SpoilerSo I recently decided to switch my main from Monk to Machinist (Along with a billion other people, I am sure!), but thought that I'd need an RP hook to explain why my character that had generally relied and depended on the fact that they were a strong close-engagement brawler would switch to something less 'hands on' for combat. The character was already mechanically inclined, but lacked a real reason to suddenly change fighting styles; so I ultimately moved toward the idea of poisoning the character and explaining the fighting style change as one necessitated due to the recovery period. The character was written as a Garlean defector, and that she was also using her earnings as a sellsword to help fund resistance forces as well as attempting to weaken the Empire, making her a target as she would have ultimately been seen as a terrorist threat against the Garlean Empire. Long story short, I ultimately had a character made that was a Garlean assassin that was forced to work in Eorzea long enough to procure the materials she needed to create the poison that she needed in order to make the assassination attempt on my main's life. In story, the attempt was a bit of a 'to-do' and the would be assassin managed to escape capture but not before wounding some Brass Blades in her escape and making known the concoction that she had come up with in an attempt to pull off the murder.Since I went to all the effort to come up with this, I figured some people might want to know about the poison that I devised in case they ever wanted to use it for some plot or RP of their own. One of the things that I absolutely wanted was a poison that couldn't just be 'cured' with a hand wave (figuratively and literally) by people using magic. The poison has been given the name "The Ceruleum Death", as one of the ingredients in it is a 'refined' form of Ceruleum. The idea here is that when people use their magic, that is based upon aether manipulation, it causes the ceruleum to become reactive and damages the person who has been poisoned, making attempts to heal via magic both painful and significantly less productive than it should be, to the point that doing so would generally be viewed to be detrimental to the person being healed. What this means is that the person ultimately has to 'tough it out' the old fashioned way, and have treatment provided to them in a more traditional sense.
The primary source of the poison is actually Cobalt; to save you a google search, cobalt poisoning is generally rare due to the amount of exposure you'd need to induce toxicity (generally you suffer from it getting in your lungs, instead), but includes blood thickening, thyroid problems, nerve damage and cardiomyopathy (Your heart enlarges and has difficulty pumping blood). It's a slow, painful, and even if you are recovering has potentially long term side effects that will also weaken you considerably. The poison is actually made by processing Coblyn blood. Coblyns are convenient in that they are great at processing down materials and storing it in their body (the lore even mentions that often times Coblyns are gathered up and smelted due to the heat burning away their bodies and leaving pure metal behind), and they are known to feast on all manner of ores - and even, thanks to a storyline quest, Ceruleum. The idea is that the Coblyns are gorged on the Cobalt and Ceruleum till their bodies are super saturated with it, and they are slaughtered and their blood is used to purify a poison that when ingested (or introduced to the blood directly in some manner) causes cobalt toxicity. The high concentration of both materials causes all sorts of pain and suffering to the target, and even if they survive the long term effects are quite problematic.
Not sure if this sort of plot hook is useful to anyone, but boredom set upon by the introduction of Heavensward's patching led me to share what might ultimately be no use to anyone!