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Hot Drinks of Glorantha


soltakss

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Over at the Podcast of Wonder thread, there is an interesting discussion about hot drinks. 

 

 

13 hours ago, BrentS said:

P.S. I was curious if hot beverages were drunk in Glorantha. Coffee is far too recent a discovery in our world to have Bronze Age associations but I could see it having ritual application in Glorantha as a stimulant that brings the shaman closer to the spirit world or prepares the heroquester (now Questworlder? 😒) for entry into the Hero Plane. I was intrigued listening to a lecture series on the Ottoman Empire recently to hear a snippet of information about the discovery of coffee....certainly apocryphal but the story has all the humble yet mythic qualities that one would associate with Gloranthan myth.....

https://allthatsinteresting.com/kaldi-coffee

I can imagine Biturian packing some of these rare, exotic beans in his red leather satchel next to the sugar, although best not to mention the goats when dealing with Orlanthi. 

 

 

11 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:
13 hours ago, BrentS said:

P.S. I was curious if hot beverages were drunk in Glorantha.

I would think infusing leaves, herbs, fruits, drugs and spices has been done forever. And I would think that shortly after cooking was invented someone discovered that infusions were easier and faster in hot liquids. 

 

13 hours ago, BrentS said:

Coffee is far too recent a discovery in our world to have Bronze Age associations

Not sure I would use our world's timeline take on discovery to have much weight here, but having been around the fora for a while I am sure I will get disagreement on this. My take is all you need (as best I understand it) is a herder watching his goats (I will admit this could be hard) getting frisky munching on berries on a hill. 

 

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

In Glorantha, the discovery could have been made by Yinkin, or some civets. Kopi Luwak might be common in Teshnos or Elamle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_luwak

Eurmal would of course be the first entity to brew a hot drink from that...

 

3 hours ago, BrentS said:

I've drunk wild luwak coffee and still have a sachet of the beans I brought back from our last trip to Bali. I have to say I was a little disappointed....it tasted like coffee flavoured coffee. I didn't have a transcendent experience, didn't meet my animal totem, luwak or otherwise. My wife won't touch it. 🤪

 

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

I thought that coffee was earlier, but seems to be 15th century. 

Tea, on the other hand, was consumed in the Bronze age and cultivated before then, probably.

According to wikipedia, chocolate was used from c1750BC with many peoples drinking it as a beverage, so that is Bronze Age.

 

14 minutes ago, BrentS said:

I thought chocolate was Central American in origin, last of the world's six cradles of civilisation. Which would be the Olmec, from about 1500 BC. Giant heads, chilli and chocolate.....and I think chocolate definitely qualifies a people as civilised, no matter what your criteria are 😀

 

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2 minutes ago, soltakss said:
11 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:
13 hours ago, BrentS said:

P.S. I was curious if hot beverages were drunk in Glorantha.

I would think infusing leaves, herbs, fruits, drugs and spices has been done forever. And I would think that shortly after cooking was invented someone discovered that infusions were easier and faster in hot liquids. 

Yes, although a lot of sites say there isn't evidence until later, I would expect them to be Stone Age at least.

However, Glorantha is not the real world, so there is no reason why we can't have things like coffee in Glorantha.

Similarly, tea is Asian in the real world, but should be able to be grown anywhere suitable in Glorantha, even in places that would not seem suitable when compared with the real world.

In Glorantha, hot bull's blood, steeped leaves, crushed/mashed grains and much more could be the basis of hot drinks.

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1 hour ago, soltakss said:

Over at the Podcast of Wonder thread, there is an interesting discussion about hot drinks. 

 

Oh, sure, steal my interesting topic, WAH! You see @Joerg, this is why we can’t have nice topics!

Edited by Bill the barbarian
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4 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Oh, sure, steal my interesting topic, WAH

Have a nice hot beverage to make you feel better.

May I recommend Hellwood's Moonfire Surprise?

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2 hours ago, soltakss said:

Have a nice hot beverage to make you feel better.

May I recommend Hellwood's Moonfire Surprise?

A piquant tisane indeed, especially when served piping hot. Great for washing away the aftertaste of walktapus jerky! Is it true that it's made from the dried and shredded barken skins of Hellwood Aldryami?

