Weird Revisted: Fantasy Pharmakon

In February of 2010, I had fantasy drugs on the mind. I'm happy to say that in the 7 plus years since this post originally appeared, a lot of fantastic intoxicants have appeared on blogs and OSR products.

"Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into locked a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can."

- Raoul Duke, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

A couple of years ago, I was following a messageboard thread discussing drugs--intoxicants--in the context of fantasy gaming. It was prompted by White Wolf's Exalted and the modern drugs like heroin and cocaine, apearing therein. One of the writer's involved with defended their choice to use those very modern drugs with those very modern names by saying that "made up" names for things were essentially lame/uncool, and that if a substance was familiar to player's under a certain name, that name ought to be used.

I disagreed in two ways. One, I think using too many words with modern connotations and origins can break the "mood" of fantasy. Such things are "amundisms," as Lin Carter would have it in his seminal exploration on world-building, Imaginary Worlds (1973). Secondly, and most importantly, why should a world like Exalted's Creation, where fantastic creatures like the Beasts of Resplendent Liquids exist--which eat raw materials and excrete drugs--be saddled with the same old, boring drugs found in the real world? Surely, that's a failure of imagination.

Thankfully, many writers of fantastic fiction have not been so limited. Here are several examples of fantastic intoxicants which should serve to inspire interesting new substances for role-playing game characters to use (or misuse):

Black Lotus
In most of Howard's Conan stories, black lotus is a poison (though in "Hour of the Dragon" it's noted that its pollen causes "death-like sleep and monstrous dreams"), but the ancestors of the thoroughly stoned citizens of Xuthal have cultivated it until "instead of death, its juice induces dreams, gorgeous and fantastic." The effects appear to be similar to more mundane narcotics in terms of the heavy sleep and euphoria it induces with the added effect of generating vivid, pleasurable dreams. Find it in: "Xuthal of the Dusk" in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian.

Dreamshit
A mysterious, and powerful, new psychedelic drug on the streets of New Crobuzon in China Mieville's Perdido Street Station. Dreamshit takes the form of brown, sticky pellets about the size of an olive that smell like burnt sugar. Eventually, it's discovered that dreamshit is the "milk" of the deadly, mind-devouring, slake-moths. Find it in: Perdido Street Station by China Mieville.

Fledge
In Tim Lebbon's Noreela, fledge is a commonly used (and abused) substance. Mined from deep underground the yellowish substance is put to many beneficial uses by the race of fledge miners for whom it provides sustenance, healing, and the ability to project their minds outside of their bodies. The fledge miners experience no ill-effects from their use, but do have withdrawal if they go without it. Taken to the surface, though, fledge degrades in quality--its mental-projection effects greatly diminish--and becomes highly addictive. Not that fledge mining is totally without dangers. There are rare, but powerful demons (the Nax) sometimes found near fledge veins. Lebbon also gives us another drug--rhellim--which enhances sexual stimulation, and comes from the livers of furbats. Find them in: Dusk, and Dawn by Tim Lebbon.

The Plutonian Drug
The Plutonian Drug appears in the Clark Ashton Smith story of the same name. Also called "plutonium"--though certainly not to be confused with the radioactive element of the same name--it's found on Pluto by the Cornell Brothers' 1990 expedition (I remember watching the intrepid explorers' return on live TV in 1994, don't you?). Its native form is crystalline, but it turns to a powder when exposed to earthly atmosphere. Ingestion of the drug causes the user to be able to perceive their own timeline for a relatively recent period as if it were a spatial dimension, allowing them to see a short distance into the future. Several other extraterrestrial drugs are mentioned in the same story. Find them in: "The Plutonian Drug."

Shanga
Appearing in a couple of stories by Leigh Brackett, shanga certainly brings out the beast in its users.  It isn't actually a drug, but a radiation produced by projector devices, the construction of which is a lost art. Users experience temporary atavism, allowing one to (as the quote goes) make oneself into a beast to get rid of the pain of being a man. The ancient projectors used a prism of an alien crystal rather than quartz, like the projectors found in the seeder parts of Martian trade-cities at the time of the stories. The crystals, the so-called Jewels of Shanga, produce a more potent effect leading to physical de-evolution, with longer exposure causing transformation to ever more remote evolutionary ancestral forms. Find it in: "Queen of the Martian Catacombs" (The Secret of Sinharat), and "The Beast-Jewel of Mars."

There you go. Five substances for hours of simulated enjoyment. Turn on, tune in, play on.

