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starry-bi-sky · 9 months ago

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tales of the passerine - danny fenton being bruce wayne's first kid

okay okay. so this is like a continuation/elaboration of my oneshot/prompt i wrote about the idea that Danny was the first batkid. We have a lot of aus where he joins the family after the rest of the bats do, right? So hey! Lets shake things up a bit. Danny is the first to be adopted by Bruce Wayne.

Danny's parents and unfortunately Jazz die shortly after the events of TUE -- how so? I was gonna say an ecto-filter explosion, that would call back to the TUE explosion and trauma behind that. But lets do something new! Carbon-monoxide poisoning.

It's not too unexpected for something to break in the Fenton house, especially with the Fenton parents' questionable understanding of proper weapon handling and lab safety. The water heater broke from a stray shot by one of the weapons, and was promptly MacGyver'd incorrectly. Danny went to stay with Tucker for a guys' night, and came back to a dead silent house.

(Danny's neighbors got a very unfortunate shock when he ran to the next house over in hysterics.)

There was a lot of shuffling around with CPS, the police. People had to be called in to handle the equipment in the lab, and the GIW was rumoring to show up in aid to clearing the scene. When Danny heard of that, he immediately went and dismantled the ghost portal to the best of his abilities. He burned the physical blueprints of all his parents' inventions, their blueprints on the ghost portal, and their most dangerous weapons were destroyed beyond recognition. Anything to prevent the GIW from getting their hands on his parents' tech.

It opened up another investigation, but he was not under the list of suspects. He was placed in the care of Vlad Masters, where they then went back to the rebuilt castle mansion in Wisconsin. Danny, terrified of the future that has once passed and may do so again, shuts down in his grief. Inadvertently, he ends up somewhat repressing his ghost half. Something Vlad, who is grieving Madeline but relishing in Jack's demise and his custody of Daniel, is not very happy with.

Vlad's... gone into a bit of a mental health spiral. He's becoming increasingly possessive over Daniel, the final remnants of his friends and a liminal being like him. He doesn't like that Danny's repressing his ghost half -- both out of genuine concern as a ghost, but also because of his desire to control Danny and groom him into the perfect son. If you ever had a phase where you read Dark SBI found family fics, first off; me too bro, and second off; those are the vibes I'm thinking of.

Danny's mentally shut down from grief! And fear. He's dropped into a bad depressive state -- paralyzed with grief and the terror of the inevitable. Clockwork saved his parents because he believes in second chances, but what's the point of that when his family ended up dead anyways? Danny doesn't wanna believe that he's destined to become evil, and he's holding out onto that hope, but it's a thin line, and he feels utterly hopeless and trapped. He hasn't used his powers or ghost form since he trashed the lab, and Vlad has alarms set up to prevent him from trying to escape.

He's also unintentionally cut off Sam and Tucker -- both of whom are so scared and concerned for Danny too, and are trying their damndest to reach out to him. He keeps ignoring their texts. Danny basically haunts Vlad's manor. He goes out to eat if he has to, attends parties Vlad drags him to, and stays in his room all day if he can.

At parties, Vlad doesn't allow Danny to leave his side, or really talk to anyone -- not that Danny wants to. A product of Vlad's increasing possessiveness. Well, he almost doesn't let Danny leave his side. Danny has a habit of slipping off to hide somewhere for the parties whenever he can, and Vlad reluctantly allows it so long as he stays alone.

This becomes an advantage when eventually, Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham after missing for years, and holds a bright charity ball to celebrate the return. Vlad has been chomping at the bits to get his hands on Wayne Industries, and with the return of its owner there is no better opportunity to wipe out his rival. He goes, and he as normal, brings Daniel with him.

Vlad thinks Wayne will bleed his little heart out for Daniel's poor orphan sob story -- he's a fellow orphan himself, after all. He's not wrong; Wayne's little heart will bleed, just not in the way that benefits him.

Bruce sees Vlad and Danny approaching before they're even close enough to introduce themselves - and like with many of the children he will soon come to care for, it's like someone set a mirror into the past right in front of him.

Danny Fenton's suit is tailor-made for him, and despite the fact that it's his perfect size, the sag in his shoulders, the ducked down head, and the way he hunches into himself all pictures the image of a child in shoes too big for him. There's a far away, glazed over look in his eyes and grief marble-cut into the lines of his face. There's not enough makeup in the world that will hide the dark circles under his eyes.

("My nephew, Daniel Fenton." Vlad's hands are possessive on Danny's shoulders. Bruce immediately notices the way the boy tenses under his touch. "His parents passed recently, and as his godfather I was designated his guardian.") ("I'm so sorry, the loss must've been terrible.") ("Yes, carbon-monoxide poisoning caused it. Daniel was out with friends, when he came home... they had already passed.") (Bruce immediately dislikes that Vlad shared the details of their death unprompted -- he likes it even less when Danny flinches at the reminder and hunches into himself.)

Danny runs off at some point earlier into the charity. At this point, parties are still being held at Wayne Manor (because iirc google search mentioned that was a thing at first before it was changed), so he disappears and hides in one of the empty rooms nearby. It just so happens to be the same room Bruce Wayne hides in when he needs a break from all of the socialization.

