Name: Cultivator’s Breath Description: Cultivator’s Breath is a special substance that can sometimes be found in Precursor ruins; it typically appears as a cloud of dense gas that floats in a clump together, glowing a dim blue-green color (and sometimes other colors). Cultivator’s Breath is a metapharmaceutical drug that is capable of storing and preserving memories, allowing them to be written and read to and from the gas by breathing it in and exhaling it. The gas is notably denser than air, causing it to float lightly above the ground, and can easily be scooped into one’s hands or placed into a vessel. Abilities: When breathed in, the user begins to experience vivid sensory hallucinations within 15 seconds of inhalation, affecting all five senses. These hallucinations are vivid, photographic flashes of the memories stored into the Breath; how vivid they are depends on the strength of the memory imprinted into the Breath, and the hallucinations can also include scenes and conversations. The breath then begins to cycle from the brain and then through the rest of the body, before coalescing back into the user’s lungs and being exhaled along with the body’s exhaled carbon dioxide. If the user, instead of exhaling the Breath when the feeling to exhale arises, holds in the Breath, then the Breath collects into their brain and opens itself to them, allowing the user to imprint their own memories. They do this by evoking memories which the Breath captures. The user is aware of what memories are imprinted into the Breath, and can then choose to remove parts of the memory. They cannot, however, edit the memory. This process must be done fairly quickly, as at this point the user is beginning to asphyxiate as carbon dioxide builds in their lungs. When they are done imprinting the Breath with their memories, they can finally exhale it to catch a breath. Limitations: While inhaled, the Breath produces a slight numbing and weak sensation throughout the body as it passes through the bloodstream before it is exhaled. In addition to the hallucinations, you are essentially physically useless while under the effects of the Breath. Also, it suffocates you while you are imprinting it. Only organic species and Glitch can use and imprint the Breath. Metanoids can use it so long as they have a working respiratory system and organic hippocampus. The Breath’s preserved memories will overwrite unused space in the hippocampus. Though this is mostly harmless, if a person were to inhale large amounts of the Breath, it could begin to cause loss of their other memories. Conditional Limitations: Exposure to negative cuils will render the Breath inert. How does it work: The recipe for the creation of Cultivator’s Breath has been largely lost to time; it is anomalous in nature, similar to other substances produced by the precursors such as Cultivator’s Sight. It seems to work by rapidly traveling to the brain after inhalation, affecting the hippocampus by imprinting its preserved memories into the user’s brain. As it binds to their brain, they can eventually begin to imprint the Breath with their own memories, before finally exhaling it. Flavor text: In the aquatic precursor civilization of the Thalassi, their part in the preservation of the Collective’s history was in their own memories. Deep in the bowels of the Sargasi, the Breath was produced under guidance of the Collective’s eldest clerics, its most industrious artificers, and its most accomplished warlocks. When the Ancients carved their final epitaphs and their long history in the walls of their graves, the Thalassi’s elders poured their memories into the Cultivator’s Breath to scatter across their worlds. When the age of the Collective passed and the age of Man arrived, people began to find the Breath, learning their secrets and then storing secrets of their own. Breath is coveted nowhere more than the Sunken Sea of the Undercrypt, where legends of the sea seek the stories of pirates past that buried their own memories with their treasure, leaving legends of their own behind for those daring to find. Attainability: Semi-Closed. Precursor item. If you want it for an event, DM me. Tags: Civilian Category: Medical
