Classic and Exotic Cigars and How To Create and Enjoy Them

[Mouse]

(gee, just look at that custom made rolling paper!)

Classic and Exotic Cigars And How To Create And Enjoy Them

Part 2: Unusual Ingredients

A Field Guide By 'M'

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Perhaps, controversially, the contents of this 'field guide' are once more found upon the billboards around the Essharan continent, bizarrely centralized inside of Starfall itself. While many tutors and even students bemoan this guide as promoting unhealthy habits and encouraging terrible lifelong habits, a select few have lobbied to allow it due to its potential useful tool to understand the many uses of ingredients found in the wild, especially near Starfall itself.

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Hello, friends. My name, or alias, is M, and today we'll be continuing my field guide to creating and enjoying cigars. The last edition did very well (although I didn't receive any sort of compensation!!!!), and so, with the assistance of my lovely friend whom I asked at complete random what I should do next, I have come out with my next edition; Thus, I refer to this as the 'wet' cigar. You will see why.

This cigar will be noteworthy as it has an almost amnesiatic effect, while having decent health effects as well. This is not to soothe or relax, though the act of smoking may offer this to you regardless, but will instead assist your blood filtration, making you more immune to diseases and even offering you some other minor effects, with a very, very mild euphoria punctuating your body's systems.

Do not misunderstand, however; This is not a healthy habit. The smoke of this cigar will be hard, and will emit thin red smoke from the ingredients. You will feel better a few hours after smoking, but the initial act is not to be done for beginners. You can consider this to be something similar to what one might expect when consuming a mana amnesia, and to a different extent, while also having jolts and bursts of energy after the initial drowsiness.

Smoke while resting; Then, once you get up, feel good throughout the rest of the day.

Requirements

You will need:

1x Rolling paper of your choice (My recommendation is my custom 'M' Brand of paper, now available in local stores)
1x Sinka Flower
2x Glowing Mushroom
2x Algeron's Leaf, or 1x Alessa
1x Pestle and Mortar (or a rock and bowl)
1x Drying rack or area where you can get access to heat and light

Optionally:

A cigar or cigarette roller or mold
A small amount of nicotine, if that is your craving
1x Sugarcap, to mask the flavor that will be apparent. It is not for everyone's tastes.

Ingredient Preparation

While preparing this cigar, you will likely have to begin a day or more in advance due to the required drying processes. We will be first drying our Glowing Mushrooms, which are known to grow in very moist and damp and dank areas, and thus will be required  to dry for some time. Unlike the Sugarcap, whom is well known for not wanting to release its moisture, glowing mushrooms have no such qualms or issues and can be forced to lose most of their moisture very easily. The glowshroom will be part of both our filler and binding, so one will need to be dried for longer than the other.

Fist, we are going to go around the cap and make several deep incisions, through the skin and into its flesh. You'll notice that, just below the surface, there's a thin layer of green flesh that gives way to an almost hollow interior. This is where the water is primarily stored, alongside the veins that move it throughout the plant. Slicing these veins will allow water to drain more quickly, and is recommended for one of them, but is ultimately unnecessary unless you are in a rush. You will leave this in a place of heat and light, or a drying rack, for six hours. The second one will require twelve hours. After they are sufficiently dried, they will have shriveled to a flat color instead of the vibrant, neon green. The one that has been in for twelve hours will shrivel even more, becoming brown and even black in some regards- This will be used for the binder, though ultimately doesn't have much of a different in taste aside from lacking the general sweetness of a sugarcap.

Next, is the rather delicate and rare to find Sinka flowers. These flowers take on a blood red hue, and are supposed to grow in areas where two magi battle for their lives, sprouting every few months during the spring and autumn seasons. This flower, despite its name and the 'history' surrounding it, is notoriously difficult to work with due to its thorns and frailty. You can bruise the stem if you are not careful, which will immediately cause it to stop sending nutrients and make the rest of the plant useless in a matter of hours. Therefore, you will delicately snip the stem from the flower, leaving the roots intact, and place it in a moist location until you are prepared to use. Once ready, place it into a pestle and mortar, and grind first the petals, and then the stem. The paste that remains should be a light red to pink color, depending on how old the flower is, and should give off an aroma almost like blood or metal. The taste, likewise, is very metallic, thus lending credence to the idea that it is a 'blood flower'.

The algeron's leaf or alessa will be prepared as instructed in the first part; You will bind the leaves together, or dilute the Alessa in lukewarm to boiling water, depending on the speed required. Once bound or diluted, you will then flatten the cigar upon a flat surface to begin the creation process. You may press it on all sides if you wish to keep it flat, but this is not strictly necessary.

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Creation

Take your wrapping paper and lay it out, flat, on a flat and dry surface. Then, lay down the alergon's leaf or alessa overtop of it - This will serve as the wrapping, entirely.

Take one portion of your glowshroom paste and spread it throughout the surface. It is intentionally light and you may have to have very little on certain sections, but this is intentional, as the paste itself will be very wet and may be difficult to light otherwise. This will act as the binder layer, and give the cigar a noticeably green tint. You will then take the other portion of your glowshroom paste and your sinka paste, and combine them together as well. The second layer should be the more dried glowshroom, thus letting it be more flammable as even more moisture has been drained from it, if not most of it. Combining the two ingredients together will result in a flat yellow coloration, and will be placed into the center of the filler layer, making sure to leave spaces on both sides, but not the top and bottom, to allow for proper rolling.

Take the edge of one side of your wrapping paper, and fold it over as instructed in the first guide. You will curl it down into the binder and filler, 'pulling' it closer to you as you begin to roll the paper. Difficult to learn, at first, but easy afterwards. You are looking to get it as thin as possible before deciding to moisten the side of the paper you are holding, and encircling it one last time to make it stick down. Your cigar, now, should be complete.

The taste of this cigar is metallic, and almost unpleasant if you are not used to it. Hard to light, the smoke is very weak and the cigar itself will last for some time due to the slow burn that it offers. On occasion, it may be necessary to snip off parts of the cigar if one side is burning too quickly. If you wish to mask the metallic taste, a singular sugarcap mushroom may be added to the binder or filler in order to sweeten the flavor. At worst, a flavored wrapping paper can be added (Brand 'M' is entirely unflavored!) to offer any sort of different experience if it proves too much for you.

As mentioned, the effects are simple; A moment of drowsiness and weariness, as well as potential very short-term memory loss from the mushrooms amnesiatic effect, followed by a massive burst of energy for the next few hours. There is a minor crash at the very end, but by the time it occurs, you should already be looking to settle down regardless.

The final step is simple; Enjoy.

Unlike the prior, this one is rough for all different reasons. While the taste will avert some people's expectation and a few may even enjoy it, this will be hard to bypass should you decide to give it a try. You may decide to dilute the sinka first to reduce the metallic flavor, but this will also reduce the potency of the 'high' afterwards. Luckily, the mushrooms are flavorless and can have additives put in for little to no downside.

Please, enjoy this cigar, tell me what you think, and send in more recipes for me to try if you so desire. This one was a challenge; One I hope I've succeeded in.

-M

(send a message to An Mouse#3466 on Discord, or to 'Marissa' in game if you have a request or a comment!)