Cookbooks of the Underdark was a set of four volumes of drow cookbooks that covered such diverse ingredients as mushrooms, fungus, molds, spores, and even meats, penned some years before 1371 DR.[note 1][2]
Description[]
Each of these tomes was bound in a high quality expensive lizardhide.[2]
Contents[]
The set consisted of four volumes, each collected at least ten recipes with detailed instructions and other relevant information that could be a valuable boon for any, even the most skilled cookery artisan. Volume I was simply titled Mushrooms. It included such recipes as mushroom paste, mushroom steak, spiced mushroom soup, sautéed mushrooms, fungus-breaded mushrooms, mushroom salad, spidermeat-stuffed mushrooms, boiled mushroom surprise, slivered k'li mushrooms, and, of corse, mushroom gravy. Volume II was titled Fungus and listed recipes for hot fungus cereal, dried fungus treat, scalloped gray fungus, fungus in wine sauce, pungent fungus rolls, spongy fungi dip, marinated fungus spread, fungus cake, fragrant fungi pie, and fungus fingers. Book III was alluringly named Molds and Spores. The recipes included were: fried mold muffins under glass, thick mold pudding, golden moldies, moldenberry sauce, glazed mold with spore icing, chocolate spores, mold and spore casserole, spore delights, fluffy spore cake, and the most appetizing of the bunch – moldy bread. Lastly, Volume IV – Meat Lovers, included such foods as steamed mice casserole, hot rat haunches, batwing salad & spore dressing, eyeless fish steaks, sauteed bat-rat turnovers, carrion crawler soup, glazed cave cricket tenders, minced kobold flanks, pureed slug over otyugh roast, and twice-basted stirge.[2]
History[]
Cookbooks of the Underdark were recovered from the buried and abandoned Temple of Lolth near the trail that led to the town of Mossbridges in the Vast in the Year of the Unstrung Harp, 1371 DR. The wizard named Tromor Zem hired a team of adventurers from the Living City to delve into the ruined temple's depths. The Cookbooks of the Underdark were discovered alongside Rourathek's spellbook in a spider-infested webbed room. The books were believed to had been taken to the city of Ravens Bluff by the hiring adventurers after the task was completed.[1]
Appendix[]
Notes[]
- ↑ The events of the Living City Ravens Bluff campaign took place on a timeline that advanced together with the real world's time. Even though all Living City adventures and issues of Ravens Bluff Trumpeter were dated with real-world dates, there were events that received a DR year. The Living City timeline can be derived from Myrkyssa Jelan's historic events of the late 14th century DR. Myrkyssa Jelan attacked Ravens Bluff in 1370 DR, according to The City of Ravens Bluff and Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting 3rd edition; these events are chronicled in an in-and-out of universe issues of Ravens Bluff Trumpeter. This places the real world year 1997 as 1370 DR, and in 1998 (1371 DR), Myrkyssa was at last arrested and tried and said to have been executed, only to reappear in 1372 DR in The City of Ravens novel. As the real world's months and the Calendar of Harptos are virtually identical, we can also date all events of the Living City Ravens Bluff as close as an in-universe month.