Kiern Vale Handbook

Chapter 3: Life in Kiern Vale

Food and Nutrition in Kiern Vale

Nutrition in the rural areas

The diet of most of the peasants and other common folk in the rural parts of the vale, is primarily based on two main grains which grow in the vale:

Wind Barley: a grain recognizable by its wide, brownish stalk. It thrives on most types of highland soil, including rocky slopes, and grows almost everywhere in the vale.

Krenic Stalk: a grain distinguished by the red hue at the upper reachs of each head of grain. Taller and thinner than the wind barley stalks. This plant is more delicate and requires richer soil. It grows in smaller quantities, primarily in some areas under lord Anzarion’s rule in the center of the vale, and in several places around lake Relarn to the west.

The bread of Kiern Vale is usually made by combining these two grains. The more refined the bread, the higher the percentage of krenic stalk in it, giving the bread a soft, delicate texture with a slightly spicy taste. Higher quality Karnic bread may also include small bits of local berries, especially opalberries, and sometimes even butter. Conversely, simpler bread has the higher percentage of wind barley, making it denser, coarser and with a more neutral taste. Such bread also tends to crumble more easily.

En’mirian golden bread, made from genuine En’mirian wheat, requires imported grains and therefore its quite rare. Only nobles and other rich people can afford it, and even they usually keep it for special occasions.

Brak porridge and storm ale

In addition to bread, wind barley is the main ingredient in two other staples of rural diet.

Brak is a hearty barely porridge, which sometimes includes (if the family can afford it) sliced fruits – usually apples or pears; and eggs, if the household has laying hens. A high quality brak porridge can even include some meat on festival days.

Wind barley is also used to ferment the “storm ale”: the most common beverage in Kiern Vale. It is a simple, coarse and dark beer, named after the thunder-like noises produced during its brewing process – and somtines by the belches of those who consume it.

Many simple folks in the rural areas enrich their menu - when possible – with local fruits (mostly apples, pears and local berries) and eggs. Those capable of raising a goat or a cow, or those who can afford to pay local herders or dairy farmers, may also include milk and simple cheese in their nutrition.

Lower class nutrition in En'mirlor

The Great Shattering not only brought thousands of refugees who gathered around the city of En’mirlor, but also harmed the land itself, and affected the small-scale-agriculture practiced on its outskirts. Today, only the fields around the city remained fertile, and their owners sell their produce at an exorbitant price while the rest must be important from more distant rural areas. Therefore, grains and other foodstuff from the rural areas, became harder to obtain and more expensive. Therefore, only the upper classes, as well as wealthy merchants and guild members, can afford to pay for a steady supply of grains, dairy and other rural produce – not to mention meat and sweets.

Lower class En’mirlor residents, especially in the refugee quarters built on muddy soil outside the city walls, are forced to rely on a more modest diet. Most of them sustain themselves with some combination of the berry bushes capable of growing in the marshlands, some crude root vegetables, the occasional crooked, sickly seeming fruit tree, supplemented by a rare egg from the chicken some manage to sustain in the yards of their rude huts. Additionally, they also maintain small gardens of cave plants that spread thrived in the murky, sulphury soil surrounding the district city after the Great Shattering.

Bath moss (“Rockling wart”): A type of moss that thrives in almost any damp, dark and warm place. Its asymmetrical patterns, which range from ashy-yellow with bulges in the areas where the moss is denser make it easy to identify and are the feature responsible for its nickname. Bath moss can be crushed into a coarse paste with a bittersweet taste that is considered disgusting, but edible and even nutritious. In addition to becoming a staple in the diets of many lower-class En’mirlorans, its inedible portions are also exploited as raw material for the weaving of a coarse fabric known is “Mossweave” or “Eggcloth” – nowadays used not only by the local Gurg, but also by many humans for clothing.

Dragon’s claw (“Lizard drool”): A common cave plant that grows on the walls in the muddy soil, often found within patches of bath moss. Recognizable by its pale and fleshy leaves, featuring a golden-brown pattern (which also exist, to lesser extent, on the stems), resembling a rough depiction of large scales. The leaves are bitter and oily; however, when mashed with the flesh of a common fungus called “Swamp Cup”, a gel-like edible substance can be extracted. This edible gel is oily, and its color is a pale greenish-grey. For the lower classes, this is often the main source of fat in their diets.