Edited by Anunnaki
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4 hours ago, soltakss said:

However, Glorantha is not the real world, so there is no reason why we can't have things like coffee in Glorantha.

I'm trying to think if there's a single cereal grain in the real world that isn't roasted and steeped to make a drink.  I'm fuzzier on the New World grains and seeds, but I think even a number of legumes are used for beverages -- certainly for making "milks".  Provided they haven't been 'effed out of canon, Glorantha has most counterparts and a few new ones.  I have some boricha right here -- roasted barley "tea" -- though I'm drinking it cold, and some genmaicha (roasted brown rice with green tea) up in the cupboard.  How 'bout some hot bloodbean milk?

!i!

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5 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Oh, sure, steal my interesting topic, WAH! You see @Joerg, this is why we can’t have nice topics!

Nobody's podcasted this topic.

Do it, man...  quick before you get scooped!!!    (I'd hate for you to get into hot water with the other peas in your pod(cast).)

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”I would think infusing leaves, herbs, fruits, drugs and spices has been done forever. And I would think that shortly after cooking was invented someone discovered that infusions were easier and faster in hot liquids.”

One common theory about the origins of tea is that it makes boiled water (with the obvious health advantages) more palatable.

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If I'm not mistaken, hot or temperate was the way to go with beer until very recently, and it was mixed with butter and eggs at least in the middle ages. 

In my Glorantha, beer and wine are surely warm in Sartar, which is objectively horrendous (especially here in Spain), which adds to the particularity of the clear wine from Clearwine, as though it's actually warm, it still feels cold to the mouth, making it extremely better. Also lunars drink their alcohol cold, just to show off the portents of Civilization to my players (one of them mentioned it jokingly and I instantly added it to my canon). 

(Just realized that this isn't exactly the topic due to a translation error, in spanish we usually use the same word (caliente) when we refer to hot and warm drinks, but oh well) 

Edited by Jape_Vicho
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12 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I forget, does chocolate exist in Glorantha? If so, we'll probably have hot cocoa.

It doesn't show up in the Guide. Crystallized sugar exists, however, even though it's a rarity and cult secret somewhere in Kralorela (I briefly talked about it in a Wind Words episode). Sugar canes are somewhat common in a few places so you can have some sweet beverages.... and on that same Wind Words episode we had mused a bit about the possibility of some nectar called "elf blood", made from.... well... let's call it "tree sap", a bit like Canadian maple syrup. That might be a fancy kind of honey to put in your tea!

Of course, it's not because cocoa isn't mentioned in the guide that you can't have it in your Glorantha :)  But it could also be other stuff... just like "elf blood", you could pick any "fantasy" element and declare proudly that it tastes sweet, a bit like chocolate, when you crush it/melt it/whatever. Who's to say that trollkin juice doesn't taste delicious to someone?

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4 hours ago, g33k said:

Some theorize that the earliest use of the cocoa plant wasn't the bean, but the soft pulp of the pod surrounding the bean!

Yep. The soft, sweet pulp of the chocolate fruit might have been used to make a fermented drink (about 5% alcohol). Which, incidentally, is something they still do in Latin America.

Also, as of November 2018, evidence now suggests that the cultivation of cocoa is actually much older than we previously thought it was. Until now, the oldest evidence was among the Olmecs of Mexico about 4,000 years ago, but now there's reason to think it was being cultivated by the Mayo-Chinchipe people of South America as far back as 5,300 years ago.

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17 hours ago, soltakss said:
On 9/28/2020 at 7:50 PM, BrentS said:

Coffee is far too recent a discovery in our world to have Bronze Age associations

Not sure I would use our world's timeline take on discovery to have much weight here, but having been around the fora for a while I am sure I will get disagreement on this. My take is all you need (as best I understand it) is a herder watching his goats (I will admit this could be hard) getting frisky munching on berries on a hill. 

Coffee is available from the islands of Avaranboth (Guide 481), and Savaronabhumy (Guide 494). It's also mentioned in "The Travels of Biturian Varosh" (Cults Compendium 77). Ctrl-F is a good starting point with these sorts of wonderings. :)

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1 hour ago, BrentS said:

Hey yes. Good spot.

