Expert Advise: Yaraldgus of Krothuum

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The old hyena squinted through the haze of his workshop, hands black with soot, claws yellowed from years of tinctures and fumes. His mane was gone to patches, his muzzle scarred by acid burns, and when he spoke, it was with the gravel of someone who’d inhaled too much forge-smoke and grave-dust.
“You want my advice, you listen close, and you don’t mistake it for rumor.”

He jabbed a claw into the table hard enough to make the bottles rattle. “If the Worm-Smith’s seed takes root in you, gods help ye’, because no medicine and no herb will. You can drink all the powders, chew all the roots, bleed yourself from now till next season, and it won’t make a whit of difference. Once the worms are in your belly, they’re in your blood, in your guts, in your lungs. You don’t drive them out. You don’t even slow them down.”

He leaned closer, eyes burning amber in the dim light. “They bide their time, and by the time you feel the first cramps, it’s already too late. Some rot slow, coughing and pissing their lives away. Some swell like overripe gourds until they pop, spraying half the quarter with their filth. But all of them die screaming. All of them die laughingstocks.”

He spat into the coals, the hiss echoing like a curse. “So here’s your warning, and don’t say you weren’t told: if you spread for Rathgur, you’re not buying steel — you’re buying worms. And there ain’t a potion brewed in Varduun that’ll save you once they’ve got you.”