Breakfast (baknablag) commonly consists of a thick slice of mushroom loaf, some sausage, imported cheeses, and honey over boiled eggs for the rich. Common drinks at breakfast are grafhul, water, or tea with milk for the rich. It is very common to eat hearty breakfasts, including sausages, cured or salted bat and salamander meats, and meat-based spreads such as leberkaral (salamander sausage) or temkaral, or (for the rich) a sausage called khagskaral that dates back to the old Dalmato-Worthese Wars and is made using cave shrimp and elfin fermented tea, and soft cheeses such as gnomish cream cheese, Caaz Artois (Penguern), Brighentyih (western Sardis), rolled Baggenen (Worthese gnomes), Dorfcaaze (“town cheese”) and more.
The main meal of the day is lunch (aglazablag), eaten around noon. Dinner (lanzablag) is always a smaller meal, often consisting only of mushroom loaf, meat (never bat or salamander, which are reserved for earlier meals) or sausages, and some kind of vegetables for the rich, often stacked into a sort of sandwich.
With the exception of gnomish mustard for sausages, dwarfin dishes are rarely hot and spicy; the most popular herbs are traditionally thyme, chives, juniper berries, and caraway. Mustard (senf) is a very common accompaniment to sausages and can vary in strength, the most common version being sabssenf (medium hot). Baggendorf and the surrounding area are known for its particularly spicy mustard (called sabselsenf), which is used both as a table condiment and in local dishes such as sengilbotarber (pot roast with mustard). In the southern parts of the province near the Snowy Border with Penguern, a sweet variety of mustard (hulwulsenf) is made which is almost exclusively served with sieukaral. Horseradish is commonly used as a condiment either on its own ground into a paste or combined with mustard. In some regions of Worth, it is used with meats and sausages where mustard would otherwise be used.
Mushroom loaf (brot) is a significant part of dwarfin cuisine. It is served usually for breakfast and in the evening with other foods atop, but only as a side dish when the main meal is a type of pfotnei (soup). The importance of bread in dwarfin cuisine is also illustrated by words such as ilnezbrot (meaning supper, literally evening mushroom loaf) and brotoglik (snack, literally loaf time). Loaf types range from white (sieubrot) to grey (rafathbrot) to black (zrauschbrot), based on the exact mushroom and spices used. Some loafs also mix in ground cave-crab meat (hence abdakhbrot, mixed load).
Mushroom wine is popular among dwarfs. Sierling and Zarsanen are among the best-known varieties of this wine, while Badizdorfunden and Zudrahunden are, too. Grafhul is also very common, not only for breakfast, but also accompanying a piece of sweetened mushroom loaf (hulwulbrot) in the afternoon, usually on rest days or special occasions and birthdays. Grafhul houses are also very common.
Society: It must be stressed that dwarfs are fey beings. The structures of their thought and their society are alien to human minds. One example of such has already been mentioned ~ dwarfs care little about the product of their labor, or what they achieve thereby. King in the dwarfin mind is work. Work is the basic concept from which most of dwarfin life and philosophy is derived, analogous to the role of love or power or family (depending on your perspective) in human thought. Work is all. Well, work and honor. The only time you can get away with insulting a dwarf’s honor is if it would prevent them from working for days at a time. And even then, if it’s just days, the dwarf might take some time to do the math.
This can give dwarfin society a strangely disposable feeling, with beautiful pieces of practical art filling vast midden caverns simply because they were completed, treasure troves for subterranean races and adventuring parties. That same seeming disposability can be seen in their social structures. Children are considered things to work on, no different from any other work, and are considered complete once they in turn can work ~ just as a mining pick is done once it can be used to burrow. At that point, at the moment of their first labor, dwarfs became sovereign adults, with complete freedom to choose their work; the strictness of dwarfin parenting disappears in a second, and liberty is their new life. Suffice it to say that this transition occurs much earlier in a dwarf’s life than most human parents would feel comfortable with.
Dwarfs live in syndics, communal groups that fulfill the same role as families in human societies and who all do the same or related work. They live together, too, in sprawling warrens, though if a dwarf takes up a new line of work, they move and are welcomed into a new syndic. Some dwarfs even spend their life migrating around, never living in the same syndic twice. Many humans are surprised that such behavior is considered acceptable by a race focused on work ethic, expecting the dwarfs to look down on such lack of commitment. When they ask about it, dwarfs usually give them a blank blink and say, “But they’re working.”
Syndics operate as independent agents with little interruption by larger government. There are larger governmental bodies, called federations, but they restrict their focus tightly to only issues that affect multiple syndics, the interactions between syndics, or the race as a whole. They are universally run on democratic principles, with any member of an affiliated syndic able to just walk in on a deliberation, have their say, and vote. Dwarfs don’t cotton well to the idea of giving up their sovereignty to a representative or a ruler. The duke of Worth spends most of their time traveling among federations, gaining their cooperation and trust. It’s quite tiring.
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