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What kind of poison is this?


Moonman

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It was almost noon before she saw the man she wanted, a prosperous shipowner she had seen
doing business with the old man three times before. Big and bald and burly, he wore a heavy cloak of
plush brown velvet trimmed with fur and a brown leather belt ornamented with silver moons and stars.
Some mishap had left one leg stiff. He walked slowly, leaning on a cane.
He would do as well as any and better than most, the ugly girl decided. She hopped off the piling
and fell in after him. A dozen strides put her right behind him, her finger knife poised. His purse was on
his right side, at his belt, but his cloak was in her way. Her blade flashed out, smooth and quick, one
deep slash through the velvet and he never felt a thing. Red Roggo would have smiled to see it. She
slipped her hand through the gap, slit the purse open with the finger knife, filled her fist with gold …
The big man turned. “What—”
The movement tangled her arm in the folds of his cloak as she was pulling out her hand. Coins
rained around their feet. “Thief!” The big man raised his stick to strike at her. She kicked his bad leg out
from under him, danced away, and bolted as he fell, darting past a mother with a child. More coins fell
from between her fingers to bounce along the ground. Shouts of “thief, thief ” rang out behind her. A
potbellied innkeep passing by made a clumsy grab for her arm, but she spun around him, flashed past a
laughing whore, raced headlong for the nearest alley.
Cat of the Canals had known these alleys, and the ugly girl remembered. She darted left, vaulted
a low wall, leapt across a small canal, and slipped through an unlocked door into some dusty storeroom.
All sounds of pursuit had faded by then, but it was best to be sure. She hunkered down behind some
crates and waited, arms wrapped around her knees. She waited for the best part of an hour, then
decided it was safe to go, climbed straight up the side of the building, and made her way across the
rooftops almost as far as the Canal of Heroes. By now the shipowner would have gathered up coins and
cane and limped on to the soup shop. He might be drinking a bowl of hot broth and complaining to the
old man about the ugly girl who had tried to rob his purse.
The kindly man was waiting for her at the House of Black and White, seated on the edge of the
temple pool. The ugly girl sat next to him and put a coin on the lip of the pool between them. It was
gold, with a dragon on one face and a king on the other.
“The golden dragon of Westeros,” said the kindly man. “And how did you come by this? We are
no thieves.”
“It wasn’t stealing. I took one of his, but I left him one of ours.”
The kindly man understood. “And with that coin and the others in his purse, he paid a certain
man. Soon after that man’s heart gave out. Is that the way of it? Very sad.” The priest picked up the coin
and tossed it into the pool. “You have much and more to learn, but it may be you are not hopeless.”

So the merchant would bite each coin to make sure they aren't counterfeited and that's how he was afflicted, but what about the shipowner and others who may have touched the coin afterwards, couldn't they poison themselves by eating or touching their lips?

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Maybe it's a liquid that would evaporate fairly quickly. As far as a specific in-world poison, I have no idea. 

Although honestly I don't know how concerned the FM are with collateral damage. They want to make sure the right person dies...but you have to break some eggs to make an omelet, right?

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That may be so but the kind man told her she must avoid such a modus operandi for the task.

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“The guards go with him even when he slips out to make water,” she said, “but he doesn’t go
when they do. The tall one is the quicker. I’ll wait till he is making water, walk into the soup shop, and
stab the old man through the eye.”
“And the other guard?”
“He’s slow and stupid. I can kill him too.”
“Are you some butcher of the battlefield, hacking down every man who stands in your way?”
“No.”
“I would hope not. You are a servant of the Many-Faced God, and we who serve Him of Many
Faces give his gift only to those who have been marked and chosen.”
She understood. Kill him. Kill only him.

 

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This seems like a detail GRRM simply isn´t that interested about. He just assumes there are poisons that only affect a target if he bites or maybe swallows it but not if it is only touched (ingested in some way) and leave it at that. No reason to get technical, really. 

There is really no reason why the person Arya "failed to rob" should recheck his coins that they are real. He know they are, since he maybe have bitten in them before. 

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3 hours ago, Moonman said:

That may be so but the kind man told her she must avoid such a modus operandi for the task.

 

The Old Man says many things, but many of Jaqens actions go against them, for example he kills Pate with the same method as Arya kills the insurance guy, poison on a coin, yet I highly doubt Pate was his target.

 

4 hours ago, Moonman said:

So the merchant would bite each coin to make sure they aren't counterfeited and that's how he was afflicted, but what about the shipowner and others who may have touched the coin afterwards, couldn't they poison themselves by eating or touching their lips?

The Waif taught Arya the poisons "on screen" or so to speak.  Go back to that passage and I am sure she describes a tasteless poison.

As for the man who's coin it was not dying, as long as he had no open sores on his hand, your talking about tiny tiny tiny amounts of the poison ever getting into his body if any at all.  He may have picked the coin up, but after putting it in his purse or whatever he could've wiped his hands on the purse or his clothing or anything thereafter removing the tiny amount of poison he got on his hands, or the poison did not attached to his hands because they had no moisture, whereas the poison dissolved instantly when put into the insurance guys mouth.

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Well, it is a very strong poison, perhaps the product of sorcery. That tasteless poison is the tears of Lys which causes a slow, painful death as in the case on Jon Arryn.

It may be a case of retroactive continuity, the faceless men being envisioned in a different matter initially. Pate was indeed the target as Jaqen assumed his identity.

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“My thanks.” There was something about the pale, soft youth that he misliked, but he did not want to seem discourteous, so he added, “My name’s not Slayer, truly. I’m Sam. Samwell Tarly.”
“I’m Pate,” the other said, “like the pig boy.”

 

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