>>5212471>>5212612>>5212747It would be wrong to say that your people do not have ‘cuisine’. You are an ancient, storied culture, and you have had a great deal of time to refine the art of rearing, preparing, presenting, and even lightly spicing meats and other animal products to bring out the full richness of flavour.
However, to say that this particular FORWARD BASE of your people was a bit lacking… Well, that would be reasonable, you think. The chef (if such a word can be applied to the female Steeltalon who slaps the slab of meat upon your tray, barely soaked in a marinade and lumpy with irregular cysts) seems just as aware of this as you are, her glare daring you to say anything about it.
“What sort of animal is—”
“Rust-monster,” she says, flatly. “It’s what we can find without a surface excursion. That and smaller creatures, sufficient to grind into paste for meatloafs. That’s tomorrow’s meal.”
It is… Certainly rich in iron, you’ll give it that. Almost as chewy, too, though Irinnile shapeshifts you some shredding teeth to assist.
<WANT: 15>
Your dream-expedition ahs left HER hunger a little piqued, as well… But there is no breeding-pit here, and none of the other operatives are in-season.
‘Woah, woah, slow down,’ Irinnile interrupts your thoughts. ‘B-b-b-b—’
‘Breeding pits, yes,’ you acknowledge, swallowing a gulp of food. ‘For those who would seek to sate their needs and produce young, but who do not have the status to select a mate in a discriminate fashion.’
‘Well WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?’ she enthuses, practically taking control of you then and there…
But you wear the diadem, and you have <CALRITY>, at least with her hunger still subdued.
‘They’re very deep down,’ you say, ‘far from the forward base. We do not have time.’
And anyway… None will mate with a Degenerate. Well, not publicly, not where they can be discovered, and NEVER in such forms of copulatory activity which could conceivably pollute their bloodline.
Even sitting here, simply eating, you draw glares and glowers of disgust from other diners. You carefully avoid eye-contact, but you must be out-of-practice with social norms, for you accidentally hold one male gaze just a little too long: a Silkscale, like your mother. He is at a table with colleagues, fellows of his own clan, and they egg him on to make something of it. He rises, advances. You sigh.
