[Leela] Chapter 1: A Father's Plea

[Throndir]

"I see... A strange custom. Very well then Leela-sama. Please follow me."

With that the entourage began their journey towards the so-called Kitchen of All Dark Things. As the group walked through the castle, you noticed that there really wasn't much lighting at all in the place. There was still light outside, but yet, for whatever reason, it looked gloomy as if it was dusk. The castle itself was in a similar state. Nothing was broken or in disrepair, but it looked treacherous, as if indeed was a stereotypical den for villains.

Finally, you made it to the kitchen. It looked like a normal kitchen, save for one odd thing. There were strange mosaics that appeared just randomly blurring the view of items, whatever they were, that sat on the kitchen shelves and counter. Blinking didn't remove the weird mosaics. If you had to describe it, it looked like the censoring they had on old TV shows.

"Ah, sorry about that. An ability I have you see." Zavan snapped his fingers. The moment he did so, faint wisps of light appeared from his snapped finger, making their way to each of the items in that were hidden behind the mosaics. All of a sudden the mosaics disappeared. What instead appeared was a collection of strange-looking fruits, vegetables, and slabs of dried meat and fish, all of them were unfamiliar, and did not look like anything you've ever seen back at home. Many of them had a distinct shade of purple, and they did not look all that appetizing.

[Ella]

Leela Steading

"Why... why would you even do that in the first place?" She asked, dumbfounded as to why someone would blur out stuff in the kitchen, the place where people needed to know what they were grabbing in order to cook food.

"Wait, can you do that to other things, too? Can you see things that you have... blurred out? Can you make it so only certain people can see things that you have blurred out?" That ability might actually come in use, depending on how much he could do with it.

Leela moved closer to inspect individual items. As she had never seen any of these food items before and most were purple in color, she had a hard time trying to guess what they might taste like. There were many foods from back in her world that looked unappetizing, but tasted well enough. Plus, some foods from the time period she grew up in were much different than how they had been many years previous, so some of these things could actually be early versions of this world's food. Maybe.

"Do you have grains and spices here?" She asked, looking around for more than just fruits, vegetables, meats, fish.

"What does this one taste like and what is its texture?" The young woman pointed at a random fruit, not expecting much of an answer considering that bread was the most flavorful thing they had ever tasted. Then again, there was a possibility that this world's bread was more flavorful than her own if she took into account how different the food presented before her looked.

[Throndir]

Zavan shook his head.

"Ah, well, Lady Leela-sama, at times the occasional minion makes their way to the kitchens and eat snacks." Zavan explained. "Normally we wouldn't mind of course, but our supply of food has been dwindling, and isn't enough to feed the inhabitants of the castle as wholly as we would like. I found it best to hide our food simply to confuse anyone deciding to have a late-night snack. Doesn't always work as some are keen of smell, but it discourages them at the very least."

"Once I use this ability on what I want, the object is blurred for both myself and anyone else. Perhaps there are ways for me to give me fine controls on who would be affected, but alas, I am not yet at that point."

"We have grains stored in barrels and sacks." Zavan said. "Some of the barrels contain the finest spirits in our lands of Roshandan." Under some of the tables were indeed sacks and barrels. Zavan moved to one, then opened one of the sacks for Leela to see. Inside were small purple foodstuff that looked similar to dried corn kernels. "These are usually boiled and created into a porridge." The silver-haired man explain.

Zavan grabbed the fruit you had pointed to, then deftly he threw it in the air. His hands moved quickly, but you managed to follow them, you noticed his nails had elongated briefly, sharpened, and managed to cut the fruit into smaller manageable pieces while it was still in freefall. With precision and grace, he caught all the pieces and offered a peice.

If ingested, roll a Physical Resistance check.

The flavor is aptly described as bland. Though at least still juicy. The texture is similar to the feeling of hardened jello in your mouth. A tasteless, juicy, jello-texture fruit.

