Lotos

The Lotos is a plant known for its narcotic and analgesic properties. It grows in the highlands of north-eastern Long, mostly within the present day duchy of Xenoshire.

Biology

The Lotos plant is closely related to the “giant aster” and the “ice cabbage,” two other plants endemic to the alpine tundra ecosystem of inland north-eastern Long.

Lotos is an annual flowering plant which develops hearty succulent leaves to protect the plant from frost prior to its blossoming towards the beginning of the region’s mild season. The flowers look like big puff balls and the plant’s pollen contains a small amount of the chemical substance described below. The lotos is in full bloom around the middle of the mild/summer period at which time it is harvested.

Although most lotos are the product of human cultivation, the plant is actually evolutionarily adept: its seeds are carried by the winds and can take root in a wide variety of conditions.

The entire lotos flower, seeds, and pods contain the narcotic chemical (which is also called lotos) to varying degrees. The most potent concentration however is found in the thick sap secreted by mature seedpods.

Cultivation and Use

Human cultivation of the lotos began in prehistoric times. People indigenous to the region used the plant for medicinal purposes. It was also used in certain spiritual rituals.

It is thought the chemical amounts used by indigenous peoples in rituals and folk-healing are lower than those consumed by modern outsiders. The sap may have been used as a topical analgesic, while other parts of the plant were employed in rituals.

The lotos sap substance can be ingested or mixed with other ingredients and smoked. In the modern era, several methods have bene discovered and utilized in order to create an aqueous solution of lotos which could be loaded into glass syringes and injected intravenously. This process originated with doctors administering the drug for patient treatment but has since caught on with recreational users/abusers.

By the early modern era, a trade in lotos pods had begun across the eastern coast of Long, this soon spread even further afield.

Today monocultural lotos farms can be found in the mountainous inland region of Xenoshire where they are largely insulated with scrutiny by civil and governmental authorities.

In addition to “legitimate” medicinal application of the plant, its euphoric and calming effects have been long observed, with many people using and abusing the drug for recreational purposes. This abuse played a strong part in fueling the profitable Lotos trade.

Prolonged use of lotos to treat chronic pain or insomnia can produce deleterious effects such as dependency (meaning ceasing to take the drug will cause the onset of a difficult withdrawal) and tolerance (meaning users require increasingly larger doses which can eventually become untenable or increase the risk of overdoes) and debilitating lethargy. Death from lotos consumption is not uncommon—a small number of people may have violent allergic reactions, many suffer overdoes whether the narcotic causes vital muscles such as the heart to slow or cease it functions, others may die from complications associated with withdrawal (or overdose following relapse).

Trade Routes

The Merchant’s League city of Monodon, founded in the early Naja Dynasty during a period of exploration, dominated trade in the seas north of Eft and down the north-eastern coast including the lotos trade for centuries. Overland trade (comprising part of the tributary economic system) has been consistent but never as efficient or profitable as seafaring trade.

Legal Attitude

In centuries past the Kings of Long had large quantities of lotos delivered to their courts: it was viewed as a luxury good akin to jewels, fine wines and fine cloths.

In modern times, the Long government has come to view the lotos trade and lotos use as increasingly problematic. It was noted how some peasants, petty merchants and artisans, and other poor city dwellers have come to abuse lotos to self-medicate and alleviate dissatisfaction with their lives. Some condemn this on humanitarian grounds as the trade spreads addiction and preventable death among the least fortunate while others object due to economic concerns—lamenting the loss of productivity and manpower.

Elder members of the priestly tribes disagree on the issue of lotos—whether it has a spiritual benefit or whether it results only in intoxication and lethargy.

Restrictions and bans on the lotos trade have been imposed intermittently and piecemeal – often on a local or provincial level with only a few instances of kingdom-wide policies. On the whole, the government’s attitude is ambivalent due to the deleterious health and societal effects on one hand but the profit realized and the (often discreet) recreational consumption of lotos by the upper classes on the other. More than legal decrees, there are occasional seizures of large shipments of lotos, destruction of warehouses and farms, and prosecutions of sellers.

The trade nevertheless continued at all times, sometimes clandestinely. Today, the lotos trade is widespread although it exists in an insecure legal grey zone and participants mostly keep their heads down.

Hu

Lotos use in Hu is not significant enough to draw concern. It is a relatively rare luxury import with consumption almost exclusively limited to the nobility and wealthy elite (even among these classes its abuse is rare). It appears every so often at social gatherings with it is presented as a novel luxury, often accompanied by ceremonies to enhance guests’ impression of this as a special experience.

In Western Hu, Lotos is somewhat more prevalent with some use by merchants and artisans in port cities.

Outreach Groups

In the port cities (including the city states) of south and eastern Long their exist private groups (with the participation of members of the nobility and/or priestly caste) that interact