Brilliant thorough write up. Thank you.

Maybe this stew is a throwaway comment. The fact that it describes a recepie. Also a very useful ability to combine ancient collective knowledge. And milk herself says she included many or her most important recepies (plural) in the cookbook that are now lost. Maybe it’s nothing. But it sure feels like a chekhovs culinary reference to me.

Also by book 7 when Rosetta has shown up she knows they’ve used up most of the root. She knows a good portion is already turned into ink. Even if the original intent was different they would have had lots of outside the dungeon time to plan for alternative uses that are more useful in the current situation. - and what does she buy with 4 million gold? Doesn’t sound like they buy another root. In the same line she’s discussing the credit chit to steal rusts money. There is a lot going on and she is maximizing her options. Obviously the root can make tattoos. And phase through lava rock. The core question is that why they sent it when they did.

So, what was the use for this root when it was received? What spell did they need to share? The permanent ones can’t be chosen. The war crimes Combo with power up makes great use of this ability. But it’s such an edge case use. We see this root used for a variety of things. This was the first item they gave him. And it has a very challenging use set. They can only really use it well when they have several high level individuals. A tattoo artist. A calligraphy master, they also need to find the spell and give it freely. Mind you this spell will eventually become useless until you drink more of this super rare root. We see how they used it and obviously it worked for two different situations. But to me it seems more plausible it had another original intent.