Long or Short Fork When Dining on Elf?

Transcript

You're listening to No Plot, Only Lore, a podcast about games and the tables we play them at. Your DMs tonight and every

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ever met. Welcome back to No Plot Only Lore. Josh,

is it cannibalism to eat a dwarf? Uh, speaking as a giant,

no. Okay. Okay. Um, and like to be clear, I mean like a dwarf that is a

fantasy race of dwarf, not a person who has dwarfism, because I'm pretty sure that eating a person who has dwarfism would be cannibalism.

Right. Right. Yeah. No, those those don't count. Uh but no, I think uh

elves are elves close enough to be cannibalism. Uh that's that feels

worse. What What about gnomes? No, gnomes are like appetizers.

Okay. Yeah, that's fair. Um dragon born. I guess dragon born are like far enough

removed. I I just I wonder where the line lives for like for me personally or like fantasy as an whole. Oh, fantasy as

a whole is just like please don't eat intelligent creatures, but like in real life we eat octopuses all the time and

like they're smart. They're clever. I wouldn't call like is the rule don't eat intelligent

creatures or don't eat sentient creatures? I mean, how do you measure sentience?

Can it outwit me? that there are things that could outwit

you. Yeah. And I don't eat them. Does that Okay. Okay. I I'm trying to think

of like the things that could outwit you. A lot of them are predators. Yeah. So, good on you predators. Yeah. Like

not necessarily known for their intelligence. Anyway, um I have been intermittent fasting lately. Okay. I am

trying to be less fat. Um, I am significantly fat

and uh so I I have food on the mind lately and also I have recently watched

an anime called Dungeon Meshy which I'm sure you've watched because you love anime. That's me known anime lover.

Oh, so the the premise of Dungeon Meshy or Delicious and Dungeon is that a

adventuring group gets kicked out of the dungeon while one of their members is

still down in the dungeon. Okay. And without having enough money to resupply,

they decide to go back and get her. Okay? And because they don't have enough money to resupply, their idea is that

they are going to survive by eating the monsters that they kill in the dungeon.

E, which like starts off with adorable mushroom dudes, really just a guy that

is a mushroom and slowly gets weirder over the course of the series. When you say a

guy that is a mushroom, like does he protest being eaten?

Uh, he runs away, but like he doesn't have a face. It's just mushroom.

Okay, that's fine. Yeah, he's he's just like he's he's a mushroom with feet. Okay. And the mushroom with feet tries

to run away and you bunk it on the the top of the mushroom head and it's knocked unconscious and then you you

chop it up and eat it. That makes a kind of sense to me, I guess. Yeah.

But I was thinking that there are a lot of Dungeons and Dragons specific or like

fantasy animals that I am intrigued about the concept of eating

them. Okay. And the one that came to mind first was the gelatinous cube. Don't do

that. They are acidic. But would they make a pretty decent like

uh jellyfish salad? No, for the acidic reasons.

I mean, h how acidic is acidic? Could you something?

It when I say acidic, I don't mean like tart. I mean like melts metal like

only after a long time. And like does it lose some of its

acidity after it dies? Are you able to handle it after it's dead? I You know what? This is an admission of

mine. I don't think I've ever actually outright killed a giant

gelatin. I they're mostly get treated like a giant inanimate object to run

away from like right obviously they're not inanimate but um yeah they're

they're like a a feature not a not an enemy like more like a trap

than a monster. Yeah. Okay. See, I was thinking that you could

make like a little jello- snack out of them that would be like spicy.

I don't like and here's what I Okay, if we want to go like fullblown dumb ass

end of it. I feel like a gelatinous cube would have more in common with like a

1960s like aspic where it's like right

flavorless gelatin around meat and like olives for some reason. Yeah. Yeah. I've

never understood that. The idea of like olive jello is ew. So gross.

