MelWong/SatchelOfPerfectBenison

The Satchel of Perfect Benison

By MelWong

The Satchel of Perfect Benison</i>\\ Artifact •\\ Commitment: 5 motes (Generic)

Background

The Satchel of Perfect Benison is an item still produced by the latter-day sorceror-healers of the Second Age, oft-found in the hands of Wood Aspect battle-chirugeons and the more esoteric medicinal practitioners of the Realm's courts. The satchel appears to be a bag or purse made from fine black leather, which, acording to the medical annals of the Elder Days, <i>must be tanned from the hide of a non-venomous serpent hunted on a moonless night in the hour of Venus Ascendant. It is either covered with a flap or closes like a hinged purse and its form varies from the shoulder-carried messenger's bag of an outrider medic, to the hand-held, hard square case of a court apothecary.

It invariably contains a number of implements ranging from four to five, depending on the era of its making. The four traditional implements were, in the First Age - an orichalcum cautery-knife, a moonsilver scalpel, a jade mortar and pestle, and a starmetal chest-trumpet. More recent sets produced in the Age of Sorrows sometimes have the addition of a soulsteel lancet.

Besides that, the bag has enough room to hold mundane bandages, poultices and liniments as a healer would need while carrying out his duty. While the supplies will run out with usage or spoil from neglect, the implements and the bag themselves are imperishable due to minor enchantment, and are oddly, rarely separated. They are, in fact, almost always found together in sets, and never apart. Whether it is part of the enchantment that such is so, or just happenstance, is unknown to the savants who plumb the lost lore of the First Age.

Mechanics

It takes five motes to commit to the bag and its set of implements. It will not work unless attuned to, which means it is useless in the hands of a non-Exalted chirugeon. However, in the First Age some of these satchels came with settings for a Hearthstone. If a Hearthstone is placed in the setting, the user may forgo the attunement and commitment process, but must also forgo the benefits granted to him by having the Hearthstone socketed in any other Artifact he may own, including Essence-replenishment, as its flow of Essence is being diverted to power the implements in the bag.

The satchel adds +2 to a given user's Medicine rating. It does not count as part of the user's "natural" dice pool for the purposes of Charms that double or otherwise increase the user's pool. Each of the five implements in the bag grants an Exalt of its appropriate type a bonus. It adds two dice to roll while performing a specific medical procedure, as defined below. Exalts may not commit double the Essence to gain the ability of another type of Exalted as this is an intrinsic power of the satchel, and not just of the specific implement alone.

Solars - Orichalcum Cautery-Knife: +2 dice to stanch bleeding.\\ Lunars - Moonsilver Scalpel: +2 dice to amputations.\\ Dragon-Bloods - Jade Mortar and Pestle: +2 dice to compounding poultices.\\ Sidereals - Starmetal Chest-Trumpet: +2 dice to diagnose illnesses.\\ Abyssals - Soulsteel Lancet: +2 dice for bloodletting.\\

Comments?

commitment 5 for an artifact one that gives a maximum of 4 dice seems a little high to me. It's a nice artifact though... I might drop the commitment to 2 or 3, and suggest it to my Anime Swords-doctor. (It's a pretty equal fusion of Anime Swordsman and Doctor. And it works, strangely enough)