A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE INTER-JARLDOM AGREEMENT AGAINST NOXIOUS DRUGS (IJAAND) AND THE STATE MEDIA OF THE COALITION OF THULEAN JARLS.
Broadcasted on Metatron 3, 1791. Citizens are urged to report all sightings, possession, or trade of the black toadstool known as Helhest.
The Coalition of Thulean Jarls has long described itself as a northern bastion built on lineage, oath, and controlled power. Its neofeudal order prizes the “Song of the Warrior,” regimented duels, and the disciplined management of magic among commoners and retainers. In that order, strength has a price, but it is a price paid with training, study, and sanctioned suffering. State media and the Inter-Jarldom Agreement Against Noxious Drugs (IJAAND) now say a new temptation is spreading through alleys, barracks, workshops, and hidden shrines: Helhest, a black toadstool marketed as a shortcut to battle-fury and spellcraft.
In a coordinated broadcast across the Jarldoms of Ultima Thule, Ýdalir, Utgard, and outlying holdings, the IJAAND described Helhest as “a death sentence that desecrates the soul and deforms the body.” The message, carried by state loudspeakers and printed broadsheets, focused on three claims: the drug induces berserker rages, violently amplifies Orgone production and gathering, and slowly rots half of the consumer’s body.
The voice of the IJAAND echoes through the frost-locked streets of Ultima Thule, carrying the stern warnings of the Jarls to a shivering populace. Credit: Kenomitian
“Helhest does not grant noble fury,” the announcement declared. “It makes a citizen into a mindless instrument.”
Officials urged citizens not to touch suspicious fungi in damp tunnels, sewer shadows, factory ducts, or frost-soaked cellars. They were instructed to report sightings to local priests, household officers, or Jarl-appointed wardens. Possession and cultivation, the PSA said, will be treated as threats to public order. The PSA leaned heavily on the Coalition’s own mythos. It invoked old tales of trance-warriors and animal cults, drawing a sharp line between sanctioned martial tradition and chemical frenzy.
Found in the dampest veins of the city, the Helhest fungus thrives on the leakage of our industrial progress. Credit: Kenomitian
“Our history remembers the berserker,” the message said, describing wolf-skinned elites and bear-warriors who fought with terrifying devotion. Yet the broadcast presented a counter-history: that some ancient frenzies may have been driven not by divine favor, but by toxins.
State media referenced scholarly speculation that hallucinogenic mushrooms or henbane could explain parts of the berserker legend. In the Coalition’s telling, Helhest is not a relic of heroic antiquity. It is a “magically-mutated evolution” of such poisons, weaponized for the modern street. The point was not to demystify the old warrior tradition, but to reclaim it. Helhest, the PSA warned, produces an uncontrolled combat trance that strips away judgment, hierarchy, and recognition.
“You will foam at the mouth, howl like a beast, and cut down all you meet,” the broadcast claimed, stressing that Helhest rage makes no distinction between ally and foe. “This is not prowess. It is collapse.”
The “chemical frenzy” strips away the soul, leaving only a mindless instrument of destruction that recognizes neither friend nor foe. Credit: Kenomitian
In a society where honor is measured by restraint as much as courage, the PSA framed Helhest consumption as a betrayal of the self. A berserker drug, it argued, is not merely a personal vice. It is an anti-social weapon. The IJAAND warned that the first casualty is the user’s “True Will”. Under Helhest, it said, the citizen’s intent is replaced by impulse, a shift that threatens the discipline on which dueling codes, oathbands, and household command depend.
The second casualty is trust. “If a warrior cannot trust his own hand,” one state reader intoned, “he cannot stand in a shieldwall.”
The PSA’s central argument was metaphysical rather than moral. Helhest’s appeal, it said, is built on the most common temptation in a magical society: a faster route to power. In thaumaturgical terms, magic is fueled by Mana generated when the Aether of the soul is mixed with Orgone, the radiation produced by negative emotions and suffering. Under lawful practice, a mage cultivates Orgone with focus and will, and then shapes it into usable power.
Helhest, state media said, is a parasite that turns that careful practice into a furnace. Upon ingestion, the toadstool allegedly forces the user’s inner faculties into catastrophic overproduction. It “feeds” on emotion and instinct, driving fear, anger, and anguish to spike. The result, according to the PSA, is an immediate surge: a brief sense that spells land harder, faster, and with less effort. This is the lure IJAAND emphasized most: not only “more power,” but the promise of longer-lasting effects. If Mana can be sustained, the thinking goes, then wards hold, compulsions linger, and enhancements endure. Helhest peddlers, the PSA claimed, exploit this logic.
“It whispers: why train a year for what you can swallow in a night?” the broadcast said.
The PSA then offered its warning: Helhest does not provide stable endurance. It creates volatility. Helhest, by flooding the system, starts to unravel that bond prematurely. The user may feel powerful, it said, but they are actually burning through the structures that make spellwork safe. This is where state media drew a direct connection between drug use and magical accidents. A Helhest user, it warned, is likely to trigger uncontrolled spells, misfires, and “total mental collapse,” especially when the surge hits what the caster values most.
