Is there a forensic toxilcologist in the house...

[DamonJynx]

One of the PC's in my Elric games is playing an assassin. His 'thing' in combat is to sneak up behind is target, which is hopefully unaware (for a +40 Bonus), stab him in the back and deliver a dose of poison from an Envenomed Dagger.

Initially he was creating mundane poisons using the alchemy rules for a basis. However, he wants his poison(s) to have an immediate onset time regardless of the number of conditions; specifically, 1 Poison is unconsciousness, 1 poison is fever, 1 poison has the dumbing & paralysis conditions and the last is an hallucinogenic.

My opinion, based on some very basic and unconfirmed research on the net, is that there are few, if any, poisons that take effect immediately, with the exception perhaps of injected poisons of an inflammatory nature, such as bee stings and other insect bites. These would possibly have an immediate effect; agony, on the location struck with further conditions having a delay period.

Can somebody help me with reasonable delay times? I'm thinking if the target is undertaking low-moderate activity (resting, unhurried walking) the delays for initial onset should be in xDx rounds at best, if the level of activity is strenuous (combat, flight) it should be xDx Combat Actions.

Thoughts?

What about other methods of delivery; Inhalation, Contact and Ingestion?

Thanks in advance,

 

[Bifford]

Even the most venomous of snakes would take 45 minutes to kill you.

From: http://listverse.com/2011/03/30/top-10-most-venomous-snakes/

"Fierce Snake or Inland Taipan.

With an LD/50 of 0.03mg/kg, it is 10 times as venomous as the Mojave Rattlesnake, and 50 times more than the common Cobra. Fortunately, the Inland Taipan is not particularly aggressive and is rarely encountered by humans in the wild. No fatalities have ever been recorded, though it could potentially kill an adult human within 45 minutes."

So I would point him at that page and search engines in general.

And from this page: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2707/whats-the-fastest-acting-most-lethal-poison

(This is a long one, but worth reading! I have taken out as much non-essential text for you as possible here)

"Toxicologists have a blunt way of rating a poison's lethality. Discussed here before, it's called the LD-50, or 50 percent lethal dose - the amount that on average kills half the target critters.

According to my consultant Doug, the most potent venom of any land animal probably belongs to the inland taipan, a central Australian snake. For a 150-pound person, the LD-50 works out to two milligrams - about the weight of five dandelion seeds. The deadliest marine animal.....hook-nosed sea snake or box jellyfish. ...if you're bitten by the blue-ringed octopus or consume too much inexpertly prepared fugu (puffer fish), no antidote can save you.

Both animals employ the same fatal substance, tetrodotoxin, but where the octopus purposely injects it as a venom, killing in minutes, the puffer fish is just poisonous to eat, with digestion metering the dose. If you're one of the 30-plus victims each year, you'll feel numbness and paralysis creep over you, fully aware but unable to do anything except die within four to six hours. The most poisonous animal substance is batrachotoxin, produced by the poison arrow frog of South America. As little as the weight of two grains of table salt will turn your lights out for good.

Ricin poisoning can be had from eating castor beans, the source of castor oil - the symptoms build slowly and gruesomely (basically your arteries plug up), culminating in death in a week or so. If injected or inhaled, a bit of ricin the size of a pin head could kill you. ..... Naturally there is no antidote.

One of the deadliest known substances could be in your pantry now, namely the botulin toxin that causes botulism. Produced by the anaerobic bacterium Clostridium botulinum, this poison is primarily encountered via contaminated food, such as unpasteurized home-canned goods. Botulin is tasteless and odorless - you probably won't know you've consumed the LD-50 of 0.4 billionth of a gram per kilogram of body weight till paralysis sets in.

Among the most insidious human-made poisons is dimethylmercury, which is readily absorbed through the skin even if you're wearing latex gloves. In 1996 Dartmouth chemist Karen Wetterhahn spilled a drop or two on her gloved hand; symptoms appeared about four months later and in ten months she died.

Finally we get to polonium, used to murder Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko last November. Polonium is harder to come by than dimethylmercury but tough to beat for lethality. Due to intense emission of alpha particles from radioactive decay, it has an LD-50 of 10 to 50 billionths of a gram per kilogram of body weight, meaning one gram of vaporized polonium can kill nearly 1.5 million people. Least detectable poison? Some tout deuterium oxide, aka heavy water - though superficially indistinguishable from ordinary water, the extra neutron in each hydrogen nucleus interferes with cell processes, leading to death in weeks, plus the leftovers will chill fission in your atomic pile (the more common use). Downside: the stuff costs about $500 a quart at United Nuclear and you'll need gallons, disqualifying it in my book as a cost-effective agent of death." (Article written by Cecil Adams)


So there you have it - even the most lethal poisons are not instant. Even the Octopus Venom, injected, takes "minutes".

