A perfectly innocent spiral-bound book whose plastic covers bear colorful illustrations of various plants. The interior pages are slighlty yellowed from age and smell of old tobacco. The first two hundred pages are filled with blocks of text and a number of black-and-white illustrations, some of which are reproduction of medieval wood cuts and engravings. The last twenty pages were blank, and are covered with recipes and hand-written notes in faded ink of various colors. The main text is in English, with the occaisional Latin quotation. The notations are in New Orleans French.

The Pharmacopeia was a very minor publication, with only five hundred copies production during its 2015 print run. Ostensibly presenting the magical potency and use of various herbs, mushrooms, spices and plants; the Pharmacopeia is a typical example of such small-press books at the time, being a collection of holistic medicine and folklore. The book stands out from most of its better-selling and less useful competitors for not including mythical plants and actually having researched the myths and folklore behind the 500-odd short entries in the book. Modern talismongers who peruse the tome might note that some of the recipes and preparations presented in the text are nearly identical to those used in preparing modern materials of the herbal arcanum.

This particular copy of the Pharmacopeia languished for several decades in the house of Augustine ("Augie") Le Fousteu's grandmother. The Le Fousteu family's heritage is a hopelessly tangled quagmire of love, immigration, teenage pregnancy, marriages in church, synogogue, mosque and Buddhist shrine, and ultimately death in childbirth, running from the law, and the next ship leaving port. Suffice to say that Augie grew up with his grandmother on the outskirts of Algiers in New Orleans. Le Fousteu's grandmother was not a magician, much less a mambo, but she did described herself as "Practicin' my religion." which more or less entitled her to a complex weekly schedule at Catholic Mass, offerings at a small Buddhist shrine, philisophical conversations and bingo at a local Masonic hall, routine chats and offerings at the gravesites of the various Le Fousteu clan, and visits to the local houngan, Papa Demiere.

In any event, Augie figures Gran got the book at a swap meet or yard sale. After she passed away, Augie took it down and read it. He might have been able to sell it to some sympathetic bookdealer for the price of a cup of soykaf and a beignet, but instead Augie turned it to his business of choice: drug dealing.

Being fairly unscrupulous to begin with, and with a number of slightly seedy and eccentric connections, Augie Le Fousteu quickly became a (very) small time type of dealer. He started out by growing marijuana in his back yard and running a still in his house. Eventually, he upgraded a little, investing in an online chemistry course. Fairly soon, Augie was supplying small quantities of more-or-less quality pharmaceuticals designed for the magic-minded around Algiers and even into the French Quarter. Which is where the trouble happened.

No one quite knows whose toes Augie stepped on when he ran a couple tablets of psyche and a quart of goat's blood into the little pseudo-vampire shop that hot August night last year, but the last Le Fousteu wasn't seen again after that night. His house was raided by his friends inside a week and cleaned out. The Pharmacopeia made it into a little used bookstore in the French Quarter, where you might still find it today...

Augie's handwritten notes detail ten recipes he commonly used, and which vary from the useful to the very weird-Le Fousteu had some unusual customers, after all. Each is written one to a page, with the back page usually blank. The various recipes are detailed below:

1. A recipe, mainly of tobacco and willow bark with a few other herbs, supposedly based on an old AmerInd recipe.

2. Instructions to properly distil absinthe from wormwood.

3. Instructions to properly create laudanum usuing xerxes.

4. Gran Le Fousteu's recipe for jambalaya, including a small side-bar detailing her prized pickled okra.

(The back of this page contains what might be the correct chemical formula for the antidote to the alkaloid-based "zombie powder" used by houngans of the Petro rite. It is written in invisible ink, and can only be seen by careful application of heat, lemon juice, UV light or some other catalyst).

5. An old family remedy, based on crushed aloe, garlic, camphor, and oil of cloves. Does not specify whether this is a topical ointment or a tincture to be ingested.