Yeah. No, I I could definitely see that. But like aspects were huge for a while. Oh, yeah. They for they had a chokeold

on the like American culinary landscape for the better part of like 30 years for

really like absolutely no good reason. Did you ever have one? Like, have have

you eaten one of those monstrosities? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Not like for fun. It was

definitely like I never have. I've never had Oh. Um, yeah. There was uh so we did

a unit in my like commercial foods class back in the day that was all about

like food trends. And so one of the trends that

got brought up was like jellify everything. And so yeah, like you know, we tried

like there was a trend in, you know, closer to World War II about like canned and potted and preserved meats. So we

kind of explored that a little bit. And then yeah, the whole like there there were some dark times like

between between the grip that like horse byproducts had on food and then the

introduction of the microwave. Um, I frankly don't know how we made it to the8s in one piece.

And it kind of explains like what happened like politically and economically then.

Yeah. I our version of that was like everything is pie. Yeah. Yeah. Like that

there was that minute in history where we just made pies out of literally everything. Yeah. If you were going to

make a meat, it had to be like part of a meat pie. Yeah. It's a very English sort of approach to things where it's like I

need to cook this food. I have to hold it in some sort of ed quasi edible container, right? Yeah. Okay. Uh no,

I've I've never had one. I've I I grew up quite poor and gelatin was not a

priority or was given to food banks very often. Yeah. Um and I don't think my mom

knew how to make one. I know we had one of the bunt pans that you're supposed to use to make them and my mom told me that

they were for cakes and then we never made a cake with it. So, I don't know if that like piece of hardware was ever used for

anything to be honest. What other purpose could it hold? Like that seems dark, right? It it was just in the

house. Like I we had a like underneath the the oven there was that drawer and

down there was like the uh flat pans for cookies and pots and pans and then a

bunt pan that we never used. That's bizarre. Yeah. I don't know if she just

like picked it up at the secondhand store and just like never actually found a use for it, but uh yeah, never

actually used it. Uh, how would you feel about eating an owl bear? That's fine.

And how would you prepare it? Um, see, owl bear is a quadriped. So,

given the size you've got. Okay. Are you intending to like just is

this like a preparation just for me or is this like, hey, we had a big hunt.

We've got this thing and now we're going to feast as a community. Let's do both.

Like obviously if you're going to feast for the community, you put it on a spit, you you roast it, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Like the aloe vera are super like to to

prepare and eat as like one contain like one big thing that's super easy. Um but

yeah, then if it's just for like myself, like I just happen to kill an owl bear or whatever.

Um, storage-wise, it's probably best to like fully break it down and then you're

going to uh preserve meats with like sausages and drying and and smoking. Um,

I think they probably get a couple good sets of ribs off of it. So, that's probably what I'd go for. And everything

else would be like like you obviously you're going to keep a little bit of fresh around to like do a couple of roasts, whatever, but there's just so

much meat. It's like a moose. Like you can't you're you you like the the the

way to eat a moose is like you know one bite at a time whatever but like it's it's so much meat that you can't just like eat it within the week. You have to

like take long-term preservation to mind. So whether it's making jerky or pemkin or uh just you know uh like I

said mixing the fat and and making sausages to smoke. Um. Mhm. See, I

wonder a little bit about the butchery of an owl bear because like a a fairly

significant portion of that creature is bird and then a fairly significant portion of

the the creature is bear. Um, and like is that reflected in the

type of meat or is that just like an aesthetic thing? So, from what I my I'm basing most of my

um assumptions here on that the most recent Dungeons and Dragons movie. Uh so

if if owl bears are configured the way that movie shows them, then um

mechanically their bodies are going to function most like a bear. like they

when it comes to like large game butchery, um the fundamentals of how you

take apart an animal are largely the same between like all sort of quadripeds.

It's just a matter of scale. Like breaking down a deer and a moose is obviously pretty similar because they're

just like moose is just a larger version of a deer. But breaking down a cow is not that different from breaking down a

deer. It's just that certain animals will have different parts that are easier to uh well they're easier to

consume or or even able to be consumed at all. Like deer actually, you don't really keep the ribs the way you would

with a cow or even a moose because there's so little meat on those ribs. Um

and then with a deer in particular, you want to get rid of as much fat as possible because that fat actually keeps

the giness flavor from what they're eating. So then compare that to so if if you look at just like the type of animal

that it is then like the comparison of an owl bear is mostly going to be like the way you would break down a black

bear. And then really after that, like it the the

the wing the quote unquote wing part of the the front limbs seemed borderline

like vestigial. Like it was it was really only a wing in like

appearance. Otherwise, you know, it was clawed and it the the articulation of it

seemed almost identical to just a regular front paw. So, I think you're

just going to treat it the same way it would and and in a lot of quadripeds like the front the front actually has some of the least amount of muscular

development. So, you're not going to get as much off like there's still a good quarter up there, but it's not as much

as getting it off the shoulders or or in particular the hinds.

one that I think would be kind of interesting and I I assume in some of these cases that like the the creatures

are going to maintain some of their magical qualities after butchery.