Completely by accident. :D Was checking the Waha cult in Cults Compendium and fortuitously noticed that the Biturian sidebar was relevant to this conversation, so I figured I'd give the Guide a quick Ctrl-F as well.

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Yaupon/cassina (a holly plant native to the southeastern US) was used, possibly since the Late Archaic period, to make a highly caffeinated family of hot drinks used for ritual purposes. This is generally called "black drink" and is perhaps more known for the common reports of vomiting shortly after drinking it (Some variants have emetic herbs added to the blend to deliberately induce vomiting, but the vomiting reported outside of those known variants may come from the caffeine content likely being equivalent to 3-6 cups of black coffee in a single serving).

Yaupon appears to have been prepared like coffee traditionally, with the leaves and branches being parched to roast them, and then the roasted yaupon being soaked in boiling water until it turned a dark brown or black and then allowed to cool slightly. 

Cassina was also used to make a tea by drying and charring the leaves, more or less continuously from the arrival of Spanish colonists in Florida down to the present day, though decreasing significantly in consumption through the 20th century. 

So there we have another potential source for coffee and tea in areas they wouldn't normally seem likely to be in. 

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And then there's ginger! Any mention of it in the Guide or elsewhere? IRL it came from southeast Asia, iirc, or possibly Oceania(?), which could either mean that you could spin that to become an export from the East Isles, Teshnos or even Fethlon, or of course ignore than completely and place it wherever.

You can also use use mint leaves as the basis for a hot drink. Probably not a personal favorite of mine, but then neither is coffee, so who's to say what tastes people have.

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2 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

And then there's ginger! Any mention of it in the Guide or elsewhere? IRL it came from southeast Asia, iirc, or possibly Oceania(?), which could either mean that you could spin that to become an export from the East Isles, Teshnos or even Fethlon, or of course ignore than completely and place it wherever.
 

Wikipedia says (fwiw (they aren't always accurate)) that (a) Ginger originates in "maritime southeast asia," & that (b) that it exists today ONLY in "cultivar" form -- the "wild" plants are just escaped from cultivation (the plants called "wild ginger" are actually distant relatives, not ancestral).

If we wanted to Gloranth-ify this, I'd probably go with the idea that in Glorantha, "ginger" is a modern(ish) creation of the Aldryami (possibly for trade purposes? possibly as a (failed) biochem/warfare agent (ginger being an irritant)? possibly nobody knows why they made it:  created by some "mad wizard" type of "rootless elf," and even the other elves aren't sure if it was madness or some deep plot of hers?)

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5 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

IRL it came from southeast Asia, iirc, or possibly Oceania(?), which could either mean that you could spin that to become an export from the East Isles, Teshnos or even Fethlon, or of course ignore than completely and place it wherever.

I'd be tempted to ignore where it comes from in the real world.

For example, tea could grow anywhere suitable, not just Kralorela, or ginger does not have to come from the East Isles or Teshnos.

 

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32 minutes ago, soltakss said:

I'd be tempted to ignore where it comes from in the real world.

 

I can see that, for sure!   The more you make <Gloranthan thing A> come from <real-world-cognate-place A>, the more you tie Glorantha down to being a bunch of single-source "not-A" places.

Kralorela already has at least one "not-China" strike against it (maybe even two strikes (I await Chaosium's upcoming Kralorela book with both eagerness & dread)); instead of (for example) the heady  Thracian/Halstatt/Norse/Vedic/PlusSoMuchMore  mix that is Sartar.

 

23 minutes ago, soltakss said:

For example, tea could grow anywhere suitable, not just Kralorela, or ginger does not have to come from the East Isles or Teshnos.

 

I also like having a bit of variety...  like, there's this spice that most people call "Ginger," but it's this harsh stuff from somewhere out of <insert semi-distant location... Balazar, Charg, etc; it may be a powdered tree-resin, you think?>.  But if you've ever had the real stuff, the good stuff -- genuine East Isles Ginger -- you'll know right away why people pay a premium for it, and you recognize how that crap (that you've been using) is kinda-sorta reminiscent, in an utterly unsatisfying way...

 

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