Drugs and Fairytales

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 6:50 pm

So I noticed somethign interesting the other day-- traditional stories about fairies closely resemble being on ecstasy.

Seriously, what happens to fairies' victims? They lose track of time and dance until they die. There's this whole aura of sensuality about them.

So now I'm imagining a setting where every street drug was created by or associated with a supernatural being. Maybe elven dandruff is actually cocaine, and the sight of an elf fills you with such inferiority that only snorting up will make you feel good about yourself again.

I'm imagining a kind of World fo Darkness vibe where each supernatural cabal uses their drug to exert control over humans and to bankroll their villainous plots. Only I think the existence of the supernaturals would be common knowledge, at least in druggie circles.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Jun 09, 2008 8:19 pm

Well, various psychotropics will let you 'see' various American gods; Mayans, Aztecs, etc.

So it is fairly easy to assign various drugs to fairy tales.

Also, there is the Green Fairy, a fairly modern invention (about the same age as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny)

-Crissa

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 12:23 am

So, off the top of my head I think seven is a reasonable number of factions. Other drugs will either be small, marginalized factions or offshoots of the major ones. So we're looking at something like:

Cocaine -- Unseelie
Meth -- Demons
Heroin -- Necromancers
Acid -- Lords of Chaos
Alcohol -- Nibelung
Weed -- "Angels"
Ecstasy-- Seelie

Drug Spotlight: Alcohol

Alcohol is the invention of the dwarves, and operates much more benignly and subtly than the other drugs. Still, the social effects are problematic.

The Nibelung are a race of creepy bastards who run around in caves and mountains. They are the only nonhuman race ot make earth their home, and the only one to have diplomatic relations with humans; indeed, they are a membr of the UN. Dwarves as a whole are ruled by greed and paranoia, and look to humans chiefly as a means for protecting themselves form toher dwarves. Humans quickly realized that the dwarves' long lives, supernal intelligence, and obsessive insight made them weapons designers par excellence, and the dwarves are now maintained in fabulous wealth by the military industrial complex.

They invented distillation, and still use thier supply of alcohol to smooth relations with humanity.

Effects of Alcohol: As real life, plus tendency to feel unreasonably good about dwarves.

Associated Plane: None, Dwarves are beigns of this earth, and so alcohol has no extraplanar properties.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 1:23 am

Boolean wrote: Effects of Alcohol: As real life, plus tendency to feel unreasonably good about dwarves.

I like the implications (that only a piss-head could like dwarfs). Hmm. I hate dwarfs, and have not touched alcohol in a long time, not including drinking punch at a party and then noticing "Say, this contains more vodka than Vladimir Putin". Coincidence?

Anyway, if necromancers make heroin (presumably because it makes the addicts look pale, thin and pallid, and because it's good at killing people, turning them into necromancer material?), are Vicodin and Endone made by their trainees? Or are they the results of good necromancers purifying the drug into something a little less deadly.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 1:45 am

Yeah, the pallor. Also opioids facilitate astral projection and generally communication with the spirit world.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 2:37 am

This is one of the best threads on TGD. Ever.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 2:45 am

This is really reminding me of something...

...Apparently, there's a really common kind of mold that infects flour if you leave it in the wrong place. And it contains an active hallucinogenic material. And that it's not impossible to eat bread made with the bad flour, and then start tripping out.

It gets funnier when you realize that back in the old days, each village got their flour from the same source--the miller. So if he had a bad batch of flour, a couple of days later, the entire village would be tripping out. Which they usually put down to having a religious experience or something.

I'll see if I can find the website. It was a list of the 10 Worst Trips/Hangovers.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 3:12 am

Maxus wrote:...Apparently, there's a really common kind of mold that infects flour if you leave it in the wrong place.

I think that's ergot, which typically infects the grain and not the flour.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 3:34 am

Yeah, I dug it up.

http://www.cracked.com/article_16178_7- ... -high.html

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 9:52 am

Oh! So that's why Panera Bread is so popular.

shirak · Post by **shirak** » Tue Jun 10, 2008 2:54 pm

Kinda makes you wonder why they use bread in communion, neh?

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 2:09 am

Well, I ate Christ's body once and didn't see angels or feel the PoWeR oF gOd or some shit, so I'm not real sold on the whole symbolic aspect of it.

Maybe hallucinogenic fungus could help to experience religion. Or a mild dose of schizophrenia.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 4:22 am

Maybe hallucinogenic fungus could help to experience religion.

Certainly eating amanita muscaria can make you see dudes with extra arms. Hinduism makes more sense when you realize that chowing down on fly agaric is sacred to those people.