Um, displacer beasts would be incredibly difficult to eat.

They would. Yeah, I have a feeling like Yeah, just getting locating it on the table to

break down is going to be difficult. Um, yeah. Like I feel you could probably do a lot of it by feel, right? Like once

you have it in your hand, that would be fine, but like everybody would be looking at you lifting the like lifting

nothing, but then further away from you, like 5t away, there's going to be like some meat that you're that is floating.

Yeah. And my thought is interesting effect. My thought is with uh with the

displacer base in particular, are those arms going to taste more like seafood or

is it going to be more like an oxtail? See, I assumed that those were just

going to be utterly inedible like I don't think so. No. Like they could be

like an octopus tentacle or like a squid tentacle. Yeah. In which case like you could make calamari out of them. Yeah.

But something about their appearance suggests to me that they would taste

like a boot.

So I like I said I think they'd be closer to preparing oxtail just because

given so like an octopus or or squid um they do have a good amount of like

articulation within those limbs but a big part of why they're useful is like

the gripping capacity and their articulation is kind of dependent on

like it's very close range and they kind of need to be in the water to get the full functionality of them. A displacer

beast tentacles are like upright and and floating in the air and like like they

they almost get they're almost like I call them like like a handstyle in in like a in the way that a monkeykey's

tail is. Um so I feel like there's a lot more musculature in there that has to be contended with.

And that's where I think it's going to be closer to an oxtail. um possibly make

a good stew, like good little bones in there for long brazing to get the most out of

it. Um but there's a ton of flavor in there. It's just going to be the kind of treatment of meat that like is frankly

like extremely working class. You know, speaking of one of the the options that

we have on our list here, and one of the ones that I find most interesting is the idea of eating giant scorpions and giant

spiders, right? And the reason for that is because we like crab. Yeah. And we

like lobster. And that's just seab bugs. Yeah. And part of the reason that they're

edible is that they are so big that we're able to like cut them up and like

crack open bits of them and like get the meat out of them and the meat is like kind of substantial. Whereas like eating

a whole bug is kind of inherently gross.

Mhm. Right. Like if you just stuff a whole spider in your mouth and eat it, it's going to be nasty. But if you've

got a giant scorpion claw, there's going to be some meat in there. And I have a

feeling that with the right amount of melted butter that is going to be delicious. So I actually kind of feel

the opposite. Um I I don't think when you scale up a

tarantula it gets necessarily better. Like you can get a tarantula the size of a soft shell crab and just the way that

their bodies are constructed does not make the same amount of meat or the same amount of flavor. Um you know, you see

them consumed in Southeast Asia all the time and it is not analogous to what you

get out of crustaceians. Um, I mean, like not to be like a

a not to be too pedantic about it, but like there's a reason they are classed as arachnids and not crustations, you

know? That's fair. I'm just I'm thinking that like especially on the giant level like what one of the the coolest

settings to use giant scorpions is Eberon. Yeah. And like

the D in Eberon hunt giant scorpions all the goddamn time and it's like one of

their main subsistence foods. And for a very long time, that's the way

I describe them is that it was like eating crab. Mhm. Um, but like crab back

when crab and lobster was considered like poor man's food, right? It was the stuff that just came out of the ocean when we were looking for other stuff.

Yeah. Um, so yeah, I mean, I guess that makes sense that it wouldn't necessarily scale

up, but I'm thinking like the like a dinner plateized tarantula is one thing.

