Alma

Alma

First appearance: Apathy, chapter 3
Last appearance: Apathy, chapter 27
Appears in: Apathy

Latest status

Alive — Eliza’s mentor and toxin-crafting instructor, angered by Lord Baen’s blackmail of her apprentice

Alma is an alchemist and herbalist running a modest market stall and garden compound outside Falcon’s Hook, whose unassuming trade masks a far more dangerous past. She takes on a promising apprentice, teaching healing craft with patience and genuine care before revealing herself as a former Royal Poisoner skilled in advanced toxin-crafting. Pragmatic, protective, and quietly formidable, Alma balances legitimate business with a hidden underworld trade, and proves fiercely loyal to those she mentors when they come under threat.

Book 3.5: Apathy

Alma is an older herbalist and alchemist who runs a market stall and a walled garden compound outside Falcon’s Hook. She takes on Eliza as an apprentice after quickly recognizing her natural aptitude for plants, alluding to unspecified trouble with a previous apprentice involving poisons and comas without explaining further. As Eliza’s water magic manifests, Alma warns her against letting anyone pressure her into an unwanted class choice, distinguishing her own consent-based teaching from more coercive approaches Eliza later encounters. Over the following weeks Alma funds Eliza’s tools and books, teaches her healing herbs and beneficial plant combinations, and praises her as one of the most capable apprentices she has trained, while showing mild concern about Eliza’s social isolation. Before Eliza sets out to hunt the Silver Stag, Alma sends her off with practical warnings about the forest’s dangers and requests for specific ingredients.

When Eliza returns from killing a troll and other players, Alma responds with pragmatism rather than shock, discussing lethal poison-delivery methods for Eliza’s hunts and mentioning she has met the water god before in an unpleasant encounter of her own. She then discloses her true background as a former “Royal Poisoner,” now running a hidden laboratory and a poison-merchant operation along the Silver Coast behind her healing-potion storefront, and begins training Eliza in advanced toxin-crafting. Alma also does regular business with Lord Baen, delivering potions to him; when Eliza needs to collect a bounty from his trading house, Alma accompanies her, negotiating his payment up to 480 gold and revealing a long-standing relationship with him that covers both legitimate potions and illicit poisons. She tries to steer Eliza away from accepting Baen’s dangerous investigation quest but defers to her apprentice’s decision. Later, when Eliza is blackmailed by Baen, Alma reacts with genuine protective anger and dark humor about killing him, teaches her the Accelerated Growth spell, and continues to support and shield her through the escalating crisis.

Status: Alive — evaluating Eliza as a prospective herbalism apprentice → Alive — Eliza’s mentor and toxin-crafting instructor, angered by Lord Baen’s blackmail of her apprentice

Eliza: Alma goes from evaluating a stranger for apprenticeship to a trusted mentor, and after revealing her Royal Poisoner past, becomes Eliza’s toxin-crafting instructor and protector.

Lord Baen: Alma’s standing business relationship with Baen, covering both potions and illicit poisons, extends this book to negotiating Eliza’s bounty payment and cautioning her against his dangerous quest offer.

Key quote: “A more accurate title for my profession would be ‘Royal Poisoner’ – at least once upon a time”

Appears in

• Apathy — 12 chapters