The Poison Factory: It was a thing

When I first heard Venice had a poison factory, I couldn't believe it. Venice invented a lot of things we take for granted, and improved a lot of others. The Serene Republic gave us innovations in public health, banking, printing, commerce, and so much more. The story of the arsenal is fascinating in its own right. In the interests of protecting her sea power, Venice pioneered mass production techniques, so that the shipyard could crank out a galley every day. In a month, they could produce a fleet.

But a factory to produce poison? It just seems mind boggling, and way too much fun not to write about. There was plenty of cloak and dagger work in the Middle Ages. Venetian poisons were shared with ambassadors, and occasionally gifted to diplomatic contacts and heads of state.

Most of the poisons used in that era were metals, with arsenic being a go-to favorite. But humans are hard to kill, so the poisons were a mix of toxins. One surviving recipe calls for mercury chloride, arsenic, ammonia chloride, rock salt, verdigris, and the plant cyclamen.

Matt Lubin of Duke University has identified 34 cases of state sponsored poisonings in the 340 years after 1430, so the Council of Ten, a secretive part of the Republic's government, was putting out a hit every decade on average, that we know about. 11 failed, 9 succeeded, 2 targets died before they could be poisoned, and 12 we don't know the result.

For my purposes, the poison factory produced four products: poisons from metals, poisons from snake venom, poisons from plants, and poisons from sea creatures. I sited it on a small islet near the Arsenal. Of course, a place full of state secrets like that would need to be guarded, and of course thieves would be tempted to make off with the products.