Deep within the coils of Eileadora's stony bowels is an iron door recessed into the old masonry around it. Easily mistaken for a long forgotten dungeon or some obscure storage-place, a keener eye might spy the gleaming details that speak to the contrary: there's no rust and little wear, and there are words written in new brass letters on a bolted metal plate over the lintel.
A square slot screeches open where a peephole might have been. There is no glass and no eye on the other side, but instead two rows of straight and dingy teeth set into pale gums that seem, impossibly, stretched behind and into the metal around them.
"Good evening, VISITOR NUMBER #49," a perfectly cordial man's voice thrums from the mouth in the door, which appears to be equipped as well with a grayish tongue and a sickly-purple throat behind its surreal grimace. "Welcome to SOLVE ET COAGULA. My name is JANUS. In order to obtain entry, please look me STRAIGHT IN THE EYE."
There's an eye, alright, at the top of the door, just as worryingly fleshy as the mouth; damp and jaundiced with a pointed stare and a contracting pupil. Its gaze lingers for an awfully long time before it rolls up into its lids and disappears once more against the shadows on the iron around it.
"Thank you for your cooperation," clacks the mouth.
The slot slides shut again, almost loud enough to hide the sound of seven rapid-fire clicks before the door glides open on its hinges. Behind it is a modest interior lit by dimmed sunrods, its drab decorating and clinical presentation rather at odds with what sounds like muffled sobs coming from somewhere below.
WHAT IS THIS? WHERE AM I?
Either you've been invited here, or you've stumbled upon it--or maybe you were dragged here the last time you got drunk and lost. This is the office of one Herr Doktor Antonius, as well as his more general place of "business."
Excuse me--business.
What exactly that entails will vary significantly between clients and associates, but by all outward appearances, Solve et Coagula seems to be an eccentric private medical practice and alchemical dispensary.
Well, some outward appearances. After all, the door appears to be filled with talking meat. Perhaps it is best to leave it at that...?
There are more eyes among the stones that make up the walls and ceiling, betrayed only by the glitter of the light on their damp membranes. So long as any visitor wanders about unattended, they watch, most attentively...
On the desk facing the door is a thin leatherbound book containing a professional sampling of services and alchemical offerings.
Herr Antonius's list of alchemical services includes the synthesis of custom concoctions, reagent appraisal, and substance identification at the rate of 2 silver per hour, or free if it can be identified at once by sight, smell or taste. Demonstrations of certain wares may be arranged via appointment.
His list of medical ones includes exams, testing, prescriptions, surgery, and augmentative surgery... whatever that means.
Critical cases and visitors suffering from particularly mundane afflictions are directed towards Eileadora's infirmary.
The first page is covered in the colloquial names of potions and substances with obvious medical purpose; anesthetics and restoratives, blood replenishing brews and invigorating serums, and even one particularly miraculous concoction whose description claims that it can raise the freshly-dead, for an exorbitant price.
The following spread is dedicated to more recreational things; potent absinthe and other spirits, the pleasantly drinkable reagent aqua vitae in three flavors, and no small number of substances practically designed for bored gentlemen in their smoking rooms. Among them is an entry for an expensive substance titled The Good Death, a drug which allows imbibers to flirt with their own demise; lethal, if not properly dosed.
Here are alchemortars, substances which provide certain properties to the buildings to which they are applied; and spell bases, for magic users who like to have a bottled ace up their sleeve in a pinch...
Fleischfäule, a substance that, it says, will permit one to sculpt flesh. Athanor Vitae, to deny a man the dulling of pain. Silence, a brew that will punish any scream. Aqua Mortis, the perfect poison; Butcher's Boon, a disfiguring disease that grows a deformed excess of flesh wherever it touches living blood. Antonius's Anticoagulant--a potion that ensures the steady exsanguination of any wounded man who is forced to drink it.
All prices may be paid in blood at the rate of 1 silver per seven drams.
Beside the book is a placard with a name on it: DR. H. M. H. ANTONIUS. There is a neatly folded page of vellum nearby, which perhaps belongs in a file in one of the drawers, labeled MITARBEITER.