Thus begins a long, long process of trust. Bruce can't reveal his hand as being smarter than he looks, but he can be compassionate. Kindness needs no measure of intelligence. He keeps Danny company for as long as he can before he runs the risk of being found.

Rinse and repeat. Vlad insistently wants Wayne Industries, and he'll go to as many Wayne parties as he can to get his hooks into the man. The problem is that Bruce Wayne is never alone, and getting him alone is impossible. Finding him too. It's like the man never stops moving. Always talking to someone, always circling somewhere. He orbits around the room as if he isn't the sun of the Gotham Elite's solar system.

Danny's had such repetitive behavior that Vlad never thinks to believe that Bruce Wayne is disappearing to go talk to him. That "Vlad's" son is even interacting with him at all. Danny never gives him a reason to think so, and neither does Bruce.

Danny doesn't actually acknowledge Bruce until a handful of parties in, where he hands Bruce a small slip of paper he smuggled in that says; "don't trust Vlad". Danny's face stays carefully blank, but he's so tense that his hands are trembling, and he's purposely looking away from him. Bruce plasters a smile onto his face, slips the paper into his pocket, and tells him "okay".

(he's been busy with his own goals with the mafia, but he sets aside time to investigate Vlad Masters. He was holding off. Until now.)

Danny does eventually start speaking to Bruce, he's starting to really like the guy. He's starting to see a little hope, even as Vlad is starting to get more and more agitated with him the more he refuses to use his powers.

He reaches out to Sam and Tucker again, and starts trying to reconnect with them. Vlad has spyware on his phone, and he limits the amount of times he can talk to them. A weird parental control lock of some sort that leaves a time limit on how long he can talk to them for. 30 minutes. Danny doesn't tell them anything about Mr. Wayne.

Danny, slowly, wants out of here, and he's slowly gathering the motivation to do it. Vlad is genuinely scaring him -- and Danny wonders just how truthful the past-future Vlad was when he told him that Danny wanted his ghost half separate. He starts trying to come up with an escape plan.

Vlad has anti-ghost wards everywhere around the mansion, and while they're always on, they boost to full power at sunset. The doors and windows are always locked, all main exits have alarms set on them. The only reason it's not super extensive is because Danny hasn't tried leaving at all yet, so Vlad hasn't had to tighten anything.

At night, Vlad locks the door to his room and puts up an anti-ghost ward around the room. The mansion is on the outside westward side of Madison, more entrenched in rural Wisconsin. The closest town is a four-way stop sign with one house on three corners, and an open bar on the fourth. Not much to go.

He refuses to go to Sam and Tucker; Vlad would look there first. It's too dangerous. Vlad would sound alarm bells and have a manhunt looking for him, Danny can't risk going just anywhere. Too much risk of being found, sold out, or caught. There's really nowhere for him to hide.

Until there is. Bruce is telling Danny about the history of Wayne Manor, and says, as casually as saying the weather; "The manor has dozens of empty rooms, I'm sure Alfred wouldn't mind filling another one if he could." And quietly, hesitantly, Bruce places a careful hand on Danny's shoulder, unrestrictive and gentle; "He wouldn't mind getting one ready for you if you need one."

And there it is. There's his out.

Danny, just as quietly, replies; "I'll keep that in mind."

The ball starts rolling.

Now I've been trying to summarize this au as much as possible for length convenience, but Vlad has been steadily growing more and more controlling. More emotionally manipulative. More agitated at Danny for not using his powers.

He wants Wayne Industries under his thumb but he's been steadily growing more and more concerned with Danny. He's started grabbing him, yanking him around, shaking him; trying to goad him into using his powers. He gets angry when Danny doesn't react, or tells him he doesn't want to use his powers. He hasn't outright attacked him, but he's getting there. This has been happening over the time it takes for Bruce to indirectly offer Danny sanctuary at his home.

It all comes to a head when Vlad stops going to parties at all -- something Danny has to pretend he isn't upset about -- because Vlad doesn't want him around other people anymore. Vlad rarely goes now without him, and only leaves to go to a Wayne function or to handle something at VladCo.

Danny can't wait for Vlad to leave long enough to escape. So he leaves during the night of a big storm. Vlad's locked him in his room, but Danny doesn't bother trying to go for it; he goes to the alarmed window instead. Danny's been repressing his ghost half so long that he can't access his powers immediately anymore -- he can feel it, he knows its there, but he can't quite reach it.

He breaks the lock by hand.

Immediately the alarm goes off through the entire castle, filling the room with red, and he scrambles for the rope the Wisconsin Ghost left for him a few months back. Danny's already out and climbing down the side of the castle before Vlad even reaches his door -- the only good thing about the entire room being ghost-proof is that Vlad can't get in that way.

The rope ends before it reaches the bottom, and he's still twenty feet in the air. It won't kill him if he lands it right. Danny takes his chances, and drops. He breaks his ankle, but he survives.

And he fucking books it to the back garden. He hears Vlad shrieking over the thunder and rain.

I'll save the full experience for a future oneshot, but Danny makes it out into the nearby woods and forcibly experiences what it's like to be in a horror game, trying to hide from the thing that's hunting you. There's only one thing going through his mind; "i'm going to die"

I have this mental image for this scene. Very stereotypical horror imo. Where Danny is hiding behind a tree, with a hand over his mouth, and Vlad is a few feet away from him, glowing ominously red through the trees, trying to search for him.

