Pigs and cattle feed themselves for part of the year in woodland. Young beasts are raised in hay meadows after the summer harvest. Semi-wild horses fend for themselves in woodland and are rounded up once a year.
Maned cattle are fierce and dangerous!
Pigs are an especially important source of food in Dark Season. They are allowed to scavenge freely. Children are often sent into the forest equipped with long sticks to dislodge acorns for the pigs. There exists an ancient animosity between pigs and shadow cats (Does anyone know the myth?)
When nor running free, pigs are kept in sties apart from the stead, usually in marsh or woodland.
Sheep, especially the Fat-Tail variety, are milked in Sea and Fire Season. Ewes milk is the most common source of cheese and butter. A Fat-Tail will produce only a tenth the milk of a dairy cow.
Shadowcats are 'stead-friends', and run semi-wild. Despite the strong totemic relationship to the Orlanthi, they are sometimes skinned. An alynx's liver painfully swells under a full red moon, causing pain and anger: it can see spirits and penetrate the darkness with its glowing eyes.
Dogs are rare and expensive to keep. They are used in war and in herding. Herd dogs have spiked collars for protection against wolves. Their tongues have extraordinary healing powers.
Most steads keep both a dovecote and an apiary. Larger steads in the mountains may keep a fishpond or 'stew' stocked with pike and carp.
Iblis, cranes or herons are sometimes kept as pets. Pelicans are trained to fish, and have collars to prevent them swallowing the catch.
Kukfighting is a Far Point obsession. Kukfights are very popular events, and usually held in conjunction with clan meetings or celebrations. Many the weapontake has been cut short to get on with a Kukfight. (This does nothing to help the reputation of Far Point men for being childish and emotional.)
A LawSpeaker may be called a Kuk. A crowing hen is a bad omen. A malformed egg is called a Kuk's egg, and is highly magical.
In kukfighting, the natural spurs are removed, and uniform metal spurs bound on. Fighting kuks are pets, their (male) owner's greatest love. They are named, massaged and exercised (chased around the stead yards). Kuks are often fed on bread supped in wine.
Solars and Lunars are fowl-eaters, and are rumoured to have birds that lay daily!
FOOD & DRINK AMONGST THE BOG ORLANTHI
ÒTheir food is simple, wild fruits, fresh game and
curdled milk.Ó
Jaxarte Whyded.
Hunting, fishing and gathering are as important as farming as a source of daily food. There is little trade in foodstuffs; most steads are isolated and self-contained.
STAPLE FOODS Small game, fish and grain porridge (frumenty or pottage) are the staple foods. Tubers, gourds, apples, plums, cherries, berries and nuts are plentiful. Cabbage is the staple potherb; other staple vegetables include peas, beans, leeks, onions, garlic and a wild mountain lettuce.
The most common food is a variation on 'pottage'; a soup or stew made from barley, linseed, knotweed and other plants grains and vegetables, thickened till it is almost solid. Meat or fish might be added, or sheeps milk and honey to sweeten it.
'Frumenty' is grain porridge. Grind some wheat, fan it out
and wash it clean. Then boil until tender and brown.
'Green Porray' is a mash of green vegetables flavoured
with herbs. 'Peas Pottage' is made exclusively from mashed
peas and salt.
'White Porray' is a pottage made from leeks, and is a
common winter food.
Mutton stew is a favourite dish, flavoured with wine, vinegar, or ale and mustard.
'Collop' is bacon or pork strips with an egg batter.
White bread is rare; brown rye bread is most common. Mixed grain breads are called 'maislin'. Beans, peas and even acorns are used to make bread.
'RockWrong' or 'Lunar Biscuit' is baked and dried until it
is rock-hard. It is rumoured to keep for up to fifty years.
Cheese is consumed in great amounts. It is hard, strongly flavoured, and often full of hair and maggots.
In the warmer months, pike of up to 20 kg are caught regularly. Roaches average 2 kg, dace 1 kg, perch 3 kg and chub 4 kg. The entire clan takes to the mountain streams when the salmon run begins in Sea Season.
