Dridders and coffee

Okay, according to this site: http://www.trinity.edu/jdunn/spiderdrugs.htm

Real-life spider can get drunk by Caffeine, which hinders their ability to spin a web precisely enough to be useful. There are also other substances that make spider do funny things with their webs too.

Back to the thread, I wonder if Dridders would act the same if they happen to take some coffee from various souces (preys' luggage, eating prey with coffee intake...)

tkh1304 wrote:

Okay, according to this site: http://www.trinity.edu/jdunn/spiderdrugs.htm

Real-life spider can get drunk by Caffeine, which hinders their ability to spin a web precisely enough to be useful. There are also other substances that make spider do funny things with their webs too.

Back to the thread, I wonder if Dridders would act the same if they happen to take some coffee from various souces (preys' luggage, eating prey with coffee intake...)

O.O *Goes back to non-existant garage and builds Coffee Blaster then comes back in battle armor wielding it* Ha ha ha ha! >8D No more arcanphobia for me!! Now "I" shall be the mastah!! Lock and a javanate!!

But seriously that soooo makes me want to make a Java Blaster....But to be fair....<.< Does it mention anywhere in the wiki that Felarya has anything remotely like Coffee Beans? *Waits for storms of people to invent said substitute.*

jedi-explorer wrote:

tkh1304 wrote:

Okay, according to this site: http://www.trinity.edu/jdunn/spiderdrugs.htm

Real-life spider can get drunk by Caffeine, which hinders their ability to spin a web precisely enough to be useful. There are also other substances that make spider do funny things with their webs too.

Back to the thread, I wonder if Dridders would act the same if they happen to take some coffee from various souces (preys' luggage, eating prey with coffee intake...)

O.O *Goes back to non-existant garage and builds Coffee Blaster then comes back in battle armor wielding it* Ha ha ha ha! >8D No more arcanphobia for me!! Now "I" shall be the mastah!! Lock and a javanate!!

But seriously that soooo makes me want to make a Java Blaster....But to be fair....<.< Does it mention anywhere in the wiki that Felarya has anything remotely like Coffee Beans? *Waits for storms of people to invent said substitute.*

*a storm cloud appears over your head and starts to rain people with ideas*

But seriously. Since Dridders digest most everything in their human half, it would be reasonable to assume that they are affected pretty much the same way we are until the caffeine gets into their arachnid half, if it does at all.

Here's two questions: 1. how many humans with a lot of coffee content within their bloodstream would it take for any sign of inebriation to become noticeable?  2. what are the odds of such scenario occurring in the wild?

Mr. I wrote:

*a storm cloud appears over your head and starts to rain people with ideas*

But seriously. Since Dridders digest most everything in their human half, it would be reasonable to assume that they are affected pretty much the same way we are until the caffeine gets into their arachnid half, if it does at all.

If so, we don't have neko going wild on catnip or inu having indigestion with chocolate (maybe these only happens in Felarya fanfiction, though) : P

Quote :

Shady Knight
Here's two questions: 1. how many humans with a lot of coffee content within their bloodstream would it take for any sign of inebriation to become noticeable? �2. what are the odds of such scenario occurring in the wild?

1/ Coffee-addicted humans. There are no statistics here, so feel free make them rare or common to your liking.
2/ As rare as a Kensha Beast get tamed, I guess. But don't underestimate the coincidence. Coffee has a nice aroma, so if a Dridder strikes a campsite and get a whiff of this smell, she may curiosly take a sip. There may be also Dridder whose have knowledge about coffee and actively hunt/trade for it.