Danny doesn't get away from this unscathed, but he does get away alive. That's all he could ask for. He gets away by getting his ghost half awakened long enough to transform into Phantom and fly to Gotham.

But he gets to Wayne Manor, he gets to Bruce. Or, at least, Alfred answers the door from his insistent pounding. Danny's just in tears and Alfred gets him in the living room, wrapped in a towel, with ice on his swollen leg before he has to step out and alert Bruce.

Bruce already breaks multiple traffic laws on a nightly basis. And that's just with the sheer existence of the batmobile itself, not including the speeding and military artillery attached. He breaks double the amount trying to speed back to the cave and get out of the suit.

Right off the bat: Bruce will know, at least before Dick enters the picture, about danny's powers. He'll figure out something considering the fact that Danny traveled from Wisconsin to New York in a single night. That'll be a bit of complicated affair, but I've already got something in mind.

Actually it'll probably be very soon after Danny joins the family, because Bruce tries to offer to fight for custody for Danny - the state Danny was in at arrival is clear enough evidence for a trial. But Danny immediately shuts it down, says it's not going to work and then Vlad will know Danny's with him and he won't be safe. He tells him that Vlad cannot know Danny was with Bruce.

Danny's biggest regret was not telling his parents he was a halfa, and while he doesn't want to tell mister wayne (yet), he does tell him about Vlad being one. He needs to know why Danny can't be seen with Bruce. So he tells him, and Danny's current plan is to just hide out from Vlad until he turns 18. That way, he has no more legal jurisdiction over him. After that? He's not sure.

And to wrap this up, since this has already gotten very long and I can make more posts about this au later; I've thought about it, and I'm going to say that Danny does become a vigilante before Dick enters the scene. He goes by, as you probably guessed; Nightingale. "Gale" for short.

#dpxdc #dp x dc #danny fenton is not the ghost king #dp x dc crossover #dpxdc crossover #tales of the passerine au #i dont want to overemphasize how much vlad sucks but also i dont want to downplay it. but also i didn't wanna make this post too long #i didn't emphasize enough on vlad's possessiveness but i wanted to make this post as general enough as possible for the au.#for some more wiggle room in the future if i make more posts about this au.#the consequences for Danny repressing himself was not a concern i was focused on for the post but i am thinking about it and mulling it ove #i'll be blunt my main specific reason for why this occurs shortly after tue is bc it means dani doesn't exist yet and it means i dont have #to include her in the continuation of this au. i love that girl but she's a dead weight. i dont wanna come up with an elaborate reason as #to why she's not in the picture when i can just say 'she never created in the first place' instead. i don't have anything for her to do #I don't want to risk giving her a poor plot line just so that she exists in au.#sometimes i really hate just how long my posts get. i feel like it kills my engagement. but i also don't want to make posts that have #a part 1 and part 2 just because I think it got too long.#i feel kinda bad for having Danny take the spot of 'first partner' from Dick. But that was part of the reason i was inspired to make this a #i've already got the skeleton of a reasoning for danny becoming a vigilante being made in my head.#He can't go by Phantom since that risks drawing Vlad's attention -- a new vigilante showing up in Gotham. a place the visited frequently #who goes by the name Phantom? He'd be on that faster than chickens on meat. and nightingale has familial meaning behind it due to being #part of an ancestral name. it follows robin's theme of using it to honor his parents while still having its own unique enough lore to stand #on its own without feeling like a cheap copy. plus the bonus meta reason that it follows the bird theme. which personally is vital to me #my other alternative to Nightingale is Sparrow. mostly because it has good phonetic structure for a hero name. not too many syllables #a good balance of consonants and vowels. dont want a hero name with too many syllables or unbalanced consonants. or worse; both.#my reasonings is that hero names should be easy for a civ or teammate to yell while still being understood. max amount of syllables before #it threatens to become too wordy is 3. If it goes over 3 it should have a balanced consonant-vowel ratio. Wonder Woman is a good example #some things got cut here that were in the initial oneshot. like danny giving bruce his physical ghost core and showing up bloody.#the first son au

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serpentface · 1 month ago

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What are each of the main cast’s favourite foods, and how to they reflect what they grew up eating/their background/broader cultural trends?

Key for the constructed foods that come up in this post:

Nara: a type of citrus fruit, comparable to a lime in sourness. Peledyo: a type of fermented fish sauce used as seasoning in of itself or a base for other sauces. (This is a knockoff of irl garum). This is FUNDAMENTAL to Imperial Wardi cuisine, and closely analogous/connected variants are produced by all the peoples of the Viper as well as across most of the Lowlands (southeast of Imperial Wardin). Magah: a type of tuberous root vegetable. Similar to a potato, but coming from a wholly different plant and more strongly flavored (notes of cabbage) with yellow-orange flesh. Heavily cultivated in the Highlands and considered more of a famine food elsewhere in Imperial Wardin. Yute: a cultivar in the same species as magah with purple flesh and a sweeter taste, a staple in the mountainous parts of Kosov and some other parts of the Burri Republic. Gaiyi: a brassica cultivar used in Kos cuisine, resembling broccolini. Completely absent in Imperial Wardin. Yamnina reyla: the premier spice blend used in Wardi cuisines, it has some regional variants but its core ingredients are crushed chilis, coriander, cumin, and firebug (imparts little flavor but significant reddish-orange color that gives this mix its name), all ground together. Camiche: an edible seed, eaten as a nut. Kolis: a cactus-like plant with edible fruits and young shoots. The fruit tastes like watermelon and is very sweet, but has more sour notes. Anuje: a sap extracted from one of the region's few native palms, has a sweet, molasses-esque flavor. This is the staple sweetener and culturally favored over honey in most provinces, consumption of honey is generally seen as a 'rural' thing]