[Ella]

Leela Steading

"Oh, I see. That makes sense." Leela had not thought that they might have an issue with food supply. This only made things worse in her mind. Not only did the food sound bleak, what bland food there was here was running low. She decided to make sure not to tell anyone about the snacks she had stored in her backpack and purse. That also meant making sure no one gets the chance to dig through her belongings. She would have to hide her things or sleep with them on her person. Just in case.

"Well, if you are able to figure out how to do so at some point, I am sure that it would be extremely useful for things like sending messages that we wouldn't want to fall into the wrong hands." She wondered if Zavan had ever even thought of that. Possibly not, considering Gorat said that he avoided the war and that meant little use for preventing people from seeing what was not meant for them to see.

"So... if you guys have grain, how have you never made bread before? Bread is made from ground up grain and water, and sometimes other ingredients such as yeast and sugar to make it more fluffy. Though this looks more like corn. I know there is such a thing as corn bread, but I don't remember all the ingredients for making it. You guys could also try making popcorn... Which would be best if you had butter or spices." The girl said after following Zavan to look into the opened sack of grain. "You don't have any spices at all?"

"Why is all your food purple in color?" Leela eyed Zavan's fingernails as he offered her a piece of the fruit. He had just cut up the entire fruit with them. It was both amazing and gross at the same time. How had he made them longer and sharp enough to cut the fruit? And most importantly, were they clean?

Perception to see if Zavan's nails are clean or not.

Rolled 1d20+1 : 1 + 1, total 2

Spoiler

Will continue the rest of this post after seeing the result of her perception check.

[close]

[Ella]

Leela Steading

His movements while cutting the fruit had been too fast for her to even think about checking the cleanliness of his nails. As he held the piece out to her, it was hard to tell if they were dirty or not due to the juices of the purple fruit that clung to to them. After having just been told that their food supply was dwindling, Leela decided not to waste food. Besides, she had intended to try a sample of everything to figure out what she might be able to work with to make a passable meal.

"Thank you." She carefully accepted the offered piece and stuck it in her mouth. The good news was, it did not taste gross. In fact, it did not taste like anything at all. The best she could describe the flavor was like water that had been filtered of all minerals. The sad truth of it was, though, was there was no flavor at all. As for the rest of it... juicy jello... She could remember holding jello in her mouth until it warmed up enough to melt a little as a child. Although it was a little harder than that... Almost like a gummy candy, but with a lot of juice and no flavor... It left her feeling like she had been cheated or tricked into eating a sugarless snack.

"Does... all your food taste like this?"

Physical Resistance Check
This dice roll has been tampered with!
Rolled 1d20+13 : 12 + 13, total 25

[Throndir]

"Making bread?" Zavan asked curiously, the look in his eye made him look like he was actually intrigued. Ghorat too behind him perked up.

"We do not 'make bread'. No. In fact... how does one even go about this? Is it some sort of spell? A lost technique only to humans?" Zavan pressed.

"Spices... If you mean plants, much like these fruits, then we have bundles of them." He pointed to a stack of purple plants. They were long, and ended in small purple petals.

"Though, gathering these for consumption take more effort, it is usually much more efficient to simply hunt the animals that live on our lands, and the larger fruits which are more filling."

When you asked why all the food was purple, Zavan shrugged.

"I do not understand what you are trying to hint at Lady Leela-sama. I suspect... is it the same reason why the skies are grey, and the rivers red?"

Physical Resistance Check: 25
As you ate the food, and it settled in your stomach, you felt as if you were going to have a stomach ache. But the feeling passed, and you felt fine shortly after.

"Why yes!" Ghorat called out from behind both Zavan and you. He continued to stand outside in the hallway. His frame may have fit inside the Kitchen of All Dark Things, but it would have been cramped.

"The PLEASURES OF ROSHANDAN are yours to take!" The demon lord announced. "Zavan! Ensure the rest of my retainers heed this newly created law!"

"Of course sire." Zavan bowed low.

