Byzant

Byzant is the popular name for Polydehydromegaphenylsemitetrapeperdinoxyaethrosupradiolchloride, a compound found to occur naturally in the Silicate Forest of Eudos (third moon of Crynos II), and more recently synthesized for wider distribution.

Byzant is currently categorized as a Class III Metanarcotic by the Department of Substances, and as a Level 4 Brainbender by the NarcoPolo Cartel. It currently enjoys widespread, class-transcending popularity among many civilized populations, in spite of evidence suggesting a strong correlation between heavy Byzant use and crippling psychosis.

Discovery
Byzant seems to have been a well-known, if unremarkable substance on Eudos for many centuries prior to Harrison Syldanade’s exploration of that moon in 1724, part of a series of pure-research expeditions commissioned as part of the settlement agreement reached to resolve the litigation efforts of the Robotic Anti-Disassembly League. According to local folklore, early Eudonian farmers had discovered that certain flora-silica hybrids attracted a parasite known as the Aetheric Eyeworm, an organism unseen on Eudos prior to the cultivation of said hybrids. The worm would reportedly ripple into existence near a silicate grove, climb slowly up a tree and onto a leaf, and writhe around on the leaf for the better part of an hour before disappearing again. Farmers examining those leaves found that the worms had left a slimy residue behind. When collected and allowed to dry in the air, the residue hardened into the compound known as Byzant.

Eudos was a largely unknown and untraveled moon prior to Syldanade’s exploration, and as such, Byzant remained a local phenomenon for many years. The Eudonians seem to have been completely unaware of the compound’s narcotic or mind-altering properties – it was traded among the populace as a novelty item, but was mostly noted for its pleasant light-refracting properties when stored in a glass jar.

Syldanade’s first contact with the Eudonians occurred six standard days into his survey of the moon’s Twilight Band, when he wandered into the settlement of Crystos IX. Per Syldanade’s standard ambassadorial protocols, he presented the leader of the settlement with various gifts, including a cubic liter of InstaSkin and an Infinity Drill. The mayor of Crystos IX, seemingly at a loss as to what would be a meaningful return gift, presented Syldanade with a jar of Byzant.

That night as his base camp, Syldanade described his impressions of the substance in his journal (see the collected “Eudos, Quantos, and Myntos: Travels Among the Moons of the Epsilon Quadrant”) as follows:


 * 20:17 – This gift from the Eudonian leader is completely baffling. It appears to be nothing more than a jar of common sand, albeit a very pretty, nearly luminescent variety. It must have some deep cultural meaning to the people, but what could it be?


 * Maze_detail,285.jpg:42 – Early investigative experiments with the substance yield nothing. It dissolves with no notable reaction in water.


 * 21:02 – Throwing caution to the wind, I have consumed a small quantity of the substance to determine if it has any mood-altering effects. I trust that future students of my work will not judge this reckless act too harshly.


 * 21:10 – Oh, hell yes. Reactions: euphoria, relaxation, and an ungodly spike in clarity/focus. I find that I can recall every single thing I did and said over the last several weeks with no difficulty. The urge to get up and do something is practically palpable.


 * 21:18 – I have christened this substance “Byzant” due to the strange, intricate manner of thought it seems to enable. Re-indexed journal entries from previous six explorations. Wrote exploratory treatise on new research directions in facilitating cross-species transfusions. Composed and delivered a 32-page message to Ashmanning under the heading “A Few of the Many Ways You Are a Demonstrably Inferior Being.” Created a perpetual-motion machine from shoelaces, rocks, and a pair of old suspenders. Developed a working prototype of a sentient kite. I AM THE GOD OF SCIENCE MADE FLESH.


 * 21:32 – [This part of the journal is obscured by extensively layered overwriting. In one of the few places where an actual word is legible, close study reveals that every letter is itself a microcosm containing other visual/textual data.]


 * 03:47 – Head hurts. Hands cramped. If I don’t find something to drink in the next five minutes, I’m absolutely going to kill myself or somebody else. Holy Jesus, that stuff was their idea of a GIFT? How do these people LIVE with themselves?

As noted previously, the Eudonians had been utterly ignorant of the psychoactive results of Byzant. When confronted by Syldanade about the effects of this substance, they were astonished and found the entire incident to be indescribably hilarious.

Syldanade suspended the goals of his Eudos survey immediately, and instead committed himself fully to exploring “the uncharted depths of the human mind” for the next several weeks. This was undoubtedly the pinnacle of his career as an inventor, although his notes from the period are mostly illegible, cryptic, and/or obscene, and are therefore of limited use to scholars.

Among the many discoveries he made on Eudos was a simple way to synthesize Byzant from more common ingredients. Had he patented this synthesis method, Galactic Fortunes magazine estimates that his estate would count him among the top 3 wealthiest men in the known universe today, but at the time he dismissed the suggestion with a vulgar variant on the folk saying “information wants to be free.”

