Drugsdrugsdrugs

We've all what a terrible thing unmitigated addiction can be, and have seen lives and bodies scarred by substance abuse.  In fantasy games, drugs are usually magnified, which makes for some powerfully negative side effects to addiction.

So, it's tough to get players to use a lot of drugs.

My solution is to make drugs powerfully useful. I intend to make drugs shoulder some (all?) of the duties that potions normally bear.

Scrap did some cool drugs, once.

Here's my take on the matter. It's not very realistic, but whatever.

Stink Bombs

The 1920s had lots of other weapons, too.  Most of which were developed in WW1.  Grenades, both in American Pineapple and German Potato Masher varieties existed.  Mortars had cool nicknames like "flying pigs" and "toffee apples".  Flamethrowers were awesome.  Tanks looked sort of stupid, but they were still really good at killing you, so whatever.

But poison gases were a thing.  The three big ones were Chlorine, Phosgene, and Mustard Gas.  Chlorine makes you cough and cough while it eats your lungs.  Phosgene just dissolves your lungs over the course of a couple of days.  And Mustard gas gives you blisters all over your body like holy shit.

Here are some of the posters they gave the troops.

By the end of the war, they had decent gas masks that looked like what you think gas masks look like.  But the earliest gas masks looks like horrifying scarecrow dumpster babies.

Which I think is more in line with what I want, so that's done. Alternative history in Eldritch Americana, gas masks all look like sad sack people.  Canon.  Done.

Alright, some more ideas about poison gases for Eldritch Americana

Rasfecula are the unfortunate men and women that have been infected with the Stinking Sickness. They constantly ooze a toxic gas from their pores that will kill other creatures that stand nearby.  They retain their minds, and cluster in horrible stinking colonies. In these colonies, they create pools of reeking slime that they bathe in whenever possible, since that is the only thing that gives relief to their burning skin. The miasma that these colonies create is so strong that only a few noxious creatures can live within it (such as Cactus Polyps and Garlicks). Since the stinking Sickness is infections, Rasfecula colonies are almost always wiped out as soon as they are discovered. . . but sometimes the Stinkers win. Maybe there are even whole cities of Rasfecula somewhere out in the Rust Belt?

Spook Juice is the code name for a liquid developed by the FBI to assist them in their raids.  When thrown on the ground, it forms a thin cloud of white gas.  Within this cloud, all white objects are effectively invisible. This can even let you see through a wall (if the wall is white on both sides and gassed on both sides).  It also causes painful blisters around the lips and fingernails.

Zann Gas was also developed by the FBI, specifically for the purpose of seeing through walls. While breathing it, you can see into the fourth dimension, letting you see through walls and into closed containers and pockets.  It also drives you insane at a terrific rate. Canisters can be fired into enemy emplacements to make them go insane. Federal psychomancers also sometimes breath this stuff from a canister on their backs--they're already completely insane, so they don't mind as much.

Goblin Gas is bright green. It gives you mutations.  Developed by Union biomancers, it is now a favorite of mutant supremacists.

Philadelphia Dust is constantly secreted from the gills of Philadelphia Dragons (which are sort of like bulky, quadrupedal, deep-sea eels that weigh about a ton and make "art" out of their food.)  Philly Dust is notable because combustion and electricity are impossible within it. Engines don't run and guns don't fire.  Even flashlights fail after a few seconds within a Philadelphia Dust cloud as the dust seeps in.  Affected parts must be stripped down and cleaned before the work again, although a good rinsing usually works just as well. There's been many instances where a well-armed group of gunmen were killed by a group of naked shiners armed with lumber axes and an accordion full of Philadelphia Dust.

Fat Gas was found inside the USS Shenandoah, an American rigid airship built by the US Navy in 1922.  Following the unfortunate Lost October Incident of 1925, the airship was eventually recovered by a team of Navy stratonauts. The gas had to be pumped out of the reservoir slowly in order to bring the airship down.  When Annapolis was overrun by ghouls in the same year, most of the gas was lost from the public record.  Fat Gas makes things heavier. When used on people, they usually fall over under the weight of their equipment, or even the weight of their own bodies.  Under higher concentrations, breathing can become impossible under the weight of your own ribs.  Under even higher concentrations, the rib cage will actually break under its own weight and the limbs will pulp themselves.  Also good for destroying buildings.  The gas is named for the sensation it causes in those affected.

