to.

Underground even in an Underground Citadel, the Gwin is a sprawling mass of old rebel tunnels and still active sewer works, its people living on trash barges below Chalcedony’s gutter. Some of the folk work pitiful day jobs in the city itself, spiffing themselves up to get stepped on all day, but some spend their whole lives in the open secret that is this town of refuse.

Most piecemeal work is found here, taking a clear strip of skin off yourself, a finger or two of the crystal’s not got yet just to clear some debts. Bits from all different people all slid together to be a replacement arm for some bastard barrister who’s barely got a few spikes. The work is lovely, top of the line, but that’s not enough to get you out of the gutter.

Hell some of the patch limbs they sell up on the proper streets these days are the cleanest jobs you’ve ever seen. Not a spot of Calcar, fully grown, fully formed, and nobody can even find the seams.

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Geodist Coterie

Stagnation is sin, acceptance is avarice.

“The world above lies scorched of life and substance. As we await its rebirth, should we not be rebirthed ourselves? The dretch of first humanity failed its setting and its stars, we must be deserving of more.

Utilize this gift to be greater, not some infinite mirror of singleminded aesthetic but our own personal perfection. All flesh that walks the under earth is but materials for your true sculpting. Your rote birth is simply a blank slate. Make and remake yourselves, grow and shine and hatch out, til this geodic egg of our world below–when we hatch out, when the sun and moon shine upon us again, it will be to a grand kaleidoscope of perfect formes and souls. Chase cellular creativity, chase yourself, your true image formed in flesh. Pain be the only limiter and a cheap one at that.”

The least beloved splinter of the Calcar Church, if they can even be called that at this point, similar only in their mirrored worship for the hidden skies and the Queen herself. Beyond simply embracing Amalgamation, that has become their core binding tenet.

“Change and trade your bodies forever until the earth above falls away again and our stagnant seed can blossom anew under the stars.”

Calcar is not a sign of devotion or divine punishment, it is merely a reminder to advance, again and again, a sign of flesh that no longer serves you. Chase more, find new perfect planks for your Theseus ship sailing through the dull masses.

Some have more strict requirement about what can join themselves, where they can gain the additions to their nervous systems. The majority actually follow in that, a variation of the golden rule, trading limbs with friends and family often, still serving their bodies and chasing their form but with no selfish slant.

Most people of the depths (save for the most devout) actually lean far more towards Geodism than the Calcar Belief in their daily lives. If you point them out to them though, that silent neutral majority is never what they think of.

To all but the most experienced, Geodists are all the worst of themselves, the extremists you see in the papers. Those the Queen has labeled ‘Absolute Geodism”; nightmares of the worst of Officers centuries past, monsters creeping on the edge of town; you must gain your perfect self however you can, however you must. That arm would be better served and loved upon your own shoulder. Care not for the hacked up imperfection that you've left behind.

Though blamed for every outbreak of Mad Amalgamates, very few have ever been brought to punishment. Queensguard are told to stop pursuing them, once they’ve cleared past the edge of town.

Communities can form, out in the condemned caverns, or in ill used back alleys, but usually only with those whose appearance and aesthetic choices align, else wise their groups will skirmish, attacking each other as “pathetic perversions of aesthetics”.

That being said when one of them is under chase, all nearby, and other formes beside, will come to their aid.

When truly desperate for parts, it’s said that Mad Amalgamates, originating from them or not, will sometimes be herded to towns and settlements, the attacks and skirmishes that follow will leave plenty of materials for them to pick through and add to their collection.

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The Greens

“So much life and beauty, and so much misery keeping it all going.”

The ‘Greens’ are a series of interconnected caverns and tunnels constantly flooded with all the moisture, nutrients and power as the regime can muster. Foods of every type known to the underground are grown and processed here, the work constantly boosted by a cycle of young mages who couldn’t buy their way out of the grunt work.

Some caverns host smaller farmworks within artificial ‘seasons’ that never end, whatever setting’s best suited to their target produce. Some grow subsidized ‘nutrient essentials’ like mushrooms that provide the Calciferol we need…once provided by the Sun. Others are run by private companies, who may do whatever they like to gain profit on their land.