[Ella]

Leela Steading

The queasiness Leela felt in her stomach upon the food reaching it made her worried. Was it poisonous to humans? Normally, if something upset her stomach, she would have to run and find a bathroom before her body decided to expel it. If it was poisonous, surely her body would try to expel it. But the feeling passed before she felt the need to ask where a bathroom was and she instead felt as though nothing had been wrong at all. Perhaps it was all in her head, with her viewing the food as unappetizing and bland, perhaps her body was unconsciously responding to that? The blonde decided to go with that.

"Yeah, making bread. It can be made in a lot of different ways with various ingredients, which in turn changes the flavor and texture. All ways are done manually, there is no magic spell or special technique needed to make it. The most basic of ingredients are flour - which is finely ground up grain - and water. Just using these two ingredients makes a flat bread. But if you add in yeast and sugar, the yeast eats the sugar and makes the bread more rounded." She continued to describe what steps she knew for making bread. Cooking was net exactly her forte, but she had to at least try with what little knowledge she had in it. She explained about grinding up the grain into powder using a mortar and pestle or between two rocks and how people from her world made grain by building grain mills that harnessed water or the wind to turn the stone and grind more grain. She told them how bread could have different quality depending on how much chaff and other stuff was removed from the powder.

"And then after you mix all the ingredients together really well, you create dough, which you can either shape into ovals, balls, or flatten, or simply plop it into the oven and wait for it to cook. The bigger it is, the longer it takes to cook and the more chance it might burn the outside. It is important to keep watch on it as you cook it so that you don't burn it to a crisp." She finished her explanation on how to make bread from scratch with minimal supplies, the entire time doing hand motions for the certain activities of each step, just in case they did not understand a concept.

The young woman also tried to explain about spices, how they are used to give different flavors to food. If they were edible but did not give any flavor, then they were not really spices, just something to add to food to make it look pretty. People in her world did that a lot to make food look as appetizing as possible. Some people even made preparing food into an art form.

"Your rivers are red?! Like with blood?" Her eyes got big at the thought of rivers running red with blood like it had been described in the Bible back home. "Your skies are grey all the time? I mean... I'm used to seeing grey skies if it is really cloudy or if the air is super smokey. But you have never seen a blue sky?"

"In my world... Food is all different sorts of colors, and only a few of them are purple. Meat can be red, white, or dark white. Fish can be pink or white. Vegetables can be green, yellow, orange, red, brown, and white. Fruits and berries can be red, orange, yellow, green, blue, black, pink, and brown. We can also eat some mushrooms, though some have to be cooked before they are edible, and most of those are white or brown." Leela brought herself back around to the topic about food. Purple food... would be much cooler if it was only a few things that were purple instead of everything she looked at.

"..." The giant demon man had been so silent all this time that they had been in the kitchen, Leela had almost forgotten that he was still there. He was apparently so excited that she was telling them how to make bread that he was deciding on the spot to make a law that she could take food. She was not sure why that sort of thing would be a law... Unless he meant that she could take stuff as she pleased, which was pretty touching considering the circumstances. "... Thank you... Lord Gorat." She bowed her head to show her appreciation of this law he had passed for her, even though she was not very thrilled, especially considering that the food here was not really a pleasure.

"Anyways... At some point in the near future, I need to go around and taste test everything here and also see if this grain can be used to make bread as well as if I can do anything with the other food here to give them flavor. For now, though, we should probably go and talk about preparations for rescuing your daughter." Leela decided to wait until she could be alone so that she sort through her things and set up a rationing of her snacks. Hopefully she had enough to last until she could figure something out to fix the food issue. But Gorat would probably get upset with her if she ignored rescuing his daughter and spent all her time experimenting with their dwindling food. Besides, she could probably obtain food from the humans while she is out on the rescue mission, which would increase her own supply of better food than what was in the "kitchen of all dark things."

[Throndir]

In your mind, a message appeared.