I Hope that all helps you!

Sam / Bifford

 

[Dan True]

Poisons of the cyanide family was used widely in WWI and WWII. Don't they kill in little less than 2 seconds when injected in the mouth?

 

[jux]

Assassin's Apprentice, a novel by Robb Hobb, there is also talk about the craft of assassination. The idea of an assassin is to do the job without getting caught and without evidence of assassination. So there the poisons were also with longer effect. In combat, there should be little use of typical assassins skills.

 

[jux]

Poisons of the cyanide family was used widely in WWI and WWII. Don't they kill in little less than 2 seconds when injected in the mouth?

True, also euthanasia is done with poison, but it is liquid and when drinking it, the heart will stop in less than a minute. But to have that effect, the dose must be quite big. Few drops don't do it.

 

[rust]

Poisons of the cyanide family was used widely in WWI and WWII. Don't they kill in little less than 2 seconds when injected in the mouth?

The problem with cyanide is that it would be extremely difficult to
produce, transport and use under "medieval conditions", because
it is also toxic when inhaled or through skin contact - without gas
mask and latex gloves the assassin would probably have to retire
unvoluntarily rather soon.

 

[DamonJynx]

Very interesting.

I thought as much, having 'immediate' onsets was a bit much, but we are playing a game. Mine in particular is not aiming for any 'realism' as such, I just wanted something fair and reasonable to offer the players - and for me to use against them should the need arise!.

I've kind of worked out a system for doing this tied to the poisons Potency. I'll post my 'article' for critique when it's done.

Watch this space.

Your comments have been most helpful. Thanks guys.

EDIT: The link for the rough draft of the article/houserules I'm writing. Any feedback is welcome. EDIT 2: Updated the onset table to separate Application Types.

Poison Article

 

[rust]

What about other methods of delivery; Inhalation, Contact and Ingestion?

A common Renaissance "poison" was finely ground glass mixed
into the food. While it has no smell or taste and is almost invisi-
ble, so the poor guy testing the food has little chance to spot it,
over time it leads to a severe damage of the stomach and to a
very painful death.

 

[Prime_Evil]

In a realistic setting, poisons should always have a lengthy onset time. The state of medical knowledge in the medieval period meant that there were few effective cures for poisoning, so exposure to poisons was almost invariably fatal - even if it took a few hours to kill the victim. However, if magical healing is available, it might be possible for victims with the right connections to survive exposure to lethal venoms.

However, there is a tradition in fantasy literature of poisons that have an instantaneous effect - both Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith used this trope back in the pulp era. In both cases, the fact that the effects of the poison was extremely swift is remarkable in and of itself. Consider this example from Robert E. Howard's Tower of the Elephant:

'What is that mist?' the Cimmerian asked uneasily.

'Death!' hissed the Nemedian. 'If a wind springs up and blows it back upon us, we must flee over the wall. But no, the wind is still, and now it is dissipating. Wait until it vanishes entirely. To breathe it is death.'

Presently only yellowish shreds hung ghostily in the air; then they were gone, and Taurus motioned his companion forward. They stole toward the bushes, and Conan gasped. Stretched out in the shadows lay five great tawny shapes, the fire of their grim eyes dimmed for ever. A sweetish cloying scent lingered in the atmosphere.

'They died without a sound!' muttered the Cimmerian. 'Taurus, what was that powder?'

'It was made from the black lotus, whose blossoms wave in the lost jungles of Khitai, where only the yellow-skulled priests of Yun dwell. Those blossoms strike dead any who smell of them.'

Conan knelt beside the great forms, assuring himself that they were indeed beyond power of harm. He shook his head; the magic of the exotic lands was mysterious and terrible to the barbarians of the north.

'Why can you not slay the soldiers in the tower in the same way?' he asked.

'Because that was all the powder I possessed. The obtaining of it was a feat which in itself was enough to make me famous among the thieves of the world. I stole it out of a caravan bound for Stygia, and I lifted it, in its cloth-of-gold bag, out of the coils of the great serpent which guarded it, without awaking him.'

If you want to be true to the literary source material, it is OK to introduce a few poisons that are instantaneously lethal - but they should be extremely rare and acquiring access to them should be an adventure in and of itself...

 

[alex_greene]

There is always fire ...

The image of the assassin skulking around all cloak and dagger is something out of the theatre, like ninja soldiers dressed in all-black pyjamas (another theatrical conceit - stage hands were required to dress all in black, and theatregoers are conditioned to accept that people dressed in black in stage do not exist).

