Goody Mooncup's Joy of Potioncraft

Fat Witch by Jonas Jensen

Salutations my tasty poppets!

It is I, Goody Mooncup, here once again to spread my wisdom to all my lovelies. If you are a first time reader of my works, might I also suggest my informative pamphlets: "How Necromancy Saved My Marriage" and "Owls, Howls, and Bowels: Distressing Sounds and How to Cure Them."

Today, I would like to share with you some of the secrets to the wonderful art of Potioncrafting! If you like what you see here today, don't forget to buy my upcoming collection "Joy of Potioncraft: A Compilation of Reliable Reagents"  for the most reasonable price of 20 SP plus tax.

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Ban-Ban Wafers 
Makes about a three dozen wafers

These crisp biscuits contain only about 2 grams of ectoplasm apiece, and are festive enough for a seance table. Be sure to use thick, fresh mucus so the filling will not be runny.

Preheat oven to Hansel and Gretel.

Whisk together thoroughly:
❧1 1/2 cups all-purpose mandrake flour
❧1/3 cup vegepygmy starch
❧1/2 teaspoon salt of hartshorn
❧1/4 teaspoon salt

Beat until well blended:
❧3 1/2 tablespoons unsalted minotaur butter, softened
❧3 tablespoons olive or poppy oil
❧1 tablespoon dryad syrup
❧1/2 cup beet sugar
❧1 large cockatrice egg
❧1/4 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
❧2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
❧1/4 teaspoon almond extract

Stir the flour mixture into the ectoplasm mixture just until combined. With lightly greased hands, pull off pieces of the dough and roll between your palms into 3/4-inch balls; do not make them larger, as the wafers should be small and will puff and spread a bit during baking. Space the balls about 2 inches apart on the sheets. With your thumb, press down the center of each ball to make a large, deep well. Fill the wells with:
About 2/3 cup ectoplam, flavored with sage, apple, fig, or any local forbidden fruit.

Very lightly sprinkle the tops of the wafers with:
2 to 3 tablespoons chopped sliced blanched or unblanched trent nuts

Bake, 1 sheet at a time, until the tops are just barely tinged with brown. Remove the sheets to a rack and let stand until the cookies firm slightly, about 2 minutes. Transfer the wafers to racks to cool.

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These lovely wafers are sure to not only impress your friends, but also banish all the parasitic spirits currently possessing their tattered souls. Only just yesterday, my lovelies, I served these with nightshade tea at my weekly game of bridge and Mistress Belle-chose, bless her black heart, had two imps and host of flies wriggle from her ears after just one wafer!

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Cat's Claret

Makes 10, 1 cup servings

Chill two quarts assassin vine wine.

In a copper pot, heat a 1/2 quart of the same and stir while adding 1/2 cup brown sugar. Mix until sugar has fully dissolved. 

Using mortar and pestle, grind until a fine powder is achieved:

❧1 Tbsp. Cinnamon 

❧1 Tbsp. Ginger

❧1 Tbsp. Grains of Purgatory

❧1 Tbsp. Extra Long Pepper

❧1 Tbsp. Galingale 

❧1 Tbsp. Coriander 

❧1 Tbsp Sweetflag 

❧1 Tbsp. Catnip 

Place one ounce of the powder into cheesecloth and steep in the warm wine before adding to the chilled.

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A multipurpose beverage that will make you the talk of the hamlet! With Galingale to stir up male virility, Sweetflag to induce labor, and Coriander to dispel gas, this delicious concoction has something for everyone. The only trouble, my lovely readers, is that you'll attract every cat in a two mile radius and I haven't quite worked out why!

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Bonnie Beth's Bog Beverage 

Makes 1 sturdy flagon.

With thick leather gloves and a glass or copper container, combine:

❧1 gill aqua regia 

❧1 gill aqua vitae 

❧1 gram of dried mosquito larvae

 Dissolve pearl ash in 100 milligram scoops while mixing with a glass stirrer until the liquid has stopped smoking. Filter through charcoal.

Add resulting liquid to 2 pints of herbal schnaps. Chew one charcoal biscuit and quaff.

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A recipe from my dear cousin Bonnie Beth, this digestif is sure to clear out even the most stubborn intestines! As an added bonus, this delicious concoction allows you to speak with mosquitoes so you won’t  be lonely in your water-closet. 

