Rare Combat Drugs for BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome
-For Beyond Electrodrome: a Custom BattleTech Fan Expansion-
Special thanks to Pavel Vophira for letting me use his piece “Bipolar” as the cover art for this post. You can find more of Pavel’s metal-as-fuck work HERE.
<I will be returning to refine these rules in the not-so-distant-to-the-very-distant future.>
In my previous post I laid out 12 of the more common recreational combat drugs found on the Gem of the Periphery, The Planet with the Plutonium Pulse, the Gambler’s Garden of Eden, Circinus, capital of the Circinus Federation, and home to the one, the only, Electrodrome Battle Games!
In today’s post we expand on the previous entry by adding three new, nigh-imaginary, recreational combat super drugs. These three are likely to cause more chaotic effects and to use them properly players must pay close attention and be willing to bend traditional BattleTech’s rules and lore, all in the service of chaos and novelty.
A bit like real drugs.
If you’re looking for the rules for buying and consuming these drugs, consult my previous post on combat drugs. There you will find tables and charts and rules and how to use those brittle bony cubes to navigate the brilliant and black waterways of the Drug.
And now…
Non-Canon Incredibly Rare Combat Super Drugs
ABRAXILENE
Ambrax, Heel, Honey Toad, Lick, Powa Peel, Topawa
Its not totally clear as to where the first Abraxilene "Honey Toad" came from. It seems to be the result of some sort of wild government experimentation, likely from one of the Great Houses. Someone heard rumor that when the ComStar boys were conducting experiments to see their God's face the Honey Toads are what they got. ComStar will kill to get all of their precious Honey Toads back. I remember hearing about how some of the older honey toads are little more than a stringy central nervous system with still-living eyes suspended in a jar of cloudy yellow-orange goo. The one I saw looked like something from some fucked up kid's fucked up collection of curios. It was like a furry toad made of star matter, floating in a glass jar of amber honey. The toad was awake, eyes wide open and flicking from side to side, stopping sometimes to bore a hole into my forehead like there was some huge fat fly there. I felt something heavy crawling there, and my hand jerked up to check, but there was nothing. It wasn't a good scene, man. No good at all. There were some weird people in the room, sitting on low cushions, swaddled in so many scarves and blankets that I couldn't tell if they were really even human. They looked bulbous…spongy. Unreal. They took a razor and shaved impossibly thin slices off of the wretched creature, slipped the slices under their fat pink tongues, honey and all. That's all I saw, man. That’s all I saw. The guard manhandled me out of the room, the gorilla, before I could see more. Tread lightly, my man. Partake sparingly. The visions are worth it, so I've heard, but only barely. They change you. All the way through to your core. So I've heard.
Hallucinogen. Strength: (7) Check: (5)
Availability: Nigh Imaginary
Cost/Dose: (3000 C-Bills)
Duration: 6d6 hours
MechWarrior Destiny Effects: +2 INT, +1 EDG, +1d3 plot points
Pro: If this pilot fails a critical roll they may reroll the critical roll with a +1 modifier.
Pro: This pilot does not suffer to-hit penalties for firing on multiple targets.
Pro: gain 1xp
Con: This pilot must fire at least one weapon at every 'mech or vehicle (friendly and hostile) within the frontal firing arc with a hit location that has been stripped of external armor exposing internal structure. If there are multiple targets within range but insufficient weapons to fire upon them all, targets must be determined at random.
PYX-Z DUST
Dart, Floki, Fly, Gigglepus, Pan, Pixie, Skoof
Soon after ingesting this chemical, its user begins releasing it through their skin as a thin pinkish mist. The drug itself is a powerful stimulant, but its off-gassed vapors function more like hallucinogenic depressants, which leads to either mortally dangerous or dangerously fun times when taken in public. This also makes it a favorite drug for anarchists, saboteurs, and artists eager to make a loaded subway platform into performance art. When the user takes this drug in a confined area, as in a 'mech cockpit, the effects are combined into a powerful hyper-hallucinogenic effect. The user’s enemies appear to them as radiant golden golems fading in and out of a rose-tinted fog. This warrior's dream world is prone to sudden rupture, however, collapsing into cartoonish dreamland, the user little more than a roiling mass of delirious laughter.
Stimulant. Strength: (6) Check: (5)
Availability: Nigh Imaginary
Cost/Dose: (3000 C-Bills)
Duration: 6 + 1d3 hours
MechWarrior Destiny Effects: May make a total of 1d3 bonus Personal Combat Attacks while under the influence of this drug. On any given round, roll d6: 5-6 results in +1 bonus movement. -1 INT, -1 CHA, -1 WIL
Pro: First turn, may fire a single weapon system twice with +2 to-hit penalty for the second shot.
Pro: First turn, may roll 3d6 when rolling for initiative.
Pro: Second turn and beyond, rolling a 12 to hit with a weapon/melee attack grants the pilot a second attack with that weapon but with a +3 to-hit penalty.
Pro: Second turn and beyond, +1 to initiative.
Pro: Second turn and beyond, +1 running MP.
Con: Rolling a 2 or lower (modified or unmodified) for a weapon/melee attack adds a cumulative +1 to-hit to all other attack rolls made by this pilot on the current turn.
Con: Rolling a 2 or lower (modified or unmodified) for a piloting roll adds a cumulative +1 bonus to all to-hit rolls made against this unit on the current turn.
Con: Rolling a 2 or lower (modified or unmodified) for initiative adds a -1 to the following turn’s initiative roll.
