It's not uncommon in settings for humanoid monsters to eat humans - but does it ever go the other way about? Do humans eat any monster races in your settings?
I feel people would mostly avoid eating anything too recognisably like themselves, like mermaids, but other stuff might be fair game. And of course cannibal cultures probably eat anything.
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My party is currently visiting a floating city full of stereotypically bourgeois elves. And everything was cool until they served us halfling steak for dinner.
I think our DM has a problem.
Isn't that basically the plot of Dungeon Meshi?
Did they overcook it or something?
Undercooked. There's rare and then there's barely cooked at all. And I'm pretty sure mine had a tattoo on the damn steak
To some extent yeah.
Halfling meat is a delicacy, it's like veal or suckling pig.
If I remember right, the stereotypical bourgeois elves in the Arcanum setting had 'The Green Pact' wherein they vowed never to eat any plant life and sustained only on eating animals and, in the case of emergency, each other.
Arcanum was a fucking awesome setting. Too bad the game was technologically 5 years outdated even back when it came out. I try to go back and play it and my eyes bleed because it looks like ass covered ass with ass filling and it's more buggy than authentic New York pizza.
Sidebar; did anyone ever make a tabletop game or module for Arcanum that did the whole Magic vs. Technology thing? I'm not surefooted enough in game design to make the module/system myself.
No.
Why not? There are a lot of non-sentient, animal-like monsters out there. If you have restrains towards eating intelligent and/or humanoid creatures, you have a lot more game to choose from.
But speaking of humanoid monsters eating humans; it is a thing among the "evil" races, like orcs or sahuagin, but the "good" ones tend to abhor the thought, though some cults and secret societies may practice cannibalism in certain occasions. Frost giants eat sentient species, too, and even practice cannibalism.
Nope, you talking about bosmers from Elder Scrolls.
it was a long time ago, and it was scrubbed off the archives for being too extreme but I am reminded of the mini-mermaid cafe of tears(or some similar name) that Veeky Forums discussed.
back in the days when quests were still a novelty, the janitors worried less about this board being worksafe. the idea was just about the edgiest thing you could imagine though, so you may not want it for this discussion...
Arcanum was an amazing setting, but as a poster above mentioned, you've confused its elves with the Wood Elves of the Elder Scrolls. They have a pact where they don't make anything out of wood (think DF elves), so they make everything out of corpses. And sometimes they eat each other. And sometimes they turn into shspeshifting death orgies who destroy and devour everything before consuming themselves in a buffet of blood and sexual violence.
Elves in Arcanum mostly hang out in the back of trains and in the treetops in Qintarra, as I recall. They didn't really feature all that much in the story. Lots more emphasis on dwarves and gnomes. Not so much room for elves in capitalism.
Strong hook. Let's hear it all bb
This D&D idea was conceived in a previous thread from a combination of pic related and some creative brainstorming. Lets see if we can refine it a bit.
>pic was an old guro image of a great many miniature mermaids being caught in what appears to be a commercial fishing operation
The Lounge of Mermaid Tears - a popular tourist attraction and *the* social watering hole for dignitaries visiting the city; that specializes in only one dish, slow-boiled mini-mermaid. Moreso, the restraunt's main attraction are the large aquariums built into the walls inside each booth. From these prisons of glass swim the mini-mermaids; who if not picked for the nightly meal are forced to watch as the diners feast on their kin.
One would assume the novelty of the restraunt would not be enough to keep it aloft, as most buyers would be nauseated at the thought of eating a mostly humanoid being. But just as the owner pulls in a king's ransom every evening, so does he grease the hands of local officials and tax collectors who give him a seal of approval after the fact. The proprietor, a well-manicured, charismatic, silver-tongued glutton, is always found in his reserved balcony seat overlooking his customers and chatting up the wives of visiting nobles as his all-female staff entertain their husbands in the private booths.
But the truely horrifying secret this building holds is that the owner and his staff are demons in human disguise who are being shielded by detection or reprimandation by the greedy local lords. As the diners feed on the mermaids the demons too feed - specifically on the terror and sadness it brings the mermaids to watch their friends and family be devoured one by one.
And the mini-mermaids? Well they just swim in their tanks, salted by their own tears and the tears of the victims before them, and await their turn in the cookpot.
"Enjoy your meal, good sirs! Take your time. Savor every last bite..."
That's pretty fucked. Is there more?
I only saved a snippet or two...
no wait. there is an archived thread
archive.4plebs.org
pertaining to an archive that still had the threads...
desuarchive.org
desuarchive.org
except the images were taken off for being extra-ordinarily gore-centric
I'll bet I know what picture inspired that.
