(no subject)

[sythyry]

Poisoned Food [11 Thory 4385; Eigrach, Srineia]

Este:"I'm not coming unless Sythyry is there, and with plentiful cley for healing spells, too!"

Phaniet:"Well, there's the lizard now. Invite zir yourself."

Este:"Me? Don't be ridiculous. Zie actually listens to you."

Me:"I'll listen to either of you ... are you planning an adventure?"

Phaniet:"Yes -- a culinary adventure. Bwipin invited me and a few friends."

Me:"Gutrumy House?"

Este:"Gutrumy House -- the Restaurant of Death!"

Gutrumy House

Here's what one guidebook has to say about Gutrumy House.

Gutrumy House is the brainchild of a mushroom-loving Rassimel chef and his husband, the former head of the Healer's Guild. It is based on three basic principles:

1. Mushrooms are delicious;
2. Some mushrooms are poisonous;
3. This should not prevent people from enjoying them

Accordingly, this small and exclusive restaurant serves an unusually broad variety of comestables, including many that are generally not regarded as generally comestable. The entire staff (all Rassimel) is trained in the use of healing and detoxification spells. No more diners are allowed than the restaurant has cley and staff available to heal them. The food is quite good, though it tends to feature ingredients and presentation more than the delicate harmonies or intense flavors of more conventional Srineian eateries. Despite the reputation, the menu is largely non-toxic. Prices of poisonous dishes are quite high, as they include the cley to heal you as well as the rare ingredients to feed you. Prices of non-poisonous dishes are also high compared to other Eigrach restaurants. The menu changes by season and availability of ingredients, though grilled and sautéed mushrooms are always the centerpiece and always a very unusual treat -- and the frisson of danger is an extra bit of spice.

The Plan

Este:"I cannot believe that you want to go there."

Phaniet:"It sounds interesting and delicious!"

Este:"And poisonous!"

Phaniet:"Foods I would never get to taste ordinarily!"

Windigar:"I'm in, if the invitation is open enough."

Este:"Are you trying to make time with my wife, nominally cissy boy?"

Windigar:"I am trying to protect her honor from Lord Bwipin's inevitable drunken advances! You could do it yourself if you wanted." Everyone smirked.

Me:"I'll go. Not that I am particularly eager to sample deadly fungi, but Phaniet knows too many of my secrets. Bwipin is sure to ply her with some mysterious Srineian mind-control mushroom and rip them from her psyche. Just like he forgot to do the last four times they got together." Actual reason: I had been meaning to try it out. It sounds interesting, in a way that is, honestly, less doom than my usual life.

Phaniet:"I can take care of myself." Which is approximately true.

Kantele:"I'll go. I'm not much longer for this life anyhow. I might as well die over a plate of fine mushrooms as anything." (No, she's not that old.)

Este:"Fine, I'll come, I'll come. Sythyry, Phaniet, what kind of healing precautions do you guys have?"

Me:"Reasonably good ones grafted. I don't know exactly what's in the cabinet."

Phaniet:"In the cabinet are: four talismans conferring immunity to the four most common kinds of poison, two unlimited-healing devices, a broad-spectrum antitoxin that Sythyry made for the Daukrhame city guard not long before some international incident made the sale impossible and zie never got around to selling since then, and sundry lesser devices."

Me:"Oh, that cursed, cursed talisman." I had tried to sell it to two other cities, too, but it's a fairly expensive device (following normal enchanter prices) and I didn't want to get into the habit of selling things too cheaply, so I still have it.

Este:"What curse did you put on it, and should I rely on that curse to save my life?"

Me:"Not a technically cursy curse. I just should have sold it fifty years ago."

Phaniet:"But technically we don't bring our own healing, they supply it. Though I wouldn't mind having some extra, as backup."

Comments

[nekomavin.livejournal.com]

That sounds like an incredibly interesting sort of restaurant. Have fun!

I wonder if a very exclusive and expensive restaurant can afford to buy your white elephant? It sounds like they'd get more use out of it than just about anyone else you could imagine.

[melskunk.livejournal.com]

Hmm, we only eat poisonous fish and occasionally insects. Rarely mushrooms

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Heeheehee, it's the Dark Restaurant of Death!

So how close to death do they let you get before curing your poison? Or do you specify that as part of the order? "I'd like the slow-death casserole, and my spirit reattached to my body after a few minutes."

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Near death experiences, cooked to order!

[mmsword.livejournal.com]

... I would totally open a restaurant like that in my homespace, if there would be any particularly feasible way to do it.

[valdary.livejournal.com]

A good amount of the entertainment in this series is the speculation in a reasonably doom filled scenario as to what extra mindbending things can go wrong.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Sometimes they go right, as with Thenel!

[Bard looks so innocent. -bb]

[(Anonymous)]

Is the healing really necessary for Rassimel customers with their ability to quickly recover from poison?