A pigsized tarantula is something a little different, I suppose. I still I I'm just

not convinced that like mechanically the way that they're like

like if you talk about like crab like the way that a crab locomotes is just fundamentally different to a spider and

I think I think that plays a bigger part than than you realize. Okay. So in my

head Mhm. and this is possibly the grossest thing that I'm going to say on this podcast. In my head, the way that

spiders move is just squishing goo from one place to another place. Like, I imagine that everything inside the

spider is just goop. Uh, that's not And I know that's probably not true. Well, it's not that

far from true, though. Oh, okay. Like, they do have essentially a hydraulic

system in there, right? That would make interesting soup.

That's fair. I don't know if that goop tastes good, but like if you wanted to flavor soup,

that seems like a decent way to do it. I can't I don't [Music]

mean because like all of the like bug eating that I know of doesn't doesn't

treat them like there's basically you get a

scorpion on a stick or you can like roast it. Yeah. And like you can put them whole

into some broths and they just kind of like absorb flavor the way like a crayfish does.

But as far as I know, the insides don't contribute anything, right? Whereas crayfish does. Like the

insides of crayfish are delicious. Yeah. Um crustations again. So yeah.

Yeah, that's interesting. I I think I would need to know more about the inside of a scorpion like the inside of a giant

scorpion in particular than I'm comfortable knowing in order to be able to continue that line of Oh, yeah. I

don't want to learn this. That's for sure.

I don't I don't want to learn it. I want to know it. I don't want to learn it.

Yeah. I I don't want that to be in my search history. Yeah.

All right. All right. What about something like an intellect of our just a little walking brain? No, I think that's fine. I think that's totally like

just a I don't want to say normal, but like a relatively normal little thing to eat. People eat brains from all sorts of

animals all the time. That's It's probably fine. See, the part that I was most interested in is like the little drumsticks. Yeah. Right. Cuz it's got

like four legs, but they're they're like little stumpy things, and they seem like they would be meaty.

Mhm. And maybe that's just me coming at it from like Balders's Gate 3. Yeah.

Where where they have a fairly distinctive profile, but like that that seems like a a meaty bit of leg. And if

there happens to be some brain at the end of it, that would probably be okay. Yeah. I think the best analogy I can

think of is it's probably just like a bunch of chicken wings. Like chicken wings with a little brain

lollipop at the end. Yeah. Yeah. All right. intellect of hours.

Um, okay. Mimics that this one is actually kind of interesting

from Delicious and Dungeon. So, one one of the the critters that they find in

Delicious and Dungeon is actually coins that are bugs. Ew. Yeah. And the

the coins are like a mimic disguising itself, but it's it's just it's an

insect that propagates itself and is able to move to new locations by

adventurers picking them up because they look like coins and carrying them around in their pouches. And then when the adventurers

fall asleep, the bugs eat them. And then they don't have to worry about the adventurers anymore.

[Music] What would a mimic taste like?

My inclination is to think that a mimic like Okay, the problem with answering what a

mimic tastes like is that a mimic could taste like anything. Oo, fooling your sense of taste as well

as other things. Now, I happen to think that

like there is something resembling like there mimic has to revert to something.

They're not born shaped like a toaster or whatever, right? So, there's that be hilarious.

[Laughter] There's got to be some sort of like fundamental mimic.

Oh my god, I just had the best idea. Okay, sorry. I I don't want to derail this entirely, but okay. The best idea

for like a setting or like a a dungeon room is you walk into what looks like a

trash pile. Okay. Right. Like it's just huge piles. It looks like a dump. It

looks like a modern-day dump with like refrigerators on one side and you've got like a car a beaten up car on the other

and it's just mimics. The whole room is like a mimic breeding ground and when

they hatch from their eggs, they just take the shape of a thing. Right. That makes sense.

So just like you you walk in, there's a toaster on the floor of this dump. You pick up the toaster, it eats you. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. Um, but my thought was like mimics revert to and

I I have to imagine it's like Odo from Deep Space 9, right? Just silver goop.

They're just they're they just they're a puddle that, you know, forms into whatever they happen to be around. Um,

so in this case, like I guess I want to imagine that you could

kind of fry them up like an egg. If you could get them to like if you get them

to revert to their natural mimic state, then they're like an egg white.

