Item Reference
A travel-codex warning for green shimmer, black-market routes, and void-alchemy exposure
Boost is a black-market body-altering substance that appears as pills, vials, mushrooms, vapor, gas, and contaminated cavern air. A controlled dose can sharpen strength, speed, and charm while weakening judgment and resilience; uncontrolled exposure can skip the advantage entirely and leave victims poisoned, unstable, or worse.
Dose
Boost helps bodies and bravado while taxing judgment, health, and restraint.
A managed Boost dose temporarily improves Strength, Dexterity, and Charisma while weakening Constitution, Intelligence, and Wisdom. The green shimmer is hard to hide at close range, and the comedown can cause exhaustion. In polite terms, it is performance alchemy. In practical terms, it makes people dangerous, readable, and easier to ruin.
Vapor
Gas, vapor, or pit exposure can poison instead of empower.
Boost in the air is not the same as a clean dose. Vic Vaurr's lower-cavern exposure showed that vapor can deliver the poisoning side without the physical or social benefits, turning the environment itself into a combatant before the spiders even bite.
Void
Boost evidence can point toward void-resonant alchemy and hidden lab work.
Astrid Ironhoof noticed true void resonance in older Centrum-era potions, while newer Boost work appears watered down or altered. That makes Boost more than a street drug: it may be a public trace of mishandled void-alchemical research, diluted fieldwork, or a supply chain trying to hide what it started from.
Routes
Follow Boost to sellers, smugglers, faction pressure, and hidden routes.
Boost keeps surfacing where ordinary trade and criminal infrastructure overlap: Gravenhurst rumors, Graven Scourge routes, Pink Pony fallout, Orval Finkus offering help and Boost, Baron-linked bottles, and hidden lower-cavern shipments. A Boost sighting is often a supply-chain clue before it is a fight.
Creatures
Boost can mark a creature hazard, not only a character condition.
New Goblin City's lower cavern proved that Boost contamination can shape the battlefield and the creatures inside it. Boosted phase spiders teleported unpredictably, hit hard, poisoned victims, and forced rescue work into emergency triage.
Victims
Boost victims may need rescue, containment, healing, and follow-up investigation.
Natasha Brand's Boost mushroom and later unknown-potion exposure made her an unstable rescue burden rather than a simple patient. Boost scenes often leave someone alive but difficult to move, question, treat, or trust.
Evidence
Boost evidence is route evidence, medical evidence, and faction evidence.
Empty green-labeled bottles, shattered vials, mushrooms handed out as medicine, shimmering faces, gas pits, boosted animals, and too-casual offers of help should all be treated as evidence. Record who had access, who profited, and which route the substance could have moved through.