Colloidal silver...

[Sehvekah]

As a sign I have far too little to do at work(or perhaps a mere willing inability to focus on the utterly mindless and redundant task at hand), I found myself wondering about how the werewolves in PitW would be affected by . Would it kill them outright, or(more likely, at least given what I've read so far in other posts) would it merely work to temporarily suppress their healing factor?

While this might seem more like a weapon at first, it seems necessary for any major surgery. As a blind guess based on his scars, Con Nero seems to have taken a silver bullet or two in his time, and someone had to go in and remove them at some point. Thing is, werewolves tend to shrug off sedatives, and no matter how necessary the situation, I can't see a concious were laying down and holding still while someone else cuts into them, breaks and spreads open their ribcage and digs around to remove some bullets.

It doesn't really matter whether it's sedatives or a crowbar to the back of the head, without a way to as least slow down their regenerative abilities I don't see a way of keeping any of them down long enough to save their shaggy ass. Assuming it would work, a shot of colloidal silver with some seditives would seem like the way to go, as one could make their own if necessary, and properly labled and stored noone who didn't know what to look for would think twice about it.

Of course theres the matteres of how long it would last, and again, the whole "IF" part. That comes in as most avaliable(and even homemade) colloidal silver comes in concentrations of 30 parts per million or less. In a human, that's still enough to do funky things like turn your skin funny collors, destroy your kidneys or kill you, but given the resiliance of werewolves...

On the other hand, we're talking about mythical creatures. A certian ammount of handwaving is expected(and even necessary) and I've rambled on long enough as is. So to bring this to a close before I bore anyone to death, would it work, or not? If not, why?

[KindaChang]

I know that in other universes colloidal silver has been used to make sedatives work on werewolves, but I have no idea how that would work here with PitW.

The specific example I'm thinking of involved an Alpha being restrained by the bads while he daughter was being held elsewhere. They had to give him so many shots that in the end he started sweating the silver out (like the human body tries to do with some toxins).


Also, bullets don't always stay in the body. Even of large game animals.

[K-MacK]

While Kris is the ultimate authority on this, I would suspect that Colloidial Silver would affect the PItW Werewolves the same way it affects everybody else: what is available by mail or over the counter isn't strong enough to do anything much to anybody.
Silver is a bacteriocide and an antiseptic of last resort, largely because the effective levels are also the toxic levels. Silver is quite simply a heavy metal poison...period. It can kill you very unpleasantly.
It is used as an antiseptic in some cases (Silvadene) and applied to the skin in situations where sterility is required, rather than supression of bacteria...like some burn or chemical corrosion problems.
It is not taken internally, because it will make you quite ill; like lead will in this instance.
So, unless there is some idiosyncratic reaction in these Werewolves, I suspect that what holds for Humans holds for the Werewolves as well.

[Kris@WLP]

Colloidal silver is actually somewhat more effective on werewolves than on humans as a poison. In the PitW world it is NOT recommended for ANY medical purpose. Werewolves can't get it out of their system once in, and in addition to all the effects it has on humans it suppresses both transformation and regeneration.

It's too slow from a practical point of view to be used as a poison (unless you have a year or three to spend on the project), but it's very, very bad for werewolves. Even the smallest dose causes permanent damage.

[Happygun]

[Kris@WLP]

[Happygun]

[Sehvekah]

That answers my question, though it does bring up a couple others. The main being, are werevoles as susceptable to heavy metals poisioning as humans, would it require a larger dose, or is the toxicity of silver purely related to it's suppression of lycanthropy?

As for using it to experiment on a werewolf, I don't think you'd actually use it on a captured subject. Rather you'd need to take tissue samples from the subject and then test upon those. Good luck finding a werewolf you can actually capture in the first place, let alone keep confined to some kinda secret labratory though.

And I don't think it'd be used for punishment or intimidation. Based on what was mentioned here, other were's wouldn't want anything to do with the stuff, due to it's nasty effects, and there's simpler and cleaner methods to take down a problem were. If they did ever use it, even in the smallest ammounts, I think Gus would be a hell of a lot weaker and more timid than he is(if he didn't outright off himself for allowing others to poision him like that). The fact he's still intact for the time being is evidence enough for that.

On the other hand, if any normal human who even tried to threaten a were with it would very soon end up very dead, if not by the one they threatened then by the whole pack in an ambush. I don't see weres taking a threat like that lightly, given the damage it could cause, and the potental knowledge and hostility it implys on the part of whoever's making the threats.

[bar1scorpio]

Unless noone believes the wolf with the bad luck of encountering them every time. And they wear hazmat gear and are good at disappearing when things go wrong...

[DesertRat]

Seems like This stuff's got torture and information extraction written all over it.

[Kris@WLP]

Well, no, not for interrogation.

Pure silver is comparatively harmless to humans; it turns skin blue-grey and depresses the immune system a bit. To werewolves, though, it suppresses the ability to transform and regenerate, essentially destroys the immune system, and acts like a mild form of heavy metal poisoning, as in arsenic or lead...

... which means delirium, dementia, loss of cognitive skills, and with high enough continued doses coma and death.

If you give a lycanthrope enough colloidal silver at one shot to weaken him enough to interrogate him, he's not going to have much left to interrogate.

(Actual metallic silver, OTOH- say, swallowing a really old coin- does no harm. It just passes right through the system, more or less untouched.)

[DesertRat]

Well, I was thinking more in terms of the "talk or I'm going to pump your hide full of this crap" than a truth serum sort of situation. Though it'd probably have a shaky reliability at best. I know it hasn't been touched on but I'm certain that someone out in the vastness of Peter's universe would be sadistic enough to use it that way.
Never like the stuff in the first place, myself. It always stuck me as the sort of miracle cure that used to be sold off the back of wagons in the 1800's. After reading about the gray lady I was even less impressed with the stuff. Nice to see that it at least has some effect somewhere, even if it is detrimental.

As for swallowing the coin, well... I can imagine a hysterical parent taking the baby to Dr. Abe after he swallowed the rare coin collection.

[KindaChang]

Of course, as a slow acting, tortourous poison, if someone had an issue with a were and was willing to risk the pack hunting him or her it'd make one heck of a revenge tool.

[UberMan5000]