Coffee is a relatively cheap drink, that is grown and brought up from Chult, and in from Maztica.
Tea is common virtually everywhere.
-RW
Damn, thought it might've been an important commodity!
It is, that's why it's so widespread and popular.;)
(Appears Thay won't occupy Unther in 4th ed=( )
I know.
*Shakes fist at Wizards*
Not that Thay will fare well enough to be important anymore.
-RW
I know.
*Shakes fist at Wizards*
Not that Thay will fare well enough to be important anymore.
-RW
Well, let's see about that.
I'm no cheerleader for the 4E Realms, but the details about the new Thay haven't all been told yet.
Mar. 6th '05
Hi, Stig! Yes, coffee is known in the Realms (usually as “kaeth”), but (aside from in the most cosmopolitan ports, like Waterdeep, Athkatla, and Westgate) it’s rare north of Calimshan and the southern Vilhon shores.
Its major sources are south and east of Durpar, about halfway up the east side of Anauroch, and overseas to the west (Maztica).
Sacks of beans from overseas are brought in to Baldur’s Gate and there trans-shipped elsewhere, mainly south to Calimshan and the Tashalar. These beans are large, soft (crumbly), and reddish-brown.
The Bedine of Anauroch call coffee “qahwa” or just “qaw”) and trade little in it, these days (post-reappearance of Shade; the surviving Bedine consume almost all of their qaw themselves). Through the D’Tarig, a tiny trickle of Bedine beans formerly reached Zhentil Keep, and thence Hillsfar and Sembia. This source is now EXTREMELY unreliable and paltry, though wealthy Sembian coffee-drinkers have bid the price up high. Anauran beans are small, hard, and such a dark brown that they look black.
The beans from beyond Durpar are usually known as “Thondur’s” after a now-deceased trader who for a time controlled the entire trade in coffee reaching Calimshan, the Tashalar, and the Vilhon. Thondur amassed a staggering fortune, much of which has never been found (thanks to his habit of establishing literally hundreds of secret caches, all over Faerûn) after he was publicly torn apart by a “pet” dragon some sixty years ago. The beans are now more plentiful and cheaper (thanks to the shattering of his monopoly), and form the bulk of the supply enjoyed in southern lands of the Realms. Thondur’s beans are large, have a pronounced cleft or depressed line running their length (making them somewhat like cowrie shells in shape), and have a bluish tint to their chestnut brown colour.
Although the coffees available in the Realms vary from place to place with the precise species of trees, they’re all derived the same way: the stunted mountainside coffee trees yielding beans that are dried in the sun (usually on rocks), sewn into sacks, and shipped long distances to consumers who grind the beans just before brewing. The sacks of beans are put into coffin-like (and battered, because they’re re-used over and over) crates for wagon-travel or barge trips, and the sacks are tossed loose into ship hulls, so they can be arranged evenly (as stable ballast).
It should be noted that coffee is drunk black in Calimshan and the Tashalar (its taste often altered with dried, ground nuts and roots, even “dusts” as strong as ginger), but in Sembia is usually mixed with melted chocolate and/or “cordials” (liqueurs).
Cider mugs are usually used for coffee-drinking in northerly places, but in the south small palm-sized bowls with outflaring tops and ‘drinking spouts’ (looking rather like a small real-life china Victorian cream jug, only one drinks coffee from the narrow shovel-spout rather than pouring the cream out of it) are favoured. These are known formally as “kavvar” or colloquially as just “cups,” and coffee is usually formally called “kaeth” and colloquially known as “fireswallow.” Bad coffee will be described with any handy oath in northern lands, but in the South there’s a word for crappy coffee: “ortulag” (“OR-tul-lag”), which derives from a now-defunct dialect word meaning “warmed-over chamberpot rinse.”
Hope this is of help. Tea next time, I think.
So saith Ed."
[...]
Aug. 4th '05
"This time around, Ed undertakes to answer Elfinblade and now Jamallo Kreen on Faerûnian tea and coffee matters:
Unlike coffee, few teas in the Realms are shipped far, or sold for high prices (though there are “clubs” of tea-fanciers in Athkatla, Calimport, and other rich cities, of wealthy connoisseurs who’ll pay much for favourite blends).
This isn’t because tea isn’t popular or well thought of. It’s because the majority of teas in the Realms are what we modern real-world sorts call “tissanes” or “infusions” or (for the bulk of them) “herbal teas.” In other words, boilings of the leaves of various plants other than ‘tea.’ Moreover, the vast majority of teas are made from local wild plants, and travelers in the Realms expect teas to vary in taste from place to place - - so not a lot of long-distance shipping goes on. Within a realm, yes, and from hinterlands into a city, but most crofters and other country folk view tea as something they glean themselves, from wild bushes they (or their children) can “pluck leaves from” as opportunity and need arises. The leaves are usually kept in metal coffers with “sticky-rim” inner lips of the lids, to keep air out (and unlike our real world in past times, the container is worth a lot more than the tea!).
Most teas are made by pouring boiling water onto a container full of leaves, and then straining the leaves out (often for re-use, after “drying on a shield in the sun,” in the poorest households, though no one brews entirely with re-used leaves; instead, they add a little to fresh leaves). The tea is ALWAYS drunk clear, never with milk. However, Jamallo’s “Murky brew made from powdered leaves whisked in a bowl” is the norm in the Shining South, and in ports where travelers from many places mix, all sorts of tea-making habits and techniques are used and copied. Tea in most dining-houses (restaurants) replaces the real-world “dusty glass of water on the table.”