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Tigran spent the first 11 years of his life in pretty extreme poverty as an agricultural laborer so did not have a lot of exciting food. His family is Ubiyan-Wardi (pretty rare ethnic minority in the region, mostly descending from people hired or enslaved as war captives and/or indentured servants for labor by Imperial Bur at its height). Many of these people formed communities that retain their cultural identity to this day, but these largely occur in the north and in the province of Lobera. Most people with Ubiyan heritage in South Wardin come from more isolated lines that fully integrated and intermarried with the Wardi(nae) population, and are heavily 'Wardinized' in the present day.

Tigran's family is an example of one with this cultural heritage being largely lost- they know that much of their ancestry comes from far northeast across the Viper but they don't know from where exactly. They are culturally South Wardi but with some traditions (and names, 'Tigran' and 'Otto' are both Ubiyan given names in origin) that have survived passed down from parent to child. To the point of this post, a lot of these traditions involve food.

He mostly ate a pretty typical South Wardi agricultural diet with the majority of his meals being variations on maize and lentil porridge, yams, onions, dairy, and foraged plants. His village also reared horses for milk and wool and ducks and fowl for eggs (and occasionally meat). He lived right on the Brilla River so would get the benefit of meat from fish or the occasional wild duck or goose. When he was 5 someone in his village killed a bull crocodile that had been eating their horses and they all had a big pit roast with it to celebrate, but he barely remembers this.

A major Ubiyan cultural element that he experienced in his childhood diet was a form of pasta. His mother and grandmother would make pasta out of maize dough in the shape of a cowrie, which they just referred to as 'little shells'. They had a secret ingredient used to toughen the consistency of the maize dough to hold the shape but wouldn't tell him, since this was apparently only for the women to know. His mother planned on teaching his future wife to make these little shells, and made it very clear she wouldn't let him marry any woman who couldn't get the technique down. To celebrate the new year, they would make a larger variant stuffed with soft horsemilk cheese, explaining that it was for good luck and abundance in the next year. This was never a Favorite food of his as a child (his favorite was the joyous occasion he got to eat fatty, non-gamey domestic duck), but he's never been able to find these little shells anywhere else, hasn't seen his family since he was 11, and misses it.

His FAVORITE food is duck. The best meal he's probably ever had was roast duck glazed with date wine, dried nara, chilis, and a little bit of peledyo. Duck is central fare for a holiday that is timed when the reed ducks return to the region and start to breed. This moment is recognized as the transition from a period of seasonal barrenness to abundance (the mid rainy season through mid dry season span in which plant life flourishes, ends with the last harvest periods for most staple crops). It involves a feasting day in which most people make meals based around preserved fruits/vegetables, early wild forage, and duck (hunted or slaughtered).

Tigran completing his initiation as a Galenii monk (which involves a year of only taking food received via begging) timed itself very close to this festival occurring. So not only did he Finally get to eat regular meals, but he had never in his entire LIFE tasted anything so good. He was 12 years old and was guided by his mentor into an epiphany that like, 'this IS what it's all for, guaranteeing that we have the season of abundance year after year. AND more importantly I get to eat really really really good meals provided by the temple'.

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Palo grew up in the very cushy end of the mercantile commoner class with his father being a guild glassmaker, and lived in the province Odkotonnos (one of the more agriculturally rich) and city of Godsmouth proper (THE center of trade), so he had regular access to a decent variety of pretty good food. He and most of his family are first generation immigrants from Kosov (a province of the contemporary Burri Republic, occupying the same latitude as South Wardin). He moved as a baby and grew up eating a lot of Kos food in addition to the general western Wardi diet (which itself has a heavy Burri/Kos/Titen influence).

(The most immediately distinctive difference between these and Wardi cuisines is staple grains/starches often being eaten in the form of noodles, which is more broadly a characteristic of a wide span of the Inner Seaways peoples west of the Mouth. The other big difference is a fermented corn sauce (functionally similar to soy sauce) being the foundational umami flavoring, rather than the peledyo fish sauce that is a staple in Wardin)

He also spent a cumulative few years of his life in Kosov and there had the favorite thing he's ever eaten, which is a mung bean noodle dish with catfish, yute, gaiyi, spinach, onions, and a chili-olive oil sauce. Some of the core ingredients are rare if not absent in Imperial Wardin (magah is generally considered a famine food and not widely cultivated outside of the Highlands, gaiyi grows in the humid montane conditions found in southwestern Kosov, and this particular kind of catfish was notably tastier to him than commonly eaten Wardi species) so he's never had this exact dish or a close equivalent since.

