Produce of Punth

Following my own advice, I look to put down a little something about Punthite agriculture.

The majority of crops grown in Punth are quite like those found over the mountains in the North - be they varieties or outright different sub-species that prosper in the warmer, dryer climate. There are however some exceptions to this rule, a result of the tinkering done by the first of the Qryth that has resulted in that biome's particular set of circumstances. 

Some of their work merely produced larger, more nutritious, more resistant crops, accelerating the work that would normally take farmers (or nature, or the Divine) much longer. Sometimes, however, they produced far stranger cultigens. 

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Awake, for morning brims in each bowl! Awake, for the service that brings plenty and the plenty that fuels service! Pour out the cup of correct ambition!

Phahk is grown largely in the hill country on the coasts of the Stained Sea. Phahk trees can grow as high as eight metres, have smooth red-brown bark and leaves that are usually a shade of slightly blueish green. It produces tawny or fulvous blossoms. 

After flowering, the tree produces thumb-sized berries, the colour of tortoiseshell. These are picked, sliced, dried, par-boiled and pressed. The resulting maroon syrup is diluted and drunk hot by the Qyrth as a form of stimulant: as wine is to brandy, coffee would be to Phahk*. 

Diluted Phahk is served in various concentrations. One part boiled and filtered water to One part Phahk is served to the Qryth in quantities like fortified wine; Three parts water to One part Phahk in quantities like wine or doppelbock; Five parts water to One part Phahk like strong ale. 

These are referred to as One-Over, Three-Over and Five-Over from the numbers generally shown on a Phahk service: 1/₽, 3/₽, 5/₽. Human beings can consume Phahk in small quantities safely but it is considered an acquired taste, as it is mouth-puckeringly tart. A good host provides ramekins of a smooth sweet custard or syllabub flavoured with fragrant herbs to go with it. 

When in the field, Qryth rations have been known to include a form of pre-prepared bottled Three-Over flavoured with aniseed, known as Campaign Phahk.

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Let each function be marked. Let each mark be clear. Let clarity come from form and pigment. Let pigment be produced by the correct functions.

Along the main rivers of Punth, you will find occasional well-placed polders, blocks of colour in the dusty landscape. These are plantations of dye-shrubs. The dye-shrub grows no higher than two and half metres and requires plenty of water and care, but produces in the thick peel of its fruits and the thin curling sheets of its bark the ingredients needed for pigments. Punth architecture and custom tends to colourful symbols or decorations - this is where that comes from. 

A dye-shrub is not in appearance as colourful as fresh paint: the bark of a red dye-shrub looks about as red as a cinnamon stick until it is aged and ground.  The fruits are harvested in summer, the bark in winter and they produced different shades of the same colour. However, the processed peel is only seen by foreign buyers in winter and thus is referred to as 'Winter Red' or 'Winter Green', despite being harvested in Summer. Likewise, the processed bark is called 'Summer Blue' or 'Summer Orange'.

The dye-shrub is, however, largely produced for domestic consumption. Of far greater interest to Imperial or League merchants is the product of the mills and furnaces in Punth's chemic workshops, the fist-sized pearlescent clumps of 'Punthite Alum' that serves a superior mordant or dye fixative. 

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The Beast feeds visibly. The Plant feeds invisibly. The Rock needs no strength beyond itself.  

The vast steeds and draft animals of the Qryth would take a vast quantity of regular fodder (to say nothing of more exotic dietary needs), and Punth is not provided with sumptuous meadows. Accordingly, a form of feed was developed for them, containing most of the substances that a Qryth mount requires in their diet. This is Twitchroot, named so for the quick and obvious responses it exhibits towards external stimuli, twisting gently to face the sun or shying away from a glancing blow. A common story in traveller's tales of Punth is watching an infuriated ox bash hard into a twitchroot - only to receive a blow from one of the plant's main limbs a few seconds later!

Twitchroot plants are faintly conical in structure, with between three and five thick roots visible entering the ground. Several limbs with thin needle-like leaves stand up straight from the top. The bulk of the plant is a sort of ochre, streaked with crimson, but the leaves are the colour of palm fronds. Twitchroot groves do not have to lie as close to the river as dye-shrub polders, but are still situated fairly close to watercourses or reservoirs. 

The bulbous roots are harvested one at a time. Each root has several large nodules on it: as long as the top nodule is left intact, the root will regrow. These nodules are heavy, almost melon-sized. They keep well in fairly cool conditions and are served to livestock roughly diced or mashed. Safely harvesting Twitchroot is done by splashing the sensitive uppermost branches with very cold water, which can stun the plant for an hour or so - allowing harvesters to produce the tough but slim saws needed to remove the roots.

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For each man, two garment sets and two blankets. All else to be provided by the Servants of the People.

For every eight fields of flax grown in Punth, there is one field of the Sky-Princes' Flax.  This does produces broader leaved, taller plants. The cloth produced by these is whiter and finer than regular linen, requiring less bleaching and hackling.** Most importantly, however, it is free of several substances that the Qryth may be allergic to. Despite the first generation of Qryth's re-making of themselves and their descendants to better fit Terrae Vertebrae, the lottery of birth and bloodline does produce Qryth with greater sensitivities to the indigenous flora of Punth. The Sky-Princes' Flax is one way to avoid unpleasant rashes.

To a foreign cloth merchant, the linen produced by the Sky-Princes' Flax is merely a high-quality linen, of use only as a rarity (though it would rarely if ever be sold outside Punth). Most would probably take it to be merely a different grade of cloth or style of weave. A non-Qryth wearing the cloth next to the skin does stand a chance of an unpleasant but non-fatal reaction. Likewise, walking through a blossoming field of the Flax can cause more than the usual number of sneezes.

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*I don't know if I care to speak ex cathedra on whether coffee exists in Terrae Vertebrae or not. I suspect the answer is 'not round here'.

**Again, I don't care to put the stamp of canon on it, but it's entirely in character for the Qryth to have produced genetically engineered crops but completely failed to re-create the mechanical cotton gin.