Jawbone Soup

## Jawbone Soup, or Bone and Root Soup, is an alchemical concoction devised on Enagia and brewed there since the Age of Rebirth.

Jawbone Soup, or Bone and Root soup, is not simply food. It is a powerful transformative elixir brewed on Enagia since time immemorial. It changes the body in accordance with the wishes of the drinker, and can do nearly anything. "Wish" is the operative word, however. The soup fulfills desires but the specifics are unpredictable, even by the Alchemist. One common use of the soup is to end undesired pregnancies that could not be prevented using traditional means. Usually the soup causes a moment of pain in the abdomen, and then the fetus is absorbed into the body and all changes associated with the pregnancy immediately reverse themselves. Sometimes, instead, the pregnant person experiences a change in species or sex, or the pregnancy is pushed immediately to term and the child (not always the same species, or even a related species as the parents at that point) is immediately delivered. On the opposite end of the spectrum someone who desires a child may find a difficult pregnancy becoming easier, or their body may change to make carrying a child possible when before it was not. Spontaneous pregnancy, however, is usually a bad sign (see below, the Most Feared Result).

Recipe

The soup must be brewed over high heat in a pot composed of iron if possible, high quality clay or brass are traditional and effective if not. The base is water which must be drawn from a river or well. Water from the sea, a lake, or collected as rain will not work. Then the following four ingredients are combined in proportions that must be learned perfectly. The soup has a distinctive shade of brown it will assume, and the flames below it will crackle in a specific rhythm, if it has been done correctly.

1. Root vegetable. Only one type of vegetable must be used in any one batch. On Enagia the potato is commonly used, but on Tellaria it is traditional to use carrots. The proportion is the same. Ingredient must be pared into slices with a blade of bone, copper, or high carbon steel. No other materials will do.
2. Mushrooms. Fly Agaric is traditional but other varieties have proven effective, even poisonous ones. At least five individual mushrooms must be used without going above the proportion allowed, and six is better.
3. Salt. What Enagian locals call "Ghost Salt," which is rock salt or sea salt blessed by a shaman or witch, is best. Other salts may be used. Too little and the soup will not brew properly. Too much, and it comes to life.
4. Jawbone. The intact mandible bone of a murderer. It is preferable that the donor die by hanging, drowning, stoning, or live burial, and they must have killed at least one person in cold blood. Other jaws do not work or cause spontaneous animation as above. This is the only ingredient that is not consumed and may be reused. The more often a bone is used, the stronger the soup will be.

After the drinker has had their fill, the remains of the soup must be buried completely in soil, except for the jawbone. The bone must be dried completely either by careful heating or wiping and stored with herbs (preferably garlic) in a dark place. The pot must be cleaned with salt water.

#### The Most Feared Result

If someone gripped by fear with no one firm wish drinks the soup their body will become a doorway for things with stronger wills. This is wish magic, the most dangerous magic in existence, and the fact that mortals cannot normally use it is a blessing. The body becomes a door to another plane, usually the Plane of Shadow or the Abyss, and an inhabitant of that world takes up residence in the flesh. No exorcist can drive it out because, from that moment on, the body belongs to it rightly. It may take seconds or months for the changes, which can include spontaneous pregnancy with a body "ideal" for the creature, to take hold, and the danger someone so possessed presents cannot be understated. Thousands have died because someone without the will to use it drank the soup. Those Alchemists who brew it are very careful now, but every now and then someone slips through who doesn't understand their own desires as well as they think.