>like mermaids
Actually in one of my settings, mermaids are eaten. They're killed on sight by fishermen, being considered an extreme danger to humans, kind of like sharks, but, y'know, actually a threat. With that being done it seemed a waste to just throw out all that meat.
In all fairness though, once they're dead they don't look quite as human as they did alive. In this setting mermaids have a degree of glamour that makes them appear particularly beautiful to humans, and makes you not notice their more inhuman qualities. Sharp claws, webbing, really big eyes, shark-like teeth, large mouths, gills on their ribs, stuff like that.
Granted villagers mostly just eat the tail-part of the mermaid, which is where most of the meat is anyways. A lot of the torso parts are used for chum. Some of the fishermen themselves, and other dock workers, do eat the human parts though, there are dockside stands that sell fried/boiled/grilled mermaid bits, along with other cheap seafood. Then parts of mermaids are eaten by the extreme upperclass. Mermaid liver, mermaid eyes, mermaid tongue, mermaid brain, mermaid soup served in a bowl fashioned from the skull of a mermaid (the mermaid being eaten in really high end establishments) that sort of thing.
Do you have the link to the pic?
>roll up a human druid
>cook and eat an orc after combat
"It's not cannibalism we aren't the same race. It'd be wasteful not to eat at least some of the orcs we killed, the rest can be left for scavengers."
The characters entire thing was he didn't think killing for pleasure was morally okay but refusing to eat what you killed was just disrespectful to both nature and the creature you killed.
He was true neutral and mostly helped the party because "though I wish to embody the will of nature and be at peace with life and death, I am merely human with selfish wants and desires." His selfish wants and desires was to have friends and family, the party became his family.
Halfling are scum. They aught to be eaten.
I did something similar once, though he was a chef.
Don't adventurers in many settings cook and eat a dragon's heart when they kill one? There's a Steven King story where feasting on the dragon's heart gave the going virility and the son he conceived that night became a noble and heroic prince.
Given how many people dragons eat, it's hard to work up moral outrage over it.
fuck off spez you cannibal piece of shit
Thanks for the correction. I get my elves mixed up.
Not regularly. To some extent, that's the line between an animal and a monster. If a normal hunter can harvest it, it's an animal. If most people can't kill one, it's a monster, and it's going to be way too dangerous to be a normal food item. Maybe a weird delicacy, but not something that most people would ever think about eating.
That's pretty creepy senpai.
Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG #2447. No threatening the aboleth with telling the Cajun restaurant his location.
So, hogs and elks (not wapiti) are monsters? It's pretty hard to 1v1 those, especially without a gun.
In my setting the Koholds ruled a vast empire until 500 years ago. There was a global cooling event which caused their now extinct staple crop to fail, they had a civil war over food and religious blame, and in the madness Men came.
Fleeing the moving Hroar Frost which swallowed Man's Skyrim like homeland of giants and mammoths, they packed thenselves on boats made of desperation and fled across the previously unknown seas south.
When they arrived they found a land empty of any food but one, and so Man devoured the Kobold lands down to the bone.
Damn, and here I thought the original mermaid myths/tales were already pretty steeped in sexist undertones.
If races are biologically similar enough that half elves/half orcs are a thing, then they're similar enough cannibalism is going to fuck you up.
Some civilians once tried catching some shark squigs but they got prosecuted and the ship's captain executed by the party. It was a harsh but effective way to inform the population that spreading the filthy ork spores around is no fun.
Whoever drew this, thanks again, it's super cool.
There's a legend that eating the flesh and blood of mermaids restores youth and grants longevity. Or maybe it's one of several components of an immortality elixir. I don't remember where I first heard the rumor, though I'm pretty sure mermaids went to war with humans over it.
Most monsters have magical properties. IIRC mermaid flesh makes you beautiful or immortal or something.
And it's even worse in alchemy.
I mean, you just have to get to africa and they eat enemies/virgin/albinos because magic, so actual magic creatures?
How so? Mermaids and sirens have always been about illusion, which isn't specifically female, and user's post didn't mention their sex.
>tfw no merman bro to lure you into the sea and tear your guts off.
My Viking character made our party help him bring a dragon corpse back to his village after they killed it and took its hoard. The dragon was made into sausages. When my friend's rogue said it wasn't a suitable end, I told him the old viking proverb: "All things come to an end, except sausages, which come to two."
Dragon sausage is good eating.
I had a low level ranger I fluffed as a mermaid poacher in pathfinder. It was actually a good campaign but ended after 2-3 sessions.
