Kluvm’s Apothecarium of Broken Wonders

Wedged between two leaning towers of questionable stability in Voolnishart’s oldest trade district lies Kluvm’s Apothecarium of Broken Wonders — a crooked storefront reeking of copper, decay, and promise. The hanging sign, a warped plate of volcanic glass etched with a shimmering metal unknown to most, squeals slightly in the breeze. One gets the sense that the building is being held together by spells that have long since forgotten what they were meant to do.

Inside, the shop is an overwhelming cathedral of clutter. Esoteric reagents crowd sagging shelves: bundles of dried thistle fungi, vials of marrow-colored oils, and resinous nodules from extraplanar roots harvested in Kluvm’s youth. The air buzzes faintly with the chemical breath of volatile reactions long since spilled. Faint glyphs glow on some containers — warnings, maybe, or wards to keep the contents asleep.

Some shelves appear half-melted. Others bear sealed crystal cases with viewing lenses and tiny copper price tags hammered onto scraps of parchment: “Void Salt – 400gp”, “Basilisk Gall – inquire with coin ready”, “Phoenix Ash, single use – NOT FOR AMATEURS”.

A cabinet the size of a wine cask holds glasswork on an industrial scale, including enormous alembics, spiral decanters, and cauldrons with screaming runes etched into their bronze flanks — vessels built not for single draughts, but for batches capable of arming militias with mutagenic elixirs or curing entire wards of the dying.

At the rear, perched upon a tall-backed stool wrapped in fur from a beast extinct since the Harvester War, sits Kluvm himself. Gone are the days of lean, wiry expedition. Now he is nearly skeletal, his skin the grey of burnt parchment, one eye dulled by old acid burns and the other clear, sharp as distilled ether. His hands shake when idle — but never when mixing.

He wears the same long coat from his Tuarnedelose days, now frayed and scorched. At his throat hangs a medallion of glasssteel, inscribed with the sigil of his lost expedition. The recent windfall from Kraggencor Forge — a princely sum for the successful delivery of a longevity elixir for Sniksnik — has allowed him to restock the shop with some of the rarest components not seen in Voolnishart for two generations.

Despite his wealth, he no longer travels. “I brought enough death back in my boots to last me ten lifetimes,” he’ll mutter if asked.

Yet his mind remains as deadly sharp as any blade — and for the right price (or a clever question), he’ll part with knowledge, ingredients, or even the last draughts of concoctions not meant for this age.

Kluvm’s Apothecarium of Broken Wonders

An exhaustive marvel of alchemical lore and latent menace

Location: Voolnishart’s Alchemist’s Row, directly across from the iron-gated courtyard of the shattered bell tower of Ilvaari.

Interior Expansion: An Ordered Madness

The moment one crosses the soot-streaked threshold, the air changes. It smells of thunder, stale magic, blooded copper, and unripe fruit. A barely perceptible tension clings to the skin, like standing too close to a ley rift. One apprentice, a six-fingered tiefling with eyes like burnt amber, warns newcomers in a hushed voice: “Speak nothing you wouldn’t want the jars to overhear.”

Ceiling-high bookshelves groan with tomes bound in stitched kelp-leather and scorched hide — many of them authored, annotated, or translated by Kluvm himself. Lanterns fueled by whispering green flame hang from hooks made of scorched antlers, casting ghostly light that shifts color depending on mood, contamination, or the presence of untethered essences.

Wards & Defenses

Despite its ragged appearance, the shop is one of the most heavily warded structures in Voolnishart. Kluvm has installed eight invisible wards, each shaped to trigger under different conditions:

The Sifter Coil – triggers if anything crosses the warded boundary carrying a weapon coated in poison or forged with infernal metals. The coil unweaves the object into strands of harmless copper.
Nullseam Threads – invisible lines of antimagic woven across the rafters. Anyone attempting to cast inside without permission will suffer localized amnesia and severe nosebleeds.
Kluvm’s Grudge Seal – bound by name to individuals he distrusts or considers too ambitious. These unfortunates are simply redirected to another shop a block away and forget why they came.
Breathlock Vault – the back room, accessible only by inhaling a tincture that proves one’s non-undead status. (Failed attempts result in paralysis and ejection via pneumatic launch tube.)

