Canonfire! - Humanoid Cuisine

So what's so evil about the humanoid races of Greyhawk? Well, you are what you eat.

Humanoid cuisine
By: Muscles
Used with Permission. Do not repost without obtaining prior permission from the author.

Humanoid Cuisine

Throughout history the higher races have known not to eat the unclean food of the orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, and their allies. The reason why the lower races resorted to fouling their own food is a matter of speculation, but Norman the bearded-sage of goblinoids at Grey College postulates that it can be traced to the age of the Fang and Claw wars in the prehistory of Oerth. He reasons that battlechiefs of the goblinoids realized that the fangless races would capture outposts and advance quicker by resupplying themselves on captured fodder. While always being cannibals in part, they had heretofore not consciously decided to take this tactical step. Ages later, their wicked food making practices are as entrenched in their culture as nuanced debating is in ours.

Though the various lower races have regional and racial differences, the following examples will fill the reader with enough gist to statiate themselves on the subject matter.

The waterbarrel, aka- The spittank: Often a simple barrel or cured standing skin, a drinking bowl (invariably the skullcap of a sweetrace) floats on top. The common tradition is to drink then choke up something squeezy back into the tank, being first to the tank has its rewards. The loogeys eventually dissolve or settle to the bottom (where thirsty characters may not notice). note: when goblins are part of a mixed tribe, they often supplement their meager rations at the spittank.

Dried mystery meat: Runs the gamut from sweetraces to traditional livestock. Sausages are most often cased in sweertrace entrails, and a rare delicacy of the leaders is unquestionably dwelf sausage. Even traditionally recognizable dried or smoked or salted cuts of livestock will have been slathered on, or smoked over a funeral pyre, or urinated on, or salted with other unclean meats.

Cheeses: Cured in skulls or other wicked containers, goblinoid cheeses may or may not apppear to be wholesome. Don't be fooled! Most often at least a splash of blood is added to the mix, and a suprise eyeball in the center is a treat for all. The most evil of cheeses will be those cured from sweetrace mothers milk. It goes without saying the rarity of this delicacy and strength of the opponents that eat it.

Other Meat: In a humanoids larder will be recent kills, bled and evicerated and hung on hooks to season. While most prisoners aren't immediately subject to this fate, characters friends and henchmen fallen in a raid will likely wind up here. Most tribes prefer cooked meat, so the spit and the pot have cooked gruesome meals. Babies taken on raids will often be given to the priests for sacrifices aka-priest picnics. The dead in the tribe will be treated like any other meat, but with less triumphant gluttony. High level priests will raise undead from the half gnawed corpses of their comrades, and sometimes for shock value will raise undead babies. These are evil races indeed. Note: Humanoids will eat anything they kill; spiders, roaches, snakes, anything.

Breads: Not often thought of by the higher races as fang fare, never the less the value in war for transportable foodstuffs has made goblinkind warp even the staff of life. Wild grains and nuts are gathered by subject races (mostly their females). The cooks add bitter herbs and blood and pour black unleavened batter into skulls and thrown into the fire where ashes are cooked into it. The heavy and nutritious dry bitter black bread (often called elfsh*t) is given to warchiefs to dispense to raiders and slavers. If a powerfull cheif or priest takes a liking to it they will eat it with bloodbutter.

Drinks: Stout earthy bloodmixed beers drank from the obligatory skull is the mainstay of all goblinkind. Spirits too, will be mixed with blood or sometimes urine ( beaten prisoner urine is the best). Some tribes make a bloody curdled kumiss from prisoner mothers milk, but this is a rarity.

Adventurers who slay a raiding party will find many abhorrent foods in their enemy's packs; spiderpaste, finger food(yes fingers to gnosh on),pickled eyeballs, dried rats, skins of bloodwater etc.. These discoveries will reinforce the moral correctness of eradicating such horrific carnisuers.