A Better Potion

What We Need It seems to me that what you need for a good live-roleplaying potion (or substance) is: Something that looks disgusting. Something that smells disgusting. Something that tastes really disgusting. Something that is totally harmless and comprised entirely of vegetable matter, thus satisfying everyone except fruitarians and windfallists. The Answer? Spirulina powder. Now I'm guessing that most of you guys have never heard of Spirulina. I hadn't. Apparently it's a blue-green algae. Anyhow, I first came across it through Tattoo Girl. She was worried about my general nutritional state (my vegan diet consists mainly of vege-burgers and pot noodles) and convinced me to take this "Spirulina" stuff, saying it will give me loads of energy and make me feel much better. So I toddle off down the health shop and get myself a bottle of spirulina tablets. Which she takes straight back and exchanges for some dried spirulina powder. The significance of this switch will become apparent as you read on. So, I get home, and read the label on the back of the bottle. It says something like "take three teaspoons three times a day". (When Tattoo Girl was taking it a few years back she misread the label and was taking TABLESPOONS instead of teaspoons. Apparently she was sleeping about four hours a day, and spending the other twenty hours organising protest demos and political action meetings). She'd told me to put the powder in a glass and mix it with water. So I get my glass, take the plastic bottle of spirulina, strip off the plastic strip around the top, take off the lid, and--- ---Damn near puke all over my kitchen. There are not the words to describe how bad this stuff smells. After three decades of heavy colds and nosebleeds, I have very little sense of smell - but this shit ripped open my nasal cavities and attacked straight into the sensory areas of my brain. "Dehydrated vomit" is pretty much the only thing I can come up with. It makes a good working description, but still doesn't quite cover it. It smelt bad. And it looked bad. It was a kind of deep green colour. Yes, I know lots of foods are green, but this was just the wrong sort of green. I read somewhere that we are biologically programmed to not eat foods of certain colour, because in the wild, foods of that colour are usually poisonous. I think maybe this was one of those colours. I jammed the lid back on and crawled into my living room towards the phone (my legs were still a little rubbery at this point). Now some of you might wonder why this story isn't about to end right now with the statement: "so I threw it into the bin and that was that..." It's a good question. You have to understand that I was totally smitten with this girl. She'd asked me to take it. It was like a test. So I phoned her, and asked if she really wanted me to take it. She did. Okay. I spent a few minutes hyperventilating to fill my bloodstream with oxygen, then clamped my mouth shut, and reentered the kitchen. I carefully levered the lid off, took about a third of a teaspoon full (I knew that if I took the full three teaspoons I'd die there and then... I figured I'd try to build up a tolerance, and work towards the full amount) and filled the glass with water. It looked disgusting. Even after I stirred, it didn't dissolve or mix. The power just swirled around in the water, some of it floating freely like silt, some of it sticking together in big clumps. And all that disgusting shade of green. And then I took a sip. As a powder it had smelt like powered vomit. As a drink it tasted like blended vomit. I went back to the phone. She still wanted me to take it. "Mix it with orange juice," she said. "It'll taste just like kiwi fruit." Now, I found it difficult to understand how anything mixed with this crap could taste like anything other than vomit. I mean if you have some black paint, you can mix it with any other colour paint, and you're basically going to end up with... black paint. But like I said, I was smitten. So I tried mixing it. And you know what? It did almost taste like kiwi fruit. Pity I don't like kiwi fruit. The Point The point of all of this is that spirulina powder fulfils all our requirements for a potion. (Healing potion? This stuff smells so bad that one whiff of it will have corpses flinging their coffin lids open and running away, shouting: "I'm okay, look I'm running... please don't make me drink that shit!") AVAILABILITY You can get it in any standard health food shop in the UK. I guess you guys in other parts of the world ought to be able to find it. ACCEPTABILITY This is an energy supplement designed to be taken in fairly large quantities, and you can get it in a form that contains no animal products. So most people should be happy taking it. (Ethically that is, I'm guessing they'll be very unhappy about drinking something that tastes this bad). USAGE You can either use it ready mixed with water, as a potion, or use it as a powder. Imagine the adventurers taking a wounded comrade to a herbalist / healer. The herbalist gives them an unearthly looking, foul smelling green powder, telling them that this will save their wounded friend. They mix the powder with a little water from their water bottles and gently lift it to his lips... Personally, I think I'd choose death.

	Contents... Back... Copyright � 2001 Critical Miss Gaming Society
	What do you think of this article? It ascended to heaven and walked with the gods. It was very good. It was pretty good. It was okay. It was a bit bad. It was very bad. It sucked, really, really badly.