Yijo Guo Addiction

The Beautiful Death: A closer look at the Yijo Guo epidemic

Written by Mari Velk, correspondent for the Onyx Herald, and Harmon Bulik, researcher at the Pelveron Institute for Alchemical Ethics

Yijo Guo is the perfect poison, the sweetest deception the world has ever known. A white, silken powder that smells like honey orchid and nutmeg, often stored in silver powderboxes with the most intricate patterns to lure the mind. It dissolves on the tongue like sugar and promises bliss within a single breath. But the blessing is but a cloak around the utter enslavement of the body and mind that this very first taste causes. And for the addicted, the cost is not only inevitable - it is fatal.

Origins

Yijo Guo has been known by many names, among them Ashmilk, Bright Rot, and White Hunger. While it has been around for at least an age, it is believed to have originated in the shattered mountain regions northeast of Drozag. It was in those mountains that Yijo Guo was first distilled by alchemists seeking to isolate euphoria itself, creating a gateway out of the heavy night that is all those depths provide. They called it the "healing dust of the gods," for this white flower grows directly upon the root and can be found only in flightless subterranean environments. The plant feeds on mineral veins rich in latent magic, often near leylines or beneath places where great sorrow or blood-soaked death has occurred.

What they made was a perfect storm of dependence, temporal vitality, and irreversible decay. Once they understood what they had done, they attempted to erase their work, but it was too late. The dust was out, and so was its secret.

It has spread like a wildfire across Avaleen as a tool of war, the silent poison of assassins, and a forbidden indulgence for the unfortunate and the desolate.

The Addiction

What makes Yijo Guo so uniquely deadly is its paradoxical nature. It is a substance that both sustains and destroys until the destruction is greater than the restoration. Within minutes of the first dose, users report an overwhelming sense of peace, clarity, and joyful detachment from all suffering. Physical wounds close faster, and diseases, even terminal ones, have been known to subside, prolonging a life that should have ended. For a moment, one feels like a god.

But the price, in the end, is one's sanity and life itself. The transformation is, at the time we write this paper, irreversible. Even a single dose reprograms the body to depend on the drug's presence for essential cellular functions. Once taken, the body cannot function without it. Withdrawal begins within hours of the last dose and escalates rapidly:

Stage I: 6-12 hours. Clammy skin, cold sweats, and a sickly pallor.

Stage II: 12-24 hours. Skin turns pale or gray, the user experiences panic, dizziness, and a lack of breath as the lungs begin to fill with fluid.

Stage III: 24-48 hours. The body's immune system begins to attack the user's blood. Fever rises, breathing becomes nearly impossible.

Stage IV: 48+ hours. The body shuts down. Without immediate re-administration of Yijo Guo death is an agonizing certainty.

Nefarious Uses

The cruelty of Yijo Guo is why assassins have long favored its use as a poison. A single dose, slipped into flour or into a cup of wine, does not kill immediately but ensures the victim will die if they don't continue to receive it. Most never even realize what's been done, believing the withdrawal symptoms to be of another affliction or disease. Court healers have been known to labor for a victim for years without knowing the true cause of the ailment.

Some are blackmailed into obedience, choosing the beautiful version of death through overdose, while yet others - poets, lords, priests - take it willingly, mistaking bliss for clarity and believing they're stronger than any addiction.

Recreational Purpose

Many cities have reported an uptake in Yijo Guo addiction where young people use it recreationally, claiming it brings enlightenment and purity. Officials have reported beliefs that Yijo Guo carries fragments of divine essence, which is why it is too much for the body to handle in the long run.

But science says otherwise. There have been no reports of a user surviving beyond five years of the onset of the addiction. The drug, though it sustains, also destroys the very body it aids. In the end, the corruption creeps ahead of the healing. Even with daily use, the body will break faster than it can be patched by any means. The high masks the decay, allowing users to dance through death with a smile on their pallid face, lying down without ever getting back up again.

A Final Word

At present, there is no known cure for Yijo Guo addiction. Repeated attempts by clerical orders, licensed medical alchemists, and independent arcane researchers have yielded no successful method for reversing the compound's systemic integration once introduced into a living person. Although one must note that some promising results are coming out of the Medica division of the A'triyes Academy in the Akati Empire.

The substance induces irreversible physiological and psychological dependency within minutes, and all subsequent efforts of treatment focus solely on temporary symptom management or delaying withdrawal onset. Preventative measures remain the only effective intervention to avoid the initial exposure.

Yijo Guo is classified as a Class X terminal compound and remains the deadliest poison registered at the Pelveron Institute.

There is no peace in forgetting pain -- only the illusion of peace, and the price is always the soul.

— Inquisitor Hallen Mor, Third Eye of the Aerial Bastion