Exotic Breads

Bread, be it from wheat, barley, sorghum, millet or rye is a major staple. Short of a setting creating a whole new set of foodstuffs, a variety of breads should be available. Some of them might even be capable of something more than satisfying hunger.

1. The Brethren of the Lordly Prophet distribute alms-bread. These loaves have a portion of food baked into them, taken from the various offerings left at their monastery. Institutional catering and the vagaries of chance mean that this may not be always to the recipient's liking. (Roll 1d6; 1 = 'I really can't eat that!', 2-4 = Edible, 5 = Edible and fairly nice, 6 = 'Oh good! My favourite!' OR Find a low denomination coin in the bread.)

2. Mosstrooper's Bannocks. The Clayscrape Valleys are a notoriously rainy region. The local irregular troopers and reavers bake bannocks in the ashes of their fires, and have developed a method of banking them with a hard crust that keeps out the damp. One comic tale of a folk hero has him baking a particularly large bannock to float across a river, but such a feat is clearly implausible.

3. Whatever their reputation, the Forest Elves are not good bakers. An elf can learn to bake, but the elves of the deep forest are not agriculturists. The most conservative of them will not even eat mono-cultured grains. However, they see the need for a compact form of carbohydrate to feed their emissaries or warbands that leave the forests to find out what it is the younger folk are doing and tell them to stop it. Thus, they carry bags of 'Trail Powder'. This is a ground-down mix of starches and roots, which is mixed together with fresh edible leaves and a little water to form something like Bubble and Squeak - but with the texture of meringue.

4. Concord Loaves are provided at a reduced price by the cooperatives of the Popular Harmony League. These loaves are deliberately larger than is needed for the average human appetite, and the bread is of a soft sort that must be eaten promptly - therefore, the bread must be shared, or go to waste. The rumour that the League includes trace elements of a pacifying, relaxing narcotic in the bread has not effected the popularity of these loaves.

5. These flatbreads from the Sun River Kingdoms are easy to make, compact and tasty. However, traditionally they are used for pushing and scooping other foodstuffs and are generally consumed only by the greediest or the poorest; consuming them can leave create a very bad social impression.

6. Inferno Rolls are dense, with red-brown crusts and a sweet, slightly treacly taste. They have been baked over a ceaseless, fuel-less, blaze of hell-fire, but this has no especial impact on the rolls themselves - beyond a scent of sulphur on the breath of those who consume them. (Mock-Inferno Rolls, designed to reproduce the taste without the lingering scent are sold at triple the price for gastronomes.) Despite this, they remain popular and no long term ill-effects have been found in those who eat the rolls. It is quite another story for the bakers who must inhale the smoke and soot of hellfire and who sometimes exhibit an extreme piety.

7. Dwarf tuber bread is bulked out with root vegetables of various kinds, due to the limited arable land in the mountain realms. It is frequently baked with beer and is almost terrifyingly stodgy to anyone not a dwarf. Tuber bread keeps remarkably well, so long as it remains unexposed to sunlight.

8. Angel biscuits (not to be confused with Angel Wafers, which are a popular brand of sweetmeat printed with brief and often trite religious messages) are made with a mix of oatmeal derived from a miraculous growth of wild oats to a prophet in the wilderness and water from the sacred spring of a pious hermit. They are do not taste 'heavenly' as such, but eating one is generally sufficient. You have somehow eaten no more and no less food than you actually need. The feeling of fullness without being overstuffed is curious and sometimes disturbing. However, what is perhaps more remarkable is that the eater generally comes away with a strong sense of purpose and mission, as if they have just had a serious chat with Aslan.

9. It is generally accepted that one cannot stop fauns and satyrs from drinking to excess, even when such a thing would be very useful. The fauns of the Bear Coast groves, however, bake a spongey pancake using milk and various ground herbs. This slowly releases nourishing and analgesic properties that will blunt all but the worst hangovers, though it is time consuming to prepare and relatively expensive.

10. The Half-Giants of the Kuthan Highlands raise Cyclopian goats - goats standing as high as a horse, with one large eye in the centre of their foreheads and three horns.  The marrow of these goats is mixed with cornmeal and baked into unleavened rounds. The resulting bread is edible for humans, but when moistened with a little vinegar, forms an excellent bait for many of the great cats of the highlands.