Otherwise his diet throughout most of his life was very seafood heavy in addition to staple grains, starches, and legumes. He dislikes most non-fish meat and hates the texture of fat, so eats a lot of whitefish when given the chance.

One thing that actually like, comes up in canon as a thing he really loved is seabass he ate at social events with his family. The bass is roasted whole and (along with other elements of the meal) surrounded by dips and condiments. You pick up the fish meat with pieces of pounded yam and dip/scoop up condiments before eating it. On a really nice occasion, condiments could include fermented corn sauce in plain and semi-sweet form, Basically Aioli (a blend of mashed garlic and olive oil), several types of peledyo (sweet anuje-wine peledyo, bitter vinegar peledyo, plain salty peledyo, etc), several hot sauces (the typical formula here is different kinds of chilis mixed with olive oil, cumin, coriander, garlic, and citrus juice, all mashed into a liquid paste), a sweet anuje-garlic sauce, chopped onions/parsley raw in citrus juice, a mash of peas + onions cooked in duckfat, fermented salted crab roe, plain olive oil, chili-olive oil, etc.

This style of eating is an aspect of the Burri cultural sphere (and the Odkotonnos provincial subculture by extension), utilized for meals during intimate social gatherings. A main course of meat cooked minimally (or wholly un-)seasoned and served with a variety of sauces and seasonings to be sampled independently aims to bring out and emphasize each component's unique qualities. A palate cleanser (usually a weak wine infused with a citrus fruit's juice) is sipped in between. This also had/has levels religious function; the traditional condiments in this meal (most of which aren't represented here) are connected to major deities of the Burri pantheon, and the diversity and abundance of the meal is recognized as the gods' many gifts made manifest (and some of each are left as offerings in a home shrine).

Palo and his family are practitioners of the Faith of the Seven Faced God (a sect of which has spread into the Burri Republic, where it is currently a very significant religious minority) and have been for several generations. So the religious aspects were framed differently in his experience, but have similar functions in representing the great abundance that God provides. (He was also brought up instructed to leave some of the corn sauce Specifically as an offering in the household shrine. This sauce is a staple across cuisines in the Burri sphere and a key offering to Vazhirum, the goddess of maize, patron of the city Titenegal, and functionally the chief agricultural deity of the pantheon. Offerings of the sauce to agricultural Faces is retained as a practice in Burri sphere sects of the Faith).

Anyway Palo mournfully thinks about this delicious seabass meal with his extended family while sitting in an alleyway with Tigran and choking down unseasoned boiled pigeon (that the guy literally caught by hand) with pounded yam, not a condiment in sight.

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Brakul was raised in a low cattle-wealth clan in the West Rivers region of the Highlands. He lived in the Urbin river valley, which is one of the largest and most agriculturally fruitful (though his clan itself was located upland and could not grow a lot of this themselves). The West Rivers Hill Tribes have an amicable trade relationship with the province of Ephennos, so he had a fair deal of exposure to Wardi trade goods, but this didn't affect his diet much. He grew up eating an everyday diet consisting of the core staples of barley + amaranth + magah + LOTS of dairy products, in addition to some hunted/fished meat and foraged wild plants.

Crayfish was his favorite food growing up. He lived in immediate proximity to several creeks, so freshwater food (crayfish, trout, mussels, frogs) could be a pretty major portion of his diet during the summers. On some occasions, crayfish and mussels would be boiled to make a broth with chilis and onions, then served in a soup with yogurt, barley, butter, fennel, and magah. This was his absolute favorite meal and he particularly liked the crayfish themselves (his brother didn't, so would trade his crayfish for Brakul's mussels).

Living in a coastal city and being introduced to the concept of Crabs and Lobsters (it's like a crayfish but HUGE) later in life was lifechanging. Crab meat is now his absolute favorite food. He sometimes attempts to recreate the crayfish boil dish with crab (he does a pretty solid job but the yogurt always ends up curdled). He's also a fan of a dish where a softshell crab is fried and then coated with a concentrated sticky sweet peledyo sauce.

He's pretty enthusiastic about trying new foods (and benefited tremendously from having a rich boyfriend who can facilitate this) and has decided that anara is the best game the lowlands has to offer. Their tails are VERY rich, tender, and fatty, very good roasted with a sweet+spicy sauce. He first experienced this at the wedding of one of Janeys' cousins and now insists on eating it regularly/pursuing anara on hunts over more favored game like gazelle and nechoi. There's also a greater variety of alcoholic beverages available, and he's become fond of the a very decadent form of date wine sweetened with anuje and imported cardamom.

He also likes + misses a dish composed of feydhi (highlands khait) fat which is rendered, mashed with dried berries and a little honey, left out in the snow to chill solid, and then sliced and eaten on bread. This is a staple in midwinter feasts and a special treat. Its considered an obligation for each tribe's chief clan to fatten some of their khait on grain and then provide their fat to their constituents for this feast (the ability to Afford to give this gift effectively demonstrates + reinforced their power). Young children and pregnant women get first dibs/the biggest helpings (regarded as good for a growing body, helps pack fat on for the lean season) so there's a childhood nostalgia aspect to it. It's something he would look forward to every year.