I figured it was kind of like the Chinese demand for rhino horn for impotence etc. He'd catch mermaids and sell powders of the scales and their blood to aging and vain noblewomen. Part poacher, part snake oil salesman. Neutral evil alignment of course.
Based on pic related.
Sounds neat. Pic related?
I've only seen this plot hook in settings coming out of Japan, most notably Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen. Has the whole "eating mermaids = youth and/or immortality" thing ever been mentioned in mermaid myth outside of Japan or did it start there? Because, lets be real here, it kind of figures it would start there.
Not quite that inhuman, and lower tech, but somewhere along those lines, tonally at least.
I should make clear too, mermaids weren't unintelligent beasts. They were actually rather elf-like, but had longstanding hostilities with landdwelling creatures, and preyed on them as well. It was a sort of mutual hostility, with neither side really recognizing the other as 'people', more in terms of land-people just thinking the merfolk were unintelligent evil monsters, the merfolk just sort of hated humans by nature and didn't really care
>the merfolk just sort of hated humans by nature and didn't really care
this sure sounds legit and like we're getting both sides of the story
Not the same guy, but I think I found the pic. I don't like it.
Never had that before. I might try to put that in at some point.
Does anyone know if it's safe to eat tyranids or orks?
Japanese folklore holds that the flesh of a mermaid can make one immortal. Or so I've heard.
Rumiko Takahashi did some decent horror stories revolving around the idea. Added twists : mermaid flesh is poisonous. If you eat it, one of three things will happen to you : 1) you die, 2) you become an immortal mutant monster, 3) you become immortal (possibly still a monster, humans being what they are and all). Classic limit to said immortality : cutting off the head. I remember two of the titles "Mermaid's Scar" and "Mermaid's Tears". There were more. They're worth looking up and reading if you've got the time. IMNSHO
Haha, you eat scum.
...
Well that's certainly fucked up.
Absolutely. Given half a chance, humans will eat it, fuck it, or both. Sometimes at the same time.
1)Most predator meat isn't particularly great, monsters tend to be predators. Obviously just a rule of thumb.
2)The key exception just like in our world is novelty and superstition, the former especially for nobles, the latter tends towards commoners but is a bit universal in appeal.
Even if a monster isn't particularly appetizing the act of being able to present its meat at your table is a great way to show off, boast about your hunters. Naturally this bit and that bit are said to have magical properties if prepared in some crazy ritualistic way if you eat them, those bits if you make things out of them.
Availability is also a big factor, as is famine. A lot of things that we have found out are really fucking delicious, and that are hard to get, like caviar for instance, are things that started out as peasant food because nobody with options would touch something that "gross" to try it meaning it was just there for starving peasants to scrounge up and eat out of desperation.
If there's a bunch of goblin raiders and there's no religious ban on eating goblin, hungry peasants will probably eat the corpses afterward. If it turns out to be delicious, they'll start hunting goblins, noblemen will find out that goblin tastes good, it'll become a delicacy and gobbos will be hunted close to extinction. Such is cuisine
I know mermaid sushi has become a more common concept in art recently.
Forgot pic
Isn't that sashimi?
That is not the facial expression of someone whose lower half in in pieces with a knife still in it.
Stop picking apart my incredibly specific character build.
Painkillers? Severe nerve damage in the lower spine?
Anyway, what's supposed to be so bad about cannibalism?
People dumb enough to eat brain ruined it for everyone.
Surprisingly, cannibalism is extremely nutritious. But also it's a great way to get an infection, whether through prions, parasites, or good old-fashioned bacteria.
If it happened fast enough maybe.
That is an excellent point.
I have no idea, eating brains causes problems and I guess you need human flesh to eat it and acquiring it is pretty illegal so there's that.
Honestly I'd go straight to cannibalism if I was stranded with another person and they were injured and we had no other food.
Hell if he died and there was other food I'd probably eat him first so he doesn't spoil.
>Most predator meat isn't particularly great
This. Bear can either be horrible or okay depending on what the bear has been eating, eg meat or berries.
Yeah, but let's say we don't eat the brain. Put some mystical spin on it like the head is the seat of the soul and the brain and eyes (or the whole head) have to be burned so the person you're eating won't come back as a wraith and haunt you.
So you'd eat some of the internal organs like the heart as the source of their power, liver and kidneys (but right now I can't think of what they would be the source of), then parts of the arms and legs to gain a portion of your enemies strength and speed.
I think if given a ritualistic aspect cancibalism can be made to appear neither callous, nor creepy in a bad way.
>AlbertFish.tiff
here again.
So we prepare the meat properly, that takes care of all the bacteria and parasites that can be found in any meat. Prions are a bit of a problem, but we're making a burnt offering of the brain to make sure the person doesn't haunt us, so that takes care of that, too.