(The back of this page contains incomplete notes, labelled as "Formula for Laés-wine," but actually for distilling the elven liquor Taéngelé, obviously copied by Augie from another source. This page is written in Sperethiel with invisible ink.)

6. The correct chemical formula for the street drug Zen.

7. The correct chemical formula for the antidote to the street drug Zen.

8. The correct chemical formula for the designer drug Psyche.

9. The correct chemical formula for the antidote to the designer drug Psyche.

10. The correct chemical formula for the antidote to the magical compound Deepweed.

(The back of this page contains what might be the correct formula for the magical compound Deepweed, but is written in invisible ink and does not include any instruction in the metamagical technique needed to create it.)

I wish there was a smiley for jealousy.

I accept the notworthy smiley.

I've already proposed. What more can I say?

I love it when you do this.

Sorry, ran out of those during the research phase.
But for your future edification:

Now if only you could get him to hold up a '10'

Amazing as usual...

*chuckle* I'd love your take on a lesser Cthulhu tome that was the sketchbook and journal of a man who studied the original Pnakotic manuscript - and Traveled past the Mountains of Madness. (I'm in a Call of Cthulhu campaign, and I am SO seeing the Dead Man's Tome in the campaign...)

Call of Cthulhu tomes were fun, but their omnipresence and the fact they had their own bloody stats really degraded them as plot devices over time. I mean, you can literally start a decaying library of the damned without really trying in CoC.

Personally, I believe a good (and realisitic) unusual tome contains a mix of dross, barely interesting but potentially noteworthy material, and a few hidden gems. That way, players are more excited when they come across a straight-out book of spells or something unusual like the Dead Man's Book.

In the interest of balance, I try to prevent the material from being too game breaking...whether or not I've succeeded at all is, of course, up to y'all.

so..... what titles exaclty would you include in a "library of the damned"?

Personally I'm seeing the picture in Magic:Mystic Manual of Secrets (ED), with the Nethermancer, including some of the greates hits like "How to Cook 40 humans", and the generic "H.P.Lovecraft".

*chuckle* You know you're doing something right when your Call of Cthulhu GM says your journal is close to becoming a lesser Cthulhu Manuscript...

I was going to go insane anyways, so might as well go out in style!

Lessee, had a list here...ah, got it:

• A mouldering copy of Olaus Wormius' Latin translation of the Necronomicon, followed by a more modern journal full of notes, fragments and partial translations.
• A first-edition copy of Cultes des Goules by the Comte d'Erlette, with wider margins for better annotations.
• von Juntz' Unaussprechlichen Kulten, perhaps in an English edition for the less erudite.
• A saved black-leather copy of Ludvig Prinn's De Vermis Mysteriis, possibly with a rubbing of the characters from the Black Monolith tucked into the cover.
• The Liver Ivonis translation of the Book of Eibon, with three carefully placed bookmarks for easy reference.
• For alchemical reference, De Lapide Philosophico, re-bound in Morrocco leather.
• For Hermetic reference, a complete set of the works of Albertus Magnus.
• For scientific reference, one could choose a selection of modern works, but I would suggest copies of Marvells of Science by Morryster and Thesaurus Chemicus by the notorious magician Roger Bacon.
• The investigator's own journals, containing precise photos, engravings, and/or sketches of all unsettling runes and signs, descriptions of all artifacts and rituals, transcripts of all incantations, and formulae for all spells they may have learned.
• The captured spellbooks, grimoires, journals, random notes and mad ravings of their enemies, clients, former investigators, etc.

damn, So far, I only have the necronomicon. At least now I have a shopping list!

Actually, it's a certain ancient relic in Stregoicavar, Hungary.

Oh. *shrug* Must be some other Black Monolith then...Does "Elder Pharos" help place it?

It's in the "Beyond the Mountains of Madness" CoC Campaign.

Great great job on that journal. Seems perfect for one character of mine to want to get ahold of!

Well, thankee all for the kind words. Just to satisfy my curiosity, have y'all ever run into chemical formulae for drugs and/or their antidotes in your games before?

