102: Voodoo Puffs

ENTRY 102: Voodoo Puffs

For many, drugs provide a way to step out of themselves, to mentally distance their ego from the actions that they undertake. Social mores on getting fucked up are relaxed, expectations of behavior lightened; transhumans still believe that when intoxicated a morph is not fully under the ego’s control. Some exploit this to indulge without hindrance of conscience, while others merely use it as an easy excuse for behavior they don’t have the courage to do sober. Some societies have taken this principal even more literally, seeking to incite ecstatic states through drugs, dancing, music, meditation, and flagellation where the user literally becomes someone else. Once the province of tradition, possession has now become a dark science promulgated through petals called voodoo puffs.

They resemble pale gray translucent dandelion seed heads which quiver on the slightest of breezes, the sphere-shaped florets a little too perfectly geometrical in their arrangement, and take on a bright green phosphorescence under ultraviolet light. Users typically snort the florets off the head, though they can be consumed any number of ways. Early signs typically involve a flushed appearance, tics and tremors, and the eyes rolling back in the head as the drug takes effect. The nanobiological payload creates a temporary network that piggybacks the user’s brain while loading a pseudo-AGI template. To the user and anyone nearby it appears that the user’s ego has been replaced by a foreign ego that is in complete control of the ego’s morph, with the ego an unwilling passenger not in control of their actions. In actuality the template program merely overrides the user’s perception of being in control, while lowering inhibitions and (depending on the quality of the programming) providing temporary personality cues and traits. So for the next few hours the user will move about as a voyeur in their own morph, appalled or delighted at what they do under “external influence,” speaking with strange accents and alien body language as they run loose.

As the name suggests, the majority of voodoo puffs are loaded with pseudo-spiritual entities inspired by syncretic religions like Vodou, Santeria, Obeah, and Candomblé, though that is a matter of programmer taste, and users have been reported to be “possessed” by everything from aliens and werewolves to prominent celebrities living and dead under the influence of voodoo puffs. The pseudo-AGI templates are rarely historically accurate, often remixes or original creations based on old concepts and imagery, and loaded with just enough information to give the impression that the entity in question is authentic—often supplemented by surreptitious real-time research via the ‘Mesh, if possible.

Voodoo Puffs Mechanics

Type	Application	Duration	Addiction Modifier	Addiction Type	Cost
Nano	INH, O	1d10 hours	+1	Mental	Moderate

For the duration of the drug, the user is treated as if they had the multiple personality implant (Eclipse Phase, p.301-2), with the second ego being an NPC with the same stats as the PC under the gamemaster’s control; the NPC ego is generally unwilling to relinquish control.

Sweets

• Le Cheval: A character whose addiction to voodoo puffs progresses to Major must make a WIL x 3 Test the next time the take a puff; if the test fails they
  permanently gain the multiple personality implant with the NPC ego from the hit that, as well as the advantage Immunity (Voodoo Puffs) as the drug finishes permanently re-wiring their brain.