Black Water — Qlippoth-Tainted Necromantic Sap

Black water is a coal-black, sticky magical liquid smelling of vegetable rot. It replaces sap inside corrupted trees and pools beneath tainted soil around qlippoth runestones. Drinking it grants unnatural endurance and allows passage through a runestone’s antipathy, but ordinary food and drink become nauseating while its influence lasts.

At a Glance

Category: Supernatural environmental drug
Delivery: Ingested
Origin: Side effect of qlippoth runestones
Aura: Faint necromancy
Campaign role: Corrupted terrain, forbidden sustenance, qlippoth exploration
Rules provenance: The mechanics below are Pathfinder 1e material.

Edition Mechanics

Pathfinder 1e

Addiction: major; Fortitude: DC 22; Price: not normally sold. For 3 hours the user needs neither food nor drink, gains +2d4 temporary hit points and can bypass the antipathy effect of qlippoth runestones. Damage: 1d4 Wisdom. While affected, consuming normal food or liquid requires a DC 18 Fortitude save or the user becomes nauseated. Cure: 3 consecutive saves.

5.5e / 2024, 5e / 2014 and 3.5e

No mechanics are presented here as official rules for these editions. A conversion should preserve black water as environmental corruption that grants temporary survival benefits and access through qlippoth wards while alienating the body from ordinary sustenance.

What Happens in Play?

Black water is particularly useful in exploration adventures because the benefit and the danger are tied to the same place. Drinking it may be the easiest way through a qlippoth ward, but doing so exposes characters to addiction, Wisdom damage and an increasingly unnatural relationship with food and water.

Where Is It Found?

It appears in vegetation and soil corrupted by qlippoth runestones rather than in ordinary markets. A patch of trees bleeding black sap can therefore act as an environmental warning long before characters find the runestone itself.

Encounters & Adventure Use

A path through a qlippoth ward is accessible only to creatures carrying the taint of black water.
Animals around a corrupted grove have stopped eating normal food.
A stranded expedition survives by drinking black water and refuses rescue provisions.
A seemingly valuable black pool marks the edge of a much larger qlippoth contamination.
An addict seeks new runestones because ordinary supplies of the substance cannot be bought.

Sources & Licensing

Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Belkzen, Hold of the Orc Hordes, © 2015 Paizo Inc.; authors Tyler Beck, Jason Garrett, Alex Greenshields and David Schwartz. PF1e mechanics and the core substance concept derive from the cited source; campaign-use material and edition guidance are original site material.