Fantastic Locations: Zuri Makavana’s Potion Shop

Located right around the corner from the western gate to the vast, central Andalian market city of Impel, Zuri’s Potion Shop was established a year ago in PC2011. It is a little and somewhat crowded shop and barely breaks even most of the time, though it has its good months. It is known mostly through Zuri’s own modest fame, and that of her cohort Claudette Dorje. The wide selection of potions and trinkets, along with other strange services granted in the shop, ensure Zuri some continued business, even though a lot of it is of a kind Zuri wouldn’t actually want, especially not repeatedly.

Location And Layout

The vast city of Impel is surrounded by high walls, and its two main streets are built and meet as a cross, meant to lead caravans and merchants in the four cardinal directions (as though a vast compass). Upon entering the western gate, or any of the gates, one sees an assortment of storefronts keeping busy in their efforts to attract newcomers to buy just one of their many goods, be they simple hardy foods, weapons, clothing and essentials, trinkets or regional delicacies. The long, unbroken street of stores, the premiere ground for any shop owner, eventually begins to branch and become less crowded and excited.

Upon one of these quiet branches lies Zuri’s potion shop. Turning to the side street, one finds an unassuming storefront with only a list of popular items and their prices (medicines, purgatives, contraceptives), another hastily scribbled-up sign reading NO LOVE POTIONS and an awning over the front doorway. Past the charming stained glass doorway, depicting an ornate potion bottle, the interior is a fairly wide space with two rows of shelves on one side, blocking a doorway, and another shelf on the opposite side of the room. The front desk is the only access to the back room, with the other door blocked. There are two small tables with three chairs each, and a little box full of the day’s Impel Crier.

On the shelves are various colorful bottles of potions, elixirs, tonics and other fluids, most of them prepared by Zuri herself, though a few are curiosities she has come upon, and others were gifts she doesn’t actually want. Each bottle is arranged with some of the more colorful ingredients that go into its mix. For those potions that have no attractive ingredients, the least offensive one is displayed. So some bottles are arranged flowers and fruits, others with garlic or cloves or rat tails.

Behind the front desk, Zuri sits and waits for customers on a rotating chair. She keeps a money strongbox, an EK-04 pistol and an EK-06 rifle behind the desk. Atop the desk is usually a “deal of the day” potion with special decorations, as well as various pamphlets from political parties and businesses that Zuri has arrangements with.

The Usual Suspects

Zuri Makavana: A mage better known as “The Genius of Basra.” Basra was her home village. As a child, Zuri was randomly selected through the congressional “Better Minds” program to attend the Points of Light Academy in Oomash, Andaliel’s capital. Though more privileged classmates, as well as some professors, thought she would do poorly due to being a villager, Zuri outshone a lot of her classmates, and had a few adventures as a mage child, which she would rather not talk about. At the age of 24, she has all but given up on a research assistantship at the college, and has instead opened a store.

Though her natural talent is in Repulsion (offensive) magic, Zuri’s interest is in alchemy, and she is quite enthusiastic about potions. After she graduated and entered her pilgrimage phase, she began to save up money until she could buy a storefront. Though she fell quite short of her goal, her friend Claudette Dorje helped make up the difference and technically “co-owns” the store, though she doesn’t want repayment of any sort. Now Zuri spends a significant portion of her time making potions. Unlike other potion-makers, Zuri believes in function over form. She despises novelties like love potions or potions with artificial flavors, and works hard to make potions with superior effects to those of her competition. Unfortunately, people seem to flock to love potions and strawberry potions, rather than healing potions which actually help close wounds.

In addition to potions, Zuri is forced to give other odd services in her store. For example, she’s been asked to loan or keep money for people, acting as a sort of bank. A lot of stores perform these services, but Zuri doesn’t like it – she’d rather just sell potions. She also has various pamphlets and a newspaper box in her store that are a very minimal source of income, along with some candied goods from a store on the other side of town that is “affiliated” with hers. As a side job she helps touch up other’s pictographs with her magic, and takes pictures for others with her pictograph box.

Though seemingly reserved,  Zuri can become boisterous over the right subjects. She tries to act excited in the presence of new customers, but often comes off as creepy and awkward more than endearing. It shows in her personality that she is only just getting used to being the face behind a desk, rather than the one hidden behind a book.

