Image Credit: Jean Giraud Moebius
In the psychic crystal drug apocalypse, we will all wear Converse. We won’t have any choice. Their lack of arch support and slender toe profile will sharpen our minds and wills as we walk the Desert of the Mind towards the Howling Canyon of Thraz’Razool, guided only by the light of our Mind Stones. If we throw them away, they’ll just re-appear by our bedrolls the next day, worn in all the same places.
There will be no rhyme or reason to our clothing. Some of us will travel wearing an oversized Captain Kangaroo ringer tee from 1976, others will armor themselves in the chitinous flight gear of the Sky Screamers, but all will wear a pair of black Chucks—maybe off-white if you’re lucky.
In the psychic crystal drug apocalypse, danger will be all around us. The Porcelain Man is always looking for fresh skulls to smoke his Etherweed from, and ours will do nicely. We shouldn’t have given him false teeth to secure passage through the Chem Farmers’ body distilleries, but desperation and delirium proved stronger than our wits, didn’t they?
We’re not defenseless however. We’ve still got that Darklight Gun we stole from the Golden City’s prison subcomplex. It made short work of those glider-skiff riders we ran into 20 klicks out from the Spire of Hauchak, but its crystal ammo matrix is quickly depleting.
In the psychic crystal drug apocalypse, we’ll have to make hard choices. When we find the hogs with the faces of our friends and family corralled in the Swine Baron’s pens, will we put them out of their misery with the Scepter of Light, or will we accept the Swine Baron’s offer of a good meal, knowing full well what it is we’re filling our stomachs with?
There will also be less hard choices, like what side dish you want with your roast hog with the face of your Uncle Jack. I recommend the scalloped Sarkkadian potatoes—the fever dreams they give you when properly prepared can’t be described, only experienced. You could also go for the Grabyllan Tenders.
In the psychic crystal drug apocalypse, war will be…weird. There will only be the aftermath of conventional wars, as we’ll see when we hide from the TechnoWarlock’s shrieker drones in the ceramic bones of an ancient atomic Bio-Titan, or when we encounter the city of the ratmen quickly dissolving into its constituent amino acids under the sustained barrage of a Germ Bomb.
But war will also get super weird too. Groups of pale humans will tearfully exchange pristine technicolor lotus flowers as their avatars scorch deep wounds into the very fabric of the Astral Plane above us. A canny sage with the face of a goat will project false stars onto a nebula unlike the Milky Way, subverting a prophecy of ruin and forcing the Phantom Lord’s armies of Half-Made Men to turn their swords upon their master.
In the psychic crystal drug apocalypse, music is going to rule so hard. Did you ever see Heavy Metal when it came out? It’s not going to be anything like that. Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees are going to score the whole thing. The psychic crystal drug apocalypse is totally going to kick ass. Just you wait.
Alex Borkowski