#which is a practice tied specifically to fate held within starlight

[slavonicrhapsody]

Rykard had the forget tonic on hand for tanith when he went silly mode. Do you think he got it from perfumers, from carian preceptors, was it inquisition inventory as a wellness tool, or something else

I’ve always wondered this! I think my best guess as to where it came from would be the perfumers… before the shattering, they were apothecaries and healers, and in a way, the tonic of forgetfulness can be seen as a balm for the mind. However, if this tonic came from a perfumer, it would have had to be before Rykard’s treason — the perfumers are proud of their Erdtree loyalty and wear that symbol on their aprons! In this case, perhaps it could have been a tool for inquisitors to forget the horrific sights of torture and the screams of their victims??

There’s another option, though… it could have also come from a depraved perfumer. These guys are said to be “heresy-inclined” — “The embroidery on the apron is itself a curse upon the Erdtree.” Their aprons are decorated with serpents, seen as traitors to the Erdtree. Depraved perfumers are also said to “imbibe their own spices to alter body and mind,” and you could definitely say that the tonic of forgetfulness alters the mind… even though I said earlier that it could be seen as a balm to the mind, I also think there’s something kinda nefarious about wiping your memory (or rather, someone else’s… looking at you, Tanith) in order to banish distress. So given the whole heresy and serpents thing, it seems like depraved perfumers would be likely to hang around Rykard... and as a matter of fact, they did! We can find Depraved Perfumer Carmaan’s spirit ashes in a Volcano Manor room. Carmaan could’ve made the tonic, but his description also says that “depraved perfumers practice their art for themselves alone” so it doesn’t seem likely that he or another would’ve made the tonic on Rykard’s behalf. Unless he killed Carmaan and stole it off his corpse and that’s why his ashes are stuffed in a guest room

ok my actual answer is that I’ve thought about this for too long and there probably isn’t meant to be an answer lmao