Intoxicated in the Strange Stars

Within the borders of the Strange Stars there are a innumerable recreational substances available from the botanical relics of Old Earth to the ubiquitous, chemically facile ethanol and a whole galaxy (almost literally) of polychrome uppers, downers, screamers, and thinkers developed by across a million habitats. Here's a sampling of them:

aku: Also known as "ink." Aku is both the name of a small cephalopod-like creature whose native world or place of manufacture is lost and the pigmented mucoid substance it produces. The user places the live cephalod over there face and squeezes it to induce the creature to squirt its pigment into their mouth. The ink is a local anesthetic (causing "aku tongue"), but has central nervous system effects similar to cannabis. Long-term use permanently darkens the oral mucosa in idiosyncratic swirling patterns. 

alcohol: Though ethanol substitutes that produced comparable effects without end-organ damage are known, their use is not as widespread as might be expected. The most primitive civilizations only know the original, and the most advanced ones use their mastery of nanobiotechnology to fix any damage their indulgence might cause. Cheap bars use synthesizers that can dispense alcohol of any variety, while high-class ones pride themselves on having finely crafted varieties.

chroma: A white, iridescent crystalline powder typically insufflated or inhaled from exploding "bouncing balls", but it can be ingested or injected intravenously. The substance has psychedelic and mild euphorigenic properties. It's particularly known for producing illusions of color alteration. Druggie lore holds that some users have experienced new primary colors like jale or ulfire.

momentomori: A rare and expensive drug, produced by a spider-like bot that, when released, clamps itself on the forehead of a corpse and injects its nanite payload into the brain. Within 15-20 minutes, a teardrop black shape begins to form from an orifice in the bot. It condenses into an almond-sized jewel. When allowed to dissolve on the tongue, the jewel delivers a vivid experience of the departed's last minutes of life (no more than half an hour, depending on how long it's been since their death. Bodies dead longer than 24 hours yield only fragments, if anything).

Opening the Doors of Perception

While mind-altering (and mind-expanding) chemicals have long been known to mankind, but there has been a prejudice against their therapeutic use by the church, science, and modern thaumaturgy.  In recent years, renegade scientists and alchemists have begun to catalog and experiment with these substances--and some maverick thaumaturgists have even begun to take notice.

These chemicals are often grouped under the name phantastica, but all fall into subcategories based on their effects on the mind and body.  While few engender the physical dependence observed with alcohol or various bootleg alchemicals, they can pose serious risks to the psyche.

The use of various phantastical mushrooms is of ancient vintage.  It has been suggested that the fruiting bodies of fungal sapients are among the most potent, and their widespread harvesting by primitive man drove these beings to near extinction and created enmity lasting to this day.

Mescaline (derived from several New World cacti) is one of the most widely studied phantastica. Some thaumaturgists have attesting to it aiding the early stages of magical research by increasing intuitive connections with the Planes Beyond.  Indeed, mescaline's only consistent thaumaturgical use is to aid in travel to the astral plane. Small doses have also been reported to allow a magical practitioner to see etheric or astral bodies.

Some phantastica come from the other planes themselves.  So-called “bug powder” sold in the astral waystation of Interzone, is a potentially dangerous example. Alchemists have work to isolate the essence of the astral moth for planar transport, but with little success.

A number of other sources of phantastica are currently under scientific investigation.  Adventurers report life-transforming visions from consumption of certain molds that grow in subterranean areas--often ones which are found near the “lairs” of certain slimes. Tincture of a distillate of ectoplasm is rumored to produce a dissociative state resembling catatonia, but allowing communication (one way) with spirits.    It has even been suggested that smoking the flakes or scraps of a lich (if one can acquire them) increases sorcerous potency for a period of hours to days, while slowing perceptions of time and heightening the senses.

It is the hope of many of researchers that the scientific study of these substances many usher in a new technological age. One perfectly integrating thaumaturgy and psychology through chemical means.

What'll It Be?

For a little brand name flash, here are some alcoholic beverages consumed by denizens of the City:

Spirits:

Albecoeurl: A moderately expensive brand of gin imported from Grand Lludd.  It's bottle is decorated with the image a panther.

Brown Jenkin: A whiskey brand from New Lludd.
Caballero: A tequilla imported from Zingaro.
Dyer Corbie: A brand of light overproof rum.
Gentleman Loser: A sour mash whiskey emblazoned with the image of a smiling "gentleman of the road." The brand is nearly a hundred years old, but was marketed in its native South as a "medicinal" for much of its history.
Storisende: A Poitêmien brandy. Expensive.

Beer:
Cold Iron: A light lager brewed in Yronburg.
Eschenbach: Another prominent beer from the Steel League.
Green Griffon Ale: Sometimes just called "Griffon."  It's symbol is (appropriately) a green griffon rampant.