Jamallo, coffee is consumed in a great variety of ways in Faerûn, from a thick black near-syrup stirred into sweet liqueurs in Sembia and Chessenta, to roasted beans eaten whole, to the more familiar brew (drunk black, sometimes with medicines or mint leaves sprinkled over the surface, and “stewed in a pot over a fire or hearth,” and hence much stronger than what most of we real-world moderns are used to). The brew is the most popular method in Calimshan, the Tashalar, the Heartlands and the North, but peddlers, explorers, and adventurers often chew the beans as they travel.
I answered Elfinblade earlier about the coffee trade [THO note: see Page 18 of this 05 thread], but let it be said that except for places that have docking or gate-entry fees levied by the conveyance (a wagon, or a ship), no one levies import or export duties on tea (“Tea? TEA? Pass, merchant, and may you know better fortune within than to have to trade in tea!”). Even if you showed up with a caravan-full, you’d not be charged duty (though you might thereafter be watched, as a madman or a liar actually “up to something else”). And yes, Stig, I’ve not forgotten the other trade-goods in your initial question, and WILL get to them. Sometime. I promise.
So saith Ed."
-- George Krashos
Salt's not even important in the Realms!
Might be important to the communities that don't have a cleric with purify food and drink spell.
Don't think its a question of anything like spells, I was more under the impression that salt isn't nearly as rare or difficult to obtain as it was in Europe.
You're correct. Salt's was difficult to come by - in Roman times, soldiers were paid in salt, therefor it's called "salary."
You're correct. Salt's was difficult to come by - in Roman times, soldiers were paid in salt, therefor it's called "salary."
-I told that to my sister the other day, and she didn't believe me. Maybe she'll believe you.
-I told that to my sister the other day, and she didn't believe me. Maybe she'll believe you.
Ask her to go make salt. That usually convinces them=)
Ask her to go make salt. That usually convinces them=)
-I've actually done that, once. The first time I went on a real vacation, I went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We weren't planning on going to the beach, but we ended up going. I went into the water wearing a specific shirt. When we got back to my step-grandmother's timeshare place, I hung the shirt to dry, instead of thowing it in the dryer. Don't know why. When it was dry, when I put it on, it had salt residue in it. It was very stiff, and crunched a little bit.
-I've actually done that, once. The first time I went on a real vacation, I went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We weren't planning on going to the beach, but we ended up going. I went into the water wearing a specific shirt. When we got back to my step-grandmother's timeshare place, I hung the shirt to dry, instead of thowing it in the dryer. Don't know why. When it was dry, when I put it on, it had salt residue in it. It was very stiff, and crunched a little bit.
I remembered having to do that as an elementary school science experiment. Take 1/4 cup of seawater in a shallow glass dish and leave it out under the sun.
I remembered having to do that as an elementary school science experiment. Take 1/4 cup of seawater in a shallow glass dish and leave it out under the sun.
-In a cup, that's fine. In my shirt? Nah, not really.
You're correct. Salt's was difficult to come by - in Roman times, soldiers were paid in salt, therefor it's called "salary."
Another titbit: salt was so precious that several tribes would trade in slaves for it - and some Slavic tribes would even sell some of their children. One theory says that this practice was so widespread it is a possible origin of the word "Slave."
i cannot help but think of Paul's coffee service in Dune for what it's worth. i mean, everything, particularly the coffee is infused w/ the Spice. we kinda' threw this in to a Faerun campaign.
somone, in another campaign i got to play in, cannibalized the concept, offering up the occaisional bonus to Sense Motive, precognitions (limited divination magic), stuff like that when we'd indulge in spice coffee. like the film/book more or less. nothing fancy. of course, there was always a catch too.
this DM mentioned that lingering pockets of Netherese magic, the necropolises where cities crashed during "The Fall", or the passages and/or magical taint of phaerimm kind of leave a metaphysical Spice that can be harvested. never did nail that down isecret in his campaign and i think he prefered the mystery, but the allusion to the Shadovar and/or Zhentish influence in the desert was a fairly close approximation to Harkonnen and Imperial elements of Herbert's book. no Sandworms though, seemed just too blatant I guess. excellent campaign, and Anauroch was years away, hence the fairly liberal artistic license...even if it was Frank Herbert's.
i'd think alot of coffee and teas would be worth alot of money depending on what the market will bear. i mean, not exactly alot of kona beans and the like in Icewindale, right? Shou teas might fetch a really nice price in Cormyr. etc. supply and demand, that's all.
Mental note, find this other Stig and end them in a most painful manner...
-Ha, ha, ha! I just got that!
Non-alcoholic recreational drinks.
How dare you.
-Ha, ha, ha! I just got that!
Yeah, that was funny!
Mental note, find this other Stig and end them in a most painful manner...
http://www.stiggybaby.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stig
That's for saplings worldwide!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stig
-He's a fraud!
Though I will end all these other Stigs... might have to nuke Scandinavia at some point over it, but omelettes and eggs and all that. So sorry, might want to think about moving at some point if you live around there.