001 — Text — UN: SHINIGAMI

[mikoshi]

[ Text only from the guy who hates calls and/or being recorded. ]

Got it — that gold-red fern that only opens up during the day? Tobacco like.

Gives you a headache first time you smoke it, but afterwards? Smooth sailing.

Bring me samples of the leaves, drier the better. Found rolling papers.

Or don't. I'm not your mom.

[ Yet despite saying that, attached comes a picture of the aforementioned plant (Sun's Lace), two samples in view: one healthy, the other dried up. ] So you gonks don't poison yourselves toking up the wrong herb.

You're welcome ᝰ🚬

Comments

un: hotpotfan

[flavourtown]

When you say 'headache', what kind are we talking? A dull pain all over? A tight pain in the forehead or behind the eyes? Any stabbing or sharp pains? Any dizziness?

[mikoshi]

[ Hot pot fan... ]

Okay, so, had a brain tumor before coming to this place. So my baseline is fucked to say the least

Johnny said he felt queasy. Gonna guess it's more or less the same side effects you get first time your body gets a shot of nicotine

[flavourtown]

[ Jiaoqiu stares at the words 'brain tumor' and firmly tells himself he is no longer a practicing doctor. He does not need to ask follow-up questions. He does not need to pester this man about his former brain tumor. ]

Nausea when exposed to nicotine is certainly normal; headaches are on the more unusual side, but as long as they don't last for more than a day, I suppose there's no real concern.

Still, please do alert someone if you experience any other side-effects. When dealing with unknown alien plants, quick medical attention is vital.

[mikoshi]

[ Jiaoqiu could, instead, question the brain tumor himself. ] Only lasted a couple of hours. Had quit cold turkey til then. Guessing it was that

Will do [ He won't — this is the guy who puked blood and walked it off. ]

[flavourtown]

Perhaps. More likely it's a side-effect of whatever toxin causes the nicotine-like experience in the first place, but as long as the body adapts quickly, I don't see much of a problem.

Do you have any extra that I could try?

[mikoshi]

Gotcha

Not a lot. Enough for a couple more cigarettes. I'm drying up some more, but it's gonna take at least a week

[flavourtown]

Ah, understandable. You must have started with a fairly small sample size.

I'll start drying my own, then. If there is a chemical similar to nicotine in this plant, then there may be additional medicinal uses of note, so I'd like to conduct my own research.

What will you do once we leave the planet? Your supply will run out fairly quickly, right?

[mikoshi]

Already grabbed some seeds, and getting some more. Grabbed a soil sample. Gonna try potting a whole plant. Get together with the science peeps to design a greenhouse that's hot and dry enough to grow these

[flavourtown]

Admittedly, I was thinking of doing exactly the same. I have a little experiment of my own going, trying to distill alcohol from the cactus species here. If it turns out well, I might just have to figure out how to transplant a few of the cactuses into a growbed here.

[mikoshi]

What, like mezcal? Could do it the traditional way — roasting the piñas underground, then grinding them with a tahona or some other mill. Then let it ferment. Pull the alcohol from that mix.

Man, been ages since I drank much less made mezcal. It's all tequila south of the border.

[flavourtown]

Is that how it's done where you're from? How interesting-- I've never heard of that method, but I may certainly have to give it a try. It would add quite a bit of depth to the flavor than my default method.

It's been a while since I did a proper underground cook. How exciting!

[mikoshi]

Yup. You also leave it to ferment in the open air, picking up yeast cultures from the ambient air. Could give you a good insight as to what kind of microbes this environment has?