Ebb and flow of Economics. (Stonevale/OPEN)

[Nevin]

Nevin was currently sitting outside one of the food shops that was thankfully just across the street from the tavern. He had on his light leather tunic over the long sleeved shirt - this time a simple dark green one that looked like it had seen better days. In front of him was a steaming mug of tea that had been half-consumed, and a few crumbs from some kind of meat pastry. The alchemist hadn't been too particular about asking what went into that meat pastry, and the crotchety woman who was running the food shop had just grunted at him when he ordered it and paid. Beside the wooden plank that served as a serving board was an open text - covered in symbols and mathematical formula as well as normal words; and Nevin was currently flicking back and forth through the pages, his eyes scanning the ink that was set into the paper.

He had managed to find the text in a trader's shop - it was a lucky find for the man, as it seemed to be a treatise on lung ailments, and medicines that were effective in treating them in a variety of ways. The first one listed was, of course, the ever popular and prevalent Miner's Delight tonic, the very same one that Nevin had come to Stonevale already knowing how to brew. While the recipe contained within the pages was different than the one he knew, it was only in a few small ways, though he would have to brew a batch to see if this recipe worked better than his own. No, it was the other formula that were intriguing to him - one that claimed to be able to make children's breathing easier in the night, and helped them get to sleep for example, or a salve that you coated a scarf in to help breathing cold, damp air. These were the kinds of things that alchemists tried their best to keep to themselves - or to their apprentices perhaps. But in any case, no, this had come as a boon to him.

While Nevin could experiment with things on his own, the concoctions he made had an unfortunate tendency towards detrimental effects on the consumer. Thankfully he had been testing almost everything either on himself (with counteragents on hand to prevent a most painful death) or on the rats that seemed to perpetually make their way into his basement, so he hadn't accidentally sold a bad brew to a customer. No, having a set of some formula on hand was incredibly useful - it would give him more wares to sell in his shop, and at the same time it would give him clues as to the ways the plants in this region interacted with each other, so his own experiments would start to go smoother. He shook his hand out from where it had begun to cramp up as he held the book open, and picked up his mug of tea to start sipping at it again before it cooled down too much.

As he did so, he glanced along the road that was, finally, becoming familiar. He'd had a couple of rough goes of things as he went on his small hunting and gathering trips, getting lost a time or two, but now he was at least accustomed to the streets between here and the edge of town enough that he wouldn't end up wandering out on the other side of town...again. It looked like there was a flash of black, black on black that is, and he raised his hand, trying to catch the wandering black-clad Elf's attention.