Cultivated Plants
PAGE: Template:Bible
Everything grown in the Known World is grown inside the walls of cities and Roedhavens and in the defended agricultural rings around them. There is no farming outside that perimeter and never was; the wildlife does not permit it. This is a statement about farming, not people — the Waendra live on the Frontier, and do not plant.
Almost every crop below yields far more than any wild relative, and none has a wild ancestor anyone can easily identify. This is simply how these plants are, and no one stops to ask why.
Grains
Graen is the term for all grain. Three crops make up the class.
- Gechwyn
- The northern staple and the most commonly grown grain in the world; what Gechra is brewed from. Its price moves the price of everything else.
- Ireis
- The southern staple, grown in Eldershore and the lowlands of Clearhold, yielding year-round. A luxury in the north.
- Vaesk
- Clearhold's terrace grain, the only crop with a visible wild ancestor, poisonous until fermented.
Roots and legumes
These keep people fed, especially the poor, and are why a bad grain year is a hardship rather than a famine: bread gets dearer, ale becomes a luxury, people eat more Chiaz, complain, and survive another season.
- Chiaz
- Calorie-dense, fast growing, tolerant of poor soil, stores through long winters, and grows in Stormharbor's rocky ground. Roasted, fermented, mashed, or stewed.
- Ubaen
- The southern counterpart: an enormous tuber that crops well in wet poor ground and does not store in heat until dried and ground. It has carried Eldershore through its bad years since the founding.
- Daell
- The pod crop, the protein alternative to meat, grown everywhere and in many popular dishes. It feeds the ground it is returned to.
- Stoek
- The hardy winter leaf of the north — coarse, heavy, nearly impossible to kill. Stands through frost, keeps in the cellar until Naethwr, and ferments into a sharp preserve that carries Stormharbor through winter. Eaten daily, admired by none.
- Ryn and Rynkael
- Ryn is in nearly every dish in the world and the ingredient least likely to be recorded because nobody remembers it is there. Rynkael is its smaller, sharper cousin, used sparingly and prescribed by physicians for wounds and chest colds.
Sugars
- Ireich
- The cane of Eldershore and its second export after Aruna. Refined to a fine white grain that is very valuable in the north; Aruvei is distilled from it.
- Sweitroe
- The north's sugar root — less productive, refined to a coarse brown earthy sugar that most working northern households use. The wealthy buy Ireich and set it on the table where it can be seen. It is perhaps the clearest sign of the class divide in the north.
Fruits
- Aeval
- Orchard fruit of the temperate zone, grown in managed orchards outside Forgegate and Shining Reach; eaten fresh, dried, preserved, and pressed into Aevalra.
- Nyrra
- A soft summer fruit, from the small bitter northern hedgerow kind to the large sweet kind of Forgegate's valleys. Short season, travels badly, a local delicacy and a mark of the season.
- Angwyr
- The vine of Forgegate's valley, source of the finest Vinaith in the world and of a permanent rivalry with Shining Reach.
- Bryla
- Grows on rock and thin moorland where nothing else will. Stormharbor gathers it by the barrel, preserves it for winter, and ferments it into Brylvin.
- Talvi
- Clearhold's high-terrace fruit, concentrated by cold nights into a flavor lowland fruit cannot match. Native to the mountains, its wild form still grows above the orchards — edible, sour, not worth the climb. Dried, it keeps for years and makes an excellent caravan ration. The skin is tough and must be split rather than bitten.
- Feiruna
- The fruits of Eldershore, dozens of kinds, shipped elsewhere at prices that reflect how few survive the trip. The number of Feiruna markets is the first thing a visitor notices.
Spices, leaves, and herbs
Spicaen is the seasoning class, from kitchen-garden herbs to tropical spice. A cook talks about Spicaen; a merchant talks about Aruna.
- Aruna
- About a dozen unrelated tropical spices grown only in Eldershore. Light and imperishable — the perfect cargo for the Long Reach.
- Zhael
- The foremost of the Aruna and perhaps the most valuable thing grown anywhere by weight.
Fibers and oils
- Paem
- Grown anywhere warm enough. Eldershore's is the finest and softest fiber; Forgegate's, on the cold edge of the plant's range, is shorter and spins sturdier, and Forgegate does not consider it inferior.
- Ksaum
- Grown across the northern belt; breathable, tough, and never in need of shipping north.
- Tauw
- The least noticed and most used fiber, grown almost everywhere in any temperature, and the rope of the world. No ship sails, hauls, moors, or lifts without it, and bad Tauw seasons are felt first in harbors.
- Oevra and Oevrei
- A hardy temperate field crop rotated with grain in Forgegate's and Shining Reach's fields, which returns heart to the soil. Oevrei, the oil pressed from it, burns in every lamp that is not a glow globe, cooks, dresses leather, makes soap, and finishes timber. Graded by pressing — first light and odorless for cooking, second darker for lamps and harness, third fit only for soap. No clockmaker would use any grade of it.
Between them Paem and Ksaum clothe the world by one rule: coarse cloth stays local and fine cloth trades. A laborer in Stormharbor wears Ksaum and a laborer in Eldershore wears Paem, neither paying for shipping. What crosses the world is Eldershore's long Paem, which the wealthy buy. Slave clothing follows the same rule: plain local cloth for a worker, better for a household slave, and a companion dressed better than many free people — a statement about the household, not the slave. Fleisk and Shilkra, the animal fibers, are under Animals of Teraell.
Cellar crops
- Kelrei
- A mushroom grown indoors in the dark on spent straw and stable sweepings. Less flavorful than wild Moeka and eaten anyway; in the cold months often the only thing on the table that was growing that morning. Ideal for walled cities, grown in undercrofts everywhere, and in Forgegate treated by the guilds as a trade with firm opinions about substrate.
Guard crops
- Naevla
- Grown by every farm in the world and eaten by none. Its only use is to turn the Rhydda, and that use is why every field in the world is planted in strips.
Drinks
See Drinks of Teraell.