![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaAnd now, for another short edition of GURPS Jorune:
Once again, this is adapted from Skyrealms of Jorune 3rd ed..
Getting a good meal on Jorune is no small matter. The native biochemistry of the planet is subtly incompatible with Terran nutritional needs. Of the Terran-descended races, only the blount and the crugar/cygra can derive all the vitamins, minerals, and amino acids they need from the local life, synthesizing what is not naturally present; the bronth and woffen are less dependent than the hominids, but they will grow ill without supplementing a diet of local life with Terran plants. A human who tries to live off of the native foodstuffs will be stunted and thin, and will have a very weak immune system. Similarly, most plants of Terran descent find that the soil of Jorune has the wrong mix of native minerals and microorganisms for them to thrive. For this reason, any discussion of a meal on Jorune must begin with gerrig and durlig.
Gerrig is a weed. A loose head of green, powdery-finished leaves surrounds a short, tough central stalk; after midsummer, each plant sends up a two-foot high flowering stalk. It grows wild all across the explored areas of the planet; anywhere in a temperate or semitropical climate that is neither a desert nor an ocean, enough gerrig greens for a meal can almost certainly be gathered. Unfortunately, its ubiquity is its primary - some would say its only - good point. The ribs of the leaves are tough and stringy, and the rest of the leaf disintegrates to a disgusting slimy mush when boiled. The taste is bitter and vaguely metallic. The earlier the leaves are picked, the less tough and bitter they are, but the metallic taste lingers in the best of circumstances; after the flowering stalk goes up, the bitterness becomes overwhelming. While the leaves on their own do not provide complete protein, a diet of native Jorune meat and plants supplemented with one or two servings of gerrig per day will sustain a hominid; bronth and woffen could get by with a serving every three days or so. Those who frequently have to live on the stuff recommend washing it thoroughly in clean water and then cooking it only in what water clings to the leaves; this prevents the texture from becoming too mucousal.
Durlig is a great improvement on gerrig, which is not really saying all that much. A fully grown durlig plant is a roughly cone-shaped root roughly two and a half feet in diameter at the top, and about three feet long, with numerous pencil-thin rootlets extending into the soil all around it; the top of the plant consists of two-foot-long dark green, toothed leaves growing from the top of the root. A ring of sharp, thorny spines surrounds the outer edge of the visible portion of the root. Near the end of summer it sends up a three-foot-long flowering stalk, which blooms with a profusion of tiny yellow flowers, each of which sets a tiny (1/16" diameter) seed in a loose husk. Every part of the plant is edible, although some parts are better than others. The leaves are similar to gerrig, although they are neither quite as tough nor quite as metallic (they are still quite bitter, and give off a slight sulfurous smell when cooked, although they do not fall apart as readily as gerrig). The root is starchy, something like a turnip or parsnip, and has only a slight bitterness to the flavor, but has an earthy, muddy odor. The immature flowering stalks, cut before they bloom and cooked lightly, are the best-tasting part, with a crunchy texture and a flavor rather like broccoli stalk. The flowers are fuzzy but edible, tasting rather like marigolds. The seeds can also be eaten, as they have a peppery, musty flavor - the bronth are fond of grinding them coarsely and adding them to soups and stews - but are more often pressed for their oil, which is a light yellow-green color and very mild in flavor. A human could, in theory, survive on nothing but durlig, as long as he or she ate every part of the plant in season, but almost no one does that; instead, it is common to serve durlig as a part of every evening meal. The leaves of a native minty herb called crethin will, when cooked with the leaves or the root, cover over the smell with its own and leech out some of the bitterness as well. Unfortunately, while durlig is very common, crethin is harder to grow and not all that common in the wild.
The two staple grains of the hominids on Jorune have two separate origins. The one that survived from Earth is barley, which is used for making bread (mostly flatbread, as barley doesn't have much gluten) and for boiling as porridge, thickener for soup or stew, or a side dish - not to mention ale. Codditch, a crop grown primarily by thriddle, has also been adopted by the Terran races as a substitute for dent corn. It is primarily used for animal feed and for tortilla-like flatbreads, although in some towns, especially in southern Heridoth, the grains are cracked and boiled into something resembling grits.
