History of Poisons, Thursday Per 2

[glacial_queen]

"Welcome to your final," Karla said once all of her students were assembled in the Danger Shop, which was set up to look like an industrial-size kitchen. Out the back door was a garden filled with various plants, some presumably the ones that they'd studied over the semester, though nothing was marked. A beehive hummed nearby. "All you have to do is make one dish that skillfully hides whatever poison you include in it. The dish can be as simple or complex as you'd like to make it, anything from a poisoned beverage to a sumptuous meal, but it has to be appealing and the poison hard to detect. When you've finished, present the dish, and explain your choices. Once you've done so, you may leave."

Karla sat down at the head of the table, folded her hands, and smiled. "You may begin."

Comments

Re: Present!

[not_every_mage]

Anders presented an innocent-looking egg salad sandwich on a poppy seed roll, complete with lettuce-and-tomato garnish.

"Two poisons in that," he told Karla, as he handed it over. "Three, if you count the opium in the roll. I put ricin seeds in the egg salad -- you only need a tiny bit, and the mustard should cover any flavor -- and mixed foxglove in the lettuce, so that even if not quite enough ricin gets ingested the person will likely die anyhow."

He sounded oddly satisfied with himself.

Re: Present!

[glacial_queen]

"Oooh, very nice!" Karla applauded. "Why go with two? Trying for overkill or hoping to confuse people with the symptoms, or...?"

Re: Present!

[not_every_mage]

"Mainly it's that you have to chew the ricin for it to work," Anders explained. "You can't guarantee your target won't gulp his food, and if I ground the seeds I would have risked swallowing some myself. So when I saw the foxglove in the garden, I figured I could slip that in too. If it confuses people it's a bonus."

Re: Present!

[glacial_queen]

"And which one of these poisons will go into effect first?" Karla quizzed.

Re: Present!

[not_every_mage]

"Foxglove by a long shot." Anders was glad he remembered. "It'll kick in within half an hour, where theoretically ricin could take days. But ricin is much, much stronger."

Re: Present!

[glacial_queen]

"It's possible that the treatment will wash out the ricin before it has a chance to take effect if they go with gastric lavage, but if they stick with activated charcoal, they will be very upset when the victim dies anyway," Karla said, giving Anders an approving smile. "Excellently done, Anders, thank you so much for your participation this semester."