The Forbidden Cabinets

Three large darkglass cases, bolted to the walls with glowing chains of etched basalt, contain materials so volatile Kluvm refuses to discuss them unless offered something of equal rarity:

Ur-Lanthan Slime – a thick, bluish fluid from Tuarnedelose. It corrodes spell energy and flesh equally, whispering old names when warmed. Price: Unknown.
Tal-Shie Embershard – a molten-frozen shard of extraplanar volcanic crystal, infused with entropy. Shifts weight when spoken to. Stored in a time-dampened stasis loop. “For research only,” Kluvm warns.
Heart of the 3rd Cycle Worm – the calcified node of a prehistoric beast unearthed beneath the Burn. Radiates pre-magic resonance. Feeding it raw blood causes it to twitch.

Each case is sealed with a three-part glyphlock, requiring a whispered phrase in Deep Speech, an etched sigil traced in air, and a vial of Kluvm’s own blood (which he never gives twice).

Apprentices of Kluvm

Despite his distrust of bureaucracy, Kluvm has hand-picked three apprentices, each chosen not for loyalty, but for their obsession:

Yeneris Redmote – a half-drow war-alchemist with burn scars across her jaw and lips. Specializes in combustion philters and war-powders. She distrusts Kluvm but respects his genius.
Trevlak Nine-Breaths – a kenku with shattered wings and an eidetic memory. Functions as Kluvm’s archivist and replicator of ritual chants. Never speaks his own words; only copies Kluvm’s exact phrasing.
Hazari Velm – a quiet halfling boy with the uncanny gift of reading a potion’s effect by scent alone. Unknown to Kluvm, Hazari is a latent wild sorcerer, and the shop subtly shifts around him.

Each apprentice is oathbound by alchemical branding to never reveal Kluvm’s secrets or process without his permission. These brands glow hot if lies are told and cold if danger approaches.

Current State of Kluvm

Now ancient, Kluvm only stirs from his high-backed chair to work on truly rare commissions. His veins bulge with mercury-tainted blood, and his breath fogs in unnatural hues. His hands, once surgical and swift, now tremble with a strange rhythm — though never when decanting volatile compounds.

He has grown paranoid, some say, or too clear-sighted. He claims the gods themselves envy his knowledge of the dead-magic zones. Some whisper he has already made a pact with something bound beneath Tuarnedelose, and the longevity potion he sold to Kraggencor Forge was but a byproduct of a much darker success.

Kluvm’s personal ledger is kept under lock in a cube of floating crystal orbiting his chair. None have read its pages — not even the apprentices.

Forbidden Ingredients of Kluvm’s Apothecarium

Ur-Lanthan Slime

A ghost-pale fluid that resists containment.

Origin: Extracted from deep petrified veins beneath Tuarnedelose.
Properties: Dissolves spells, glyphs, and bindings. Liquefies flesh without scent.
Container: Ethereal glass tube suspended in an anti-magic lattice.
Warning: Screams quietly when exposed to fire.
Rumor: A drop was once spilled, and a fifth of the inventory vanished into “unspace.”

Tal-Shie Embershard

A blazing shard frozen in time, pulsing in rhythm with a long-dead elemental star.

Origin: Lodged in the skull of a Tal-Shie war-beast found calcified in the Bleeding Scree.
Properties: Generates chaotic entropy; explodes if struck. Causes hallucinations of a burning sky.
Use: Can charge unstable potions to ignore planar barriers.
Kluvm’s Note: “Still warm. Impossible.”

Heart of the 3rd Cycle Worm

A petrified, fist-sized node with concentric spirals and erratic biological rhythms.

Origin: Pulled from the sub-flesh strata of the Burn, beneath the Valley of Veins.
Properties: Emits pulses of pre-magical resonance; poisons all attempts to scry on it.
Use: Said to empower necro-reactive elixirs.
Warning: Begins to twitch when exposed to blood or moonlight.