Lumberworks transformed into backdrops for Calcedony tourists hunting prey, else growing systems pushed to the maximum. Chained Constellatials and and feeding spells positioned right above their targets, flora and fauna alike growing nonstop, no night, no rest until their harvest. Some issues have been raised, but there’s so much else to worry about…

Mage academies exist here but are highly competitive, and kick students at the slightest grade drop, unless they have connections. Ensuring the best of the best put their all into staying that way, and that the majority of students who enter, must then keep in the Greens and clocking in constantly to settle their loans and have a chance of freeing themselves and settling any elsewhere.

So much energy is continually pumped into the area that new ‘species’ occasionally originate without intention, escaped livestock or the seeds themselves developing into new formes. If they’re useless they’re hunted as a pest, if they’re large enough…What a lovely new advent for limb-harvesting, add them to the stock!

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Limb Type: Descendant

Do NOT Amalgamate. Kill any who attempt.

While the Ascendant and Abstract breathe the natural power of life and arcana, these beings breathe fear and pain, they seek it out, they gorge upon it.

“No ‘species’ of yet that we’ve identified, each unique in its function, forme, and derangements. The category is built of twisted life who would disdain and disgrace every other. The most violent and vile, like a nightmare come crawl up from the depths. Some function in a more physical brutality, dragging creatures of all persuasions into their burning dens and rending every ounce of sweat and blind stress from their prey before consuming them alive, often from the edges inwards. Their strange magic keeping the poor wretch’s heart beating long past the point of natural failure. All suffering they drink in, and then the corpse, and then they make more of themselves.

Sometimes directly, a skinless arm twisting out of their abdomen, teeth sprouting as new armor from their back, their prey incorporated alive-in a manner of speaking. Or else they save up energy, over several kills, and they leave a disgusting little orb of viscera in a piping hot thermal vent. The scent of rot and frying flesh means that there’s an egg, and that you should go back the way you came.”

The first course of action upon encountering is to run, leave any who are downed and if a limb of yours gets fluid contact, either get accessed by an Officer within the first 12 hours or remove it yourself and give it unto the Guards. Should nearby Descendant even be suspected, contact local Queensguard immediately. Specialized crews or hunters of a certain quality will be dispatched to sort out the issue. Do not hunt them on your own, even for vengeance. You’ll just be more fodder for their ranks.

Our one singular solace is that they do not enjoy waterworks or the cooler temperatures, and will seclude themselves to the deeper magmic caverns by choice. All known brood sites have been long sealed and are monitored by remote sigils. Any areas with tunnels reaching above 121 C are immediately tagged and will be investigated by a heat-tolerant surveyor crew. Unlucky bastards.

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Limb Type: Ascendant/Abstract

“It is a strange instinct, to classify and approach all manner of life and beyond, in how best you can break them apart and make use of them.”

If the mages can manipulate a strange and unseen energy, what we call magic, then these beings are powered entirely by it. No spines or venous systems, no blood or hearts just a strange power pumping through their impossible, curving veins. They are energy incarnate, and one day soon we’ll figure out how to use them.

Surveyors have found depictions of the same Ascendant formes in deeper caverns than any outposts have inhabited within record. Some believe this implies a pre-cathedral religion, perhaps even pre-fall. Or maybe it’s just one of these freaks depicting themselves.

Regardless, these formes are the rarest in the depths, only a handful ever noted of each ‘species’. Absurdly powerful but they all choose to flee long before ever attacking, if we give them the chance to run. Amalgamation of their bodies is rarely attempted, though those in the black markets will buy up even rumored parts for great prices just to try.

“I have tried the taste of them, just once. I observed a scuffle between two kindred forms, hid away from the blasts of strange magic and skimmed the wreckage afterwards. I found what I think was a finger of sorts. It went to my half-gone pointer with a bastard (but well tested) stamp and I fell into a strange, sparking fever for days on end, before begging my brother to strike off the whole arm. It’s still in a box by my bed, the whole arm odd-twisted and translucent now. It holds no touch of rot, no sign of decay for the decade now it’s spent in there.”

