ALTERNATIVE MIND NUMBING SOLUTION

Mortal tier recipe. No cultivation requirements

A far stronger alternative to alcohol.

With that out of the way, it also holds more uses. Particularly that it takes effect far faster than alcohol, as both a pain killer and social diluter. Unlike the modern age, where medicine advanced greatly to open up an array of anaesthetics, the primal ages were far more barbaric. Lots of plants and herbs that numb the body were known of, and it was common for a warrior to chew on one upon encountering a great injury. The work of some tribal shamans created a liquid that heavily numbs a target area, or everything if drunk. Unfortunately, it’s far harder to make than alcohol.

INGREDIENTS AND RECIPE

*       Freshwater, 500 ml – non magical fluid

*       Hearty Ginger extract, 50 ml – non magical fluid

*       Neurotic nightshade, 1 flower – non magical poisonous flower

*       Paralysing bear gallbladder, 1 gallbladder – non magical venomous animal part

Many of you likely recognize this nightshade as another variant like the bloodied nightshade from the first recipe in this guidebook, good news is that this poison is destroyed by strong acids like that of your stomach. Just don’t drink it in a concentrated form… a large enough amount can still seep through the thinner parts of your mouth and quickly put an end to you

Hearty ginger is simply an enhanced form of ginger that provides strong yang Qi and aids in the healthiness of blood. In general it temporarily increases haemoglobins significantly and boosts the productivity of bone marrow, useful for long distance runners who may encounter some small danger on their path. Messengers are a good example of this.

Paralysing bears are a nuisance, capable of coating their claws in a secretion that works as a powerful muscle relaxant. However the gallbladder instead produces a less notable chemical that reduces nerve stimulation, practically reducing your ability to sense touch. For obvious reasons this is useful if you recently underwent surgery or a serious physical injury. In the end they are not magical animals, so a trained group of hunters can bring them down.

To begin the recipe, all the various parts should be washed in boiled water, except for the freshwater itself… but that shouldn’t be necessary to state. Why are some people so braindead?

Moving on, this is the first recipe where we don’t just crush down ingredients! Isn’t that wonderful?

Begin by setting the freshwater on a simmer and dropping the nightshade’s petals into it. Don’t allow the water to boil! The rest of the flower holds little use, although its pollen is useful for disabling your sense of smell temporarily. Its nectar is also insanely sweet, and does not hold any of the flower’s poisons.  

Hearty ginger extract is the evaporated juice of the root. Begin by peeling the ginger’s skin and finding a suitably strong mechanism to juice it. This will take several squeezes per chunk of ginger, but when left with a dry stalk you can use the rest as pleased. Some of the medicinal effects still remain though, so don’t discard the juiced root. It can easily be shredded and chopped before adding to a nice curry or such. Leaving it to dry in the sun can allow it to last months before decaying.

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To reduce the juice, place it in a metal pot over a low heat and bring it to the boil. Make sure to stir occasionally, and wait until the watery juice becomes a thick concentrate. When it achieves a honey-like consistency you know the extract is ready and must be cooled.

Now for the gallbladder, but first a warning. Never consume the body part whole, in sufficiently copious amounts it can start affecting the nerves of major organs and lead to multiple organ failure. However, the first to go is normally the heart, so you won’t suffer at the least!

Crushing the gallbladder is pointless, as it will also release a significant portion of the cellular fluids, heavily diluting the bile. A needle and syringe is far more effective, but acquirement of such tools is impossible in some worlds, particularly less-developed ones. The best remaining method from here is cut open the sack and hang it to slowly drip into a cup. You will need at least 10 ml of bile, however the bear on average stores 30 ml.

After draining the gallbladder it can be used in whatever way you please, except its intense bitterness gives rise to few uses. Some say that including it in the beer fermentation process makes it taste better, but I don’t like beer so that’s up to you.

Add the bile to your hearty ginger extract, which should have cooled off by now, and stir well. The originally cloudy syrup loosens and gains a lime green tinge, showing that none of the ingredients are bad or improper.

After simmering for so long, the water should be a faint purple. This colour leached from the nightshade’s petals, leaving them a mix between their original purple and a bleached white. If this is the case then throw away the petals. The colours are actually harder to leach out than the poison, so this effect means their use is long since over.

Add the bile and ginger extract mix to the poison and freshwater mix and stir. The flame can be put out allowing the drink to cool down, but ensure that it’s stirred once every few minutes. The purple colour will easily overpower the green-ish extract, unless you somehow removed the petals right before any of the colours could be leached off. Such a thing is easy with cultivation, but a mortal doing so would be impressive… or just really lucky. Don’t be an alchemical idiot savant, you won’t get very far.

Bottle the produced drink and hand it out to whoever you want. Not exactly cheap to produce either unless you can artificially produce the bear bile like those technologically competent worlds. At least a normal person only needs a sip to lose feeling in all their limbs.

USAGE

Increased blood cell count of 50% for 6 hours, taking effect half an hour after drinking. Heart rate increases by 30% to account for the thickened blood, this would be higher if not for the increased haemoglobin proteins per volume of blood countering the thickened solution. This is for a single 30 ml dose, while 300 ml will likely cause a heart attack in a mortal. This is only the cardiovascular effects as well.

The part that everyone cares for, losing sensation in body parts. The solution is very easily used by the injured as well, as just pouring it into the wound site will cause mass numbing of the site. Do note that pouring too much can cut off motor signals to the body part, rendering it limp for up to 6 hours. Unfortunately, this does require an open wound to work, so a bruise or broken bone will not produce an effect. Once again this is a 30 ml dose.

Lastly, when drunk its effects are far slower to release. The bile aids in reducing the stomach acid and preserving more of the poison, however it will still need roughly half an hour to enter the bloodstream. A mortal should never consume more than one 30 ml dose an hour, otherwise the concentration will allow enough to penetrate the blood brain barrier and potentially kill.

Due to having a particularly bitter taste it is often hard to kill with, although tricking an enemy into thinking that it’s just a rare alcoholic beverage is a documented method.