'Stockfish' is salted air-dried fish. Stockfish will keep for
years, but it needs to be beaten with a hammer, soaked for
hours and then boiled before it can be eaten. It is only seen at
the end of winter when food is becoming scarce.
In winter, pickled pork, bacon and other salted meats are often the only meat available.
Salads are made of parsley, wild lettuce, sage, garlic, spring onions, leeks, bouage, mint, fennel, cresses, rue, purslane and rosemary.
Vegetable oils are produced from linseed and false flax.
DRINK Water is often too dirty and dangerous to drink; buttermilk, milk, cider, beer or wine are the staple drinks. Beer is brewed with barley and spiced with herbs. The use of hops is still unknown. Powerful berry wines and mead are produced at most steads, as is pear and apple cider. Some wine is imported from the south.
'Crimpy' is sweet honeyed mead.
'Almond milk' is a Lunar drink that is gaining in
popularity; a mixture of wine, ground almonds and honey.
Several clans forbid the consumption or importation of
foreign wines, believing that they sap stamina and
endurance. It is not a northern custom to water wine.
Never whistle while drinking cider; you may summon up
a wind.
UNUSUAL OR FAVOURED FOODS Favourite foods include roast game and venison, game birds, snails, wine with honey, honeybread, rivershell, roll mops, giant insects, river oysters, (imported) peaches, eggs, truffles, mushrooms, fungi, black bread, ginger and cinnamon bread, lizardfish served with roe, sticklepick, skewered locusts, cheese and curd, apple fritters, and corncake.
Certain meat joints are reserved as the ÔthaneÕs portionÕ to be consumed by leaders and warriors. Bone marrow is very popular and prestigious, as it contains the spiritual essence of an animal.
'Giant' snails (about 15 cm long) are fattened on milk.
Doormice are force-fed on nuts in specially made clay pots
with holes.
Sticklepick or blackburn is a fish sauce made from the gills, blood and intestines of fish, whole small fish, salt, herbs and vinegar. It is left to liquefy for two or three months. Sticklepick is Far Point's most renowned export.
Strawberries and bilberries are a summer treat.
'Parfort' consists of nuts and dried fruit pressed into a
round flat cake. It is popular amongst travellers.
'Cammy' is fermented mare's milk served with lumps of
butter.
'Hippocras' is mulled spiced wine.
ETIQUETTE
Food is usually served on a trencher; a round flat piece of
bread that serves as a plate. On formal occasions, one should
not eat one's trencher.
Spoons, like most domestic utensils, are carved at the steads from beech wood.
To up-end one's trencher is a bad omen. To deliberately do this to a fellow is a deadly insult that will immediately start a fight to the death.
You must never cook or eat a crop in view of a field. The plant spirits must not know their coming fate.
Pelorians call Orlanthi 'butter-eaters' - they prefer vegetable oils. (Pelorians are in fact lactose intolerant, and cannot stomach more than a cup of raw milk.) As a result they are very sensitive to the 'butter-smell' of dairy food consumers such as the Orlanthi, a stench that habitual consumers can not sense. (This same stench permeates the bodies of Europeans and other westerners: we can't smell it, but people from societies that don't use dairy products certainly can! 'Westerners stink!' is not necessarily a political statement).
Butter is strongly symbolic of male sexuality, and butter churning of sex. Ghee is consumed as an aphrodisiac - at clan weddings men will often consume a kilo or more. Sacred images of the gods are sometimes carved in butter as part of a sacrifice.
Rennet is also made at the stead, in blocks that weigh up to 3 kg.
'Churn' is a spirit magic spell, essentially a low-intensity
disruption that can cause considerable pain to a human
target. Final churning is a delicate process always done by
hand.
2. THE FAUNA OF FAR POINT ANIMALS CULTURAL ANIMALS; - Aldryami (rare in south): Beast Folk (uncommon): Broo: Dragon: Dragonewt: Duck (rare): Enlo (feral in south): Ghost Tribe: Human (Heortling exiles from Tarsh, a few Lunar resettlement colonia): Land Spirits (dryad, hag, naiad etc.): Magisaur: Newtling (uncommon, bachelors only): Runner: Scorpion Folk: Telmori (rare): Tusk Rider (rare incursions from Stinking Forest): Uz (rare in south): Voralan (extremely rare, found in north only): Wind Child (rare).