Zuri has long and somewhat disorderly dark hair, which she might sometimes restrain with an incongruent orange ribbon. She has light brown skin and bright green eyes, and tends to wear a cape or shawl over whatever she’s wearing (normally vests and dress shirts with slacks).  Zuri has a red dot on her forehead, which she applies every day as a religious tradition of her village, but her messy bangs tend to cover it up. She is about average in height, a bit above in weight, for a Iomadi. Her Iomadi markings are mammalian, and she has black and brown fox ears with a bushy black and brown tail. She needs glasses for reading, but not for anything else, and so customers only rarely see them (usually only if she has to read a label).

Claudette Dorje, Esquire: A young lawyer, about Zuri’s age, Claudette and Zuri met as children in Oomash, and became fast friends despite Claudette’s initially pretentious behavior regarding her own wealth. Though they were estranged for some time during Zuri’s attempt at a pilgrimage, they met up again several years ago.

Claudette is often found on the table closest to the front countertop (and sometimes when Zuri is particularly pliable, behind the counter and beside her) reading the Impel Crier. She is a lawyer with the firm “Cox and Dorje” which her father began. Though her father passed, the current owner Alvius Cox employed Claudette as an honor to her father, and mostly allows Claudette to come and go. She comes around perhaps once a week, and spends most of the rest of her days at Zuri’s shop.

One of the reasons Claudette doesn’t work much is that she only takes cases she can win. Claudette has odd ideas about being a lawyer, and she resents having to represent criminals or people obviously in the wrong. She will only take a case if she feels she can commit to proving her client right. When Claudette is “in her element” she is quite competent, and she has eyes like an eagle. She has caught her fair share of shoplifters in Zuri’s store, looking over the newspaper at customers.

Her interest in potions skews away from Zuri’s own (she loves flavored potions and is interested in love potions), but even this minor interest only came about on Zuri’s behalf. Claudette is actually quite in love with Zuri, and has already purchased an extremely gaudy ring which she keeps in her coat pocket. She is trying to work up the courage to propose to Zuri, but feels conflicted about it. She fears that since she co-owns the shop, and she’s been smoothing over Zuri’s finances for a while, her behavior could be seen as coercive by others – that she is using her wealth to corner Zuri.

Claudette is a light-skinned northern Iomadi, with blue eyes and long blonde hair, long in the back, and with the sides pulled and pinned with blue ribbon. Her Iomadi markings are bird-like, and she likes to trace her wing-ears and fan-tail to the Oomashan Cave Pheasant (they’re actually turkey feathers). She wears expensive coats, shawls, vests, shirts and ties and skirts, sometimes pants, and is often seen with a different (but fitting) outfit every day. She has a pair of old dueling flintlock pistols (much less advanced and useful than normal Adelian revolving cylinder guns) that she keeps on herself. She’s also not uncomfortable with melee, being the owner of an adaman-tipped dueling cane, and has called herself “Zuri’s Knight.”

As a humorous fact, Claudette has memorized all of Zuri’s labels with her pictographic memory.

A World of Potions

Zuri has a few unique potions that may draw some interest, aside from the assortment of “normal” draughts. All have been tasted, at grave peril, by Zuri herself to insure that they work. Claudette was always present during these experiments for safety concerns, so she too will back up the authenticity of each potion – and their dangers. Here are a few examples.

Gray Potion of Invisibility: Invisibility is a very difficult magic property to give to objects. Skilled illusionists can make themselves appear to have disappeared in the eyes of others. But to create a means for non-casters to become invisible, such as a cloak or elixir, is vastly more complicated, since an illusionist accounts for his or her own body type, measurements and movement when casting – it is very difficult to cast a spell that would fit everyone well. Zuri discovered this potion during the examination of a Dragon’s horde for the Andaliel Archeological Society. The Dragon had drank half of it, and become invisible for practically forever (it claimed to have been invisible now for 3 years).

Draught of the Peacock: The Draught of the Peacock is a transformative potion. In this case, its effect is to change the user’s sex characteristics to the other sex. While outward appearance is not (immediately) changed, the person effectively is a working male or female after a drink. The potion is exceptionally strong – Zuri spent a whole day as a boy, ingesting garlic and silver dust to counter the effects, from just a teaspoon. It is labeled as a “permanent effect.”

Elixir of the Departed: Labeled “DANGEROUS” this potion allows a person to become ethereal for a time, walking through walls and entering objects like a haunting ghost. However, Zuri believes that if used for a long period of time, the body may die separate from the temporarily ejected ghost-soul: even though she used it for only a few minutes to prove it works, Zuri felt quite sick and hurt upon returning to her body, as if she’d been gravely wounded.