[Laughter] All right. Well, is that

not Can you not see what I'm talking about? No, I absolutely can. I I was thinking of them more as like an oyster.

Oh, okay. Like just actual snot. Yeah. Like it's just it's not in a case and

the case changes its shape, right? But like it still opens its mouth. It still has all the teeth. It still has like a big tongue and like tries to eat you.

Yeah. Um but yeah, I'm I'm thinking it's just like a little lump of like gooey

flesh. Yeah. That you could shuck out of the shell. Okay. And eat that. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Throw like a

little lemon on it. Bit of parsley. So then like are you able

to like magically get a a mimic

to the turn off, if that makes sense. I don't I

don't think so. Like I I've never seen any mechanic that makes it so that a mimic reverts to like its quote unquote

natural form. Yeah, that's what I like. I don't know if that's actually a thing. I don't think it is. I think mimics are

always looking like something else. But like is that a learned behavior?

Like when a mimic is born, what is its like like tottering around on like weak

legs, full stage, right? Right. Like what what what does that look like for a

mimic when it hasn't seen anything? If you if a mimic is born in a white room, right, with nothing around it,

does it just like take the shape of its egg? Does it take the shape of like the

surface it's born on? Right. Inquiring minds need to know.

I wish more people listened to our podcast so that people could tell us what they think that mimics. I wish more

people with stupid ideas like us listen to our podcast.

Just uh Yeah. No, I I I would love to know what a mimic looks like in its natural state, if there is one. And more

importantly, can you eat it? Yeah. Uh, would you eat a rust monster?

No. Well, that that right there is like the

giant bug scenario for me, right? And I I don't actually know if I would eat

that. Is a rust monster a crustaceian?

No, it is an insect. Okay. Um, I have a feeling that eating a

rust monster would be danger. Like, you know that thing when when you're eating fish and like they

haven't taken all the pin bones out, so like you have to carefully take every bite and make sure that you're like

feeling around in your mouth to make sure the bones are out of there, right? It'd be that but with metal

slivers. Rust monsters like destroy metal like fundamentally

all the time, right? So like does that process continue as they consume the

metal? Like does it just get broken down into carbon? Oxidized iron still isn't great to have

in your mouth. No, but I mean it's not like it's just sitting around in their digest digestive tract. Like it's going

to get further processed, right? Maybe. Yeah, that's Yeah,

maybe. Right. Like where does the metal go? Like when when they're processing

the metal digestively, is that going to their bones? Is that going to like specific parts of their anatomy? Is that

going to like their exoskeleton? What What has that turned into? As far as I know, it's just straight up like

calories. It's It's just fuel. But I guess neat

because I I haven't fought a Ross monster Ross monster a rust monster in a long time. Uh they're like their kitan

isn't like particularly tough, is it? No, not really. Not what I recall. Like

they they are vaguely rustcoled, but like is that because of their diet? Is that just like because they're always

around rust? Right. Right. Like one of the fun things about

uh the world building on this sort of thing, for me at least, is that I have to think about the ecology

of these monsters in a lot more detail if I'm thinking about how I would eat them. Right. Yeah. Right. Like

Well, and and for me, like I I rarely think about the ecology whatsoever.

Well, that's one of the great things about the the show that set this off for me is that they do talk quite a bit

about the ecology of the dungeon. Like, they treat the dungeon as if it is its own natural environment filled with

creatures that are in like a sort of homeostasis.

Yeah. Right. Like in order to continue propagating the dungeon with more

monsters, there needs to be some sort of balance between predators and prey and

things that draw in people for the things that people are needed for, right? And so it's uh a really

interesting look at how a few of those monsters work. Like there is a

um like a living armor monster in the show that is just an oyster.

And it like gets into armor that already exists and just inhabits it,

right? Yeah. Yeah. If it's under threat, then it marionets it around. But you can shuck the armor and eat the oyster bit

and apparently it's delicious, right? And that that was something that

I had never considered is like why would a piece of living armor exist and how

would it exist and how would you kill it? And if you did kill it, what kind of corpse would it leave behind that wasn't

just like a chunk of metal? Well, yeah, cuz like when you say that, I think of like animated armor. It's

like, oh, a wizard did it. Like there's nothing in there. Yeah. Yeah. But it doesn't have to be, right? I think

that's that's kind of neat. Uh, last one I want to bring up is the sturge.