Few other Earth vegetables survived. Several varieties of leaf lettuce (but none of the heading lettuces) adapted fairly easily to Jorune's soil. An edible-podded sweet pea is grown in southern Jasp, Ros Crendor, and North and South Khodre; usually the whole pod is picked, the strings removed, and it is steamed and served whole, but sometimes the peas are allowed to mature on the vine, dried, and served cooked into soup (this is how most Burdothians and Heridothians would be familiar with them). Several varieties of squash, including crookneck, Hubbard, and acorn, have adapted to the local soil, although these require heavy mulching to thrive (they react particularly well to gerrig mulch). Sweet corn has been preserved in the Gauss Valley and a few places in Heridoth. And fortunately for makers of stews, both a long-day and a short-day variety of onion made the transition to Jorune. For Terran fruits, one is limited to the blackberry, which grows wild near many of the original colony sites (in fact, the thriddle have been known to investigate a site for Earth-Tec solely because blackberries grew there) and the pear, which requires intensive cultivation to thrive and bear fruit. Blackberry wine is a common rural beverage; perry is very expensive, enjoyed only by the very rich. Flax is mostly used for its fiber, but the seeds are edible and can be pressed for oil.
A number of native plants have been added to Terran menus over time. These vary wildly by the area, but a few are widespread enough to be recognizable anywhere. The russip plant has a long, crunchy stalk and a bulbous, white-fleshed root, something like celery or fennel, but tasting slightly sweet, with an aftertaste something like thyme. A mildly alcoholic brew, rusper ale, is made from the mash of the root soaked in water. The fidla tree, with its short, bulbous trunk and foot-wide, ovoid leaves, bears eight-inch pod-like fruit; the rind is tough and hard to cut, but the seedy pulp inside is sweet and very, very juicy. The klisht fungus grows on the trunks of trees in damp climates; its exterior layer is tough and leathery, but if it is peeled off, the interior is quite palatable when cooked, with an almost meaty flavor and a firm but giving texture. The ziuw plant produces both bland but filling tubers and inch-wide purple savory 'fruits' that can be sliced and cooked in oil; they are quite tasty pan-fried with onion and a bit of durlig stalk.
One important point: there is no equivalent of the honeybee, the sugar maple, the sugar beet, or sugarcane. The only sources of sweetness are barley malt and the various fruits. Sweet-tasting things are likely to be highly valued on Jorune.
Meats also vary wildly by area. Wild deer exist in Glounda Forest and in a few other large woods, but venison is rare outside of those areas. The only other Terran-origin meat animals are the geep, a hybrid of a goat and a sheep that is mostly raised for its wool south of Khodre but is widely eaten in Jasp, and the catfish, which is widely farmed by the acubon but not common outside of their sphere of influence. Most meat on Jorune comes from the native animals. The most common meat animal is the thombo, whose flesh (and leathers) has a slightly musty odor and somewhat tough texture; it improves with long cooking, and so is often served in stews. The do-thobider, a larger, heavier creature related to the thombo, is also raised for meat, especially by the boccord and bronth; it has a sharp smell and a slightly less tough texture, and is often grilled or roasted and then cut into thin slices. A native creature called the cyiddu, a two-foot long plains herbivore with a hopping gait, is often raised for the table, and serves many of the same purposes as chicken on Earth. Many native fish and shellfish are eaten; a favorite on in Burdoth is creshi, a foot-long, heavily scaled fish that is easily preserved in brine for transportation.
Finally, a word must be said about hilc. Hilc is a limilate made from concentrated gerrig sap. A dose taken at the beginning of a day allows a Terran to eat nothing but Jorune-native foods that day with no ill effects. It is often taken by travelers who are unsure how their food supplies will hold out. Most try to avoid it, however, as the flavor is truly wretched.
Once again, this is adapted from Skyrealms of Jorune 3rd ed..