All types of these carry companions with them, little orbing lights that flutter along and aid them when we attack, healing or taking blows. Perhaps others of their kind, the most numerous beasts assisting the rarer ones, each other species of this category whittled down to a vanishing few…

All creatures of this category once subdued, dead or alive, legally must be turned over to the nearest Queensguard outpost as fast as possible. So the category may be studied and better understood… In fact, there is a specific team of hunters in employ from the Capital, sent to hunt and harvest any they can find, well these beasts and another kind…

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Limb Type: Earthen

We can craft ourselves new perfect pieces, did you know that? So much simpler than sewing together fleshy castoffs to make a single cohesive limb. Such room for creativity, such impossible reach; their crafting can be simple and pure as spinning a pot out of clay, or as beautiful and laborious as carving veins out of marble.

“You can build yourself now, a piece made of kinder minerals, learn to love all crystal and earth that’s not the one tearing you apart-well you can’t build it yourself of course, we have the Craftsfolk for that”

It began with creatures that crawled up from the mines, animated so thoroughly with magics we had never before glimpsed in the world above. No veins, hardly any internal systems, but still functional formes. Creatures of many shapes and locomotions, some malleable as mud, and oh how we wanted those limbs. Bodies once thought impossible, of smoking coal, crystal, hooked hagstone or even lava, somehow they live and somehow now, we can become them.

Even more of a learning curve than the plants, no xylem or phloem, no cells at all, direct nerve to spell contact, maintained for all life, drawing from your own personal energy.

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Limb Type: Metalloid

The greatest scientific advancement of this past century, instant power for those whom cannot comfortably hold magic. A shockwave in your wrist, three drills within your ankle, an arsenal hidden perfectly behind a thin golden veil. The ideal limbs for a surveyor, a fighter, a surgeon; the highest Queensguard built up to be walking tanks. With a shiny enough outer cover they are the new favorite of the capital folk, though they more often forgo the options of weaponry for simple hidden lighters or cubbies for your coke. It hardly matters that you lost your limb from Calcar or a pissy wife if your new one looks this good.

A bastard version of the Metalloid class has existed in the mining companies for a good few centuries: a sigil with the simplest of stamp moves, base ambulating spells with a single trowel or pickaxe affixed to your stump. You can’t feel anything from that kind of ‘limb’, or but that’s probably for the best.

Metalloid beasts do exist, but solely by our own hand. Contraptions in the wild that have slipped away from their crafter’s village, from supervision and intended purpose. From there on you cannot predict the false-beast. They follow jolts in their wires, or have been co-opted by other ‘creatures’ who desire a frame to ambulate. There are no laws against hunting any metal creature under the earth, you may kill and take from them as you will. Though many sad freaks in the engineering guilds tend to build these creatures with a penchant for combat, so come prepared for some nasty tricks.

A metalloid limb crafted for you alone will serve you perfect, last ever long and grant you many electric boons, for a peak market price of course. Attaching a pre-owned limb however….from wandering shambles otherwise, you are truly rolling the dice. You are handed a secret arsenal which you can discover only in the scramble for life or death, some of which may trigger, perchance, against your will.

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Limb Type: Greenery

“How to make a plant grow when the Sun has left us behind… Many starved and choked on ill-thought experiments as we tried to figure that one out. There was life that thrived already in the caves, and fed well its intended inhabitants, but for the utter volume of new human life, we needed to change things fast.”

Lampenflora twisted to greater heights, surviving crop seeds were kept barely alive by the hard-wrought magic that granted us pseudo-solar radiation. Then the small fixes, faster and faster, Constellatials and their grander cousins–built, if rumour is to be believed, from scraps of slain Ascendants–and then we were all farmers again.

Fungi are tucked within this category alongside the obvious plant-folk and other beasts of the brambles... Specifically, those who grow large and angry enough to be worth harvesting, and if the breed is raised right, they are all relatively low cost. Easier than any flesh beasts, they have no inherent need of light, nor food to compete with us or other livestock for. They simply require a fitting substrate to work off of. The first limb farms at all were filled with mushroom creatures of all sorts and formes, but only a few lasted, held limbs that could actually keep strength and fully integrate. Regardless, they are a useful group. Indeed their smaller, stationary cousins provide faint light for most of the underground, and the rare species that do not relish in killing us, can make for a quite stable food source. You do not get far in this new world, distaining the mycons.