Exclusive Alchemical Recipes (Known Only to Kluvm)

Elixir of Nullspark Vitalis (1,500gp)

Effect: Renders drinker immune to all divination spells for 24 hours.
Side Effect: Mild organ necrosis. Hair loss.
Recipe: Quicksilver vapor, Ur-Lanthan Slime (trace), cracked blue opal, hollow banshee tooth.

Ash Draught of Unmemory (2,400gp)

Effect: Erases one memory (up to 1 hour long) and creates a blank space in its place. Can remove fear, trauma, or magical coercion.
Recipe: Phoenix Ash, nightglass powder, fragmented ghost essence, distilled dream ichor.
Notes: Irreversible. Can leave emotional voids or produce phantasmic side effects.

Slumberheart Suspension (1,100gp)

Effect: Halts biological aging for 3d12 months.
Recipe: Bloodroot extract, moonmilk resin, powdered diamond, shadowveil petal (from the Underdark).
Use: Used by Kluvm to stabilize his apprentices between experiments.

Elixir of Vellum Bone (3,000gp, unlisted)

Effect: Grants temporary undeath. Immune to sleep, aging, exhaustion, and poison for 10 days. Skin thins to parchment; must avoid sunlight.
Side Effect: Severe loss of empathy and growing dependence.
Speculation: This may be Kluvm’s prototype phylactery elixir.

Excerpt from Kluvm’s Expedition Notes

Found inside a char-streaked field journal bound in Tal-Shie glassleaf

*“Day 74. Wind does not blow here. Not anymore. The sky is white like salted paper, and every spell cast turns inward — like a lung swallowing itself. The iron-rich geysers erupt once every five hours. Three of the crew are blind from the heat-laced mana fumes.

I found a vein of rainbow ore wrapped in petrified marrow. No name for it yet, but it sings if you weep nearby. I’ve wrapped it in copper netting, but I swear it hums to my bones.

I saw a face in the geyser steam this morning. It looked like mine, only… older. I’ve begun recording my thoughts twice. One for me, one for him.”*

Rumors & Musings on Kluvm’s Pursuit of Undeath

The whispers swirl in Voolnishart’s alchemical and academic circles — always behind closed doors, always half-joked.

“He’s not aged in ten years.” Some claim Kluvm never drinks or eats in public. He simply sips from his own tinctures.
“He buried something beneath the shop.” A failed apprentice or perhaps a ritual anchor.
“He doesn’t fear death—he negotiates with it.” One old rival says Kluvm once spoke to a dying god in Tuarnedelose and stole a piece of its severed immortality.
“He’s building a phylactery inside himself.” The shimmering scars across his chest — glimpsed during a sleeveless summer day — seem to pulse with alchemical glyphs. Some say his blood no longer coagulates… but evaporates as mist.

Kluvm’s Planar-Elixirs (Legal… mostly)

Each of these potions bears Kluvm’s personal sigil and a stamped mark from the Guild of Ethical Alchemists. Sold under strict conditions.

1. Draught of the Burned Spiral (600gp)

Effect: Grants resistance to fire and necrotic damage for 1 hour.
Side Effect: Dreams of dead languages and screaming forests. DC 10 Wis save or gain one level of exhaustion.

2. Moteskin Oil (1,200gp)

Effect: Makes the skin incorporeal for 30 seconds, allowing the drinker to pass through solid matter as if affected by gaseous form.
Side Effect: Leaves glowing runes under the skin visible for 1d6 days.

3. Elixir of Arc-Blind Clarity (950gp)

Effect: The drinker becomes immune to illusion and enchantment spells for 1 hour.
Side Effect: Cannot distinguish friend from foe (mechanically, loses ability to benefit from Help actions).

4. Auric Lattice Draught (1,800gp)

Effect: Allows one spell slot (level 1–3) to be recharged after a long rest without sleeping.
Side Effect: Leaves the user unable to dream for 1 week.
Warning: “Do not stack with astral tinctures. You will forget how to scream.”