Also, would it be possible/prudent to bind the healing spells within the food itself, or to neutralize the poison beforehand but keep the taste with Sustenoc Illusidor? Or is the poisoning itself part of the experience?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Well, even Rassimel might not want to endure intense itching or convulsions for the hour or two it takes them to recover.

Binding healing spells in food would probably be a waste of cley: binding takes two cley (and is lost altogether if the food is not eaten); casting the spells at need takes but one.

Detoxifying the food before eating would be my normal approach -- and take far fewer cley: one per potful rather than one per diner. But it would detract from the purity of the experience.

(Incidentally, there are a variety of standard foods which are poisonous to some degree in their natural state, but with processing become wholesome. [Bard notes stuff like tapioca on Earth in the same category.])

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Aww it's only one day and you totally change the topic from fixing the boat / playing the cute flustered rassimel to, um, weird food?

Well... okay... was that really the most notable thing to happen that day?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Hardly, but I didn't feel like writing about defeating the Ventaglian space pirates over breakfast, or how I had to conquer the Pshuntrivian Empire at elevenses.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

*giggles, then tries for a straight face* Space Pirates? I daresay your world might have a different definition of that term than ours does! And yes, conquering empires DOES tend to be a bit of a tedious task, doesn't it? Once you've conquered one, you know how to conquer any of them, right? It's really just repeating the same process over and over again..

*tries to keep the straight face, but abruptly fails and laughs vigorously*

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Space Pirates use complicated locador magic to steal volume from city states that foolishly demarcate their boundaries using landmarks. They then sell the stolen area on the black market, by the acre.

The more clever ones steal volume from the common airship routes, charging merchants a fee for the shortened journey, and then get paid twice when they sell the space for other purposes.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

My translator seems to want to add, "They do not charge very much for what they steal, but they sell a great deal, and thus are quite profitable." It seems to think this is somehow quite funny.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Your translator is giving me a headache!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I'm glad my translator is being of some value to me, at least.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Hey! My comments have inspired some of your most brilliant snarkiness!

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

I checked with your translator, and I think everyone who reads this, uhm, needs to hear zir, ahhh, generous wit.

In other words, zie made an atrocious pun, and I am inflicting it on anyone who will read this hereafter!

The quote was, "They don't get much profit on each sale of space, but they make it up on volume"

Which, since I don't know how well it translates into, uh, Ketherian, a pun on the term "volume" which can mean number of sales, or also the size of a space. I guess you all have a few words that can mean similar things like "quantity" "volume" "mass" "amount", and such?

[rowyn]

You'd think it'd be less trouble just to get Creoc and make the space, instead of Mutoc (or would that be Ruloc?) to move it around.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Then it wouldn't be *authentic*.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

This is where I with I have this clever recipe for mushroom tops with cheese and bread crumbs.... but to be honest, all I really know is how to sautee and marinate mushrooms, and that's hardly as exciting as large mushrooms stuffed with bread and cheese...

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Err... wish, not with... darn dyslexic mind...

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

Wow. I resolve never to tease your chronicler about molecular gastronomy ever again. (If you're unfamiliar with this Terran phrase, it translates roughly to "not enough food." :) ) Especially because I have to admit I'd probably eat at Gutrumy House.

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

*looks sidelong once you've flitted off and furtively jots in a Moleskine World Tree Mapbook*

"S-R-I-N-E-I..."

[mmsword.livejournal.com]

We'll call it a dinner date!

[zeeth_kyrah]

Right. This is the first time I've translated "molecular gastronomy" as "food by the molecule", thanks to you. Perhaps "alchemical gustation" would be a phrase more closely aligned with the original intent, but I like your version just as well.

[bloofox.livejournal.com]

This is the single best idea for a restaurant ever. Pity I hate mushrooms!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[Bard will tell beetiger about this, for it is her idea. -bb]

They have other toxic foods as well, every bit as good as their mushrooms, should you ever be in Eigrach.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Is it the case where you are, where some foods are much more poisonous than others to individual primes? Like some type of nut is poisonous to some families of rassimel or whatever?

[zeeth_kyrah]

I would think this would be more by race than by family. On the other hand, if any of the 7+12 wanted it that way, it probably would be so.

[terrana.livejournal.com]

Depending on how successful a business this is (or whether they can get a loan), you might have a buyer for the talisman there. They could substantially increase the number of customers they can serve per day using it. I guess it depends on whether they have the money.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

That kind of culinary roulette sounds much more appealing with the availability of proper magic. Monsters do it too, with a type of fish, but without the magic -- one takes one's chances.

Re: Thoughts

[rowyn]

We have hospitals and antidotes and stuff. I'm sure people hardly ever die!

Also, even with magic you can still botch. >:)

Re: Thoughts

[terrana.livejournal.com]

Yes, but the treefolk still have the advantage that most poisons on the Tree are never directly lethal.

[rowyn]

That does sound pretty safe, compared with your normal plans. Such as going on vacation, or to a picnic, or for a swim in Nupyup Pond.

Beware! An invitation to a poisoning is probably just to lull you into a false sense of security!