Magic without a magic

[sturdycoldsteel]

Steel wakes up. This is not where she went to sleep. She has a peek at the stream -

- And lets out a surprised yelp at the nonsensical cacophony.

"What in the blue hells is this place?" No answer is immediately apparent, so she climbs to the top of the ravine, carefully avoiding the various inexplicable things in the area. The snake-goat hybrid was particularly grotesque.

The top of the ravine has a road. She tries to fly, but can't. Again, very strange. This is a pretty nice road, physically, but magically it's completely undeveloped. She walks towards the city, peeking at the stream once in a while only to see fog, and seeking an explanation.

Comments

[alicornucopia]

"Just bring them all tomorrow," says the surgeon. "I'll close for the day soon anyway."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Do you want some aspirin as well? I sell those at eight pills to one seo. I'll give you a hundred for 10 seo if you agree to sell them at the same price."

[alicornucopia]

"What do you care how much I charge for them?" blinks the surgeon.

[sturdycoldsteel]

"If you charge for more than they help, it might give aspirin a bad name."

[alicornucopia]

"I could call 'em something else."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Hm. Fine, I suppose. I still want you to tell people the safe doses and such, though. How many aspirin should I bring tomorrow?"

[alicornucopia]

"Of course I'll tell them the safe doses," says the surgeon. "I'll just call them soothers or something. I'll take the hundred."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"So that's 80 seo total, for fifty morphine and a hundred aspirin. And notes on safe doses. I'll be back maybe two hours after sunrise. Have a nice night!"

[alicornucopia]

"You too!"

[sturdycoldsteel]

Steel goes home and mixes medicine. The moon tonight is not quite full, hopefully nobody wants to risk losing Aelare's blessing by being too hasty - it'll work best if they all do it on the same night.

The next morning she's back at the surgeon's place with the pills, and copious notes on them.

[alicornucopia]

And she receives money for them.

[sturdycoldsteel]

She leaves her address. "Pleasure doing business with you. Let me know when you run low."

Back at the shop, she looks at the record of sales and concludes that the sale of morphine means that the shop is now probably-profitable.

"Hey Aya, we are officially making more money than we spend. This calls for a bit of a celebration. Not that I don't like your cooking, but what's the nicest restaurant you know of?"

[namesthesky]

"The nicest? Probably the place by the pond at the edge of town. I think it's called Chef's Knife."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I should clarify - the place with the best food, not the place with the fanciest decor."

[namesthesky]

"I have never personally tasted the food at any fancy restaurants. My guess would be the same, but you might have to ask someone else for firsthand accounts."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Ah, yes, forgot about that. Thanks anyway. Maybe I'll skip it entirely. At any rate..." She glances around to see that the shop is currently empty, "Are any tattoo-removal-seekers waiting?"

[namesthesky]

"One will be back any minute. Another is around the corner rather than loitering in here, I'll get her." She goes and gets someone.

[sturdycoldsteel]

She unbinds the someone's tattoo, asks them not to spread it around too much, and repeats when the other guy comes back.

And she tells Aya, "I do things without thinking them through sometimes. It would be nice to have a check of sorts, so I know I'm not doing something wrong while thinking it's right. So." She describes the risks and benefits of morphine, if Aya didn't know them already from the notes. "Do you think it's unethical to deliberately inflate the price of potentially dangerous and addictive medicine so that it doesn't get used unnecessarily?"

[namesthesky]

"Unnecessarily meaning recreationally, or to stave off withdrawal symptoms after prolonged need for genuine pain relief?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I wanted to make the price high for a month or two and slowly lower it closer to what it actually costs to produce. This is meant to discourage people from using it recreationally. Drug abuse was a significant problem in some parts of the world from my memories. Withdrawal could be managed by steadily decreasing the dose."

[namesthesky]

"Is this basically just... cosmetically different alcoholism, or should I be imagining worse effects?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Definitely worse short-term effects, somewhat worse long-term effects. And it's a lot easier to accidentally kill yourself by taking too much morphine or other drugs than by drinking too much alcohol. Morphine is the first thing I've made personally that could be easily abused this way."

[namesthesky]

"Approximately what fraction of people who are originally given morphine in a responsibly controlled manner will become addicted?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"If you take it once, there's maybe a one-fifth chance you will get a mild and short-term addiction that disappears in a week and has no lasting negative effects. If you take it for a month, it's almost certain you'll be at least mildly addicted. And this is physical addiction I'm talking about, this is on top of just wanting to keep going because it feels good. You literally can't think straight without morphine if you're in severe, unmanaged withdrawal. It's not nearly as addictive as some other stuff I could mix up if I felt like unethically making a lot of money."

[namesthesky]

"Well, don't make things that serve no other purpose, but - say there are five hundred people who need morphine varying amounts in a given year, which is a number I just made up. Assuming everyone is either apprised of the risk ahead of time, or in so much pain that someone else has to decide for them, the choice is pretty straightforwardly between giving a hundred people an in-most-cases-temporary problem that sounds much less unpleasant than receiving surgery while merely blind drunk - itself not a risk-free painkiller - or torturing five hundred people who would have preferred the risk. I... think this is fairly straightforwardly in favor of making morphine as available as you would with any other drug, and just peppering it with warnings and maybe not giving out too much at a time to anyone who isn't themselves dispensing it."