Loretober: A Fantasy Worldbuilding Challenge for October!

[jaybirdthings]

# 12. Cuisine
Subject: Place
Canvas: Dimensional

FATHOM

Many of the known worlds are home to beautiful and delicious culinary traditions that even the most accomplished and well-traveled chefs in Admas are completely unaware of. However, once every 60 years, a restaurant arrives on Verra that offers foods from many of the other realms. It is called Fathom, and it has existed for unknown eons. The restaurant is located on a converted Time Raider Driftskiff, and its owners have been traveling through the planes in search of exotic foods and customers to appreciate them. Their signature dish is called Elyria, and consists of a sauteed fruit medley from the Garden of Clemency and ground ilroot from the Abyssal Wastes topped with rinik salt, a spice blend made from the horn of a fallen Ki-rin.

 

[Bohandas]

2.) Nightlife

The Cursed Cauldron Tavern in the Abyss is something like the equivalent of a sports bar. However the 'sport' they are watching is the Blood War, and in place of a TV is the eponymous cursed cauldron; clean water is put in, and toxic polluted water pours out, but while it is being poured out the curtain of water displays images of events on other planes

12. Cuisine

The demons of the abyss are immune to poison. This allows a greater variety of foods to be explored. Mustard gas in place of mustard. Other nightshades swapped out for tomatos. that sort of thing. they enjoy getting non-demons to sample the food

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

12. Cuisine

The demons of the abyss are immune to poison. This allows a greater variety of foods to be explored. Mustard gas in place of mustard. Other nightshades swapped out for tomatos. that sort of thing. they enjoy getting non-demons to sample the food

FWIW, C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner sci-fi series plays with this a bit.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

12. Cuisine

The demons of the abyss are immune to poison. This allows a greater variety of foods to be explored. Mustard gas in place of mustard. Other nightshades swapped out for tomatos. that sort of thing. they enjoy getting non-demons to sample the food

There was an old USENET post about a setting with an alignment swap: Most of the usually-evil underground races/species (drow, kobolds, beholders, medusae) are typically-good, and the above-ground races/species are corrupted and evil. This is the bit about halflings in that setting:

The Halflings fell under the influence of a particularly nasty fiend named Shuggua, perhaps a Yugoloth lord, perhaps something older. This being exhorts its followers onto the path of consumption: literally, eat what you can. This is not quite gluttony - to a Halfling, it matters less how much you can eat and more who you can eat. A Halfling that eats rats or carrots is an ashamed Halfling; a Halfling that eats Humans is happy, and a Halfling with a lunch of demon or devil is a Halfling hero! The Halflings have supplemented their rogueish tendencies with the use of various poisons, and many a traveller of another race has had as his last sight (as his limbs stiffened uselessly) a halfling getting out a fire-starter, a skillet, and a selection of spices. Many Halflings gain tolerance of various poisons in increasing doses due to a belief that the best spice for a meal is the poison you used to kill it. Other, more degenerate Halflings eat their meals alive and paralyzed.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

Loretober 13: Weapons
The sacred woman's daggers carried by the female followers of the Moon Goddess are all, theologically, the same dagger. This results in any given instance of the Dagger having a number of arcane oddities.

Each new instance of the Dagger must be made to the same pattern before being consecrated, with older instances becoming more and more alike as time passes. Attempts to break any one instance of the Dagger will only succeed if the instance is first deconsecrated or profaned. And all the instances of the Dagger are equally, moderately, sharp. Sharpening any one instance will render all the instances minuscully sharper, rather than affecting just the one instance to which the whetstone is applied.

 

[Bohandas]

Loretober 13: Weapons
The sacred woman's daggers carried by the female followers of the Moon Goddess are all, theologically, the same dagger. This results in any given instance of the Dagger having a number of arcane oddities.

Each new instance of the Dagger must be made to the same pattern before being consecrated, with older instances becoming more and more alike as time passes. Attempts to break any one instance of the Dagger will only succeed if the instance is first deconsecrated or profaned. And all the instances of the Dagger are equally, moderately, sharp. Sharpening any one instance will render all the instances minuscully sharper, rather than affecting just the one instance to which the whetstone is applied.

It would seem that the efficient thing to do is set aside one instance to just be sharpened full time, 24/7, and not sharpen the others at all

 

[Bohandas]

13.) Weapon

The Ad-Infinitum Cannon is a pipe dream that has been chased by several princes of the Abyss. A long time ago a mad thaumaturge devised a plan to siphon conceptual infinity out of the huge bottomless pit that the obryiths dug in Pazunia (aka the Plain of Infinite Portals) during the Age Before Ages to create a weapon that could fire across planes and destroy absolutely anything. Several demon princes have attempted to construct this weapon but all have failed. They would first have to finish the mad seer's incomplete design. Then they would need to seize the entire area surrounding the pit as the weapon entails capping off almost the entire pit with a network of structures arranged in mystically significant patterns, and running shafts and tubes far down into the pit. Finally, a long and complicated series of magical rituals would have to be performed in these structures. Historically the few projects that have reached this point have been disrupted by rivals wishing to claim the weapon for themselves or to prevent it from being used against them, or else by demon princes wishing to prolong the Blood War - which such a weapon could end once and - for all as it is many demons' favorite pastime

 

[Bohandas]

14.) War

During the fall of ancient Pnakotus the Yith snatched the minds of many of history's greatest warriors and put them into vacant cones to aid them in their war against the flying polyps. This is the grain of truth that gave rise to the myth of the valkyries.

 

[Bohandas]

1.) Old Gods

The primordian gods of the world of Yearle are the divine couple Mother Whiptail and Pater Nosferat. They ruled over an era of perpetual springtime until they broke up in a violent altercation that xxtiltedxx shook the planet off its axis and left Pater Nosferat dead. Every year when the days grow short Pater Nosferat returns from the land of the dead to feed on the world's life energy, bringing the winter. Meanwhile, Mother Whiptail swore off men and became a parthenogenic whiptail lizard, who comes to hatch the summer every year after her ex leaves. At the time of the solstices they rule from temple-palaces situated at opposite poles. At the time of the equinoxes they travel between the poles, Nosferat via the underworld and Whiptail via the overworld

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

Loretober 14: War
The War of the Eyebrows was fought 240 years ago in the Red Mountains, between the goblins of Cheetzpink Mountain and the neighboring dwarves of Hartzberg. It ended when the goblins won a narrow and costly victory at the Battle of Copperbat Cave.

At the peace conference, Master Seztrim of Ylide (who was passing through the area) suggested a settlement where each side paid the other an annual 'peppercorn' tribute. The tributes finally settled on were not actual peppercorns, but rather a bottle of wine from Cheetpinkiz Mountain and a wheel of cheese from Dwarven Hartzberg.

A small number of conspiracy-theorists on each side claim that this was when the dwarves laid the infamous Curse of Cheetzpink Mountain on the goblins. That the Curse had long been in existence at that time is a mere bagatelle.