The Ambrosium

To the Republican peoples of Canterune, many seek cures and medicine within towns and cities by visiting the local Ambrosium. Over the years they have increased in popularity, offering the latest in circulating medicinal theory and approved practices in arcana and alchemy. They are considered the prime locations in order to receive healing, advocations of good health and recovery from illness and injury - magical or mundane. Its origins lie within the establishment of a niche but growing class of ethically-clad necromantic mages & the Republics use of domesticated and augmented slimes. Many doctors and apothecaries follow the trend of Ambrosium businesses to fund their practices and share their experimental discoveries and knowledge, joining the Grey Medician Guild.

PURPOSE AND FUNCTION

Whilst considered by foreign tourists or travellers to be an apothecary or alchemist store provided by the wealthy and entrepreneurial magocrats, it offers more services than the simple sale of goods & herbal medicine. Those with more philanthropic hearts hold a dormitory for sick patients & desperate folk that would actively work toward paying back debts for medicines used. They have become well known for never turning anyone away that are in need, and provide a communal service to the local communities. While those who possess wealth and influence may receive the higher quality treatments than the common man, such as reinvigorated drafts of youth, detoxifying remedies for alcoholism and substance abuse, or the more complicated and dangerous procedures such as surgery or even facial reconstruction within a private clinic. They ensure that those who do not possess the means nor the wealth are given access to the store's collection of known remedies and ailments to personally search for their own means of finding the cure. Most keep a ready stock of herbs that can be used as a merciful painkiller and remedy for those who are not long before passing, as this is the best they can offer for emergency arrivals. However, their services can only provide for those with non-magical ailments but can be useful in deducting whether an injury or ailment is the result of a wicked curse or otherwise, and thus are prominently reported and advised to see a priest.
Ambrosiums are divided into sections of the city to give access to all in different means by the predicted gaps in wealth. Those located in the poorer sections are small but impeccably clean hospices with upper-level stores and greenhouses with ready gardens given access to sunlight through shutter windows, and lower underground levels that can house up to ten to twenty ailing individuals in cool candlelit spaces, divided between curtained walls to reduce the risk of spreading disease. The Ambrosiums within the more middle-class and upper-class have larger treatment centres with specialised teams of alchemists and apothecaries, even wizards, that partake in the practice of researching new means of combining medicine and the more noble aspects of necromancy to control the life energies within patients and channel them correctly to improve the ailing bodies health. The larger buildings provide hospices above ground to avoid public view, with clear white stones and artistic frescoes adorning the walls to divide them into colourful sections, allowing sunlight and cool breezes to pour through the windows and the warmth of the summer.

ARCHITECTURE

Although different Ambrosiums have different structures based upon the space restrictions & property rights in different regions, their structure remains uniform and recognisable to those wandering the streets. Much like most urban Canterune architecture, they are buildings that extend outward over the street on their higher floors, built-in rectangular form with painted white and lime-green stone-brick foundations - evoking the essence of nature and healing from Melora the Wildmother. Their upper levels are supported by dwarven-styled stone pillars imported from the Alloyar Shaperate and blended with elven-style Ironwood support beams, a style adopted from the cosmopolitan style of the Republic. The roofs tend to be flat and accessible via a rectangular stairway tower. On the roof, canvassed greenhouses and small gardens are plotted, a scenic area for visitors and patients to enjoy. Wrought-iron fencing to guard the edges of the roof, with a ceramic chimney shute built-in one corner, used to warm the building's interior in the winter, but also to publically pinpoint the location of an Ambrosium from afar by mixtures added to the smoke to give out blue-tinted plumes of smoke in the sky.
Each Ambrosium always holds three key floors and rooms:

• The ground floor shop front, designed to be colourful with bright-green's and filled with colourful-flower tapestries, evoking a sense of life and vitality. This floor holds vast locked sliding-door cupboards filled with multitudes of ink-scribed labelled potions and remedies, medicinal books, and display shelves. At the back of the shop front, resides the counter, usually holding the most popular remedies, potions and herbs as well as a small chalkboard of special deals, sales and prices. In the corner resides the cermanic chimney, offering heat in the room - in the opposite corner is a doorway leading to the stairway.
• The upper floor greenhouse, housing a private collection of common and rare medicinal herbs in stock. This floor is filled with tall double-glazed shutter-windows allowing light in the room - pungent with aromas, bitter, sweet or even spicy. A herbology station rests on one side of the room in which the medicines are prepared.
• Lastly, is the underground clinic, which provides the further and more expensive services of the Ambrosium. There is also a walkway access behind the Ambrosium to offer privacy for those looking for their services - leading to a small waiting room, which leads into a spacious hospice area filled with beds and small chests separated by drawn-curtains to offer privacy. Lastly, there is a private chamber offering a one-to-one service, with a single chair or resting bed in the middle of the room, with a cupboard of surgical instruments and cupboard of remedies.