Assassination has a somewhat more prosaic image; the assassin walking through the kitchen carrying a sack of root vegetables stops briefly on the way to the root cellar to insert a small posset of lethal herbs in the stew destined for the royal table; lying in wait in his victim's room, he waits till the drugged ale he slipped the victim an hour earlier takes effect, then tips a lit candle onto his victim's bed while the victim sleeps.

If anything, a career assassin - as compared to your standard brute murderer - has to be a master of looking as ordinary as possible, part of the crowd, and a master of making death look like an accident. Remember, forensics is a non-existent art in most fantasy milieux, so it's usually a much easier thing to make it look like the target died from choking on a chicken bone at the banquet table than to explain the marks of that weird fungal infection spreading outward from the knife wound in the dead guy's back.

 

[Mixster]

@Bifford, the porblem with your data is that they grade the poison by their LD-50 index, which is a valuable way to grade toxic by how deadly it is, but it has nothing to do with the onset time.

The tests are done by getting a huge amount of mice of roughly the same size, and applying a dose of known poison to each, the group of mice that has 50% alive and 50% dead from the poison one day after are the denominators for the LD-50 group.

---

The onset time of a poison very much varies.
Arrow Poision or Curareworks by blocking the acetylcholine receptors in the muscles. These receptors, also known as the nicotinerge receptors keep the skeletal muscles running, which are the set of muscle that determine all voluntary ability, and this include the ability to breathe. So the Curare poison will first paralyze all muscles in whatever place it is injected. Then it will move to the Diaphragma, and the result will be asphyxiation.
Such a poison works the instant it comes into contact with the determining muscles, meaning the distance it's injected from the lungs, and the activity of the victim are the determining factors.

If working with snake venom it gets a bit more complicated.
There's two main types of snake venom, cytotoxins and neurotoxins, the latter works like the curare, by blocking specific receptors, and thus inhibiting the signals, these toxins work the instant they get into contact with the target cells. This poison will therefore be quite deadly if distributed via the blood system.
The cytotoxins need ome time to degenerate the cells, but often have a lower LD-50 value.

I'd say that if a person knows what he's doing and can choose wherever he wants to inject the poison, he could pretty much get instantaneous effects.
---
But why would an assassin need this information? An assassin should want to get a target and get away. The reason why Arsenic is called the "king of poisons" isn't because it's fast working or a killer when smeared on blades, but because the symptoms doesn't seem a lot like poisoning, and it can't be tasted and thus can be applied to something a person would eat or drink no matter the amount of food tasters, the one who gets the prime share of the dish gets the arsenic.

 

[alex_greene]

Oh, and this is a fantasy setting. Instant onset poisons can't exist in the real world - even if injected directly into a carotid artery it would take a good part of a Combat Round to reach the brain and begin to take effect - but these alchemical poisons likely could begin to kill instantly because they have a supernatural component that defies what we accept as scientifically plausible.

 

[Loz]

Oh, and this is a fantasy setting. Instant onset poisons can't exist in the real world - even if injected directly into a carotid artery it would take a good part of a Combat Round to reach the brain and begin to take effect - but these alchemical poisons likely could begin to kill instantly because they have a supernatural component that defies what we accept as scientifically plausible.

And bear in mind that a combat round represents 5 seconds of time.

Personally, I think he's asking (if not demanding) for far too much and requires a common-sense check. If you allow insta-kills the character you'll only stoke the fire. Other players will want similar advantages and your assassin will soon start making other outlandish demands that will, really, start to spoil your game. The GM is forced to start pitting the characters against foes especially developed to deal with all their little tricks, and so artificiality and 'encounter inflation' sets-in. I've seen it happen more times than I care to remember.

Resist his demands. He may not like it, but if you relent, the game will eventually suffer.

(Or... something very cruel occurs to me. Is this the same game with the sorcerer with the Reflection rune? Give the assassin insta-kill poison, and make it impossible to resist - he should LOVE that. Get the sorcerer to cast Reflection on someone the assassin is going to backstab - perhaps accidentally. Sit back. Job done... :twisted: )

 

[alex_greene]

Or exercise GM fiat and tell him flat out that instant kill poison doesn't exist in the setting. Decapitation, spear through the heart, iron and lead poisoning from getting shot, stabbed with a sword or whatever: sure, but poisons take time.

However ... you can have incurable poisons ...

The aim of poisoning in an FRPG is not to give someone a poison that kills instantly: it's to provide a poison for which a cure does not exist. Not even a magical cure. The poison road is just to make absolutely sure that the victim dies, without a possibility of recovering. It doesn't matter if it takes 1 Combat Round or a week. Poison is the ultimate act of premeditation.