He hasn't had any access to this dish whatsoever in South Wardin, as khait are virtually never slaughtered except as an act of desperation (culturally considered to be poor meat in general) and the Coldest winter temperatures average in the high 40s F (sub-freezing temperatures and snow Happen but not predictably or regularly) which is not adequate to cool fat to the desired consistency. This is particularly torturous because feydhi are actually quite common in South Wardin as pack animals and have a tendency to get VERY fat on the seasonal abundance of grass (being an 'easy keeper' landrace adapted to having nutritional needs met by much poorer mountain forage). His khait She-Bites is a feydhi and was sold to him cheap (on account of behavioral issues), he was originally intending to have her butchered but got too attached.

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Etsushir grew up in a clanless Jazaiti community, in a coastal fishing town northeast from the city of Wardin proper. The existence of clanless Jazait mingling with Wardi populations long predates Imperial Wardin as an entity, but these communities have grown substantially in the past two centuries, in large part due to heavy encroachment on Jazaiti fishing territory causing major subsistence issues and driving many people to look for employment to sustain themselves. They are very marginalized ethnic minorities and tend to form distinct sub-communities amid their Wardi counterparts, but the decentralized structure of Jazait society and certain practices (like polyandrous marriage and minimization of reproductive females in any given family) cannot be fully retained in these settings (both on the levels of pure logistics and a result of disenfranchisement). As such, these groups tend to experience a degree of 'Wardinization', which affects all aspects of life, and in this case The Food.

Etsushir would have grown up in large part eating a typical coastal South Wardi diet (lots of maize porridges, lentils, and fish), in addition to exploiting uncultivated resources that his human Wardi counterparts physically cannot (certain grasses especially) or culturally Do not (only a couple seaweeds are considered good eating).

His favorite food is part of the Fusion Cuisine found in some of these partly Wardinized Jazaiti communities. It's a dish consisting of several kinds of seaweed mixed with hominy and raw tuna that has all been marinated in vinegar peledyo. His family and wider community have adopted the Faith Of The Seven Faced God and practice what would be considered a syncretic folk-variant. The Jazaiti Moonfather (who created tuna and sometimes takes the form of one) is associated with the Face Mitlamache, and tuna is often eaten in place of beef during the Mitlamache-focused maize planting festival. His family getting to catch, keep, and eat their own tuna would have been a special occasion largely reserved for these celebrations.

(The strictly Jazaiti version of this dish uses seaweed and fish in addition to the young shoots of a type of grass, all cured in nuji (VERY bitter native citrus, not commonly eaten by humans) juice. Elowey and human chemical sense of taste overlaps considerably, but elowey can digest a wider range of plant matter and have a substantially more complex experience with bitter tastes, a lot of foods from elowey cuisines are distastefully bitter to human palates)

He also has the genes for lactase persistence (VERY rare in the Jazait population, as well as the broader White Sea elowey population group). He doesn't like yogurt and finds adults drinking milk to be mildly disturbing, but is very fond of cheese. He prefers cowsmilk cheeses over the slightly more common and accessible horsemilk, and likes a fairly common Wardi cheese dish (a soft cowsmilk cheese cooked in a pepper/onion sauce and eaten atop grits).

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Faiza (and every other character from here on) is in the noble class and grew up eating a substantially more varied, calorie rich, and meat heavy diet than the average person. This doesn't mean that every meal is Very Fancy, they're still ultimately reliant on most of the same basic staples as the lower classes, but their everyday diet includes More of these staples at once, with more variety, more spices, and a much more regular addition of meat.

The Haidamanes are all multiethnic (most relevant here is that their father was Titen on his mother's side and South Wardi on his father's), they're squarely South Wardi in terms of cultural identity but were brought up eating some Titen cuisine on a more than incidental basis. Faiza was the only one of her siblings that was notably into this, she thinks the noodles are fun. A favorite standby would be a dish made with very thick mung bean noodles, chickpeas, pre-roasted horse udder, cabbage, and onion, which is all fried together in fermented corn sauce and garlic-olive oil.

Faiza really likes salutachin dog meat, most commonly eaten in a dish where it is roasted with a rub of olive oil, garlic, date wine, and smoked yamnina reyla. Salutachin is a dog breed specifically raised for meat and is a South-Wardi specific practice in the present day (livestock dog types fed on plant matter used to be more common across the region. Burri influence contributed to the notion (already extant in some Wardi groups) that ANY form of dog meat is unclean, and the practice is extinct or rare in most other parts).

This is kind of a luxury food and regarded as a delicacy. It's of critical importance that salutachin stock is kept entirely 'pure' and prevented from breeding with ANY other dogs, and fattened on exclusively vegetarian diets, generally maize and yams (this partly stems from wider dietary taboos surrounding consumption of predators, but largely just improves the taste of the meat). They can be more costly to maintain than other types of livestock (which will help feed themselves via grazing) or working dogs (which aren't supposed to be eaten and thus can be fed on any number of scraps). As such, it tends to be fairly expensive and reserved for special occasions, and is a mainstay at South Wardi wedding feasts.

