Gaius the Alchemist

*Do not read beyond **this point** if you want to avoid being **spoiled!***

**Gaius the Alchemist** is an expert in the alchemical arts, famed throughout Rivellon and the Isle of Epidicae in particular, where he has a laboratory. He is noted to be a bit of a hermit, living in a modest house in a swamp some distance from Ruben. He is a blue-scaled lizard.

Due to the blight in the area causing the infected to suffer horrific decaying followed by zombification after death, Ensatina Desmognathus and her companions attempted to find Gaius in order to question him and seek his aid in resolving the crisis. The four had determined that the plague had been caused by infected fish in the local fisheries, who had been contaminated by alchemical waste that was being dumped offshore by a local pirate group, noted for their red banners.

After being boarded by the pirates, the pirates' orders were retrieved by Ensatina's group, who realised that Gaius had ordered them to dump the waste offshore in the first place. Thus, they set off to question him at his laboratory in a swamp. After encountering Gaius' "neigbour", Lindsey von Baal, they learned that he was a relatively amicable fellow until a year ago. Making their way to his lab, they were forced to fight a series of horrific bone and alchemical creatures, led by a giant bone spider, which they narrowly managed to defeat.

As they neared his laboratory, they found out that not only was it guarded, but that the area surrounding it was trapped by minefields. Thanks to Ragnar Fastflint's ability to talk to animals, they found out from some feral dogs and the bones nearby that he was a recluse, with only people in large, black armour entering and leaving his house. When leaving the house they dumped corpses out, which the dogs ate. These showed signs of human experimentation, and some had notes by Gaius still attached to their remains.

After defeating the people defending Gaius, including two elf bounty hunters, a guard named Nathana Octavian and another bone creation, the Bone Destroyer, Ensatina's companions forced themselves in. Ensatina herself stayed outside, unwilling to agree to the others' plan in getting information out of Gaius before killing him. Inside the laboratory they found that Gaius did not adhere to good laboratory practice and safety standards, with notes haphazardly discarded everywhere, along with containers of alchemical reagents and waste. They also found more signs of human experimentation, such as torture racks and empty coffins. A note Adelliah of the Axe found suggested that Gaius had "jailors", who were instructed to take a deceased "subject" outside; Gaius apparently hoped the Divines understood, perhaps holding a degree of regret for his actions.

Eventually he was cornered by the group in his room, along with a "pet", a human who acted like a dog in some strange metal harness, whom he called David. Adelliah and Ragnar intimidated him for information, and Gaius was not particularly brave in the face of this. He appeared to be terrified of his jailors, and honestly believed that his waste was being dumped properly by the pirates he hired. The others stated that this was stupid and the waste was being washed up on shore, and Ragnar stated that even dumping waste into the deep sea was a bad idea. Gaius also explained that Dave was another subject of his who had suffered brain damage, and Gaius "accidentally" exchanged his thought processes with that of a dog in an effort to cure him, to Adelliah's particular disgust.

Finally, Gaius got to the matter at hand and explained that Lord Caligo, ruler of the island of Epidicae, had a sick daughter, who he healed but not fully; the jailors were there to make sure he worked on the cure. At this point Ensatina became fed up of waiting outside and forced her entry, noting that Gaius had been meddling in advanced alchemy, healing magic, necromancy and human experimentation, and on seeing him attacked him with fire. Gaius responded by throwing vials of unstable alchemicals at the group, who were trapped in the room's doorway, though Glamon eventually managed to polymorph Gaius into a chicken and Dave slain.

While a chicken, Gaius pleaded for his life, saying that he had a cure for the plague. They let him turn back into a lizard again, with Adelliah and Ragnar threatening him again. With a note they found on him and further questioning, they learned that there was a cure for the blight. Subject 0 (Caligo's daughter), was exposed to Source, and as a result her blood was transformed and became an antidote for the blight. Caligo, however, refused further testing on his daughter, forcing Gaius to do more experiments. When the others questioned him about Dave, Gaius argued that he wasn't allowed to kill people, only for Adelliah to ask why he didn't simply let Dave die and be put out of his misery. The four then shoved Gaius into a cabinet, barring the doors, as Ensatina burnt down the laboratory around them, alchemical reagents exploding, before jumping out of a window.

Adelliah had told Gaius that if he had survived and she saw him again, then she would kill him, but Ensatina and Glamon watched the house after leaving. They saw Gaius, singed and on fire, jump out of the same window they escaped from, and Ensatina burnt him to death. The four left his ashes there as the remains of his house and the area around it exploded as the alchemical reagents, waste and smoke detonated.

Later that night, looking through Gaius' notes, Ensatina realised that Gaius didn't know what he was doing, and ended up turning Caligo's daughter undead by accident. He had also infused her with Source, making her now a voidling and yet also somewhat undead. The disease became more virulent. Ensatina also recreated Gaius' cure from the notes she had, but it required a lot of blood from Caligo's daughter. Privately, while Ensatina would criticise Caligo's actions, she couldn't see issue with refusing Gaius' human experimentation. In her view, Gaius lacked empathy, and that his crimes could not be put down to ignorance or incompetence.