VICISSITUDE
Alphomeg, Jend, Spoon, Vicky, Wrench
"Alphomeg" is not a true drug, rather it is classified as "exotic matter", a substance no doubt sublimated by a mad scientist's Rube-Goldberg hellmachine. Somehow this strange matter escaped its magnetic bottle and has spread through the universe like a ring wave from a pebble dropped in a pond. This substance oozed invisibly through rare cracks in the fabric of the universe, manifesting as tiny patches of glittering microscopic flowers. These patches, barely covering more area than a quivering hand, are extremely rare though they seem to be more common on surfaces that have been subjected to violent energy discharges. Vicissitude seems to generate its effect by momentarily pinning multiple parallel universes into a single overlapping point, typically resulting in bizarre coincidences and synchronous events: a handful of dice come up as all sixes, brothers die simultaneously of the same cause on worlds light-years apart, a grinding battle ends in a brilliant flash as every lethal weapon finds its mark. The moment after the effect passes, the user is unsure as to whether or not they are in their original universe or not, though there are often subtle hints that things are not as they once were, as they wander down streets with slightly misspelled names, flipping a good luck coin now made of Damascus steel as they try to picture their lover's face, try to recall their lover's name, try to remember if their lover ever existed...
Hallucinogen. Strength: (9) Check: (4)
Availability: Imaginary
Cost/Dose: (5000 C-Bills)
Duration: 10 + 1d6 seconds
MechWarrior Destiny Effects: As below.
Effect: for a single turn, all weapon attacks made by you or targeting you automatically succeed or automatically fail. After all attacks from/against this characgter are declared (but before they are rolled), roll d6: 1-2 = all fail, 3-4 = normal rules, , 5-6 = all succeed. If all attacks are successful, every missile in a salvo and every round in an AC barrage hit.
Effect: After the scenario ends, roll d6: 1-3 = -1 Edge for 3d6 days, 4-6 = +1 Edge for 3d6 days
Effect: After the scenario ends, roll d6: 1-3 = -1 xp, 4-6 = +1 xp
Can you imagine this guy not loving combat drugs?
Game Play Tips
These drugs are extremely rare. Players may be able to buy them off of their local dealer, but the odds are stacked heavily against them having these drugs. That’s just not the kind of thing these drugs are. They’re not some sort of impure substance, jammed into greasy vials and sold by slack-jawed miscreants. These drugs are like rare works of priceless chemical art.
A Rembrandt is the prize of a collection, something locked behind bulletproof glass. A private collector with a stolen terracotta warrior will show that priceless artifact to only a select and discrete few.
Abraxilene is said to be coveted ComStar property, some sort of distant-viewing personal transportation system that ignores the laws of physics. Vicissitude is said to be a psychoactive pseudomatter that can form bridges between parallel universes. Pyx-Z was brought to the Inner Sphere by radical separatist infiltrators from Clan space. These are not the sorts of things that are bought and sold at the local drug kiosk or handled by some half-wit crimelord wannabe.
If your players want these drugs, they’d better be willing to work for them. Perception. Persuasion. Seduction. Years of building the social network. Unimpeachable scientific expertise. Daring heists. Shocking violence. Dumb luck.
Here’s a line to use: “You want ‘em? Go get ‘em.”
Also, the fine folks of the Circinus Federation, pirates and scoundrels every one of ‘em, especially those in the Electrodrome orbit, do not have the same taboos about drugs that we have in modern America. To them, drugs are just another thing to do. While most start their mornings in the same way we do (coffee and a pastry), stim-vendors run a brisk morning business in the teeming streets, selling espresso, spazz, and antidote without anyone so much as sneering. Their motto is “live fast, die young, and leave a smoking chemical-laced crater”.
Closing
Having spent the last two posts expanding the wide world of scifi drugs, I feel like I should take a moment to speak on the topic of drugs, to inject some sort of hands-in-pockets, no-eye-contact, matriarchal message on the perils of drug use and how nobody should do drugs and how they’re evil and how they’ll ruin your life and blah blah blah.
I will not.
The truth of the matter is that I lived in Washington state for a solid seven years, where the legal weed flows like the salmon of Capistrano. Its not bad stuff. In fact I’d go so far as to say its damn fine. Sure, it can make your life unnecessarily complex, and once it made me so paranoid that I wrapped myself up into a blanket burrito and stuffed myself between my bed and my window rather than engage with my girlfriend at the time. Weed can be abused to the point of dysfunction. But so can fast food. So can oxycodone. So can booze and soda and social media and modeling glue and the Oxygen Channel and exercise. They say the difference between medicine and poison is the dosage. Fair enough.
I will also say this: not all drugs are created equal. Alcohol, caffeine, and ibuprofen are all technically drugs. But bath salts, crystal meth, heroine, and similar horrific drugs will ruin your fucking life. I’ve worked with real-life users in hospitals, prisons, and in their homes. Their stories do not end with a “happily ever after”.
Also, remember, the thing about illegal drugs is that they are illegal. Doing illegal things can bring you into contact with the Law. The Law has guns and dogs and shackles and can lock you up a steel cage buried in the guts of a vast concrete citadel filled with murderers and rapists and the like. I’ve volunteered in prisons and let me tell you this: you do not want to go there. Not against your will, at least.
In summary: Don’t break the law. Don’t do overly stupid shit. Don’t die.
How’s that?
Okay.
That’s it for now. I am working on a few poisons and similar compounds to round out the chemical spectrum, but for now, this is pretty good. I’ll be posting more fantastical parasites and more on the BattleTech: Beyond Electrodrome expansion/universe soon.
Alright dudes and dolls. It’s Friday. I’m out of here.
As always…
Be creative. Have fun. Get weird.