1. That's not a proper answer to a question that begins with "how many?". 2. Let's elaborate on your answer, shall we? First of all, the aroma. This assumes that the people involved are camping, thus are yet another group of cliché fodder humans, and thus are probably not armed at all and definitely have no clue what the setting is about. Wouldn't it be more likely that something else, like say, a Kensha Beast, who no doubt have a vastly superior sense of smell than a dridder, spots and kill them all, before the dridder can? Next, the hunt/trade. In your world, a dridder will go out of its way to ask humans if they have coffee beans or actively hunt/cultivate coffee plants. In the former, considering that humans and giant predators encounter each other far less often than most people like to think, and given the fact that they're giant, and thus would need a metric ton's worth of coffee beans at the very least for her to be remotely affected by them, I don't see that happening. In the latter, keep in mind that coffee plants are either shrubs or small tree that grow in tropical jungles. Already, the Dridder Forest, which has the largest concentration of dridders known so far, is SOL. For those who live in Tolmeshal Forest, while they may run into some, probably wouldn't even bother since the plants are so tiny. Lastly, the power of coincidence. Just read the above. Power of Coincidence to me translates to "I'm the author, I can do whatever I want!", just like "It's magic, I don't have to explain it."

In other words, the idea of giant dridders getting drunk on coffee requires too much of an extraordinary setup to become a worthwhile trait. That said, small dridders, particularly those living at the Motamo Docks, getting drunk on coffee is much more credible. They live close enough to a city where such plantation is not only possible, it probably is actively cultivated, and since they're about the size of a human, a mug or two of coffee would be enough to have an effect on them.

^Uh huh, I didn't actually give much thought about how Dridder will get coffee in their hands at first. Now hearing you said that, I try to brainstorm a little here.

It seems true that while a giant Dridder has virtually no way to get hand on a large amount of coffee to make them drunk, expect a few rare instances, like asking a fairy's friend to enlarge the cup or have some power of size-changing magic, someone willing to drive a coffee-filled tank truck to the dridder (as a friend or as a trader of something he wants), etc. The latter example was actually used in someone' story. Just that it was chocolate instead of coffee, though

Meanwhile, smaller Dridders have much better chance to acquire coffee. They can either grow coffee plants if they have the seeds, harvest it and sometimes brew some to enjoy the drink, or exchange bags of coffee beans/powder from acquaintances or merchants, or just take it as trophy from preys. For places like Motamo's Dock, they can even enter a coffee house, though I can imagine of the sign "Dridders are not allowed here".

So I presume everyone's read this?
http://mangapark.com/manga/monster-musume-no-iru-nichijou/s1/v5/c26

Uh huh, I just got the knowledge about spider drunk on coffee from that manga, lol XD

Shady has a point there- we already have the dryad gut worm, and its coffee weakness is already a long shot by itself. I think we'd be overstating the importance of coffee in the jungle if we make not one, but two creatures who are stated to be affected by it.

Perhaps this doesn't so much warrant an addition to the dridder wiki entry as a simple rumor. Whether a predator or a standard rumor, I'm not sure.

Well, it's been established that there are caravans traveling around and delivering stuff. It could be possible (though uncommon) for a caravan to be carrying coffee beans.

Who would they carry those coffee beans to?  Negav is out because it already has a handy-dandy dimensional gate, which they like to use to import goods from other, safer worlds.  Furthermore, do you expect giant dridders to eat the vehicles?  They don't care for cargo, they just want the humans.

Safe harbor? Jungle Bowl? And usually when animals are able to get high/drunk off of something, they are attracted to it, such as cats with catnip, or reindeer to Amanita muscaria (Fly amanita).

The Jungle Bowl is isolated and its existence isn't common knowledge, that only leaves the Safe Harbor, though since Ravana is reworking on his stories, it's unclear whether the Safe Harbor will mostly be self-sufficient or will have some form of currency for merchants, though said merchants will most likely come from Negav where they can obtain knowledge of the harbor's existence.

Also, your example of animals being attracted to products they like doesn't hold water. Both animals you cited have a much more acute sense of smell than a human. It's entirely possible that giant dridder have a sense of smell on par with humans, at which point, they will not be able to pick up on the scent of the coffee beans, especially since they'd be borderline microscopic to them.

Well, you can't count out just plain old curiosity. Giant preds are people, too.

That said, I agree with the ideas of it being restricted to smaller dridders, or even just a rumor as Stabs suggested.