Creatures from the developing grow-space (those nutrient-rich moist caverns that would one day be “The Greens”) each species pulled from there helped to push the bounds of what Amalgamation could truly be. Limbs that came already imbued with life power, who kept it, grew it even, across any distance post-severing; and that brought something new too. Magicians loved the little tricks those creatures used to get away: quickening steps or merging with the mossy walls or healing themselves of the wounds just dealt.

Those boons would sometimes come along with their flesh. Sudden incantations with their instincts already honed, adhered to someone who previously had no skill for magic at all. The Greens became the homeland for burgeoning mages soon after, and save a truly worthwhile cause, they are rarely ever permitted to leave it.

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Limb Type: Insectoid

Skitter and crawl, click-clack through the depths. Likely one of the first types of organisms to ever traverse these caverns, beyond the simplest of greenery and microscopic life. These exoskeletal freaks have become quite well adapted to life down here–and big, some have also gotten big. Fine navigators with the faintest light or even none at all, they crawl and dig, wrap the hooked ends of strange feet round the rough edge of a stalagmite. Take one on and you’d be among the best suited for cavern life, but less so for some other aspects…

Insectoid systems need rearranging, workarounds for bodies not especially used to breathing thru their skin. Hemolymphatic systems worked hell on the original stamps, made them change their route-pathing to a new series of checks and choices for the desired limb. It was a far more fitted style of setting, actually adapting to what systems are available where the limb connects. This process allows for a far more quick Amalgamation, mostly safely, even with some new creature that you are perhaps the first to ever see or kill.

Though somewhat in-fashion in parts of the Greens, insectoid limbs typically belie desperation, or moreover that is the stereotype. Perhaps you couldn’t afford your original choice? Some bit of you rotted off faster than expected? Perhaps you just needed those legs for your work in the mines, and company subsidies would only cover what works best for them.

Unless you jump fully into the aesthetic, chase several matching legs and wings for the complete build, then it is seen as almost surely a mistake. Something you had to do rather than chose to. There are some attempting to change that image of it: some naturalists, low mages and the like, perhaps some stranger fashioneers. For now though, a cricket leg is something you gnaw on at the market or crush underfoot, and only ever feed your own blood into when you really really have to.

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Limb Type: Beast

One of the more wide-ranging of the categories, originally just encompassing non-human mammals (those largely being creatures of the old kingdom who survived the call along with us and a select few warm-blooded inhabitants of the depths). Then we widened our view a bit more; essentially all species who can easily integrate with our nervous systems, whose hearts pump red blood that will bow down to ours with a little push.

“We must appreciate all things similar to ourselves, as these caverns expand ever deeper and we come to contact with ever stranger and more wretched beings below.”

The name has long been pushed for a change, given how much of early literature just slings ‘beast’ at anything that moves and tries to kill you. At the very least surveyors long for solid categories between ‘this will attach to your leg easily’ and the exact species and breed in question. Perhaps someday, but for now no queen yet has ever shown interest in changing it.

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Limb Type: Human

This is always the best option of course; even before the fall we could take bits of ourselves to share with others, or occasionally they would be taken against our will… But bodies often reject what is not there to begin with, sometimes they will even reject their own selves. The world above did not prioritize the fixing of that (as magics and certain tonics can now so easily allow) they had little need to, comparatively. The work could only be truly explored once that wider world was gone.

The first Queen had many to work with, broken bodies and sudden amputees crushed between rubble and stalagmites. Some cursed her, called her a witch, but she would save any who permitted to pass under her knife. She fixed up those she could with their own flesh, and when one eventually passed, or decided they could not take the wretchedness of our new home and gave up their breath, she could use those even better.

Your own blood flows into another’s veins, dominating it, wiring it into itself, blood and marrow converts to your own. Flesh be rendered subservient to yours and your central systems now knowing it forevermore, knowing not to attack its own tools. In time your forme shall know the new appendage as its own self, no matter its shape and origin.