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These recipes and many more await in "Joy of Potioncraft: A Compilation of Reliable Reagents"! Send your carrier pigeon today and get a free rat's tail bookmark and a signature from yours truly.

Until next time, Stay Tasty, my Lovelies. 

If you Tasty Lovelies out there have a question or concern that has been bothering you, please scratch them into the forehead of a goat skull and bury it in the woods. Each skull is carefully reviewed by our staff of marsh goblins. Goody Mooncup receives many skulls but some are lost in transit or are whisked away by the goblins, and thus she cannot answer everyone. We thank you for understanding.

A Witch Stole My Name!

Witches, amirite?

So you are just doing your adventuring thing, having some fun in a bog or a dungeon or some random cave, and suddenly this ugly mug pops up and steals your name. Shit! You were thinking, oh yeah no way that could happen. After all, someone needs to hear you say it. Or know your Four Causes, right? WRONG. Witches don't need none of your fancy philosophies or your Crisis Energy or your nonsense about Kings. They sit outside of the rules because they are, fundamentally, servants of chaos. Now this doesn't mean they are all evil, nay. They fill an important magical niche in the world, they are the metaphysical exception that proves the law. For how could you ever have the law in the first place without the exception?

In any case, while we were waxing philosophic there, the witch has not only stolen your name but has left you with a new one. How kind. Only, it is something like Zoosmell Stinkpits or Jerkface McGee or (ohgodno) Todd. What're you going to do?! Well there is a variety of options. You could always find her and try to force your name out of them, but really when she already has your name the direct approach is probably foolish. You could go to a Wizard and see if they could somehow restore your name, but good luck there, they'll probably charge you a literal arm and a leg. The best way is to find another Witch. That's right, you heard me, another Witch.

The face of your savior.

You see, Witches do not have names. When they make the pacts with whatever force gives them their power, they sell their name away. This is all well and good until you need to introduce yourself or sign for a package or vote. So, they steal names for their own use and give you their old ones. However, it has, over time, become something of a competition. Each witch wants to have the best name. Now it might be up to individual tastes for some lone witches, but every year at the Witchmoot, bragging rights and respect always go to the witch with the undoubtedly best name. This is why Goldan Gorandi Dallie Kantar Frentsasu Sensinda III has held the title of Archwitch for the past fifteen years. And why the queen of a distant foreign country is named Dumpy Dan.

It might take a few tries before you meet with a witch that gives you a name that you like, especially if you are a Todd. It is all about what is in vogue and sometimes trading down in the hopes of eventually trading up. On the positive side though, you might get a little something from your new name. Escape from a curse bound to your name, cast out a disease that could have sworn it was infesting a Lillian and not a Jim, or even find that your new name has a bit of magic in it!

Sen is a better name than Carrottop, right?

Whenever you meet a witch and she's on the lookout for a new name, roll 4 times on this chart and see what you end up with. Or just look up what celebrities are naming their kids nowadays, eugh....

Roll	First Name	Middle Name	Last Name	Magic?
1	Little	Sweetmeat	Cutlets	Roll on the Supernatural mutation chart!
2	Yunique	Indie	Vidual	Hope you like nose warts! -d4 Charisma
3	Thunder	Thighs	Hamfist	Were your teeth always this crooked? Gain 1d6 bite attack, 50% chance to miscast spells
4	Rage	Boggart	Peyote	This name is cursed! Roll on GM's favorite curse chart!
5	Todd	Plain	No-one	Healed of all curses and diseases
6	Blanket	Apple	Seven	Wanna talk to birds? Well you can now, too bad they mostly just want sum fuk.
7	Mary	Sue	Moonbeam	You weigh as much as a goose! You cannot sink in water and act as though under constant Feather Fall.
8	Flint	Brick	Squat-thrust	You can regenerate 1d6 damage twice a week. You can also do d4 damage to yourself for 1 ration.
9	Mister	Double	Universe	Guess what? Your nipples now glow with the strength of a bullseye lantern. You're welcome.
10	Princess	Glorious	Almighty	Gain 1 magic die and roll for a spell on a list of your choosing. You are now a spellcaster. Woopty-doo.

The Four Causes and How to Exploit Them.

Aristotle held that there were four kinds of answers to "why" questions, these being the Four Causes. The Material Cause, the Formal Cause, the Efficient Cause, and the Final Cause. To fully understand something, one must understand all of its Causes. I'm going to take my limited knowledge of the topic, surely get half of it wrong, and then put it to work for the OSR.