Bootleg Alchemicals

Though alcohol is legal across the New World continent, smuggling still exists to avoid taxation. The largest illicit smuggling of intoxicants, however, involves alchemical substances of various sorts made illegal, over decade ago, in most of the member states of the Union (including the City, the Steel League, and Lake City) thanks to the efforts of church-driven abstinence movements.

This has done little to stem the tide of these substances, which are available in speakeasies or drug dens throughout most major cities. “Bathtub alchemicals” are made in small laboratories within cities or rural areas. Larger scale operations (on some level, likely under the thumb of the Infernal gangsters of the Hell Syndicate) smuggle in alchemicals from foreign countries. Some may even come from other planes of existence, though the origins of such extra-terrene substances are murky.

Alchemical intoxicants come in many varieties, having effects similar to “mundane” drugs (like alcohol, cocaine, opiates, or cannabis) or mixtures thereof--there is an alchemical similar to cocaethylene, for instance. There are also “exotics” which produce magical effects similar to many potions in traditional fantasy worlds. Cheaply made alchemicals may be dangerous, in ways beyond the intended effects, and cheaply made exotics often strangely so.

Here are a couple of alchemicals not uncommon in the City and its world:

Absinthe: In the world we know, absinthe is just a liqueur flavored with essence of wormwood (usually with a high alcohol content), but in the world of the City, it literally harbors a green faerie. Technically, its an alchemical tincture of the larval stage of a spirit creature. These larvae appear to the imbiber as small, pale green, luminescent, and winged pixie-things, but are invisible to others not magically aided. It’s use enhances creativity, and may lead to clairvoyance or clairaudience in a chance which increases with dose (10-40% on first try, with chance increasing by 5% for every week of 4 or more days use. Similar intervals without use lower the chance). With long term use, it allows the user to perceive astral beings, but also causes hallucinations, so telling the two apart is nontrivial. This gives way to paranoia, and possible convulsions if use is heavy and prolonged.

Purpureal ether: Also called mauve enmanation, this alien substance is difficult to describe in earthly terms: it's purplish and has a slight glow, and can be “poured” or contained--something fog from dry ice, though it doesn’t dissipate like any fog, and is, in fact, a radiation from somewhere in the outer dark. It can be collected on moonless nights with little cloud cover on alchemically prepared cloth screens.  These are pressed or squeezed to yield the substance, which is then bottled in opaque receptacles--sunlight will degrade it within others. After 24 hours, it becomes more violatile, and is used by inhalation from bottles, or from cloths on which some of the substance has been pored.  It’s use deadens pain, increases strength (+1 with commiserate damage bonus) and heightens the mind (making the user immune to illusions and the like) for 1d4 hours. It also, however, reduces coordination (reducing anything reliant on dexterity by -1). Longterm use (daily use for a period of 1-4 months), causes degeneration first of the nerves (further dexterity loss, though this time permament), then of the flesh (charisma, and finally constitution loss).

Bug Powder

Bill: What do you mean, "it's a literary high"?

Joan: It's a Kafka high. You feel like a bug.

- Naked Lunch (1991)

Bug Powder is a strange magical substance found in the City, and its world, and possibly elsewhere. It generally appears as pale yellowish powder, and its official use is as a professional-grade insecticide. It can be found in containers from several different and mysterious suppliers--"Benway Chymical", and "Voke & Veech", are prominent examples. Bug powder will indeed serve as an insecticide, but if nasally insufflated (snorted), or injected intravenously in small doses it has euphoric and mild hallucinogenic properties.

Long-term use generally leads to dependence, but also, like use of a large single dose, seems to open a doorway to another plane. Users report travel to an exotic, desert world under two reddish moons, were lies a sprawling pennisular city called Interzone, on the quivering banks of a gelatinous sea. The swarthy inhabitants of Interzone appear human in all respects, but have undefinable and unsettling air of strangeness about them. In addition to the natives, humans from many time periods and worlds, as well as alien beings, can be found sweating in Interzone, perusing their own agendas. There is a great deal of political intrigue in the city-state, and several different political factions--but the goals of these groups and the reasons for their conflicts often seem contradictory, if not outright nonsensical.

Mystics and planar scholars believe Interzone to be an interstitial realm acting as a gate or "customs station" between the material world and the inner planes. Supporting this view is the presence of soldiers the Hell Syndicates, as well as miracleworking street-preachers and holy hermits professing the varied and conflicting "ultimate truths" of the Seven Heavens. A slight variation on this view, is that Interzone is not so much a part of the astral plane, but more an extension of Slumberland, the Dream-World, located in some seedy Delirium ghetto. Further exploration will be needed to determine this for certain.

This exploration isn't without dangers. While physical dependence comes from the bug powder's use, the thinning of the psychic barriers between the material world and Interzone serve to cause a person to involuntarily shift between the two. This tends to generate feelings of paranoia--and perhaps rightly so, as the more time one spends in Interzone, the more likely one is to become an agent (perhaps unwittingly) of one of its factions, and fall prey to its byzantine intrigues.