Zeb pita-bread: The lower class En’mirlor bread, is called “zeb”. It resembles pita – only it is greyish, oily and coarse-looking. Since the bath moss paste is too liquid to be solidified into flour, it is mixed with a small amount of wind barley imported from the rural areas. This mixture is then coated with dragon’s claw gel to prevent it from crumbling. The more wind barley the Zeb flour contains, the less it crumbles into a coarse paste, and it frequently develops a texture with brown veins, which hint about its quality.

Premium Zeb bread (“Zeb-Azrin”): Azdan, daughter of Godzar (nowadays called Lady Azrin Var-Or’sil) once a simple cook, ascended up the social ladder by dint of a marriage to a wealthy scholar. She made a significant fortune and fame for inventing an exceptionally refined version of the usually sour and oily Zeb pita bread. Azrin’s version has a creamy (still slightly sour) deep taste, and a spicy fragment. Unlike the cheap Zeb, Azrin’s version boasts a pleasing brownish-white color, and a pleasant odor. This new dish has become very fashionable and beloved by the city’s higher classes, which gladly opened their wallets to acquire it.

The superior zeb is likely based on substituting the wind-barley flour with a red krenic stalk flour, as well using high-quality village butter instead of the Dragon’s claw gel. Lady Azrin claims she is also adding some kind of secret spice (“and few more surprises”) which she learned from her father.

Cave Soup: After zeb bread, the dish that is most associated with the lower classes of En’mirlor is known as “cave soup” (sometimes mockingly referred as “bath stew”). It is based on boiling bath moss paste and dragon claw’s gel. Into the mix, the family adds whatever is available, ranging from degraded root vegetables, eggs and berries if they can be afforded, foul sweet-chewy flesh of tiny cave fish, and anything else edible or semi-edible which the family manages to gather.

Typically, the result is a thick, unappealing stew marked by lumps of greyish dragon claw gel that tend to float on the top. When the liquid cools, it forms a greasy and quivering layer, punctuated by trapped pieces of the added ingredients. The cave soup dish, usually constituting the main meal for the city poorest (with or without zeb pita bread to dunk and ‘diversify’ the taste), is known for its pungent smell. Many among the upper classes never tire from mocking it, referring to its lower-class consumers as “Soup suckers”.

Cheap alcoholic beverages in the city of En’mirlor

The drinks consumed by the En'mirloran lower classes tend to be stronger and fouler than common rural ales.

Zish: In the poverty-stricken slums of En’mirlor, people learned to ferment a kind of foul berries growing on marsh canes, which were formerly mostly used as livestock feed. Nowadays, it is distilled into a strong, foul-taste whisky known as “Zish” (along with half a dozen other names, most of them even less flattering).

“Toad Liqueur”: The Gurg clan Krig, began distilling their own recipes after taking control of a large local distillery: The most common of them, is based on a mixture of swamp berries, a strange fruit which grows in the depths of warm cavern, resembling an elongated, unripe tomato which has foul taste and considered inedible (mockingly called “Krig Plum” or “Divine toad apple”). To the mixture, they add a thick, sour milk obtained from the pigmy pigs which the clan raise. The result is a bright-murky thick liquor with sweet-sour taste, which the Gurg call “Dishmog”, while other prefer to call it “Toad Liqueur”. This drink is thick, oily and extremely potent, yet considered tastier than the foul “Zish”.

A common scene in the more dilapidated parts of the city, is seeing a Gurg merchant carrying large and furry goat skin, from which they pour liqueur in a large wooden ladle, while they loudly praise their questionable ware, in such a shrill voice that would not shame the moon choir of Clan Krig.

Puk Sweets

In addition to drinks, the Krig clan also produces and sells a type of sweet they call “Puk”. It was made from a mixture of sweet moss and pygmy pig milk, shaped as sheets of coarse cloth, wrapped around a stick. In the poverty-stricken slums of En’milror, puk is usually the only sweet that many children ever had the chance to taste.

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