Faiza has a notable childhood memory of being at her uncle's wedding, feeding a scrap of salutachin to one of the hunting dogs, and experiencing a kind of sick, nervous thrill at compelling a good animal to cannibalism. She interacts with food taboos/taboos in general more skeptically than average and experiences temptations to violate them, though she's never actually gone through with it on the food level. She doesn't ultimately disagree with any of them though, just interprets their necessity through her proto-materialist philosophical background instead of the strictly spiritual angle. She's very fixated with the stories of Godsmouth civilians starving to death in the siege resorting to eating feral dogs (which is VERY taboo) that had themselves eaten human corpses (thus this is like, the worst thing you could possibly eat short of an actual human corpse). She's kind of fascinated with cannibalism in general.

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Hibrides is from the city/province Erubinnos and predominantly of Yuroma-Wardi ethnicity. This refers to descendents of a Yuroma ethnic group first arrived as refugees several centuries prior, and is considered an Imperial Wardi subculture in the present day (practicing the state religion and fully integrated into the broader cultural sphere, but retaining a sub-identity).

Erubinnos has a near-equivalent makeup of South Wardi and Yuroma-Wardi inhabitants and its regional cuisine is influenced by both groups. (Some distinctive Yuroma elements are the regular consumption of raw fish, heavy specialization into smoked and cured meats (as a culinary form rather than a practicality), use of squid ink, and favoring of rice (which was first brought here by Yuroma migrants)). So Hibrides spent her first 15 years of life eating a bougie version of this diet before being moved to the province of Wardin for marriage.

She's a Very picky eater and has a lot of dislikes- she doesn't like most whitefish, most freshwater fish in general, tuna (doesn't actually dislike the taste but found a very big worm in her tuna once and it put her off forever), most red meats (she particularly doesn't like horsemeat, she got attached to a childhood pet horse to the culturally rare point of not wanting to eat Any horse meat altogether), eggplant, most lentils, or raw tomatoes. And to top it off she has a lower than average heat tolerance. So when she has a choice in the matter she tends to go for oily fish, fowl, rabbit and hares, and some reptiles like crocodile + turtles + certain snakes.

One of her favorite meals is an Erubinnos-specific dish where sardines (or other oily baitfish) are marinated in a sauce made with vinegar-peledyo, olive oil, and a sauce of mashed tomato + garlic + more olive oil, and eaten raw. This exact preparation with raw fish is uncommon in the city+province of Wardin, but she has the benefit of living in a household with a cook on hire and requests it very frequently. It reminds her of home.

She also used to love turtle meat (a type of softshell turtle is a delicacy here, usually eaten in soup). The Erubinnos regional turtle soup is kind of an outlier among Imperial Wardi cuisine in being very delicately flavored (a thin broth made with a dry wine, onions, fennel, rice, and usually ginger (imported)). She actually prefers the South Wardi variant (which is a heartier stew with heavy seasoning, eaten over grits).

She has had intense cravings for turtle during each pregnancy (which is interpreted as a bit of a concern- most river-based foods are thought to support a healthy pregnancy, but Cravings indicate that the womb is excessively 'hot/dry' and at greater risk of miscarriage). She ended up liking turtle a lot less after the first pregnancy when the cravings ended, and shifted her reptile soup focus to a species of python with a similar tasting (but less luxuriously fatty) meat. The return of the turtle cravings was one of her first indicators that she was pregnant a third time, and she doesn't stand a goddamn chance of getting any turtle meat in the 6th year of the drought.

She's pretty fond of a lot of game meat in general. Her favorite uncle was an avid hunter and made a point of bringing back gamebirds (and their eggs and feathers) for her, so she has a nostalgic fondness for dishes with duck, goose, ibis, pheasants, and the like. Hunting is also one of the diminishingly rare things she enjoys doing with her bitch husband and she's found that actually participating (granted, just in the form of watching and yelling directions) makes eating it afterwords more satisfying.

She'll only eat the nechoi they kill smoked and cured though, it tastes repulsive to her otherwise (in no small part due to this tending to be big boar nechoi killed in a prolonged, somewhat foolhardy solo struggle and is thus pumped with testosterone and fear hormones). This meat is stripped of (horrid tasting) fat, salted, slow-smoked, and usually eaten in soups.

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Janeys is also somewhat of a picky eater, in his case he dislikes almost any animal product that comes out of the water (with a particular disdain for shellfish and crustaceans), and consciously frames it as such- crocodile, duck, and goose is an exception because they don't live in the water permanently, turtle is on thin fucking ice. He has to make an exception for peledyo because it's in just about everything and he can't honestly say he dislikes it.

His favorite meat is beef. He and his siblings grew up eating more beef products than average (even for nobility) due to the agricultural aspect of their wealth being rooted in ownership of cattle herds (which are actually reared, managed, and slaughtered by peasants). The Haidamane family is considered 'new money' landed nobility (opposed to established, multi-century old landowning families with wealth based in crop agriculture)- the vast majority of their wealth is mercantile, with a small facet being the 'ownership' of mostly uncultivated scrubland and the cattle grazed there. Janeys is now in charge of the latter aspect after being quietly cut out of his actual intended inheritance, so this humiliation has a fringe benefit of having plenty of beef around, AND he hasn't quite gotten sick of it yet.