Oh, are those like um giant mosquito giant? Yeah, big mosquito

bugs. Uh, I would not eat them. I would exterminate them. Uh, I would just be out there with a a

like a five foot long bug zapper. Okay. So, I have an idea of how you

could make a sturge delicacy. E. No. You feed the sturge something that

you normally wouldn't be able to eat, but it that has delicious blood.

How do you know the blood's delicious? How did we know that feta cheese was going to be delicious before

we ate it? Cuz we knew how to make cheese. See, I always just assumed that

whoever tried feta cheese first was a starving person who looked at the bottom of a bucket of bad goats milk and went,

"I wonder what that tastes like." Um, yeah, you have a real pessimistic view

of how like cuisines are developed over time.

You see it as like people got lucky with survival. Like I I think people are actually incredibly cautious and

conservative of what they do and it's only when they have like stable food sources that they start experimenting. I

think feta cheese was just like, well, we know how to make cheese. What if we try it with a different milk?

Fet cheese just seems like an accident to me. No, I think I think sour cream was an

accident. Okay, that's fair. There's there's a lot of foods like especially fermented foods

that I I assume are just accidental. We came up with that. Especially dairy.

Yeah, we [ __ ] dangerous. preserve and like try to hang on to the

the dairy that we harvest because it's so much work. And then like it turns out a lot of the ways that dairy goes wrong

accidentally becomes still edible if Yeah. Like not just edible but also

delicious. Yeah. Like the the fact that yogurt isn't immediately disgusting,

right? Is a miracle. Yeah. The fact that he's just like mess around

with like raw milk and like oopsy daisy's butter. Like that's actual sorcery.

Yes. And that that's a lot of like where I think the accidental discovery of food

stuff comes from is just like nobody sat down with some butter

and decided to beat it for a long time, right? Just because like they were

trying to do something else. I think they were transporting a large amount of fresh milk over a distance and oopsy

daisy, we shook it around so much it like churn. Can you imagine how disappointed you would be if you opened

up your milk expecting to have like some delicious milk and instead there's just a bunch of [ __ ] butter in your your

earn. Well, first of all, there would be buttermilk, which is just like shitty weak sour milk and then you're like,

"Oh, what's this? A lump at the bottom of the buttermilk?" Well, and then we found out [ __ ] to do with the buttermilk. Yeah, it's not it's

not good milk, but god damn it makes good pancakes. Well, and that's the thing. I think for a long time they were just like, "Goodbye buttermilk. That's

just waste product." Then one day someone was like, "What if we didn't?"

Mhm. Mhm. Anyway, uh I assume that we know

that wyvern blood is delicious because somebody found out accidentally or because somebody looked at a wyvern and went, "I wonder what that tastes like."

I I would have to assume it was like, "Hey, we got a group together to go take down the wyvern and we we wounded it."

Ah, something splashed on Jimmy's face and he's like, "Actually, guys, it's it's kind of

pecant in my mouth." Oh. Oh, it's in my mouth.

Well, and then you get into like some interesting territory of like breeding monsters for better

edibility. Right. Right. Right. So like if you have a particularly pecant wyvern

blood, do you like breed a couple of wyverns together that have like spicier blood to get spicier wyverns?

Do you think giant crabs came about because people just really [ __ ] love crab and wanted to get even bigger cloth

every time? Okay. As soon as we start talking about like giant stuff and like

experimentation with food and biology, the idea of a wizard did it makes a

whole lot more sense in context of food. Yeah. Yeah. There was a wizard from the

east coast who was like, "Godamn, I don't want to wait for these to develop.

What if I just made it bigger with my wall?" You know what I love? Crab claws.

I'm going to make them 17 times the size. Excuse me. Your buffet said literally

all you could eat crab. And I can eat so much more than you want.

It's not my fault that the food is dangerous. You bring me one more crab. I'll show you how to be profitable.

H I don't know why our wizard is always Doof and Schmz from Phineas and

Ferb cuz that's every player character wizard on a long enough timeline.

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