-Username17

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 8:31 am

PS, Frank, the mushroom Sammi found she definitively identified and tried. Results were as she expected, although perhaps too intense than she'd anticipated, she spent the entire evening (and nearly all night) in bed.

She's getting better (faster) at identifying mushrooms, which is good, because when she disappears after work to print, slice, and poke the samples she finds in a day was kinda annoying.

Also, she's now (over the past year) tried each of the psychedelics that have no known toxic effects, so I've gotten to see the results of her experiments.

Mostly it's led me to believe that drug law as practiced in the US is really, really stupid.

-Crissa

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 9:46 am

Crissa wrote: Mostly it's led me to believe that drug law as practiced in the US is really, really stupid.

That alone?

This thread makes me want to convert the Unknown Armies Narco-Alchemist to D&D. That was awesome.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 8:47 pm

Probably not, Koumei. My father was killed by a police officer in a botched drug tip stop, and my mother was a hippie in the day, so I probably was already leaning that way, even though I'm otherwise painfully straight laced.

-Crissa

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 2:38 am

Cracked wrote:They are enjoyed in Cambodia, Philippines and the fifth and seventh levels of hell. They are typically sold by street vendors at night, out of buckets of warm sand. You can spot the vendors because of their glowing red eyes, and the faint, otherworldly sound of children screaming.

no this isn't a drug or something from D&D. It's from Cracked's list of horrifying foods, though it sure as hell makes me want to include it in Sigil...

Calibron · Post by **Calibron** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 4:23 am

The mostly formed duck fetus still in the egg? Personally I really liked the Korean rice wine with the half dozen or so infant mice floating in the bottom of the bottle, it's just so metal.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 8:29 am

Ugh. I deal with baby mice enough in the last year, helping feed my girlfriend's young rainbow boa.

The concept of humans or humanoids feasting on little live critters would make for a very effective RPG flavor for, say, Dragonfolk or Tieflings.

Screw social penalty modifiers, they eat their snacks raw and wriggling.

Tiefling: "OK, lunch break. This dungeon was brutal."
Human: "Fine by me. I have iron rations, a leg of lamb, some wine. What did you bring?"
Elf: "The usual. Honey, leaf-wrapped Magical Elf Bread, some spring water..."
Tiefling: *begins popping bloodied, squirming baby mice down and chasing it with a brackish concoction of brine shrimp, beetles, and blood.*
Human and Elf lose their lunches.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 3:50 pm

"Magical elf bread" -- pretty hilarious, given the thread

the_taken · Post by **the_taken** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 5:03 pm

sigma999 wrote:Tiefling: "OK, lunch break. This dungeon was brutal."
Human: "Fine by me. I have iron rations, a leg of lamb, some wine. What did you bring?"
Elf: "The usual. Honey, leaf-wrapped Magical Elf Bread, some spring water..."
Tiefling: *begins popping bloodied, squirming baby mice down and chasing it with a brackish concoction of brine shrimp, beetles, and blood.*
Human and Elf lose their lunches.

Orky just found his!

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 5:47 pm

Leviticus 11:20 wrote:All fowls that creep, going upon all four, shall be an abomination unto you.

-Username17

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 9:25 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
Maybe hallucinogenic fungus could help to experience religion.
Certainly eating amanita muscaria can make you see dudes with extra arms. Hinduism makes more sense when you realize that chowing down on fly agaric is sacred to those people.

-Username17

OH God, it's the fucking Soma myth again.

Wasson's allegation that Fly agaric is probably Soma is quite often disputed.

Of course, I agree that HIndus did have to be taking something to see blue-skinned multi-armed pseudo-deific figures from Jimi Hendrix album covers. But probably not A.muscaria. *

* The only proof proper proof I drudge in a moment's notice seems to be the wiki page which has two lines on the A. muscaria page on the subject. I God, I miss my access to the scholarly journals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_agaric#Soma

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 10:24 pm

The thing is that whether the ancient Aryans were chowing down on muscaria or not, a lot of modern Hindus explicitly are. I know some of them.

-Username17

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 10:49 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:The thing is that whether the ancient Aryans were chowing down on muscaria or not, a lot of modern Hindus explicitly are. I know some of them.

-Username17

That's news to me but that doesn't make it something of a universal property of The Hindu (I speak of the religion's follower rather than ]the newspaper, of course.)

As a hindu myself, I've never heard it be part of any rite or ritual. But, meh, religion is a strange, devious, and divergent thing. You might know a different sect (cult even, here I joke.) of Hindus than I have associated with across the world and that is very, very possible.