Even if citizens dismiss metaphysical claims, the PSA argued, Helhest’s physical signature is undeniable.
Helhest consumption, it said, rots exactly half of the eater’s body slowly over time. The broadcast described one side of the body turning “the color of cold ash,” with skin failing, muscle sloughing, and organs degrading into black sludge. The message stressed that this is not a common infection and not a wound of war. It is an ongoing necrosis fed by the same amplified Orgone the user sought.
A warrior’s body is a banner; half a banner is surrender. The physical price of the Helhest frenzy is a slow, lucid decomposition. Credit: Kenomitian
“This rot is not cured by a simple medical bot,” the PSA said, warning against reliance on industrial quick fixes. It also warned against “unsanctioned healers” who promise reversals in exchange for favors, secrets, or devotion.
Officials described the condition as uniquely cruel: victims remain alive and lucid while decomposition advances. The PSA called that outcome a public hazard, not only for hygiene and safety, but for morale.
“A warrior’s body is a banner,” one state voice declared. “Half a banner is surrender.”
The PSA did not pretend that magic eliminates addiction. Instead, it leaned into the reality that drugs can become more dangerous when the soul is part of the chemistry. It warned that repeated use conditions the user to chase the Orgone spike itself. That chase, it said, can lead to isolation, paranoia, and desperate acts to provoke negative emotion for “better Mana.” In a magical culture, the PSA argued, addiction is not only about relief. It can become about performance.
“Some will hurt themselves to cast,” the IJAAND warned. “Some will hurt others.”
State media presented Helhest as a strategic threat. It described a supply chain moving through sewers, port ice, factory shadows, and black-market shrines. It blamed “foreign subversives and diabolic cults” for marketing Helhest as a gift of strength. The PSA said smugglers do not care for lineage or honor. Their aim, it claimed, is to destabilize the Coalition by converting fighters into unpredictable liabilities.
A Helhest user in a barracks is dangerous. A Helhest user in a duel circle is scandal. A Helhest user in a household guard is a potential massacre. This is how the broadcast framed it: Helhest is not merely a vice, but a method for turning the Coalition’s strength against itself. The IJAAND also warned of exploitation. Helhest users, it said, can be coerced, blackmailed, or steered into crime. Their need for the drug makes them easier to recruit, easier to betray, and easier to weaponize.
The PSA stated that the Coalition’s enforcement arms have been authorized to treat Helhest cultivation as an immediate threat. It described cooperation among wardens, battlemages, and specialized hunter units tasked with identifying cultivation sites and supply nodes. Officials emphasized that the response is not limited to arrest. Cultivation sites, they said, will be handled as “diabolic threats,” suggesting escalation beyond ordinary policing, including containment, cleansing, and destruction of contaminated infrastructure.
Specialized hunter units move through the underworld, meeting the diabolic threat of cultivation with the cleansing purity of fire. Credit: Kenomitian
The IJAAND also announced coordination with arcanist networks to trace the spores’ origin and map distribution patterns across jarldoms. The broadcast framed the fight as both forensic and spiritual: track the fungus, track the money, and track the cults.
The PSA gave simple instructions to common citizens:
- Do not touch black toadstools found in damp, hidden places.
- Do not burn them in enclosed spaces.
- Do not “test” them by ingestion, smoke, or tincture.
- Report immediately to local authorities, priests, or household officers.
Citizens were also warned against “friend-of-a-friend cures,” including unlicensed antidotes, exorcisms for hire, or ritual cleansings performed in back rooms. The message was clear: Helhest thrives in secrecy, and secrecy is how it spreads.
A Message to Noble Houses:
The PSA addressed noble houses directly, urging them to police their own retainers and sponsored spellworkers. It warned that Helhest may appear where ambition is sharpest: among those who feel pressured to demonstrate power, win duels, or maintain prestige with limited training.
“Do not let desperation become a policy,” the broadcast said, urging houses to investigate sudden changes in temperament, unexplained injuries, or the telltale half-body discoloration.
The IJAAND framed this as a matter of stewardship. Noble houses, it said, must model disciplined practice rather than rewarding raw output at any cost.
In closing:
The PSA ended with a metaphor tailored to the Coalition’s Teslapunk sensibilities: consuming Helhest, it said, is like trying to power a high-voltage engine by throwing a lit torch into its fuel tank. The result is a sudden burst of speed, followed by warped metal, melted parts, and an explosion that leaves only a broken shell. In its final lines, the broadcast returned to the Coalition’s identity.
Do not trade your will for a frenzy. Do not trade your future for a surge. Do not turn your suffering into a market.
This announcement is a product of the Thulean State Media and the Inter-Jarldom Agreement Against Noxious Drugs (IJAAND). Compliance is mandatory for all persons under the Coalition’s jurisdiction.