Getting a good meal on Jorune is no small matter. The native biochemistry of the planet is subtly incompatible with Terran nutritional needs. Of the Terran-descended races, only the blount and the crugar/cygra can derive all the vitamins, minerals, and amino acids they need from the local life, synthesizing what is not naturally present; the bronth and woffen are less dependent than the hominids, but they will grow ill without supplementing a diet of local life with Terran plants. A human who tries to live off of the native foodstuffs will be stunted and thin, and will have a very weak immune system. Similarly, most plants of Terran descent find that the soil of Jorune has the wrong mix of native minerals and microorganisms for them to thrive. For this reason, any discussion of a meal on Jorune must begin with gerrig and durlig.
Gerrig is a weed. A loose head of green, powdery-finished leaves surrounds a short, tough central stalk; after midsummer, each plant sends up a two-foot high flowering stalk. It grows wild all across the explored areas of the planet; anywhere in a temperate or semitropical climate that is neither a desert nor an ocean, enough gerrig greens for a meal can almost certainly be gathered. Unfortunately, its ubiquity is its primary - some would say its only - good point. The ribs of the leaves are tough and stringy, and the rest of the leaf disintegrates to a disgusting slimy mush when boiled. The taste is bitter and vaguely metallic. The earlier the leaves are picked, the less tough and bitter they are, but the metallic taste lingers in the best of circumstances; after the flowering stalk goes up, the bitterness becomes overwhelming. While the leaves on their own do not provide complete protein, a diet of native Jorune meat and plants supplemented with one or two servings of gerrig per day will sustain a hominid; bronth and woffen could get by with a serving every three days or so. Those who frequently have to live on the stuff recommend washing it thoroughly in clean water and then cooking it only in what water clings to the leaves; this prevents the texture from becoming too mucousal.
Durlig is a great improvement on gerrig, which is not really saying all that much. A fully grown durlig plant is a roughly cone-shaped root roughly two and a half feet in diameter at the top, and about three feet long, with numerous pencil-thin rootlets extending into the soil all around it; the top of the plant consists of two-foot-long dark green, toothed leaves growing from the top of the root. A ring of sharp, thorny spines surrounds the outer edge of the visible portion of the root. Near the end of summer it sends up a three-foot-long flowering stalk, which blooms with a profusion of tiny yellow flowers, each of which sets a tiny (1/16" diameter) seed in a loose husk. Every part of the plant is edible, although some parts are better than others. The leaves are similar to gerrig, although they are neither quite as tough nor quite as metallic (they are still quite bitter, and give off a slight sulfurous smell when cooked, although they do not fall apart as readily as gerrig). The root is starchy, something like a turnip or parsnip, and has only a slight bitterness to the flavor, but has an earthy, muddy odor. The immature flowering stalks, cut before they bloom and cooked lightly, are the best-tasting part, with a crunchy texture and a flavor rather like broccoli stalk. The flowers are fuzzy but edible, tasting rather like marigolds. The seeds can also be eaten, as they have a peppery, musty flavor - the bronth are fond of grinding them coarsely and adding them to soups and stews - but are more often pressed for their oil, which is a light yellow-green color and very mild in flavor. A human could, in theory, survive on nothing but durlig, as long as he or she ate every part of the plant in season, but almost no one does that; instead, it is common to serve durlig as a part of every evening meal. The leaves of a native minty herb called crethin will, when cooked with the leaves or the root, cover over the smell with its own and leech out some of the bitterness as well. Unfortunately, while durlig is very common, crethin is harder to grow and not all that common in the wild.
The two staple grains of the hominids on Jorune have two separate origins. The one that survived from Earth is barley, which is used for making bread (mostly flatbread, as barley doesn't have much gluten) and for boiling as porridge, thickener for soup or stew, or a side dish - not to mention ale. Codditch, a crop grown primarily by thriddle, has also been adopted by the Terran races as a substitute for dent corn. It is primarily used for animal feed and for tortilla-like flatbreads, although in some towns, especially in southern Heridoth, the grains are cracked and boiled into something resembling grits.