You have gained a new title『Teacher of Demons』
You have gained +1 WIS

"Zavan! Make close attention, our hero speaks the truth that we must hear." Ghorat said as he listened intently on your instructions of how to create food.

"By your will my lord." Zavan responded. For the next couple of minutes, both Zavan and Ghorat began nodding enthusiastically as you continued to explain what you knew about food, ingredients, and preparation. Both the demons had well-placed 'Oohs' and 'Aahs' every-time you spoke of a new wonderment. And their eyes seemed to glisten with awe. When you described that the colors of your food were more than just purple, Ghorat himself started to drool a bit.

"When I had stepped into the human lands to the west, their skies were different than ours. They were blue and had white clouds! Our clouds are dark red. The rivers run red too! Oh but I WISH THEY WERE RIVERS OF BLOOD! The lands of Roshandan WILL STRIKE FEAR IN THE HEARTS OF ALL HUMANS."

"That is... except you Leela-sama. You are always welcome on my humble lands."

When you gave him your thanks, Ghorat bowed his head.

"I should thank you! When my daughter comes home... I'll be making use of these new techniques you have told us, and see if I can create 'bread'!" Ghorat promised. "My daughter would be so proud."

"With our business here done, follow me to our hall." Zavan suggested.

"OF MISERY." Ghorat replied without missing a beat.

"Yes, my lord, 'Of Misery'." Zavan corrected.

I can continue the scene right now if there's nothing for you to reply to, let me know.

[Ella]

Leela Steading

As stupid as all of this seemed to her at first, Leela found herself enjoying teaching them what she knew. It made her feel special and powerful to be able to capture the demons' full attention. She was sure that if she pulled one of the granola bars out of her bag, she would have them eating out of her hands. But she would not go that far. Those granola bars were more precious to her than gold. They must stay safe.

You have earned a new title:『Teacher of Demons』
Gained +1 WIS

More words flashed in her mind's eye. A new title? Just for teaching these demons how to make bread? What was with all these titles, anyways? And this +1 WIS, she could only assume it was something like in a video game or Dungeons and Dragons where you allocate your stats in character creation and can sometimes find books that increase certain stat levels. But she hadn't allocated her "beginning stats", did not even know what they were, and seemed to be gaining these stat increases from titles instead of books. She wondered what other sorts of things she could get titles for. How she wished she could ask for a room to herself at this moment so that she could sit down and try to figure out what all this was. She did not feel comfortable trying to ask the demons about it, still fearing that if she showed a sign of weakness, that she would lose the control that she seemed to have over them so far. Questions about their land and world she did not think could be viewed as a weakness, considering she was not an all-powerful god who knew everything. She was just a girl from another world. But questions about herself, she felt that those might be considered weak. A strong person and leader should know as much about themselves as possible.

A sigh of relief escaped her when they assured her that the rivers were not of blood. Though she wondered what could make their sky grey and their clouds and rivers red, especially if surrounding lands seemed to have a normal sky, clouds, and water. Whatever was in the rivers, she hoped that it was just water with a lot of minerals in it and that she could filter enough of it with her water bottle to make it more like regular water.

With their business temporarily concluded in the kitchen, Leela followed them out of the small room.

Spoiler

Ready to continue the scene.

[close]

[Throndir]

Soon enough, the three of you made their way to the Great Hall of Misery with Zavan leading the way. The castle was well-tended, and eventually the group made their way to the great hall itself. It looked like the great hall included a throne as one was situated at far end of it. Nearer the center was a long table, some spots having chairs while some were empty. It looked like it would have been able to deal with many guests, but for the most part, the hall was empty.

"Welcome to the great hall my lady." Zavan said as he gestured with a sweeping motion towards the room.

"This was where I used to hold meetings." Ghorat said as he then pointed towards the throne. "I used to sit atop that very throne, my daughter beside me, while we discussed our agendas for the day with each of my generals."

"No one uses the hall anymore these days though..." There was an evident somberness to his voice.

