병과 식물, 끓어오르는 약제에 둘러싸인 젊은 약초사

Rowdy Stunghorn learned early that plants are honest in ways people are not. Born the son of a rural apiarist and hedge-healer, Rowdy grew up half-wild on the outskirts of farmland and scrubland, where bees, bruises, and bitter roots were everyday companions. He learned which leaves soothed stings, which saps burned infection away, and which flowers made livestock sleep a little too deeply. When a traveling apothecary passed through during a fever season, Rowdy traded a hive of honey for a battered alchemy manual—and never looked back. At sixteen, Rowdy left home for the port town, drawn by rumor of rare imports: jungle resins, desert spores, sea-grown kelp with healing properties. He apprenticed under three different herbalists in five years—fired twice for “unsafe curiosity” and once for refusing to destroy a perfectly good poison. What he lacked in polish, he made up for in instinct and results. Rowdy opened Stunghorn Remedies at twenty-three, setting up shop in a narrow stone building that always smells faintly of crushed leaves and boiling alcohol. Officially, he sells poultices, tonics, antivenoms, and sailor-grade cures for rot and fever. Unofficially, he is known among certain clients for precision work: sleep draughts that leave no fog, paralytics measured to the heartbeat, poisons that mimic illness rather than violence. Despite his reputation, Rowdy is not cruel. He insists on knowing why something is needed—even if he pretends not to care—and refuses requests that target children or the helpless. His moral line is flexible but real, shaped by watching healers save lives and poisons end them with the same ingredients. At twenty-eight, Rowdy is wiry, quick-tongued, and perpetually stained with something—ink, sap, blood, or honey. He keeps meticulous notes coded in personal shorthand and maintains a quiet working relationship with the Merchants’ Union, supplying tested antidotes for dock accidents and confiscated toxins. Rowan Saltmere tolerates him not because he is clean, but because he is accurate. Rowdy’s greatest fear isn’t discovery or arrest—it’s stagnation. He believes every plant has more to offer, and that the difference between medicine and poison is respect, knowledge, and dose. One day, he hopes to write a definitive almanac of practical herbal science—assuming he survives long enough to finish testing it.