5. Oath-Binder’s Serum (2,500gp)

Effect: Allows the drinker to speak a vow that, if broken, deals 4d10 psychic damage and causes madness (DC 17).
Use: Occasionally requested by guildmasters, high-ranking judges, and expedition leaders.

Kluvm’s Turn from Time: The Apothecary’s Descent into Preservation

Failure of the Known Paths

At one time, Kluvm enjoyed the fruits of his genius: potions of suspended decay, chronal stasis draughts, and alchemical life-sheaths that rendered time sluggish within his body. For nearly 40 years, he held age at bay — the shimmer of youth maintained by a careful cycle of treatments. But now:

His Slumberheart Suspension leaves him disoriented and mute for hours.
The Ash Draught of Unmemory causes persistent hallucinations.
Even the Elixir of Vellum Bone threatens to strip him of identity.

He still sells these formulas — but he no longer drinks them.

His skin has begun to slough in places, revealing slick, silver-filament veins. His apprentices whisper of the “tarnish”, a sign that the great alchemist’s body is no longer his own.

The Simulacrum Project

Within a vault beneath the shop — sealed with three blood-hinged locks and a sigil that consumes memory — lies Kluvm’s arcane workshop: not a place of brewing, but of construction.

There, with arc-wands, flesh-synthesizers, and ancient echo-glass, he has created a simulacrum of himself… and perhaps others.

Known Simulacrum:

Hazari, his young halfling apprentice, is widely believed to be genuine — but in truth, he is a memory-grown construct, stabilized with distilled soulstuff drawn from a broken Tal-Shie crystal.

“He dreams of things no one should,” mutters Yeneris.

Kluvm uses Hazari to observe dream states, reaction to stimuli, and the behavior of magical identity when splintered across vessels. Hazari has begun asking where he was born — a question Kluvm always ignores.

Anatomies of the Eternal: Research Subjects and Specimens

Since abandoning chemical youth, Kluvm has turned to the long-lived, attempting to unravel their internal mysteries to anchor his own decaying essence.

1. Tal-Shie Cadavers

Kluvm holds three Tal-Shie war-corpses in cryo-bonded sarcophagi below the shop. Each was taken from the scorched fields west of the Burn after the final retreat. Their hair still grows. Their teeth still regrow when extracted.

Kluvm’s Notes: “Hair is memory. Nail growth is will. I believe they sheathe time within their bone marrow. If I could distill the marrow…”

Rumors claim he’s grown fragments of Tal-Shie limbs into functional organ samples.

2. The Broken Fey

In a frost-glass tank filled with saprotic ichor floats the partial body of an fey — now twisted and missing the eyes and hands. Kluvm recovered it from Tuarnedelose, claiming it “was asleep in the petrified dream-pond.”

Traits: Its veins are latticed with mirrored roots. Its voice still echoes in the tank, at times calling out to someone named Rhellavan.

Kluvm suspects fey longevity arises from time skipping — they exist along eddies of fate, not fixed flows. He seeks to anchor that property to mortal coils.

3. The Infernal Heart

Sealed in a triple-layered chamber, protected by runes of suffering and delay, is a devil’s heart — supposedly taken not through slaying but bargain. It pulses only when nearby bodies decay.

Apprentices are forbidden from entering this chamber. Even Trevlak, who repeats Kluvm’s voice like a loyal raven, has begun to avoid the lower halls.

Kluvm’s Unspoken Goal: Becoming the Alchemical Eidolon

He no longer seeks lichdom — he finds necromantic phylacteries “boorish and too obvious”. His ambitions aim higher:

“I will become the reaction itself. Not a soul in a cage, but the flame that shapes metal, the solvent that renders the world pure.”

His vision is not to preserve the body, but to reform it, into a living chemical process — eternal, self-healing, thinking in equations, not thoughts.

Some theories, written in secret glossolalia in the margins of his early texts, name this path the Eidolon Transmutation, where the body is reborn as a living vessel of alchemical law — neither undead, nor alive, but perfectly stable in transformation.