Fire, Fire, and Slime

Holy Fire

You'll see this type of fire burning in the Hesayan Churches, and sometimes carried by their lantern bearers.  It resembles normal fire, except that it is pure white, "soft" around the edges, and burns in slow motion (compared to mundane fire).

Holy fire is hot, but it never burns living things.  People who have put their hands in holy fire describe it as painful but invigorating, like a hot spring.  Objects are still harmed however, and it does tremendous damage to the undead.  The light from holy fire reveals invisible things, and lesser forms of undead find the light from holy fire repellent (especially ghosts, who are accustomed to being unseen).  Zombies are especially susceptible to this effect, and holy fire will drive them away for as long as it burns.

Holy fire can only be lit from another holy fire, or from a certain spell cast by senior clerics of the Church.  The only fuel that can sustain holy fire is holy water.

Felfire

This type of fire sheds no light and gives no heat.  It is normally started by magical means.  Aside from that, it is exactly like normal fire, and only experts can tell if an object was burnt long ago by ash fire or mundane fire.

Watching felfire spread is bizarre.  Paper will brown and then blacken.  It will spread to the desk, which will discolor and collapse, releasing a shower of cold ashes into the air.  Finally, the floors and walls will follow, as cracked, black charcoal spreads through the wood like a cancer.  Disturbing the charred products will release voluminous clouds of choking ash.  These fires are especially dangerous to houses with sleeping occupants, since it is nearly silent.  Necromancers are also fond of casting this on their enemies, who may not realize that they are being consumed until it too late.  Felfire causes no pain, just an instant sensation of deadness (which may be hard to notice in the middle of a battle) and retina damage (if you try to look at it).

Water extinguishes it, as does a lack of air.  However, since it is harder to "see" which parts are actually burning, it is easy to attack the wrong part of the felfire, or to badly misjudge its size.  Additionally, ash fire frequently releases poisonous gases, and many would-be rescuers have charged into an ash-burning house, thinking themselves safe from any heat, only to collapse on the shivering floor and be consumed.

It is commonly accepted that the stolen heat from felfire is used to stoke the fires of hell.

Green Slime

Just as forest fires incinerate forests, so do outbreaks of green slime disintegrate them.
Green slime is related to the larger, mobile oozes.  Like its larger cousins, it also eats organic material.  It can dissolve a man's arm in seconds, producing an equal volume of slime.  It is not hard to see how this could spread and consume a forest.

Green slime is destroyed by two things: heat and sunlight.  For these reasons, it is normally only found underground.  However, under certain circumstances, it can erupt onto the surface and turn entire forests into slimy wastelands.

The conditions only occur in wet forests that have consecutive days of rain, with sufficiently heavy cloud cover to prevent any sun from shining through.  The jungles of Basharna and the southern Dembraava Wilds are known to occasionally have slime outbreaks.

Those who have survived a slime wave (for that is what such things are called) describe the horrible noise it makes as it consumes the wet forest.  They say it sounds like a million hands stirring a million bowls of noodles, which I suppose doesn't sound very terrifying out of context.

Unlike forest fires, animals from the slimed sections of the forest sometimes carry small pockets of slime on their bodies.  When these animals flee from the slimed sections, they carry the slime with them.  Rangers fleeing a slime wave report seeing melting deer dashing ahead of them, only to collapse a few hundred feet later into pools of slime that rapidly spread out into the dark, waterlogged forest.

And there are rumors of even stranger things happening in a forest entirely consumed by slime.  They say that some animals are not eaten by the slime, but form some strange partnership with it (becoming sludgebucks, slimejaws, or green anglers in the process) .  These animals move easily through the slimy mire, and vomit green slime on their enemies.  And no one has ever offered a satisfactory explanation for the the whirlpools that suddenly form in the deep spots, after all the slime has oozed downhill.

Rangers and druids are sometimes tasked with saving towns from slime waves.  This is an extremely difficult task, but with sufficient resources it is sometimes done.  Ironically, the best countermeasure is to burn sections of the forest to create "slimebreaks".

And even after the slime wave has been exhausted and deadened by sunlight, green slime can still survive beneath the baked surface.  Even years after a major slime wave, parts of the Dembraava Wilds remain dark and wet enough to sustain small patches of green slime.  Many a Dembraavan Ranger has fallen into a murky pool, only to emerge with a patch of green slime rapidly consuming his knee.