So let's go through the causes using, say, a plain wooden table.

I'm looking at you, bub. 

The Material Cause of the table is the wood that makes it up. Now this might seem simple enough, you are merely naming the raw material of the object. However, on a deeper level, this is implying that the material effect (wood) always had the resulting form (a table) within it all along.

The Formal Cause of the table is its design. Better put by wikipedia it is the "the pattern or form which when present makes matter into a particular type of thing, which we recognize as being of that particular type." This is closely linked to the Theory of Forms (something I will absolutely explore elsewhere) which posits that the things we experience are merely shadows of some truer archetypal Form. Linking back to the Material Cause, the Formal Cause laid inert within the material cause, waiting to be unleashed. 

The Efficient Cause of the table is the carpenter who created it. This is the closest to "cause" as we traditionally know it. The carpenter causes the table, the painter causes the art, the sculptor causes the sculpture. But, keep in mind, that these efficient or agent causes are merely the vector by which the Formal Cause may be made manifest from the Material Cause. When the sculptor chisels a statue from a block of marble, the statue had been within the whole time.

Finally there is the Final Cause. This is the reason for which a thing is done in the first place. The case of the table is fairly simple, its final cause is to be used to dine upon, or to write upon, or to hold a vase of flowers, etc. This comes from the concept of Telos, of an end purpose. The case of the table is a extrinsic telos, it is a final cause imposed by an outside force (in this case humans). It is argued by Aristotle that natural things have an intrinsic telos, a final cause that is present in them all along. The intrinsic telos or Final Cause of an acorn is to grow into an oak. This necessitates either a Prime Mover and/or some kind of Plantonic Forms to assign this. The other causes are determined by the Final Cause, for it is, after a manner, the destiny of the object in question.

Aristotle: Philosopher or 10th level Wizard?!

So lets make this an fit into a RPG.

Many players of RPGs and, I would think, most folks in the OSR community are rather familiar with various magical and supernatural beliefs and systems. One that is very common is the concept of a True Name. In Wizards of Earth Sea, the True Name of an object is entirely how magic is worked. The inhabitants of the Archipelago only give their nicknames, for they know their True Names can be used against them. In various systems of Demonology, you may only command a spirit by knowing its True Name. King Solomon held his power over spirits by having knowledge of the 72 Names of God.

I posit that to absolutely know a True Name is to know its Four Causes. This makes the understanding of inanimate objects significantly easier. This is why any wizard can enchant any simple blade. Material: Steel. Formal: Sharp Weapon. Efficient: Blacksmith. Final: To do harm.

However enchanting something living is more complex and more temporary. You may charm a man, or cause him to grow into a giant, or change him into a toad. However in most cases this effect is temporary. This is because you only hold a portion of that True Name, only a few of the causes. Jim the Fighter's Material Cause is Flesh/Bone (or Clay if you will), his Formal Cause is Man, his Efficient Cause is his Mother and Father, and his Final Cause, who can say? This is easier with beings such as Devils, Angels, and Elementals, for they were crafted for known and documented causes. But for mortals, possessing in them true Free Will, their Final Cause is intricate, changing, and perhaps unknowable except by the greatest of minds.

Why are sheep such a Baleful Polymorph staple?

The Four fits nicely with GLOG's casting mechanic of a max of 4 Magic Dice. Many spells scale in power as you invest more dice, potentially representing a deeper understanding of the fundamental Causes behind the spells and behind the caster's target. Mishaps or Dooms could be caused by a corrupted or insufficient understanding of the Causes, thereby resulting in a casting. Including my spells as "What Ifs" idea, you are trying to force a change or an effect against this universe's Causes, Causes that have been assigned and Causes that show why a thing currently is as it is. By subtly changing them, you work magic, but the universe is by far older and more concrete than any single mage and thus the true Four Causes almost always reassert themselves.

Notice in the description of the Final Cause, I reference the need for Platonic Forms or for a Prime Mover. Well luckily in fantasy that is far easier to deal with. You may have your gods, or in Pathfinder you have Abadar's First Vault, an actual repository of Platonic Forms. In my case, I have the Kings who are at once the Prime Movers of the causes and the incarnations of the Platonic Form of objects all in one.

Perhaps I'll make a Wizard school that deals with this on a meta level. I'm sure you lot can think of a variety of True Name or Words of Power type connection here. But for now I'll just leave you with this image of Aristotle getting ridden by Phyllis.