MAJOR WILDERNESS FAUNA; - Alynx (wildcat or shadowcat, many species): Sable Antelope: Auroch (rare, legendary, probably extinct): Badger: Black Bear: Blue
Bear: Tree Bear: White Dwarf Bear: Beaver: Forest Bison: Boar: Blue Boar: Horned Boar: Chamois: Chipmunk: Red Deer: Roe Deer: Dinosaur (very rare in uplands, mainlysmaller vegetarians, including stunted pentaceratops): Dragonsnail: Elk, including giant species: Ferret: Red Fox: Frog: Tree Frog: Gorp: Griffin: Wild Goat: Hare: Hedgehog: Wild Horse: Ibex: Krarshtkid (rare): Lizard: Rock Lizard: Lynx: Mammoth (rare or legendary): Marmot: Crim Marten: Pine Marten: Otter: Pika: Polecat (ferret): Pronghorn: Razorback: Reindeer: Rodent: Rubble Runner: Sabretooth Cat: Salamander (lizard): Wild Sheep: Mole Shrew: Snake: Grass Snake: Squirrel: Stoat: Tusker: Vole: Wapiti: Walktapus: Wood Vole: Weasel: Wolverine: Wildcat: Wolf.
FISH AND AQUATIC ANIMALS; - Burbot
(Pricklefish): Carp: Chub: Crab: Dace: Eel: Lamprey
(Lizardfish): Rock Oyster: Perch: Pickeral: Pike: River
Porpoise: Roach: Salmon: Sprat: Sturgeon: Trout: Giant
Turtle: Snapping Turtle: Waterwolf: Whelk and many other
freshwater species.
ELEMENTALS AND MAGICAL CREATURES; -
Beast Ancestor: Demon: Gargoyle: Ghost: Oread:
Salamander (rare)*: Shade: Skybull (rare): Succubus
(very rare): Sylph: Undine: Wraith & myriad spirits of the
land and wilderness.
*In my conception, the magical geography of Far Point includes the fact that forces of fire are eternally weak.
BIRDS
'As for birds... you will find geese, teal, coots,
didappers, water crows and herons - more than
anyone can number, especially in the Long Dark or
at moulting time. I have seen a hundred taken at
once, sometimes with bird-lime, sometimes in nets
or snares.'
Jaxarte Whyded
The Journey Through Far Point, 1628.
(Note: Far-Pointers use the term 'haggar' instead of 'hawk' or 'eagle', and 'teal' to distinguish non-intelligent ducks from the durulz.)
BIRDS; - Blackbird: Bullfinch: Buzzard: Coot: Crane: Crossbill: Curlew: Demi-Bird: Didapper (Dabchick): Diver: Egret: Ern: Falcon: Gyre Falcon: Fuzztopper: Godwit: Goose: Goshawk: Grebe: Hazel Grouse: Wood Grouse: Haggar (Wind Hawk, Goshawk, Sparrow Hawk): Sun Haggar (golden eagle): Heron: Jay: Kestrel: Kingfisher (Halcyon): Lake Wader: Lapwing: Morganseer: Nighthunter (Haggar): Nightingale: Nightjar: Owl: Oyster- Partridge: Pippit: Winged Plover: Red Throat: Ruff: Starling: Stead Sparrow: Stonechat: Teal: Tit: Tree- Turnstone: Water Crow: Raven: Sandpiper: White Stork: Skylark: Little Stint: Swan: Red Vulture: Warbler: Wheat Ear: Whinchat: Witch Bird: Woodlark: Woodpecker.
INSECTS INSECTS - Horned Beetle: Dungson: Kermes Beetle: Louse: Marsh Fly: Maggot: Midge: Millipede: Scorpion: Snail: Worm: Slow Worm (legless lizard): about ten million others.
Note: Insect size increases dramatically as one goes north toward Dagori Inkarth.
END PART TWO
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