Nice piece of work there. Since it was published in 2015 oroginally, wouldn't it make sense that some of the more common drugs like the meth of today would be in it. I could see Le Fousteu getting started as a meth cooker and then finding this book.

And no, none of my characters or players have come across chemical forumlae, but they have used cleaning supplies to incapacitate a ritual circle in the middle of a sending. Man, those guys are good at fucking up my plots.

The book was published in 2015, but Augie didn't read it until his grandmother died...say, 2055. He may well have cooked up some meth in his lab, but his customers would likely have preferred familar and empowering combinations like Zen and Psyche. Not that you couldn't find a veritable pharmacy of drug recipes on the Matrix if you really wanted to...

Absinthe is a great touch. I swear one of these days Im going to make a short game that is just loaded with this sorta cool stuff.

Yeah, the Asian Pharmacy version of this allows you to properly prepare doses of powdered deer penis; applied beneath the tongue it negates Allergy modifiers...

Sorry. Flashback to Glimmer Man.

Since when are deer penises herbs? O_o

They're not, but you'd be amazed what counts as medecine in some places.

Too true.

I think it was in the 2nd Ed. Grimoire ... the alchemical component "other draconic bodily fluid". ("You want me to what? In a flask??").

No, but the deer that donated his penis might have been called Herb.

Never really thought I'd see deer penis' and tongue in the same sentence on this board, but there you have it.
Anyway, Ancient, why couldn't you write my textbooks? I might have studied.

On what would I write these textbooks?

Your computer. Badum bump! Rimshot!

Shit. I haven't even taken those classes yet.

So, you are untainted...

Research methods. You seem good at that, too.

I mean, your farts still stink and all that, but you seem to cover your bases and look for balance and accuracy.

That is some strong stuff. But I guess it affects people differently.

The psychoactive effects of absinthe are disputed, being a combination of high alcohol content and thujone. Needless to say, the stuff you get nowadays isn't quite the same as way back when.

And when I say, 'way back when', I mean it. Reciepts for oil or tincture of wormwood go back thousands of years, at least to the ancient Greeks.

Personally, I don't like absinthe much, I'm more a fan of classical liquors. 60% absinthe bought in the Czech has a tad more punch than my usual (well, I don't drink daily, but if I do, it's mainly that) Whisky, but it didn't make me feel like I took some sort of harder drug, either.

I'm not too much of a fan of the taste. But the burning? Well, maybe it was the hot food I regularily eat ... besides, I like that, kinda, it leaves a warm feeling.

60% isnt any thing big. I drink vodka that is harder then that on a daily basis. 80% will f*ck your sh*t right up, and proper. Also, correct me if Im wrong (which I may be), but isnt proper Absinthe run though a cocaine filter at some point in processing?
I only mentioned it because it still carries a bit of a... mysical flavor (in the metaphorical sence) to it. And it looks funny.

Very cool stuff.

One day, I will play in a Magic oriented game.

Are you going to continue adding this stuff to your "Best of" Page?

Aye, the Spoorn will get more stuff eventually.

In hindsight, I suppose I should have included a page or two on 'The proper care and feeding of your peyote cactus." But that might be enough for a book in and of itself.

That's friggin great.

Oh yeah, and 80% does f*ck you up horribly. I have also drank that, in fact, i'm looking at a bottle right now

Absinthe doesn't got the taste for everyone, but i would like to try to get ahold of some of the stuff if there is SOMEONE(like a RL Gran Le Fousteu or something...one of those old people that used to work in a distillery and whose grandparents and great grandparents did ) that actually knows how they made it back in the day(ok, a couple centuries). Just to try it out. Made PROPER of course.

I know some idiots that try to make their own from taking wormwood extract and mixing it with vodka. They end up getting a stomach pumping, or worse, dead.

And maybe the peyote cactus can be a hidden page?

While you're in Europe ... flights to the Czech Rep are cheap. So are flights to Poland. It's legal there, prepared the old way and all.