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Delirium is the realm of the physical body, the confusion that overtakes us when we are trapped within our own senses. Unlike Passion, it does not lead to Awakening, only to submersion of the self. Delirium immunizes us from shock, lets us blend into the most chaotic worlds, and gives us power over the physical stuff of existence. It is a sub-lore of Madness.
Delirium is a place as much as a state of mind; a suburb of Metropolis, where endless dissolute parties and orgies take place in red smoke behind smudged curtains, where armies of junkies and drug addicts lie in trembling heaps, shaken by loud and sudden noises which echo down the sweat-greased streets. It borders on the Living City. Those who try to escape the world through intoxication, drug addiction or substance abuse end up here. Delirium is the great city as it appears to those who live on its sidewalks, exposed to the cold and the car exhaust. It is a place where people go to vanish. Almost all drugs are made in Delirium, by the Drug Lords whose greed and physicality has made them masters of the Lore.
(Delirium was originally invented by Andreas Marklund, James Estes and Terry Amthor in the KULT adventure UNTO DEATH.)
The Sorceror opens a mirror or portal into either Delirium (in Metropolis), or into the drug hallucinations of others and the chaos beyond. By looking into a normal urban area, they see the suburbs of Delirium. They also see traces of all the drugs and all the episodes of shock, trauma or ecstasy in the area; the lingering emotions take the form of smoke clouds and oozes and liquids splashed over the nearby surfaces. A skilled Sorceror can identify the persons as well as the emotions by examining the position of the splashes. By looking at a person on drugs, they can determine their past drug experience, their bodily health, and how they are perceiving the world. With an effect of 10 or greater they can see what the person would look like if their Mental Balance dropped low enough to cause physical changes. The magician can bodily enter the drug world (which is often a violent place of sudden change and betrayal). By examining the persons mental state, they can discern what would shock the person most, physically as well as mentally.
If a Sorceror enters a persons individual drug world and is kept there when the portal closes, they are trapped within that persons body, often a disturbing experience. When they cast the spell again and leave, they literally, physically emerge from the person, appearing as if swimming out of the surface of their flesh or being vomited forth in swirls of black mist.
The Sorceror can effect another persons perceptions and bodily state. They can reproduce the effects of any drugs they have themselves experienced, causing hallucinations, headaches, chills, etc. They can also cause temporary physical changes in the persons body, if their Mental Balance is negative, although unless the Sorcerors effect is good or higher the changes will be of the kind that can be rationalized off (body temperature dropping to 80 degrees Farenheit, extreme growth of hair or nails, acne, cold sores...). The changes vanish when the duration of the spell is over. The Sorceror can also turn a good trip to bad, or vice versa. The effects of manipulating Delirium always cause dissolution of the self, never quite leading to Awakening.
If the victim fails an EGO roll following the experiences of the spell, they become psychologically addicted to the Manipulation, even if they do not know what it was.
The dark desires of humans create their own life forms to satisfy them. The following are some of the different beings, and the required effect to summon them:
| Nonochtos | 5 |
| Verrucktpflanze | 10 |
| Extreme | 10 |
| Drug Lord | 20 |
The Nonochtos are rumored creatures sought by drug addicts who want to go beyond the norm. William S. Burroughs has some experience with them. They look much like iguanas, green-skinned lizards with a frill down their back. Their underbellies, however, are pink and their hearts and organs can be seen beating thorugh the skin. Their frill is on closer inspection a set of nipple-like glands. Nonochtos are five feet long.
The Nonochtos secrete addictive chemicals in a slow, milky drip. They are normally inactive. Humans who drink the Nonochtos bitter milk use it to trigger their own mental desires, replicating the effects of any drugs they are used to, but also creating an entirely new high. They feel close to losing themselves in Chaos or Nirvana, and they are incredibly stimulated. Morals and inhibitions vanish. The effects last 1d5 hours, during which period the drinker has +10 to CON, PER and EGO (except in the case of resisting Terror Throws).
After each drink from a Nonochtos the user must roll under their normal EGO or become addicted. Addicts will seek out the things again and again, trying to reclaim the feelings of power and escape. Prolonged use turns the victim into an Egotist (-5) and then a Megalomaniac (-10). If a human with extremely low MB (-75 or less) becomes addicted to a Nonochtos, they may gradually shrink and dwarf into a small, grayish clotted thing, similar to a fetus, which remains attached to the end of the Nonochtos nipple. The older, sluggish Nonochtos often have as many as three or four of these things attached to them; if cut away the things shriek and shriek and finally die. As for the Nonochtos, they simply grin and are quiet.
These unnatural plants come from Gaia, where they once produced the Ambrosia of the Gods. They appear similar to grapevines; green, leafy vines which coil and twist up walls and posts, bearing clusters of heavy blue-purple fruit like round strawberries. The plants can sometimes be seen swaying when there is no wind, but aside from that they are physically harmless. When summoned, a Verrucktpflanze sprouts somewhere outside the Sorcerors protective circle, growing to full 6 height in four hours.
Any who eats the fruit of the Verrucktpflanze experiences feelings of rapture and bliss. Unless they make an EGO roll with greater effect than the plants EGO, they are addicted (though first-time users often _gain_ 5 or 10 points of advantages from the plants calming powers). They must henceforth eat the fruit every day, or they begin to weaken, losing 1 EGO point per day until down to 3 EGO. The taste of the Verrucktpflanze is so powerful that _everything_ the victim tastes seems to taste like the fruit. However, the second day after they have failed to eat from the fruit, the surrogate taste begins to rot, until gradually everything they eat tastes like rotting, foul fruit. After the 2nd day the victim must make an EGO roll each day to eat _anything_, and if it fails they are likely to vomit. Unless they can taste the fruit again, the victims usually go mad and then starve. The Verrucktpflanze are the basis for our legends about fairy fruit.