They are sapient like humans, but their values and overall quirks differ due to a different upbringing. It's very likely many wouldn't even bother since there's hardly anything useful for them among a merchant's wares, unlike a human thief or brigand who can try to sell the stuff for an inflated price.  There could be cases of curiosity, true, but as Stabs pointed out, instances of giant dridders finding a caravan of coffee beans in the middle of the woods and being curious enough to taste the beans in sufficient amount would be so impossibly rare that the quirk just isn't worth mentioning.

Of course there could be a special coffee plant native to Felarya that some Dridders like to to eat, especially if their knowledge of it was something handed down from the ancient Dridder empire.

At this point, we're just trying to create something insanely specific all to justify a largely irrelevant quirk of only one species. I still believe the argument that giants are too big to be affected, but small-sized ones aren't, is already a simple and effective answer.

DarkOne wrote:

Of course there could be a special coffee plant native to Felarya that some Dridders like to to eat, especially if their knowledge of it was something handed down from the ancient Dridder empire.

Like Opium Coffee? Perhaps made from extra large magically enhanced beans? <.< Cause I can so total see that. Heck I'll bet old King Tonho had piles of cat nip during his reign as Supreme Neko Emperor. I would if I were him.

haha that's cool nice find.

Stabs wrote:

Shady has a point there- we already have the dryad gut worm, and its coffee weakness is already a long shot by itself. I think we'd be overstating the importance of coffee in the jungle if we make not one, but two creatures who are stated to be affected by it.

Perhaps this doesn't so much warrant an addition to the dridder wiki entry as a simple rumor. Whether a predator or a standard rumor, I'm not sure.

In my opinion, how coffee works on Dryad Gut Worms and Dridders are two entirely different traits that cannot be stacked like that. It is like chocolate is a nice treat to human but poison to dogs.

Dryad Gut Worms will be killed if it eats a swallowed prey of a Dryad if he has consumed coffee before hand. To what degree is not mentioned though. While Dryad's Gut worm is certainly smaller than a Dryad (so that it can fit into the Dryad's stomach), it is still big enough to swallow a person whole. Is an intake of mere normal-sized cup coffee enough to kill it? Or the person eaten have to be a coffee-addicted one whose blood is pretty much flowing with cafein?

Meanwhile, coffee on Dridders makes them drunk. I don't think this will work as a rumor, as smaller dridders will have better ways to access coffee. Of course, humans can guess that if coffee works like that on smaller dridders, than the bigger ones may get affect too with a large enough amount of coffee.

jedi-explorer wrote:

DarkOne wrote:

Of course there could be a special coffee plant native to Felarya that some Dridders like to to eat, especially if their knowledge of it was something handed down from the ancient Dridder empire.

Like Opium Coffee? Perhaps made from extra large magically enhanced beans? <.< Cause I can so total see that. Heck I'll bet old King Tonho had piles of cat nip during his reign as Supreme Neko Emperor. I would if I were him.

*In the progress of making super-compressed coffee powder. One pinch gives a tankard of coffee!*

The problem is how do you get and carry enough coffee to make them drunk, and how do you force them to consume it? Meanwhile, as you're lugging all that junk, how do you stay hidden from everything else? If you want to use it as a mean to defend yourself against giant dridders, you have to take into consideration the more common threats that will show up and won't be affected by your cunning strategy. It all boils down to an overspecialized defense that requires too much of a set-up to ever be considered practical.

Also, Stabs' point with the Dryad Gut Worm still stand. Why? Because a human that has consumed coffee would have, by all rights, an absolutely tiny amount of caffeine in its bloodstream, and an even tinier amount by the time it's completely digested. How such a minuscule amount of caffeine is able to kill a giant worm is a stretch. Your metaphor of chocolate being a treat to us but poison to dogs doesn't make sense because, while indeed poisonous to them, a piece of chocolate is much more substantial than trace amounts of caffeine.

It's actually quite easy. Just take Godot with you. ^_^