Drugs in Fantasy: Methods, Motives, and Magefell

"It's realistic" -- no

You may not think of drugs when you think fantasy (or maybe you read The Witcher first, and it seems fundamental), but they are subtly prolific.

The Lord of the Rings, The Stormlight Archive, Earthsea, and Wheel of Time all have some level of substance inclusion, and for a variety of reasons. Whether or not to use them and what they do hinges on the world you build, and the story you want to tell.

So let’s talk about drugs in fantasy: why you'd want to include them, how to do it, and an example from Thrain and from my world of Magefell.

Why

Do you recall how in Lord of the Rings, Gandalf begins to tell Frodo about the ring, and slams a bottle of strong whiskey?

Of course not. He smokes a pipe and it is both a memorable and more valid substance to use. Similarly, the Witcher does not use a diffuser to gently imbue the air with essential oils before charging into battle, he drinks potions with often severe after-effects. These two examples may seem obvious, but I want to draw out the deeper reasons behind why they work so well.

I like to consider the why of substance through three primary lenses: ambiance and culture, characterization, and plot.

If you read no further, here’s the takeaway: Drugs are magic systems that leverage real-world equivalents to provide setting, characterization, and drive plot.

Ambiance

As I mentioned above, Lord of the Ring’s smoking fits into this category. In-universe, it’s "pipe-weed," but we feel it thematically: a relaxing, slightly indulgent ritual. It signals comfort, familiarity, and a place where danger hasn't yet arrived.
No one smokes pipe-weed and proceeds to accomplish previously undoable feats, but having it provides a touch-point where Tolkien can convey those feelings.

The most widely known drug, however, was declared long ago in ancient times to be required for any fantasy no matter what, and that is alcohol. It’s practically a trope if a story starts in a tavern, or the bartender asks the protagonist what they want, and do have the thesarus next to you as you try to figure out what to call that fizzy liquid instead of ‘ale’ least your work catch fire from triteness.

Yet, that’s really exactly why you should include it. The vast amount of context you can imbue into your story by including a warm tavern with excellent beer would take you paragraphs and paragraphs to build out otherwise.

Characterization

Returning to Gandalf, he is particularly good with his pipe, able to produce rings, and even a boat that sails through one in the Hobbit. This lets pipe-weed act as a vehicle for conveying Gandalf as wizardly, and knowledgeable.

It’s also why having him drink whiskey would feel odd. Pipe-weed, although not described with medicinal accuracy, seems much like tobacco in our own world. We know someone could smoke from a pipe in modest amounts and conceivably remain unimpaired. It would not match Gandalf’s character to imbibe something that could cloud his judgement.

On the other hand, there is no quicker way to label a character as decrpit, fallen, unlucky, or otherwise than to have them plastered in an alley. You can take this further by including harder drugs. It’s one kind of fantasy if the tavern has hard liquor, quite another if scene one includes side characters doing lines on the bartop.

Plot

Drugs can also be powerful enough to change events or characters in your world. In the Witcher, Geralt consumes potions and they give him heightened abilities (the games push this even further). In Lord of the Rings, there is a drink the Orcs have which when given to Pippin and Merry, strengthens them.

This raises one question: Why use drugs, and not some relic or other mechanic?

First, thematic consequence. The real world is full of drugs that might be a boon in the moment (morpheein, alcohol, fentanyl) but deliver ripostes ranging from mild to near death, depending on the intake. This is the substrate you draw from when adding substances to your world.

Second, as I pointed out when discussing drinking and fantasy, drugs at all have context because they exist in our world; magical artifacts, or magic in general, does not. Reading “he drew a bag of white powder from his coat, doing his best to hide it” will already tell us a whole lot, whereas “he withdrew the Tal-al-virnonin amulet from his pocket, sneakily as he could” only tells us our protagonist does not want people seeing said amulet.

How

Once you establish the reason behind whether or not a drug is needed, you must determine how to implement it.