Verrucktpflanze do not spread much, but they regenerate from damage at an incredible rate, faster than kudzu. The already-addicted often defend them by smearing their fruit into the mouths of the sane.
The Extremes are all that remain of practitioners of Delirium who went too far. When ones existence is devoted to the body, the body gains its own sentience, being possessed by the remnants of the Drug Lords consciousness in all the drugs the person has ingested. The result is a new being, an Extreme. The body eats the soul which originally inhabited it, and it is not released until the bodys death.
Extremes are completely evil, and want only to force other humans to lose control over their bodies. They do this by driving humans to low MB (turning them to Furies), or by offering them, too the chance to become Extremes. By making an EGO roll with a higher effect than the victims EGO, and having close physical contact (such as sex) with that person, they can draw a persons soul out of their body and into their own. Once inside, the person (who is usually shocked or stupefied by the change) has control over the Extremes (superior) body, but only briefly. The victims original body is uninhabited, essentially in a coma. While possessed, the Extreme can prevent the person who is with them from doing harmful acts by causing internal bleeding and damage; 1/2 an EGO roll (or an EGO roll if the victim has Endure Pain or Endure Torture) is necessary not to collapse in pain. Gradually, after a number of days equal to the victims EGO, the Extreme devours the victims consciousness and reasserts their own. If the victim has a positive Mental Balance and a higher EGO than the Extreme, there is a slim chance that they will force the Extreme into submission instead, but then there is still the matter of returning to their original body...
Extremes occupy important positions in society and in drug pushing, getting places with their high COM. Lictors and Drug Lords want to kill them. They are sometimes pursued by humans who recognize the bodies of people they once knew.
Extremes appear like normal humans, often with high physical attributes. If it takes a fatal wound, the Extreme will lose control of itself and the separate pieces will rip bloodily free and tear off in all directions, trying to grow mouthes, eyes and other things they will need. The separate pieces can then only be destroyed by fire, acid or the like (although they usually have a short lifespan).
The Drug Lords are experienced Sorcerors of Delirium, who dwell in the Living City of Metropolis. Delirium is a low, physical path and most of them have undergone physical changes. They are larger (and often fatter) than normal humans, and they secrete addictive chemicals, which cause them to be attended by junkies who slavishly collect the chemicals for use in drugs in the Illusion. Coming close to a Drug Lord, one enters its miasma of smell.
Some Drug Lords are worse; hypodermic needles replacing their fingers, smoke emitting from their lungs, their entire blood system operated externally by IVs, drooling alcohol from their mouths and mouth-sized pores, plasticky substance coating their bodies, or their skin turning into a gelatinous goo. They often also have changes to their sexual organs. They are petulant, selfish and given to whims. Drug Lords who have a _positive_ Mental Balance are rare or unheard-of (although some say Timothy Leary is one). When summoned, a Drug Lord often appears with some of its entourage, humans who may be either distorted and freakish or recognizable as the chemists and street-corner pushers of this world.
With this spell, the Sorceror can take a Puritanical persons or a clean freaks fears of dirt and drugs and make them real. By concentrating a substance in a certain area, which the sorceror must possess a small amount of, they can make its smell and touch spread out to the larger area around it. For example, a glass of wine at Communion in a church could gradually fill the church with alcohol and make everyone inside drunk. The smell in a lavatory could fill an entire house or building, making everything filthy. Or a trace amount of toxic waste buried underground could seep out and poison everything for hundreds of feet around...
The range that is effected is determined by the Sorcerors effect. Within that range, all persons and things are effected by the drug or poison at normal Potency, as if they have ingested it. If they had already ingested it, it effects them at double Potency. If the Sorcerors effect is 10 or more, the substance can actually be physically seen to grow; smoke filling the air, mildew and rot visibly expanding, a small line of cocaine writhing and swelling.
The Sorceror can addict anyone to anything, whether a sensation or a substance. A police officer can be addicted to beating and torturing prisoners or a cannibal addicted to lettuce. The addiction is physical and permanent; if they fail to have their fix, they will suffer in a way determined by the Sorceror during casting, including the possibility of death. Good CON and EGO rolls can resist the effects. They gain the disadvantage Drug Addiction at 15 or 20 points, depending on what they become addicted to. If the person has a negative Mental Balance, then gradually they begin to require greater and greater amounts of the substance or stimulation, until they abandon all other sources of energy and possibly die (unless the Sorceror has mercy upon them first). The Sorcerors effect with the spell roll must be greater than the persons effect with an EGO roll or the spell has no effect. The Sorceror must first tempt or force the victim to imbibe or indulge in a small amount, in their presence, of the thing they will be addicted to.
This spell is an advanced version of Manipulate Delirium.
The Sorceror creates their own chemicals and expels them from their body in the form they choose; sweat, saliva, or sexual fluids are usual choices. By manipulating their own bodies, they can reproduce the effects of any drugs in the Illusion, or create entirely new ones.
The GM must determine what effects the Sorceror can create, using the normal drug tables as guidelines. No drug a Sorceror creates can have a higher maximum Potency than their EGO, or can kill outright at less than 1/3 CON. Drugs can sedate, un-inhibit, derange, incite to violence, or help their user see through the Illusion. If the Sorceror does not actively try otherwise, the drug will cause the user to absorb some of the Sorcerors personality traits, causing mild depression if the Sorceror has the Depression disadvantage, or visions of hordes of rats if the Sorceror has a Phobia of Rats, for instance. The Sorceror can make a number of doses of the drug equal to their EGO plus their skill in this spell, per day.
Written by Jason Thompson aka Knygathin Zhaum <jason@SONIC.NET>