Cattle are very sacred animals and the Only sacred livestock. Sacred status doesn't entail not being eaten by any means, but it does entail a lot of emotional+spiritual investment in them as livestock and ritual surrounding their rearing and consumption. Janeys has also always been a little jealous that both of his sisters are in the priesthood, and his (ultimately very distant) involvement in the management of these animals (some of whom are donated to temple sacrificial stock herds) feels like a slice of that, getting to eat their meat on a relatively regular basis is psychologically gratifying in ways beyond just liking the food.

His favorite cut is actually the oxtail above anything else. This would mostly be eaten in a (notably bougie) South Wardi oxtail soup (tomato and olive oil sauce, wine, beef broth, yamnina reyla, saffron, hominy, onions, garlic, cabbage). He also is very fond of sweetbreads, and the liver. The liver is culturally considered the best part of the cow and its consumption is ceremonially restricted- half of the liver Has to be offered in sacrifice for each cow slaughtered (a sort of thanks-giving and payment for the cattle's death), and the other half is reserved for the patriarch who owns the cattle, which can be distributed as he chooses. As of his father's death, Janeys is now technically the patriarch of his family so like, great news for him.

There are no such restrictions on the livers of other regularly consumed animals, and he does like horse liver too. Usually takes it in sausage form (the favored, high quality type here is minced liver mixed with the tender ground meat of the tail, cumin seed, and thyme, cased in caul fat).

He's notably fond of sweet foods- major examples available are roasted figs with cheese, figs or dates stuffed with nuts, sticky pine nut and/or pistachio 'candy' made with anuje, candied figs/dates/kolis/nara. One variety of cornbread is stuffed with pine nut + camiche + pistachio, fried, and glazed with anuje. A type of native melon (similar consistency to a watermelon but VERY mildly sweet, tastes more like a cucumber) is used to make a cold soup with mint + thyme, he takes it sweetened with anuje. He also tried grilled honeycomb with honey + larvae while in the southern-central Highlands and was shocked that he liked it (given that insects are not only famine food but Peasant famine food).

In relation to this, he eats a lot of fruit when it's in season. His favorite fruits are figs and pomegranates. These aren't accessible year round and he doesn't particularly like them dried on their own, so it's something to look forward to every year. Kolis has a very long fruiting season and he has one growing on his balcony for personal use.

He likes sweet wines (typically served strong, rather than watered down like how most wine is consumed on a regular basis) but is a lightweight and noted sloppy drunk. He dilutes it with rosewater on occasions where he's exhibiting a reasonable degree of self control.

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Couya isn't a terribly picky eater (she will eat just about anything) but has strong proclivities towards very simple comfort foods and doesn't like meat all that much, to the point of her chosen diet being regarded as spartan and peasant-esque. A big part of her personality is thinking of most of her fellow nobility as Pussies and making a bit of a show about how much she doesn't mind discomfort and relative non-luxury, which extends to her food tastes. (though to be clear, this is mostly a prolonged act of 'fuck you mom/brother/most of my extended family'. If she had to spend a month living as an actual peasant she would DIE).

This is also motivated in part by the fact that her childhood home life was legitimately horrendous and a whole lot of Really Nice Foods and Delicacies are associated with bad memories for her (particularly the Titen noodle cuisine that Faiza is very fond of, since that's the only element she's ONLY experienced in that home and nowhere else.) Switching most of her diet to basics more characteristic of the lower mercantile class (and eating very little meat outside of holidays and ceremonies) is kind of an escape from that.

She doesn't really like sitting down for meals and favors 'husk meals', which is a subclass of foods built around being wrapped and cooked in corn husk, where they will hold a semi-solid shape and can be eaten on the go. There's a tremendous variety of husk meals, this is the equivalent of The Sandwich in terms of its utility and variability. They're usually composed of a seasoned grain or starch, often stuffed with vegetables/cheeses/egg/meats. Some variants resemble a sausage (without casing) where equal parts of a finely chopped/ground meat is mixed with grain and other ingredients and cooked in the husk. These meat variants most often use meat from the head (as well as eyes, tongue, and brain, and leftover scraps) to extend a valuable slaughtered carcass; head-husk is specifically regarded as a peasant food in this capacity.

Her favorite husk meal variant is one made with seasoned crushed rice stuffed with onions, cabbage, and soft cheese. Rice is her favorite grain, but its not The Most accessible where she lives (the province of Wardin is the driest and has a very small rice output) so she's having variants with maize dough/grits instead on most occasions. She also loves okra (a landrace of which can be grown here, though is a fairly delicate and non-staple crop), which is often eaten with other vegetables and hominy grits (she usually takes this as a husk meal too).

#This took me fucking FOREEVVERR to write lol. Also is minimally proofread sorry if anythings fucked #I'm probably going to have an updated version of that general food post it's gotten more fleshed out #with some things removed due to more concrete ideas of where certain grains/vegetables have been domesticated and would have #spread here by this point in history #Should note that most foods should be assumed not Identical to real world counterparts but Close Enough #(as in like. they might be different cultivars than extant irl or etc)#I only give them unique names when it's a full spec bio plant (of which there are few) or distant enough from an IRL analogue that #its worth separating

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