Level of Immersion

I hope we also do not recall Golem bemoaning the loss of his Ring in the Hobbit, then scurrying back to his rock and doing a line of coke. Similarly, even in a world where seltzers could be possible, it would be an obvious misstep to have a character order a “White Claw” and potentially order a seltzer at all. They are rather modern inventions, after all.

If those examples seem contrived, consider “denner resin” in the Kingkiller Chronicles. For all intents and purposes, it seems a lot like opium, except that directly eating the tree seems to be all that is required (real opium has a precise and arduous extraction process). It would likely do less for Rothfuss’s world if he had to first set up additional lore about the detailed extraction process and contrive a means by which Kvothe and others found themselves in such a place.

“But it’s unrealistic to” — no. If you are world building just for fun, then go right on ahead with anything you enjoy. If you build for stories, however, only do what serves the story.

Rothfuss had a purpose for that section of his narrative, and a highly restrictive and intensive extraction process did not serve it, so it was not added. Using a drug also allowed him to quickly communicate overdose, addiction, source, and so on without getting bogged down in the details of edge cases. We more readily agree with the presented phenomena as we have real-world undertanding to pull from.

Understanding Equals Effect

Similar to hard versus soft magic systems, substance in a world can only be as effective as it is understood, though this varies a lot in regards to characterization.

As I mentioned in the ambiance section, Gandalf does not gain additional powers from smoking (other than to summon head-nodding and Saxaphone music). When characters do gain power from drugs, there must be clearly understood rules.

You can think of it as a matrix: on one side is how clearly you define usage and consequences, and on the other how large an effect it can have on plot. If you are familiar with Sanderson’s Three Rules of Magic Systems, it’s near copy-paste for understanding this.

If, for example, you introduced a plant which when ground up and mixed with water, provided dramatically increased physical abilities, you immediately raise some questions:

• How effective

• What consequences

• What limits

• How rare

(among others)

Those questions do not matter too much if the substance does not play a huge roll, like with the Tree Ents’s special water making Merry and Pippin taller and stronger. While we might see it and think “wow, I wonder what happens if normal men drink it?”, Merry and Pippin do not suddenly take out Sauron by themselves due to this water.

The moment your protagonist, or another key character uses it to solve a problem, defeat a foe, etc, you must immediately have concrete answers to those questions, otherwise you risk making the drug feel like a plot gimick.

Examples

Thrain

In Thrain, I use the exact classic I mentioned at the start: alcohol. Specifically, in Chapter three (spoilers) Tylen meets Torp at a bar, and has his first drink. I use alcohol to do several things:

• color the world with fantasy-esque vibes

• show Tylen to be inexperienced

• show Baeumont to be unscrupulous

It would take more time in both showing and telling if I made my own mechanic or substance, and for little benefit, at least as the story stands right now.

Magefell

Magefell follows magic mechanics that closely adhere to Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition. This makes it an extremely powerful and saturated magic world; to the point that even normal patterns of life in the city could be disrupted or impossible without careful consideration.

To assist with this, I added Feyfog to the world. A near-equivalent to cannabis in our world, it has a few additional properties. Namely:

• Tasteless when dissolved in liquid; fully soluble

• A BAC of 0.05 renders one incapable of magic (if the drink is properly mixed according to the city guidelines)

Even outside of drinks, the substance slowly renders one incapable of magic when used and so it helps keep the peace when it comes to magic users. I have a precise and measured system for calculating how much of it is needed, and a %-based spell failure chance for magic users in between zero and full doses.

This is because the stories I tell with it are shaped by its existence. Wizards can cast giant fireballs; evil sorcerers can teleport at will. How believable would it be for them to remain trapped in prison by a couple dudes with swords? Not at all, unless they couldn’t do magic.

By the same token, since this substance does alter what magic users can do, it needs some level of strict ruling so that when it crops up in the story, it doesn’t feel hand-wavy.

Closing

When thinking of fantasy, it’s probably not drugs you think of, but having recently read A Wise Man’s Fear, Ranger’s Apprentice, and some others where it occasionally stands in the center, the topic was on my mind and I thought I’d talk about it some.