What Contraband is there? I want to have some smugglers trading in drugs such as cocaine, meth etc but I can't figure out what would be their warhammer equivalents. Please help or suggest.

Don't know about the Warhammer canon, but in terms of real late medieval period, I'm not sure there's much evidence out there and it's highly likely that any drugs that were used were legal. The criminalisation of that sort of thing was a much later development. In the European proxy, it's likely that there may well have been the use of mushrooms to obtain legal highs or hallucinations, but whether it was used recreationally or as a form of local spiritual ritual I wouldn't like to say. In the near-East (Araby I guess) some form of hashish presumably would be available, given that we derive the term Assasin from its users, although I don't know whether the stories were based on fact or western myth. According to an article I found on the Wellcome website, opiates were known in the medieval period for pain relief, so another option there.

I think you have to recall that you're talking about a tougher time than today. Most people didn't have time in their lives for recreational drug use - they woke, they worked, they ate, they slept. Within the nobility, well I guess anything goes. But again, bear in mind that drug use was unlikely to be illegal and thus not smuggled.

Now if smuggling is the focus, the issue there is less about illegality and more about evading excise duties. So it's luxury goods and trade goods that would attract the attention of the revenue men that smugglers would focus on. Or you could always go down the route used by dark sci-fi like Judge Dredd, and have people smuggling drugs which are illegal because of the heretical and rather unpleasant process by which those drugs are extracted from the livers of dwarfish children

The Old World Armoury (WFRP2nd edition) lists a few. From the top of my head I can remember Mandrake Root (there is even an insanity dealing with addiction named after this) and Black Lotus (served for example in Marienburg).

Opium as medicine, Opium as Laudenum, Opium as…opium. It is the most worldly of drugs that could be stolen from legitimate traders, snuck through port authorities and shipped as far away as Cathay for a profit.

Tobacco didn't see wide circulation in Europe until the 1600's but we're talking fantasy here! Tobacco was used for all kinds of things in many levels of society. Snuff powder, medicines, etc for a long time. It would be something that every port authority and customs official would want to dip their beaks into, and give an "honest smuggler" plenty of reasons to avoid them.

Sugar, or "sweet salt" as crusaders called it when they brought it back to Europe after the crusades. A sugar smuggler could make a lot of scratch selling bootleg sugar to feed the fat-arses of Imperial nobility. Other than bad teeth from malnutrition, nobles would have some of the worst teeth in the empire due to their predelictions for sugary confections…since they would be the only ones that could afford such things.

Cannibus would be less of a draw for widespread smuggling in the Empire. There are plenty of indigenous plants that would get people "high," and lighting fires was a total beeeeeotch. Peach leaves, angelica root, mullein root…all smokable with some after effects.

Other drugs existed in European culture, but most of them were hallucinogens associated with witches and other spiritual uses. They wouldn't be that smuggle-worthy.

IIRC Warhammer City / City of Middenheim from v1 world has some drugs (e.g. ranald's delight = cocaine I think…)

This may be of help. It is a fan made doc for 2nd ed. http://ratujmywfrp2pl.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/herbalism.pdf

It may give you some ideas,

Alp

Any 3e conversion on this?

jh

Definitely Warhammer 3 needs some good rules for Poison and Drugs, Liber Fanatica may be?

Condition cards would be the obvious way to go when creating new drugs. We already have a condition card for one drug (alcohol), it would be easy for FFG (or any of us fans) to create a couple of condition cards representing drugs with different effects. As an example:

Rabid root
The root is boiled and then tobacco is soaked in the decoction and smoked.
Initially gives the user a burst of energy but later leaves the user lethargic for hours.
Addictive.
Add 1 reckless die to all physical checks for 5 turns (even in conservative stance and in addition to the characters normal characteristic/stance dice).
After the 5 turns add 2 misfortune dice to all Mental checks for 10 turns.
After the card is recharged, make a Resilience roll with 2 challenge dice, if failed the penalty to mental checks is permanent, except when using the drug.
Costs 5-10 silver per dose.

k7e9 said:

I am LOVING the mechanic above…adding an additional reckless die to the pool. This would work perfectly for Madcap Mushrooms and their PCP like effect on characters!