But sometimes it is not simply blood to blood that must be mastered, beyond simple types, nerves must be fixt, they run into the stamp burn, convert to their own, nonsynaptic orders, for all the limbs that followed that were not a fellow hominid. All that is your own need not be yours, the impulse to grab, to stab, to grasp, converted to water vascular systems, rotted tendons, twisted twig or even stone. Welcome new flesh in any forms, even devoid of flesh itself, such is the gift of our once and ever Queen.

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Calcar Church

“What a mercy to be one with the earth. The very stone and soil that saved us, the caverns that called out to us, opened their maws to lovingly catch us, our whole wretched nation, as the sky split to fire and consumed the rest of the world.

The earth keeps us here, safe and sound, til the world above reforms and revives again, and one day, when we all are ready, she shall let us go to reach it. But for now she keeps us safe; she scatters us with kisses on and in us, little spots of her devotion, of her sacred people who she shall hold within herself, turn to herself, til she can return us to the care of the Sun.”

To some, Calcar is a blessing and a natural process, a sign of the blessed survivors of humanity. Made of us, ourselves merged with the shapes and language of the earth. You do not scrub away a stigmata, you do not carve out a blessing from your skin and use it as base materialistic capital.

Church officials, and the most truly devout, cannot trim themselves of Calcar ever in their lives, and cannot Amalgamate in any way to lessen the pain and slow the affliction. It is a sign of weakness and impurity to rely on the strength of another. Live in your flesh only, now and forever. The pain is your penance.

The only souls permitted Amalgamation are the lineage of Queens, as it is key to their being and a necessary cruelty. They take on the grand sin of other’s flesh solely for our sake, to protect us from the sick shameless devils out there, crawling and fusing in the wild.

The road to their Grand Chapel is lined with statues, kneeling or reaching to the stars in ecstasy forever. If you live your life in penance, keeping true to yourself and the earth that saved you, you just might have the honor of joining them.

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Tiernokarst

The True Kingdom of the depths, survivors of an apocalypse centuries past and all their brave descendants, surviving in the wreckage. Then growing, changing, devouring all that already lived below, twisting them to their purposes. The last bastion of humanity. Or so they believe.

Established by the first Queen and her followers, the first to accept and understand Amalgamation. Her devotees gained new strength, magic, skills and longevity. Other bands of survivors could not resist the draw of power for long, or if they could they could, they could not hold out once the crystal set in.

The Kingdom in earnest began in the earliest caverns of the Greens. Survivors turning decaying debris and waste into fertilizer,and using new magic, even burning out their souls to fuel it. Mutating what seeds they could scavenge from the collapse, and burning even more life to imitate solar radiation. Desperate echoes of the world above to make it through that first decade or so of starving.

Some independent communities still survive, still denying the Queen and her blessing. Largely in more remote caverns and spread across the wider reaches of the lakes, but they keep to themselves, and live very carefully. If they do not, well, all in Tiernokarst will certainly appreciate that the markets have an influx of cheap, new limbs.

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Caddis

People always disappear when the war-front shifts. Perhaps some of the other side’s soldiers slipped past the front lines and did their worst. A simple, silent tragedy; torn clothes mixed with the ashes of a homestead just burnt to the ground. Maybe some luckier families felt the coming of a turning point, fled into the night with their valuables, to other relations or more neutral climes. Any mystery of war, it’s all the same to their neighbors. Decades of life vanished into nothing overnight, long before the tanks ever arrive. There will always be quiet casualties, and those unable to follow will be the only ones left who bother to look.

Caddis is the sole survivor of the King’s latest massacre. A caravan of war weary commoners, tricked through the door by the promise of a contract. A kind deal from the Monarch to free them from debt. Just bring your goods and yourselves! Not a one left the signing chamber alive. All killed and chopped to useful bits, packed like produce, imported as spare parts to the world below.

Save for one, who slipped by, and jumped of their own accord.

Caddis wakes in the depths, pulled from the water thousands of feet below in an impossible world. A curse laden kingdom that feeds on itself in the hollows of the earth.

They take on the stylings and net-work of the lake folks who pulled them from the waves, and begin the climb. It affords them a low and distanced profile, wafting of fish and labour, carrying a sword-nose blade. It keeps most from looking further, from noticing a form totally untouched by Calcar through all their twenty one years. Unbroken by crystal in a way even the heights of society can never truly manage in this world below. Their skin still kissed by a Sun the whole kingdom thought died long ago. To this new world you’re not meant to exist, keep it that way until your work is done. Revenge is their path–your path now too.