One final interesting bit of Interzone lower is that the natives hold that their city-state, was actually once six cities of very different mystic character, physically indistinct and loosely co-spatial, but still spiritually differentiated. The names of theses putative cities when uttered with the proper ritual, are said to be a powerful spell, though sources disagree as to what purpose.

Fantasy Pharmakon

"Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into locked a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can."

- Raoul Duke, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

A couple of years ago, I was following a messageboard thread discussing drugs--intoxicants--in the context of fantasy gaming. It was prompted by White Wolf's Exalted and the modern drugs like heroin and cocaine, apearing therein. One of the writer's involved with defended their choice to use those very modern drugs with those very modern names by saying that "made up" names for things were essentially lame/uncool, and that if a substance was familiar to player's under a certain name, that name ought to be used.

I disagreed in two ways. One, I think using too many words with modern connotations and origins can break the "mood" of fantasy. Such things are "amundisms," as Lin Carter would have it in his seminal exploration on world-building, Imaginary Worlds (1973). Secondly, and most importantly, why should a world like Exalted's Creation, where fantastic creatures like the Beasts of Resplendent Liquids exist--which eat raw materials and excrete drugs--be saddled with the same old, boring drugs found in the real world? Surely, that's a failure of imagination.

Thankfully, many writers of fantastic fiction have not been so limited. Here are several examples of fantastic intoxicants which should serve to inspire interesting new substances for role-playing game characters to use (or misuse):

Black Lotus
In most of Howard's Conan stories, black lotus is a poison (though in "Hour of the Dragon" it's noted that its pollen causes "death-like sleep and monstrous dreams"), but the ancestors of the thoroughly stoned citizens of Xuthal have cultivated it until "instead of death, its juice induces dreams, gorgeous and fantastic." The effects appear to be similar to more mundane narcotics in terms of the heavy sleep and euphoria it induces with the added effect of generating vivid, pleasurable dreams. Find it in: "Xuthal of the Dusk" in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian.

Dreamshit
A mysterious, and powerful, new psychedelic drug on the streets of New Crobuzon in China Mieville's Perdido Street Station. Dreamshit takes the form of brown, sticky pellets about the size of an olive that smell like burnt sugar. Eventually, it's discovered that dreamshit is the "milk" of the deadly, mind-devouring, slake-moths. Find it in: Perdido Street Station by China Mieville.

Fledge
In Tim Lebbon's Noreela, fledge is a commonly used (and abused) substance. Mined from deep underground the yellowish substance is put to many beneficial uses by the race of fledge miners for whom it provides sustenance, healing, and the ability to project their minds outside of their bodies. The fledge miners experience no ill-effects from their use, but do have withdrawal if they go without it. Taken to the surface, though, fledge degrades in quality--its mental-projection effects greatly diminish--and becomes highly addictive. Not that fledge mining is totally without dangers. There are rare, but powerful demons (the Nax) sometimes found near fledge veins. Lebbon also gives us another drug--rhellim--which enhances sexual stimulation, and comes from the livers of furbats. Find them in: Dusk, and Dawn by Tim Lebbon.

The Plutonian Drug
The Plutonian Drug appears in the Clark Ashton Smith story of the same name. Also called "plutonium"--though certainly not to be confused with the radioactive element of the same name--it's found on Pluto by the Cornell Brothers' 1990 expedition (I remember watching the intrepid explorers' return on live TV in 1994, don't you?). Its native form is crystalline, but it turns to a powder when exposed to earthly atmosphere. Ingestion of the drug causes the user to be able to perceive their own timeline for a relatively recent period as if it were a spatial dimension, allowing them to see a short distance into the future. Several other extraterrestrial drugs are mentioned in the same story. Find them in: "The Plutonian Drug."

Shanga
Appearing in a couple of stories by Leigh Brackett, shanga certainly brings out the beast in its users.  It isn't actually a drug, but a radiation produced by projector devices, the construction of which is a lost art. Users experience temporary atavism, allowing one to (as the quote goes) make oneself into a beast to get rid of the pain of being a man. The ancient projectors used a prism of an alien crystal rather than quartz, like the projectors found in the seeder parts of Martian trade-cities at the time of the stories. The crystals, the so-called Jewels of Shanga, produce a more potent effect leading to physical de-evolution, with longer exposure causing transformation to ever more remote evolutionary ancestral forms. Find it in: "Queen of the Martian Catacombs" (The Secret of Sinharat), and "The Beast-Jewel of Mars."

There you go. Five substances for hours of simulated enjoyment. Turn on, tune in, play on.