Black coffee. Works just as well for a quarter of the price without fucking your kidneys up or giving you diabetes.
On a serious note, I really enjoy yerba mate-based (or should I write flavoured) elixirs. Or even yerba mate itself. Just saying! 🤷
This always makes me think about the intersection of magic and science.
Many "mages" way back in Europe such as Albertus Magnus and Agrippa were scientists and doctors. Shamans were doctors. Some of the oldest incantations we have are healing spells.
Yes, there's a lot (a lot) of spirituality mixed in, superstition and wrong things, but a lot of it was really more of a framing; scientists explained their discoveries with religion, but their goals were fundamentally to further science, they just didn't call it that.
Truly, the people that developed the methods to concentrate flavors, to get sweetness without sugar, stuff like that, they're alchemists and mages. Doctors, chemists, researches, they are alchemists and mages.
That really is an apothecary and they really are elixirs of wakefulness. Just as they didn't call them "convenience stores" and "energy drinks" back in the day, we don't use these mystical terms nowadays, but that's what they are.
Druidry is/was an ancient practice that was inherently spiritual but was likely an early analog to scientific inquiry, with an emphasis on passing that knowledge down and ensuring new members became experts in their own right.
"Wizard" and "Magus" are both terms that could be traced to just meaning "a wise person" or "a person with knowledge". Knowledge is power, and sufficient amount of power can be perceived as supernatural.
After all, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
I am now going to casually refer to all caffeinated beverages as "elixirs of wakefulness"
Courting death!
I'm currently at a scientific experimental analysis to rate all Monster flavours. Boy didn't I know how much there are lmao
Pop on their website. Last I checked they're all on there.
A Bull of Red is the only answer