HISTORY

The use of magic has been a controversial subject throughout the history of the Continent of Lorthal, and was a contributing factor to the revolution that granted Canterune's independence from the sovereign empire of Martzhein during the Century of Broken Magic (2nd-3rd century Post-Divergence). Uniting the groups of elves, dwarves and humans together in a central position between their respective and independent kingdoms has allowed a renaissance of thought and intermingling of cultures. This allowed the two more prosperous groups of society to intermingle and match - the Magocrats and Commons. As the Magocrats rose in power and influence within the urban sectors of Canterune, they delved and inspected further into other areas from ancient texts and scrolls imported and discovered from the other continents. One group of mutual companions interested in the spark of life, and combining the countries alchemical industry worked together to provide mutual care and increases in health, as the issues of the seasonal acid rains did much to affect the people in their nutritional consumption of crops, as well as affecting and deteriorating their bodies, skin tone and hair colour. One ambitious mage of humble origin, raised under the care of the hospitable Monks of the Mountains in western Canterune, Alonso Decrasius, studied through archaic tomes and the mysteries of arcana to uncover the potential of the bodies connection to the quintessential energy of the universe that granted life. Delving down this path, he consulted different experts on how to cure sickness and disease, to priests that would grant miracles of near-instantaneous recovery (of which he found somewhat of hypocrisy for miracles that demanded gold in exchange for their services) and alchemists that provided herbal remedies from the surrounding swamps and wetlands of Canterune. Alonso discovered the connection between instantaneous healing with the dark arts of necromancy, but in his endeavours, he discovered a potential means to subvert the despicable life-draining nature of the taboo art by finding the means to channel and see the 'energies of life essence' within people, recording these within his memoirs and published works. With his findings, he was able to found a sub-school within the art of necromancy that did not take one's life force, but rather redistributed it in areas in which the links were weaker, and provides greater restorative measures against them. His success passed on to his students, of which pursued these endeavours further and one of which, a half-elf known as Ambrose Lethell, an enterprising entrepreneur and mage, took Decrasius' works and implemented them in his alchemical shops across Canterune, to give access to good health and cures in small forms without the grandeur of providing gold-miracles to the public. Giving rise to the so-called 'Ambrosiums', a nod to his own name, and the elixir of the gods. Some treat this as an ironic joke by Ambrose, who thought that it would make Alonso laugh in his grave at the jab at the priests - others believe that it was simply the man's ego shining through, but nevertheless, each Ambrosium is known for its sign - an angel-like figure carrying an elixir in one hand, and Decrasius' book, the Decrasi Treaties on the Essence of Life in the other.
Decrasius' sub-school of necromancers rallied behind the works and efforts of Ambrose Lethell, opening their own Ambrosiums and practices within the city, spreading into different city quarters and even beyond into Canterune towns. The popular works and business chartered the beginning of the Grey Medician Guild, a collective of like-minded mages, businessmen, doctors and alchemists. With each new Ambrosium, and their growing popularity, a surge of new medicine and business accumulated within Canterune - increasing the demand and research into magical components and medicinal herbs across the towns and public. New fields of research sprung as a result of this, hoping to cure the natural ailments that plagued the Canterunians from the seasonal acid rain, ash-fall and smoky fog that plagued them during the winter.
One budding discovery and experimental method utilised the Canterunian's ingenuity towards their unique domestication of slimes and oozes. One Grey Medician known as Galthus Horkaire, with his experiments with a small species of docile slimes, was able to perform multiple procedures that treated skin conditions after exposure to acid rain - acne, blisters, carbuncles, chickenpox, cold sores, eczema, hives, rosacea, measles, warts. Further studies allowed him to perform a precise procedure to target specific ailments and diseases. Through the slimes consumption of herbal remedies and healing potions, the docile slimes would be applied to the affected areas of the body temporarily (in a similar fashion to leeches) to treat the ailment, suffusing the body with the slimes composition of healing remedies while breaking down the ailing areas. Deemed to be nearly revolutionary, however, as of this point the procedure has not been approved or made a legal point in Canterune, undergoing testing among approved officials - however, those faithful to the divines see this practice as despicable and believe that these necromancers are gaining too much power. That their work is tainted and now they implore the use of monstrosities such as slimes, natural dwellers of filth and sewers, and intend to use these creatures on the public. The debates on this in the political circles are being faced to this day.

Type

Clinic

Ruling/Owning Rank

The Consul of Canterune

Owning Organization

Grey Medician Guild