Potion of the Minotaur: The Potion of the Minotaur enhances muscular growth. Unlike strength spells which increase the target’s strength through channeling kinetic energy across their bodies, this potion actually, physically increases muscle mass. What this does to organs, the target’s bloodstream and other body parts is anybody’s guess.

Extract of Lotus: Essentially a hallucinatory drug, but too obscure and rare to count as one for the authorities, this potion induces a delusional, euphoric state. It is powerful and highly addictive, which would be a grave problem as Zuri doesn’t have more of it, so anyone who drank the whole potion would be hard pressed to acquire more.

Potion of Instant Growth: This potion causes an object to advance from an “incomplete” to a “complete” state, or from “young” to “adult” or just merely causes time to pass, or so Zuri conjectures. When she drank some, she had finally gotten a good cheek-length haircut, but the potion caused her hair to spring long and messy once again. She poured a drop on a spider’s eggs and watched them grow to maturity before her eyes. Labeled as a farming aid.

Blue Milk: A novelty, this bottle of blue milk never grows old. It has gone months without spoiling. Zuri founds this in the home of a mad alchemist she once helped Claudette to investigate on a client’s behalf – and she essentially stole it. She has no idea what sorts of horrible chemicals might be in the milk, but she swears, someday, she will examine its secrets in-depth. This day has never come. The horrible thing will probably be sold before that. It tastes just like normal milk.

Lustrous Potion: This potion causes the target to become attractive to others. The only noticeable effect is a slight sheen on the skin. When Zuri and Claudette tested it, nothing really happened. Perhaps they were already attractive enough to others. However, when they accidentally spilled some an alley cat, it was very quickly chased down by other cats.

Pig Potion: A potion that turns people into pigs. If not enough potion is taken, and the target is a Iomadi, the target’s Iomadi markings become a curly pig’s tail and pig ears. Zuri didn’t drink enough to turn into a pig. This potion is tucked away in a dusty corner with no real decoration, and it only has a black scribble on the bottle reading “pig potion.”

The Unusual Suspects

A variety of people come regularly to Zuri’s shop, though usually not to buy things.

Gharial “Jimbo” Thurwood IV: Gharial is a Sorian, a tall and powerful lizard-faced, scaly-green-skinned humanoid with plenty of sharp teeth and an almost perpetual scowl. Gharial was ejected from his Sorian tribe as a child due to a very un-Sorian fascination with bottles. The other Sorians thought something was wrong with his head, and dropped him off a cliff. Suriving, Gharial was taken in by a Iomadi family, and became a bottler. Gharial supplies Zuri with the bottles for her potions. He also supplies her weekly with frustration, as he often delivers unneeded bottles, just because he had to make bottles that week for somebody, so much does he love bottle-making. He will often try to barter bottles for food.

In reality, Gharial is a Sorian with “The Shine,” the supernatural Sorian aptitude or genius. His Shine is in making bottles. Zuri’s potion bottles are nigh-indestructible compared to ordinary bottles, but she doesn’t realize it.

Xiuxiu: A disagreeable-looking Cuporo whose spirit marking is to have nettle leaves growing out of his short dark brown hair, Xiuxiu is the paper boy for the Impel Crier, who fills the box in the shop. His other job is to get into arguments with Claudette, as they support different political parties. Claudette considers the Impel Crier a content-less rag, albeit she still reads it every day. Xiuxiu is actually a run-away. Despite being a teenager, he seems very smart on a lot of subjects, albeit less in others (for example, identifying with only one, very weird name as his run-away name). His family is influential in politics, and are looking out for him, though he has changed his appearance to throw them off. Zuri suspects as much anyway.

Honey: Zuri assumes Honey is a nickname adopted due to the young lady’s work delivering sweets for the sweet shop Zuri is loosely affiliated with. The sweet shop sells some of Zuri’s potions, specifically flavored (though Zuri HATES doing that), and in return Zuri sells some of their candies at her shop, and they cross-promote that way. Honey is always dressed in big coats and scarves, and rides a draisine from one end of the town to the next delivering sweets. She rarely speaks, and when she does, it’s often either terse, or not resembling communication at all. Honey looks like a Iomadi, as far as Zuri can tell. In reality, Honey is a Wasman Angel, gathering intelligence. Her wireless card was broken in a bad fall, and so she can no longer reconnect to the satellite network, and does not know that her Cephaetera has been destroyed. Due to being disconnected from the internet, she finds it very hard to adjust to situations, and is considered an eccentric. Like all Wasman, her internals are a complex series of tools and linked systems buried by her soft and warm exterior, including welding tools and a laser gun.