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Substance Catalogue
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Substance Catalogue

A substance (SubstanceDef) is pure data: what a fluid does when a vessel of it lands, and what it does when someone drinks it. The framework ships the fluids below as neutral data — it attaches none of them to a weapon itself (that is a consumer's job, like Piss Nuke). A vessel can hold any of them, and any of them can be poured, mixed, fermented, thrown or drunk.

The organising law is harm inverts as volume falls (mlPerDay): a body makes a lot of some of these and almost none of others, and the ones it makes least of do no damage at all. When harm goes to zero, time becomes the weapon — a jar of toenail clippings took years to fill, and that is the point.


The fields

Field Meaning
mlPerDay how much a body (or the world) produces per day — sets fill time; default 1750
damageDef the splash's damage type; null → framework's generic FP_SubstanceSplash (a soft bruise)
causticDamage splash damage at full potency; 0 = it only humiliates (no blast, just filth + a memory)
disease / diseaseSeverity infection applied in code so headgear can block it (peak severity at a bare face)
burnsEyes concentrated ammonia can blind — only a ripe, fermenting substance
hitThought the "someone threw this at me" memory — humiliation is the universal payload
filth mess left on the ground; null → generic foul mess
ferments does it age (and get worse, and build pressure)? see Fermentation
nutrition food value if drunk
drinkHediff / …Severity what swallowing it does to the body
drinkThought how they feel about having drunk it
addictionRarity base per-drink chance to form a dependency (scaled by the drinker's disposition)
addictionChemical the real chemical the dependency maps to (its addictionHediff is applied)

The full catalogue (14 substances)

Sorted by production rate. Harm falls as you go down the bodily list; time-to-fill rises.

Throw harm — what a splash does

Substance mlPerDay Flammable? Caustic Disease (severity) Burns eyes Ferments Throw memory (mood)
milk (FP_Milk) 11000 no 0 — no no doused in milk (−3)
water (FP_Water) 2000 no 0 — no no none (barely worth remembering)
fermented urine (PN_Urine) 1750 no 6 piss rot (0.35) yes yes doused in piss (−14)
chemfuel (FP_Chemfuel) 800 yes 26 — no no firebombed (−10)
hooch (FP_Hooch) 500 yes 16 — no yes firebombed (−10)
beer (FP_Beer) 500 no 0 — no no degraded (−16)
wort (FP_Wort) 500 no 0 — no yes pelted with filth (−12)
vomit (FP_Vomit) 250 no 0 gut rot (0.25) no no pelted with filth (−12)
feces (FP_Feces) 150 no 0 gut rot (0.45) no no pelted with filth (−12)
blood (FP_Blood) 60 no 0 — no no drenched in blood (−14)
liquid luciferium (FP_Luciferium) 50 no 0 — no no degraded (−16)
earwax (FP_Earwax) 0.05 no 0 — no no degraded (−16)
toenail clippings (FP_Toenails) 0.02 no 0 — no no degraded (−16)

Drink payload — what swallowing it does

Any fluid is drinkable, and for several substances the drink is the real weight — thrown, they merely humiliate, but slipped to a pawn in a drink they land their full effect. See Drinking and Addiction.

Substance Nutrition Drink hediff (severity) Drink memory Addiction rarity → chemical
milk +0.05 — — —
blood +0.05 — drank something vile —
fermented urine 0 food poisoning (0.35) drank something vile —
vomit 0 food poisoning (0.30) drank something vile —
chemfuel 0 toxic buildup (0.20) drank something vile —
hooch 0 alcohol high (0.16) — 0.03 → Alcohol
beer 0 alcohol high (0.16) — 0.025 → Alcohol
wort 0 alcohol high (0.05) — 0.01 → Alcohol
liquid luciferium 0 luciferium high (0.30) drank something vile 1.0 → Luciferium
water / earwax / toenails 0 — — —

Reading the catalogue

The two flammables are the firebombs. Chemfuel (26 caustic) and hooch (16) point their damageDef at vanilla Flame, so their splash rides the framework's GenExplosion and starts fires with no special-case code. Chemfuel is the industrial one — hotter and wider; a prisoner who reaches a fuel stockpile is a serious problem. Hooch is the prison-brewed cousin, and it ferments: for hooch, age is alcohol and alcohol is what burns, so it runs the harm axis the other way from the bodily fluids — worse as it ages, not worse as volume falls.

The two disease vectors are feces and vomit (both carry gut rot, feces at the higher dose) and fermented urine (piss rot). All three are applied in code, filtered through headgear — a sealed helmet is near-total protection. All three infections are non-lethal by design: a wing of sick, wretched, capturable prisoners, not corpses.

The benign ones are the joke that makes the rest land. Milk only annoys (−3, and no filth def exists for it, so a splash leaves only a memory); a Kind pawn throwing milk is comedy. Water does nothing on impact — it is the anti-substance, the key to the reaction layer: it douses fire and washes filth. See Mixing and Reactions.

The pure-humiliation tier is the thesis in miniature. Earwax (0.05) and toenail clippings (0.02) do zero damage. A jarful of any of them is worthless as a weapon and priceless as a statement: it is only fillable by someone with years of idle time, so possessing one advertises exactly how long its owner has been inside. All three share the harshest throw memory in the mod (degraded, −16) precisely because there is nothing else to them.

The drink specialists carry almost nothing thrown but everything swallowed. Beer and wort are smuggled/brewing alcohol; blood feeds a sanguophage and revolts everyone else. Liquid luciferium is the catastrophe: thrown it is a monstrous waste, but drunk it applies vanilla's LuciferiumHigh and, at addictionRarity 1.0, the roll all but always hooks — mapped to the real Luciferium chemical, so vanilla then runs it as the permanent, lethal-to-stop dependency. Slip a pawn a jar and it is a life sentence.


Foul Play is part of the Institution suite — one install with a checkbox per layer (Core, Contraband, Policing, Corrections, Gangs, Ward) about what an institution does to the people inside it. It bridges to the Contraband layer when Institution is installed.