As for the legality, this is a fantasy world. I doubt there'll be any official laws regarding eating orcs or goblins if there's a more or less permanent state of low-intensity (and occasional high-intensity) war against them.
You'd have to kill and butcher the person in such a way that the membrane surrounding the brain and spinal cord isn't broken, in order to ensure prions don't contaminate the meat.
How fast does that happen, though? Is it really like prions spill all through the body if someone's head is bashed open with a mace? Or their head cut off? Or they get stabbed between the shoulder blades?
How far would the prions spread from the point where the brain and/or spinal cord were damaged?
That's part of why I strongly lean towards giving it a ritualistic spin and entirely leaving the head out of the eating, and focusing on some parts of the body that would tend to be fairly safe. (limbs, and some internal organs)
I'd try to play cannibalism as showing respect for the dead, acknowledging that the other person was a powerful warrior or whatever, and hoping to gain their power or wisdom through a ritual that involves eating parts of them. If you're barbequing someone else whole and then picking bits off them while they're spinning over the fire and you have a couple of beers, you're DOING IT WRONG.
>I doubt there'll be any official laws regarding eating orcs or goblins
Ehh monkey/ape is illegal to sell for meat in america, same with buying a butchering monkeys. If we can have ethical conniptions about eating animals that we're distantly related to/vaguely look like us. I just don't see a fantasy people being ok with eating something that not only looks similar, can potentially interbreed, and that whole sapience thing they have going for them. Unless they're fantasy Belgians.
The ink is supposed to give it more flavor, like squid. It's a delicacy you pissant
On the other hand, ape/monkey is eaten throughout large parts of Africa and Asia (and I'd be willing to bet South America as well) usually smoked and added for flavour as I hear. There're some theories that homo sapiens came to be the dominant human species on earth because we'd kill and eat the other ones.
So those ethical conniptions are hardly universal, I don't think they'd apply as strongly to a fantasy-medieval world as they do to modern-day USA. And speaking of the USA, do you really think most of those rural rednecks wouldn't eat a monkey or gorilla given the chance?
canibalism being nutritious its a meme
even in ancient times its believed that when people resorted to canibalism was because they were starving or part of some sort of religious ritual.
news.nationalgeographic.com
In the Second Apocalipsis books, there is an army than devours the equivalent of goblins.
You would bet well then.
I'm honestly disappointed that this hasn't been posted yet.
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>Don't adventurers in many settings cook and eat a dragon's heart when they kill one?
That's the scandinavian legend of Sigurdr and Fafnir and here Fafnir was originaly human so it's kind of cannibalism in a way
Orks must taste like vegetables and tyranids, maybe fried
Not quite. Not yet anyway.
Deep Fried Orkin Skins with Grated Furim Meat packed within
Famous treat for the Xenophobic Militarist Human Galactic Purity Combine
>I think if given a ritualistic aspect cancibalism can be made to appear neither callous, nor creepy in a bad way.
man, do you really think the canibalist culture who existed on earth though it was creepy to eat human ?
depend of the culture
>But also it's a great way to get an infection
so just like every meat ?
>I just don't see a fantasy people being ok with eating something that not only looks similar
>Ehh monkey/ape is illegal to sell for meat in america, same with buying a butchering monkeys.
but that's only USA which is only one country you should think way larger if your fantasy settings only show americans
yup. thats the one.
now go find the series of pics where they are prepared(live in almost all cases) in an assortment of dishes while their compatriots watch in horror and listen to the screaming.
I had folks eat odd stuff before. I did make the rule that Orcs/Goblins, being sometimes carron eaters, are notably nasty in flavor.
However other things ARE eaten, most large cities have food shops that whatever meat is around (barring a few notably nasty meats) might be thrown into the stew pot.
Generally humans and Demihumans was a huge no-no. Mermaid and Centaur and the like the animal half was "kosher", the "Man" side wasn't.
Some animals are also poached for there magical substances.
But it was always more flavor or "Do not go to O'Dells at eat from that pot, who knows what they put in it."
The reason it doesn't go the other way around is because eating human-like things is traditionally seen as monstrous behaviour.
Not going to lie, i'd fuck it.
Then they could at least make it a good looking tattoo on their breedstock. I think I went to the same floating city, mine had MUM on it.
>So, hogs and elks (not wapiti) are monsters? It's pretty hard to 1v1 those, especially without a gun.
Guess how I can tell you've never been hunting
Druids who don't know shit about ecosystems and nature knights avert your eyes
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FYI before guns we hunted boars with spears