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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ElectricDragon" data-source="post: 7285637" data-attributes="member: 10778">Jasper,It was a relief to finally get away from the duke’s cloying port as well as the duke’s slick and oily appointed investigators. A scant sennight later found us anchored off a small island with no apparent dock or even sign of civilization. We took the longboat to the shore where a small horde of islanders appeared through the jungle foliage and greeted us warmly. They led us inland to a cozy village of mud and straw huts set next to a small sheltered lagoon where I was introduced to and met with the chieftain. He immediately sent about a dozen runners (actually paddlers as they all took canoes, I found out later) to notify all the nearby villages to bring their trade goods. We finalized our agreements and a feast was held to celebrate. Two days later found the shore closest to the Epicurious festooned with canoes, outriggers, dugouts, and rafts all loaded with many different goods and foodstuffs; and all from the nearby isles just as our scout reported. I will amend a copy of the ship’s bill of lading to this message. Needless to say, your orders for cocoa beans, vanilla beans, sugar cane, bananas, nutmeg, and mace were easily filled with extras should we want to sell some at market. I speculated on coconuts, papayas, oranges, dates, yams, marsh mallow root, and pineapples (not an apple!), I hope they do not rot during the month-long voyage home to the capital. The ship has two holds, the main hold and a smaller forward hold; I cast wall of ice on the bulkheads of the smaller hold to help keep some of the fruits and other foodstuffs fresh for our long voyage back to the capitol. I plan to recast the spell periodically as needed. We easily filled both the main hold and the smaller, cooler hold almost to capacity; we should make a tidy profit from merchandizing some of the foods in the capitol market. I, later, transferred some of the goods to the special rooms explained below. I will also amend a list of these goods which will not appear on the bill of lading.I did not find any pages of the cookbook here, but I did manage to acquire an elvish recipe from the druid (a position akin to captain, owner, and custodian I learned) of the elven ship, that I think will intrigue you. I am including it in this missive. The day after our arrival at the island that the natives call Honuku, an elvish ship, Dolphin’s  Dawn,  delivered the requested elven carpenters to our ship as we lay anchored by the island. The carpenters immediately went to work as soon as the crew left for shore leave. They pulled the necessary materials from storage in our holds. Over the next two days, they outfitted the ship with the agreed-upon two secret rooms including cleverly crafted doors that looked like nothing more than normal bulkheads. The first “room” cut into the ship’s main hold slightly but gave us a massive space for hiding highly taxed goods from the duke’s tax collectors. The second room cut into the captain’s cabin and is to be for more expensive items like the mission’s coffers, gems, and anything particularly rare or valuable that we acquire (including my jeweled scrollcase and my golden pear) as I had taken over the captain’s cabin for this trip). This second room ended up being a bit larger than I expected but it was still completely unnoticeable to me until shown the right spot to spring open the door. I put a large chest in there (in anticipation of future special goods) in addition to the expedition’s coffers contained in a small leather sack, my golden pear, and my jeweled scrollcase. There was still room to stand with the door closed so another small chest could be added with no problem. I had the carpenters add a peephole from the secret room into the captain’s cabin to make sure no one was around, so secrets could remain secret. They hid the peephole as a knot in the wood, very ingenious. The elves insisted on slightly altering the size and shape of the captain’s map table to further hide the secret room from even the practiced gaze of the captain (who thankfully had also been ordered to take 5 days shore leave like the rest of the crew). The royal chef, himself, can reveal or conceal the existence of the rooms to whomever he wishes. The chef asked me to keep it secret for now. After the carpenters finished their job, they invited me to a celebration meal aboard their ship. I was escorted into a, I hesitate to call it a “mess” hall because the term seems somehow derogatory to the actual beauty of the room; so I will call it a dining room equipped with a large oval banquet table made of beautifully carved dark oak, with scenes of animals, birds, and plants dancing and/or twining about everything. The center of the table continued upward to and through the ceiling, looking much like a tree springing up from the table where, above deck it became the main mast. It wasn’t until dessert that I noticed that the table was actually part of the tree that was the ship and had simply grown that way. Indeed, the whole ship was a living plant. The sails were huge fibrous leaves shaped like lateen sails and instead of ropes, the elves sang to the tree to furl or unfurl the sails. There were different songs for each sail position and different pitches for