 

[Mixster]

Oh, and this is a fantasy setting. Instant onset poisons can't exist in the real world - even if injected directly into a carotid artery it would take a good part of a Combat Round to reach the brain and begin to take effect - but these alchemical poisons likely could begin to kill instantly because they have a supernatural component that defies what we accept as scientifically plausible.

5mgs of curare administered to pulmonary artery is pretty much instant paralyzation and then asphyxiation.

A neurotoxin, that blocks the adrenerge receptors, applied to the heart also kills somebody pretty quickly, at least it puts them out of action until they die from it.

So it's not like poisons that stop people from fighting and just leaves them to die in minutes don't exist in the real world.

 

[Hopeless]

OR...

he can do research on his target and immediate family in case they have an allergy which in itself can be used to kill the target and in some cases could be made to look accidental if say they leave evidence that the target themselves were responsible say with a spilled jar of the substance they're allergic to left on a table nearby which is recognisably theirs with no indication that it might have held anything else...

Make it a combination poison so that its not one or even two elements invovled but say three different substances that only combined cause the lethal effect and can even be done to simulate an allergic reaction if handled properly.

In the Belgariad they had a few references to certain poisons that only become deadly if the subject becomes alarmed or furious although in that setting the distributor was usually Nyssan in origin where poison lore was not just a common skill but elevated to an art form where the best poisoners not only knew the best poisons but also the antidotes to avoid dying themselves or offer the best defence to those most threatened and able to pay their fees for their service.

I still say researching the target and their allies and foes would pay more dividends after all when the job is done does he want them chasing him or going after someone else so he can get away scot free?

 

[alex_greene]

It's way too much trouble when a badly-cooked chicken can lay the victim low with lethal food poisoning, or a rusty nail can kill the victim with septicaemia.

 

[DamonJynx]

Thanks for the assist guys.

See Mixster, all that medical study wasn't in vain! :wink:

I'm going to put it to the group that Onset times vary by Potency, application type and victims level of activity. See the link below.

The best he can hope for is to roll extremely well for his Potency which will mean the Poison (when used in combat as described in my OP) will have an onset time of 1D3 Combat Actions.

There will be the odd exception of course, isn't there always? Inflammatory type toxins could cause the Agony condition immediately to the location struck (in light of Mixsters informed post, some of the paralysis types might behave that way as well) and effect the rest of the victim as per the onset delay. it still needs a bit of fine tuning here and there, but it's getting somewhere I believe will be a happy medium between realism and game play.

Poison Article

@Loz,

Yeah this is the same campaign, but the sorcerer you're referring to (not the same guy wanting to use the poisons), after instigating an attack against Maligaunt, despite having failed his Persistence roll and becoming a Cult member and subsequently defeating him (BTW Loz there was no unarmed skill for Maligaunt and he didn't have any defining Runes for the Rune of Dissolution so I made them up, didn't do me much good though!). Got visited in his dreams by Cran Liret (as did the rest of party). Liret didn't take kindly to his favoured servant and high priest being killed, so he sent nightmares to the culprits, most of whom ended up with a temporary insanity. Unfortunately, the sorcerers wasn't so lucky. After trying, with no avail, to destroy the Chaos machine in the subterranean level of the Isle and being attacked by his fellows, he decided to live out the rest of his miserable life (his gift for joining the Cult is Eternal Life) guarding that machine. Cran Liret, on reflection, thought that an ironic punishment.

 

[rust]

While you are at it, take a look at digitalis, too - very nice for
a "death by heart attack" assassination ...

 

[Loz]

Yeah this is the same campaign, but the sorcerer you're referring to (not the same guy wanting to use the poisons), after instigating an attack against Maligaunt, despite having failed his Persistence roll and becoming a Cult member and subsequently defeating him (BTW Loz there was no unarmed skill for Maligaunt and he didn't have any defining Runes for the Rune of Dissolution so I made them up, didn't do me much good though!).

Remember, I wrote that scenario for Chaosium's 'Elric!' rules, which didn't have either an Unarmed skill or Runes in there. That's why they're absent.

Got visited in his dreams by Cran Liret (as did the rest of party). Liret didn't take kindly to his favoured servant and high priest being killed

Actually, he probably wouldn't care... ;-)

so he sent nightmares to the culprits, most of whom ended up with a temporary insanity. Unfortunately, the sorcerers wasn't so lucky. After trying, with no avail, to destroy the Chaos machine in the subterranean level of the Isle and being attacked by his fellows, he decided to live out the rest of his miserable life (his gift for joining the Cult is Eternal Life) guarding that machine. Cran Liret, on reflection, thought that an ironic punishment.

Very fitting. Madness does, indeed, have many colours.