The King ordered them in, the guards locked the door, and the Kingsman was both the trigger and the pull.

Vengeance and the climb are all that is left to guide you, the Capital(s)will burn, the Monarchs will die. Above and below and Caddis will do whatever they must, become whatever they must, to achieve that.

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Stamp Officers

Peers of the newest Queen as she trained, the highest of high artisans, mages who survived the climb up every rank and stayed pure loyal. All may be considered for the next opening of a Stamp Officer. After the pre-existing lineage of the prior holder, of course.

Approved Officers receive thorough training through their priors or the Queen’s own Court on how to adapt and Amalgamate any section of the human forme (and beyond), but as per tradition, only hold the ceremonial stamp for a certain category of limb. Though with rearranging and bit of creativity, that limitation hardly matters.

For the majority of the year they are expected to reside at their designated station, affixing new parts to those who bring proper payment (perhaps dealing their own builds and limb-trade on the side) and standing as the final authority in that region for all matters under the earth. Several times out of the year however, an officer should alternate tours of other zones, ‘keeping the peace’ in outer districts, while the others keep to their stations. Said peace is often very thoroughly kept at the end of their tour, nevermind that the population is a tad bit lower.

At the very peak of their craft (do not consider the mad), holders of the ceremonial stamps hold absolute authority over their limb type and preferred sources. They are expected to craft themselves, those under their care, and their surroundings however their artistry guides them (so long as all acts within ultimately serve the Queen).

For the standard services, some rely on pure capitalist systems or barter, coin spends well, as coin often does. Others though, can be a bit more choosy with their work. Only those who are worthy can get their turn under the knife. And if truly, desperately unworthy, a refusal is often the kinder option. Perhaps they use something other than the piece you intended. Perhaps they take you apart.

But bodies need fixing after all, and what choice do you have? You could travel over days to one of the others, burn coin doubly or more to ask beyond their speciality, and pray beyond prayers that they don't talk to each other often. It's that or a bastard stamp, that could easily kill you outright. Better to bend the knee, work within the system, beg. It's easier, mostly. And if they keep a piece of you they like, well there’s nothing wrong with taking a little off the top.

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Amalgamation

“Tourniquet and carve the flesh, circle down till the blade tastes bone, quickly as you can to clear the way, then saw the relevant osteal. Prime the areas of attachment with rounds of setting stamps, in both the stump and the new appendage, appending and roiling the blood (or reef knotting and issuing proper connector spells should the new flesh lack veins at all) suppress immunity, turn the blood to its master’s. The nerves should writhe and stretch, awaiting their new neighbors. Slide the new self together, ensure the catch and alignment, then a final branding stamp at the skin where both join. Human electricity sparks. The flow begins between them. If you’ve done something wrong you should know shortly.”

How to survive the curse without? An advent of the depths and strange magics to strengthen the body, add to it, trade its worser parts for something else, with someone else. It pushes back the crystal’s spread, and depending on what poor slab of flesh you’ve just merged with your nervous system, you might have just learned some lovely new tricks.

Strapping down the patient was long a core of the process but nowadays paralytic potions, or spells themselves if you have the right parts, are cheap and easy. Sensation blockers are decidedly less so, so consider thoroughly the caliber of your patient before electing to waste one. There’s always whiskey.

“Notice to all Officers and Attending: A change in the circuit. The lower lakes have become prolific for a back alley kind of Amalgamation. Some clever bastard mages pouring sedation, tranq, and bloodstill spells onto the kinds of bonesaws every sailor keeps on their hip to use in processing beasts, and we can't ban those outright without hurting the tax. These plus the rumored ‘home-cast stamps’ floating about down there are cutting quite noticeably into travel taxes and officer profits. Shortly we will be stationing an officer of the more common limbs near an edge town of the lakes. Your commands are thus: Introduce faulty (perchance necrotic with a delay?) stamps of your own make into the underground market, chase down the rogue mages, deliver them to Queensguard, and if a fresh limb comes wandering by, clearly not attached by the proper authorities, feel free to rip it off them.”