each mast. It was wondrous to behold the ship getting underway after I returned to my own ship. It was much like witnessing a symphony sailing away into the sunset.Dessert with the elves, though, was a masterpiece (find the recipe below). The elves have no special name for it, to them it is just a salad, I call it “Elvish” salad.I made sure to invite the captain to dine with me on his map table upon his return to the ship to gage whether he noticed the changes to his cabin or not. He seemed to notice nothing amiss at all and we had a thoroughly enjoyable meal.EricP.SI showed the spirewood stick I had been given as an example to the chieftain and all his villagers as well as all the villagers from the other islands that visited and also to the elves; but none had any clue where such a tree grows. One villager from another island brought me a few limbs of darkwood; which I quickly bought. He claimed that there had once been a whole grove of darkwood trees on his island; but last year, the duke’s men cut down and carted off all of the trees, missing only the few fallen limbs he had secreted in his hut to trade with passing ships (a practice he had built his living upon). Elvish SaladIngredients6  bananas, split; 4 oranges, squeezed for juice, 2 gills orange juice; 1 pouch of coarsely grated coconut; 2 handfuls of elvish way-breadcrumbs; 1 pinch of nutmeg; 1 pinch of cinnamon, finely ground; 1 pinch of sugar, white, finely groundServes: 6Effects: Haste for 2 rounds, counts as a full meal.Time to Eat: 5 minutesDirectionsPlace split bananas in small kettle.Mix orange juice and sugar and pour over the bananas.Mix together crumbs, coconut, nutmeg and cinnamon.Sprinkle over top.Load clay oven with anthracite coal and light. Use a bellows until the coals burn bright red.Bake for 20 minutes keeping the coals red.Serve warm.Craft (cooking) DC 10; Caster Level: 3; Market Price: 12 gp, plus the cost of the elvish way-breadcrumbs; Wt. 3 lbs.Epicurious Bill of Lading *bananas - 1 cart (about 16 bushels) - cost 22 gp*clams - 1 bag (about 3 gallons) - cost 15 gpcoconuts - 1 cart (about 16 bushels) - cost 13 gp*dates - 2 carts (about 32 bushels) - cost 300 gpdarkwood - ¼ cord (about 500 lbs.) - cost 3,000 gp (worth 5,000 gp!)lampuka (fish) - 1 cart (about 16 bushels) - cost 500 gplicorice root - 1 bag (about 3 gallons) - cost 75 gpmarsh mallow root - 1 bag (about 3 gallons) - cost 50 gp*oranges - 2 sacks (about 1 bushel) - cost 6 gp*oysters - 4 sacks (about 2 bushels) - cost 5 gp*papayas - 1 bag (about 3 gallons) - cost 15 gp*pineapples - 7 sacks (about 8 bushels) - cost 26 gp*swordfish - 1 bag (about 3 gallons) - cost 40 gp*yams - 1 canoe (about 45 bushels) - cost 48 gp*placed in the iced hold.As our scouts reported, all the islanders in this area use the standard gold piece (mostly empire coinage, but coins from elsewhere are seen as of equal worth. Other isles use shells or beads as money, and some even only use barter.I did acquire 4 pieces of shell-money in my trades, they are called “dollars” and are somewhat flat and somewhat circular in shape, the smallest about gp size and the largest a double-handspan width, but all vary in size and color that somehow determines their value. Each is pierced with a central hole to enable carrying large amounts on a string, all of different sizes, but colors are never mixed on a string.    During the feast in the village, the crew was regaled with a selection of musical adaptations of their myths. One in particular mentioned a troop of elven riders mounted on giant sea horses accompanied by their officers mounted on hippocampi who fought a major battle just off shore against a huge band of pirates on at least 10 ships. The elves lost and dispersed never to be seen since. The pirates still rule these seas (according to the song), but have had their attention elsewhere since the battle. The song spends a whole verse describing an underwater elven city with spires of ivory just past the reefs of the lagoon. The song ends with a promise that those heroic elves protect the nearby islands still. I spoke to everyone who would listen after the song;  asking if anyone had ever seen a water elf, a giant sea horse, or a hippocampus. The answer of course was, “no one alive has”; everyone seemed to have heard the story from someone who is no longer alive. We need to send a scout to investigate this rumor of an underwater elven city. What foods would they eat there? Try to acquire several potions of water breathing to supply such a scout and send him as soon as possible.EricSecret Goodscocoa nibs - 2 canoes (about 100 bushels) - cost 125 gp - worth 1,125 gp*elven waybread - 4 loaves - cost 200 gp - worth 800 gp*enchanted elven waybread - 2 loaves - cost 1,500 gp - worth 5,000 gp*healing apples - 1 dozen - cost 500 gp - worth 660 gp*mace - 3 pouches (about 2 lbs.) - cost 4 gp - worth 30 gp*nutmeg - 7 pouches (about 4 lbs.) - cost 7 gp - worth 130 gp*saffron - 1 handful (about 3 ounces) - cost 3 gp - worth 45 gpsugar cane - 2 keelboats (about 350 bushels) - cost 75 gp - worth 17,000 gp*vanilla beans - 3 sacks (about 3 bushels) - cost 150 gp - worth 25,000 gp*placed in the chest in the secret room of the captain’s cabin.Note: “Worth” is the cost of buying that much in the capitol from the duke’s personal venders, err I mean the Royal Foodstores.</blockquote>

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