Here’s another preview from the upcoming Under Dark Spires for Crypts and Things and other OSR rulesets. In this adventure book, there’s an area called the Stink River. It more than lives up to its name, being a broken, weird land full of puss ridden diseases and poisonous insects and plants. Its also inhabited by swamp dwelling tribesmen. Since there are none of the usual Temple of Healing franchise out in this remote part of the world, I thought it best that I detail what levels of healing the player characters can expect.

Getting help from the Local Healers

The Stink River People have an established class of Healers, with one or two in each village. They brew up cures, antidotes and preventative medicines in their healing hut, which also acts as a place to keep ill people, usually up to five patients, in quarantine. In the hut, you can also find the tools of the Stink River Healer’s craft.  Metal needles for lancing noxious boils, a small oven for heating needles, clay pots for storing medicines and creams.

The Healers primary role is to look after their people; all else is a distant second. Adventurers cannot come swanning up to healing Hut, suffering from some disease or poison, and expect immediate treatment from the Healer no matter how much gold they offer. The Healer will merely laugh at them and go back inside, as the village’s hunters notch arrows coated with poison (typically Imperial Folly) and aim in the character’s direction.  First, they must establish a relationship with the healer’s village, and only when they are accepted as an honorary member, after helping out by killing off dangerous monsters rescuing kidnapped members etc., will the Healer even consider healing them. The advantage is at this point there is no charge to the character, they have already paid in kind by helping the village

Stink River Healer AC 7[12] Leather equivalent HD 4 HP 20 Attacks 1 Knife (1d4) Mv 12 Special: Spellcasting CL/XP 5/240

Healers typically know the following spells:

Cure Disease, Cure Light Wounds, Neutralise Poison, Purify Food and Drink, Remove Curse, Sleep.

Note these spells are very heavily based on physical ingredients, such as specific herbs and prepared creams and powers. The Healer one in six times be out of the ingredients and require the characters to fetch them from the nearby wilderness before they can cast the spell to help their wounded colleague.