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Re: (TFT) Whats your poison: Poison on claws, weaps etc.
(I didn't really mean to resurrect a dead discussion, it's just that I
got distracted on Wikipedia while writing this, and it ended up
festering in my "Drafts" folder until now.)
I've heard of hunting poisons being derived from poison dart frogs in
Amazonia, the plant wolfsbane (also known as monkshood, or aconite, as
anyone who's read Harry Potter obsessively enough knows) in medieval
Europe, and another plant (Strychnos something-or-other) in Africa.
Snake venom has probably also been used in various places, but that's
just me guessing.
The quickest-acting (ingested) human poison I know of is cyanide,
which kills in a minute or two - certainly quick enough for good
dramatic effect.
If you're going to implement poisoned weapons, it seems like a delayed
effect, by at least a turn, is needed in order to be at all realistic.
More like 20 minutes if the poison was swallowed, though this varies a
lot. Some kinds of mushroom kill you by destroying your liver, which
doesn't produce symptoms for a couple of days. This apparently made
them popular for assasinations - the assasin would be long gone by the
time anyone realized something was wrong.
The most deadly poison, ounce for ounce, is botulinum toxin (Botox, as
it's known today). It's one of a group of poisons that act by
paralyzing all skeletal muscles, including the diaphragm, so the
victim dies of suffocation. Socrates' hemlock and fugu (pufferfish)
poison also do this.
Heavy metals are usually fairly slow-acting, but have been used for
assasinations, especially arsenic.
- Meg
On May 24, 2012, at 6:52 PM, Jay Carlisle wrote:
Squirrels and small monkeys are the targets for the arrows and blowgun
darts as I understand.
I've heard of poisoning the only water supply to a town under siege
but
quick acting weapon stuff for humans is very... Shakespeare I think
the
word is.
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