A cliche honorable warrior race ala the klingons, except replace “warfare” with “cooking”. Still gruff and argumentative and quick to throw down, except their idea of throwing down requires them and their opponent to step into a kitchen and make the best goddamn pies they can as if their lives depend on it.
“Shepard, your pie crust is bland and tasteless. Only the krogans truly know the meaning of honor.”
Random worldbuilding time!
Their homeplanet of [SPECIES] is a world where nearly everything is incredibly toxic.
This is the result of an unusual accident of evolution, their homeworld was the sight of two separate lasting abiogenesis events. Both forms of life have biochemistries often highly toxic to the other. Somehow, this did not prevent endosymbiosis much like that which happened on Earth from occurring, and the symbiotes managed to tailor their processes and products to avoid poisoning each other. All complex life on their world is the result of this union.
However, this means that evolution has a ready made arsenal of toxins to deploy against other organisms by making slight alterations. Sometimes by selective pressure to avoid predation, sometimes by coincidence, most native lifeforms are toxic to most other native lifeforms. Consumers are highly specific to certain kinds of food, and as such tend to have very restricted ranges where they can live.
But not the [SPECIES], who as intelligent tool using beings, became nomads when they overpopulated their native range.
But their was a problem- there was little that they could eat in their new homes without careful preparation. A lot of trial and error went into food preparation, as not all toxins could be burned or washed or filtered away easily, and many were sacrificed for the “good of the tribe”. Chefs, those who prepared the food, became the most elite and celebrated members of the tribe, with advanced skill and knowledge of tricky detoxification methods. It was expected that most members of the tribe have some ability in this area, and it became a norm that everyone must be the first to try their own food. Poisoning was a relatively common cause of death.
“Cooking duels” to the death became a thing, where chefs fight for their honor by attempting to prepare some especially dangerous rare delicacy- which they must be the first to taste.
Over time more knowledge and technology made food production much simpler and less dangerous, but the traditions remained as [SPECIES] entered the industrial age and, eventually, traveled between stars for the first time.
And so: a society of angry, obsessive chefs IN SPACE.
…
(I have no idea how plausible or coherent this is I was bored)
Tags:
#story ideas I will never write #food #in which Brin has a food poisoning phobia #(this post didn’t especially bother me) #(but I thought people who were familiar with my tagging system and had similar issues might be blacklisting that tag) #death tw
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