[Ella]

Leela Steading

"Well, we will be using it now." Leela stated as if she was going to change that final statement. She proceeded to move towards one of the chairs, pulling her backpack from her back as she walked. After sitting and properly situating her skirts, she pulled her backpack into her lap and opened it, cautious so as to not let the others peer into it.

"Before we begin, do you have a map of Rossandan and the lands that surround it?" She asked as she retrieved the larger of her unlined notebooks, a mechanical pencil, and an eraser before quickly zipping her backpack back up. Not bothering to move the backpack from her lap, Leela opened the book to the first empty page a couple pages in and set it down on the table.

[Throndir]

The two others took their places as well. Ghorat sat on the throne at the end of the room, facing the table. While Zavan took a more practical seat, and chose to seat himself across from you.

"Artifacts from your world?" Lord Ghorat eyed the strange items curiously.

"The make of your sack is quite fascinating as well." The silver-haired man remarked as he watched you zip up the bag. "As for a map... I believe it was Kajri who kept such things. Unfortunately she is no longer with us. Each of the generals had cleaned up their quarters before leaving to other Lords, so it's not likely we would have find a map in her old room." Zavan said.

"I can explain the neighboring lands... But truly, it is Ashaki who had done most of the wandering. To our west there are human settlements, I believe they are loosely connected politically. To our north, east, and south, are the domains of other Demon Lords."

[Ella]

Leela Steading

There was a pause after Gorat asked if the items she had pulled out were artifacts from her world. Leela took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. She could forgive their lack of food knowledge - that was something she could fix. She could forgive their stupidity when dealing with humans - although it did leave her stuck witch apparently cleaning up their mess. She could forgive a lot of things that she found fault with the place and people she had wound up stuck with. She was quickly coming to realize, however, that everything she had in her backpack and purse had suddenly become precious commodities, not just the food. It was like she had been thrown into some sort of mix between stone age and... whatever age it was when castles first started getting built.

"Please tell me that you have paper and writing utensils here." She was not sure that she knew enough about making paper to be able to walk them through how to make it.

"Yes... The make of my bag is extremely useful. If we have time in the future, perhaps I can teach you and your people how to make something similar." Leela realized that she might have to make a list of things she had to teach them how to do or make. She was not sure if she could go back to her home world, but in the event that she could not, she would have to do something to improve the situation.

"So what you're telling me is that you do not have maps or books or anything? Shouldn't the Lord of the castle have copies of important things like that in his own library that no one can remove from said library?" She found herself holding her head with one hand in disappointment for the third time in less than a day.

"Okay. We can work through this." The Lolita said more to herself than to the others in the room. She turned her attention back to the empty page of her book, picked up her pencil, and drew a basic picture of a castle. "This is this castle. How many days travel are the human settlements from here? And how many days travel to each other the other Demon Lords' domains?" Her pencil was ready and poised to draw in figures to represent the surrounding lands. "You said you have red rivers, where are the rivers and how do they flow? Are there any other landmarks, such as hills, mountains, forests, ponds, or lakes and where would they be in position compared to where we are now?"

[Throndir]

Both Zavan and Ghorat began trying explain and describe the surrounding lands. Where the lands of the demon lords were that surrounded Roshandan, along with where the human settlements were. They described the topological layout of the land, along with other features of the area. Their memory was surprisingly sharp.

INT check, or craft (map), or profession (scribe/cartographer) requested. We'll be using the alternative Craft rules from Pathfinder to handle this. Time unit is 4 hours. Eg, at minimum this will take you 4 hours to make.

[Ella]

Craft (Cosplay) Roll:

Rolled 1d20+8 : 3 + 8, total 11

Spoiler

Using Craft (Cosplay) as agreed to by the GM as crafting cosplays involves drawing and pattern making skills, which involves being able to draw spacial distances much like map-making, and because Leela has two people explaining distances of things to her instead of trying to make the map while traveling.

[close]