Few other Earth vegetables survived. Several varieties of leaf lettuce (but none of the heading lettuces) adapted fairly easily to Jorune's soil. An edible-podded sweet pea is grown in southern Jasp, Ros Crendor, and North and South Khodre; usually the whole pod is picked, the strings removed, and it is steamed and served whole, but sometimes the peas are allowed to mature on the vine, dried, and served cooked into soup (this is how most Burdothians and Heridothians would be familiar with them). Several varieties of squash, including crookneck, Hubbard, and acorn, have adapted to the local soil, although these require heavy mulching to thrive (they react particularly well to gerrig mulch). Sweet corn has been preserved in the Gauss Valley and a few places in Heridoth. And fortunately for makers of stews, both a long-day and a short-day variety of onion made the transition to Jorune. For Terran fruits, one is limited to the blackberry, which grows wild near many of the original colony sites (in fact, the thriddle have been known to investigate a site for Earth-Tec solely because blackberries grew there) and the pear, which requires intensive cultivation to thrive and bear fruit. Blackberry wine is a common rural beverage; perry is very expensive, enjoyed only by the very rich. Flax is mostly used for its fiber, but the seeds are edible and can be pressed for oil.
A number of native plants have been added to Terran menus over time. These vary wildly by the area, but a few are widespread enough to be recognizable anywhere. The russip plant has a long, crunchy stalk and a bulbous, white-fleshed root, something like celery or fennel, but tasting slightly sweet, with an aftertaste something like thyme. A mildly alcoholic brew, rusper ale, is made from the mash of the root soaked in water. The fidla tree, with its short, bulbous trunk and foot-wide, ovoid leaves, bears eight-inch pod-like fruit; the rind is tough and hard to cut, but the seedy pulp inside is sweet and very, very juicy. The klisht fungus grows on the trunks of trees in damp climates; its exterior layer is tough and leathery, but if it is peeled off, the interior is quite palatable when cooked, with an almost meaty flavor and a firm but giving texture. The ziuw plant produces both bland but filling tubers and inch-wide purple savory 'fruits' that can be sliced and cooked in oil; they are quite tasty pan-fried with onion and a bit of durlig stalk.
One important point: there is no equivalent of the honeybee, the sugar maple, the sugar beet, or sugarcane. The only sources of sweetness are barley malt and the various fruits. Sweet-tasting things are likely to be highly valued on Jorune.
Meats also vary wildly by area. Wild deer exist in Glounda Forest and in a few other large woods, but venison is rare outside of those areas. The only other Terran-origin meat animals are the geep, a hybrid of a goat and a sheep that is mostly raised for its wool south of Khodre but is widely eaten in Jasp, and the catfish, which is widely farmed by the acubon but not common outside of their sphere of influence. Most meat on Jorune comes from the native animals. The most common meat animal is the thombo, whose flesh (and leathers) has a slightly musty odor and somewhat tough texture; it improves with long cooking, and so is often served in stews. The do-thobider, a larger, heavier creature related to the thombo, is also raised for meat, especially by the boccord and bronth; it has a sharp smell and a slightly less tough texture, and is often grilled or roasted and then cut into thin slices. A native creature called the cyiddu, a two-foot long plains herbivore with a hopping gait, is often raised for the table, and serves many of the same purposes as chicken on Earth. Many native fish and shellfish are eaten; a favorite on in Burdoth is creshi, a foot-long, heavily scaled fish that is easily preserved in brine for transportation.
Finally, a word must be said about hilc. Hilc is a limilate made from concentrated gerrig sap. A dose taken at the beginning of a day allows a Terran to eat nothing but Jorune-native foods that day with no ill effects. It is often taken by travelers who are unsure how their food supplies will hold out. Most try to avoid it, however, as the flavor is truly wretched.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 12:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 12:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 07:16 pm (UTC)A poor rural human might break his fast on a bowl of cold durlig-root mash, lunch on barley flatbread with a bowl of mixed durlig and lettuce greens from his garden, and sup on sliced stewed durlig root cooked with herbs and onions. If he lives near a river or lake, there's a good chance that supper will be stewed or grilled fish two or three days out of a week (fish are very plentiful on Jorune, and few of the waterways have been fished out). If he's near the woods and has any skill at hunting, fresh venison will show up every once in a while, and venison sausage will flavor his durlig stew once a week or so. If he's on the plains, a gyddu will end up in his stewpot about once a week. And in any case, whenever one of the old thombos in his community dies of old age or overwork, everyone will get a bit of the (tough) meat. So while he certainly won't get meat at every meal, it's probably more common than for the average medieval French peasant, say.