Remedies, and Treatments:

Once, medicine was an art of certainty. A tonic could be trusted, a salve could soothe, and a fever might break beneath the calm hand of knowledge. Those certainties were buried with The Lost Ages, entombed beneath fire, famine, and the arrogance that mistook mastery for permanence. What endures in Everwealth are the remedies and treatments, the bruised echoes of a craft long unmoored from reason. Bottles without measure, powders without name, the fragile remains of an age that once healed and now only delays decay. They are the kingdom’s last inheritance from a world that understood cause and cure, diluted by centuries of desperation until the difference between the two became a matter of luck and dosage. A remedy is any cure that tries not to kill its user before it takes effect, tinctures of root and soot, draughts brewed from ash and rainwater, ointments thick as pitch that seal more than they heal. Treatments are the crueler cousins, bandages soaked in vinegar to cauterize a wound, poultices that blister the flesh to “draw out corruption,” leeches fattened on the false promise of balance.   Each town swears by its own mixtures, passed through generations of trembling hands. One apothecary’s miracle is another’s poison, yet both sell briskly to those who have no better choice. Before The Great Schism, these concoctions obeyed law and measure; Ingredients were weighed, names recorded, results compared. Now, they are remembered, not understood. What was once science became mimicry, and what was once healing became endurance. A missing page in an old manual can doom a dozen patients; A mistranslated symbol can turn a salve to acid. Still, the people of Everwealth persist, drinking, dabbing, and praying that this mixture will be the one that saves instead of scars. Unlike Alchemy, which meddles with magickal resonance and the invisible forces of creation, remedies and treatments cling to the tangible, roots, smoke, salt, and suffering. Their failures are quieter, but no less deadly. Across the cities and mountain keeps, the same truth festers beneath every infirmary’s door, there are no true cures left in Everwealth, only a thousand ways to bargain with death, and one more night to hope the bargain holds.