Short-Term Effects
Byzant is most commonly dissolved in water, and consumed. People have also experimented with injecting the water-based solution, or eating/smoking/rubbing the raw crystals, but those uses are considered unrefined.

While the effects vary somewhat by individual – no one has ever reproduced Syldanade’s period of highly charged productivity on Eudos, despite many attempts to do exactly that – there are three short-term effects that appear to be common with Byzant use:


 * Euphoria, and high levels of confidence
 * Stimulation, specifically a drive to take action
 * A marked change in the brain’s ability to multithread several ideas at once. Syldanade referred to this phenomena as "hypertangential thinking."

The third effect appears to be significantly reduced in the synthesized strain of Byzant, compared to the compounds harvested on Eudos itself.

Longer-Term Effects
In the immediate aftermath of a Byzant “high,” a subject will initially find himself locked in a sort of behavioral rictus, unable to take any actions at all for several hours. The onset of this condition seems to be triggered by a sort of analysis paralysis – the brain finally fails to cope with all of the tangential lines of thought that the drug stimulates, and wisely shuts down. After the first 15 minutes or so, the brain relaxes its shutdown, but this coincides with the body’s realization of what the brain has been making it do for the past several hours, necessitating a general forced shutdown to allow the user to rest up.

Byzant is widely believed to be addictive, both behaviorally and physiologically. Syldanade has famously rejected that belief on many occasions, claiming that so-called Byzant addicts are simply “weak-willed,” “insufficiently ambitious,” or “a bunch of pussies.” However, it should be noted that Syldanade’s ongoing use of the drug was entirely tied to the natural compound, not the synthesized version. It’s possible that the addictive qualities vary quite a bit between the two strains, and since Syldanade was incredibly protective of his remaining quantities of the natural drug, science has never been able to make strong conclusions.

In addition, as noted above, there is considerable evidence correlating prolonged Byzant use with psychotic behaviors. Researchers have theorized that Byzant’s effects on the neural pathways of the brain are akin to a steel-tipped arrow’s effects on a feather pillow, and that over time, the newly-blasted pathways start to cross and overlap. This seems to render people incapable of focusing on a single topic for more than 10 seconds at a time, and leads them to make wild, excited conclusions that are insupportable by empiricism, theory, or common sense.

Impact on Syldanade’s Career
Syldanade never fully completed his survey of Eudos, thereby voiding the terms of the settlement with the Robotic Anti-Disassemblement League and accelerating him towards financial ruin. His failure to finish the survey mission was partly due to his increased focus on Byzant, partly due to the swift collapse of Eudorian society shortly after Syldanade explained how to trigger Byzant’s psychoactive effects, and partly due to a Eudonian’s Byzant-fueled experiment with an Infinity Drill, which triggered an irrevocable change in the moon’s orbit and rendered it largely uninhabitable.

Many of the inventions created during Syldanade's visit to Eudos remain indispensable to modern explorers, particularly the Forever Goggles, the Clockwork Sherpa, and the Electronic Alibi.

While Syldanade’s discovery of Byzant certainly brought him increased fame as an inventor, it also gave his rivals in the Farthingside Brotherhood increased fuel to challenge his findings as an explorer. Just after his presentation on the Moons of the Epsilon Quadrant to the Brotherhood – which focused very little on the moons themselves, a great deal more on his discovery of Byzant, and ended with a passionate description of this new age of “inner discovery” that the Farthingside members would do well to emulate – Malinveer Ashmanning wrote the following in a letter to Galactic Explorer’s Monthly (vol XIV, issue 3):


 * While I have challenged the Syldanade’s work in the past, this latest presentation marks a new low in his credibility. He admittedly abandoned the goals of an important exploratory survey, and has assumed the mantle of some sort of galactic drug-pushing guru instead. I found some of his previous research hard to swallow, and it’s hard to imagine how I could take him any more seriously now that he is an advocate and user of psychoactive substances. However, I do admit that I quite liked his talking kite.

This perspective was considered to be the consensus of the Farthingside Brotherhood until several years after Syldanade’s death, when additional evidence of his exploits began to surface and lend credence to his wildly improbable stories.

In spite of this general derision from his peers, Syldanade remained a proponent of the liberal use of Byzant through the end of his life. He chided his critics for their "old-fashioned, naïve concepts of propriety and ethics," and claimed that "history, and not these weak-minded armchair critics, will ultimately determine the righteousness of my actions." He refused to acknowledge that his continued use of the drug had any effect whatsoever on his cognitive abilities, in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary.

The NarcoPolo Cartel awarded Syldanade its Medal of High Distinction in 1731.