Glaze

Glaze was a drug created by Greg Kawakita from the fibers of the Mbwun Lily. Kawakita's coworker Margo Green discovered the lily during the Museum Beast Murders at the New York Museum of Natural History. Green learned that the beast Mbwun was addicted to the lily's fibers, and when it could not get them it satiated its addicted by killing people in the museum and eating the hypothalamus of their brains.

Kawakita left the museum soon after the murders and began to experiment on the lily in a private lab. He discovered that consuming the lily actually transformed human beings into Mbwun. He began genetically engineering the lily, hoping to isolate and remove the transformative side effects while keeping the good properties such as enhanced vision and hearing.

Along the way, Kawakita discovered that the lily was a powerful narcotic. He began selling the powdered lily fibers to drug addicts, advising them to brew it in water and drink the infusion like tea. The drug gave its users a long, clean high and heightened senses, followed by a clouding of the vision, and finally ending in a powerful hunger.

Despite Kawakita's best efforts, he was unable to remove the lily's negative side effects. Early users of the drug began to transform into Mbwun-like creatures, albeit very slowly. Their bones thickened and their bodies became deformed. They developed a sensitivity towards light and retreated underground to the deepest parts of subterranean New York. Deprived of vitamin D, their skin grew loose and the homeless people who encountered them called them "Wrinklers".

Kawakita continued to refine the drug, eventually reducing the physical side effects, but he was alerady taking it himself and his physical condition deteriorated. At some point he contacted his former advisor, Dr. Whitney Frock. He shared everything he had done to date and confessed that he was losing control of his users. When they could not get the drug they had taken to murdering people and eating the hypothalamus as Mbwun had done.

Frock helped Kawakita with his research and helped him develop a tea ceremony-like ritual as a way of controlling and satiating the Wrinklers. Kawakita proved unable to control his "children" and they killed him and dumped his body into a storm drain.

Frock took over the group and developed it into a full-blown cult using his knowledge of anthropological rituals. He recreated the hut found in the Amazon by the 1987 Whittlesey/Maxwell Expedition, except where the original was merely lined with skulls, his version was built entirely from human bones.

Frock also began taking Glaze. He had refined it to the point where there were no physical effects; indeed, after using the drug he regained the use of his legs (although he kept using his wheelchair in public). He promised the Wrinklers that he could cure them of their deformities, but he knew that in reality there was nothing he could do.

Green, Agent Pendergast, Vincent D'Agosta, and the homeless community leader Mephisto confronted Frock during one of his rituals in the Astor Tunnels. Mephisto detonated a Claymore antipersonnel mine in the middle of the crowd of Wrinklers, killing Frock and ending the manufacture of the drug.