Gastromancy – Magic You Can Eat

An evening in the inventors' stronghold. The long table holds soup, salads, fish, meat, potatoes and a bread with a golden crust, the best the guests have ever eaten. Anyone who arrived tired from the road and feared falling asleep over the plate is surprised to find they feel more and more awake. Then a cart rolls in bearing an enormous pudding, followed by a stout, grey-haired halfling woman in a flour-covered apron. After the first spoonful a warmth spreads through the belly, as if there were spirits in the dessert, though nobody can taste any. Worries melt away, and the war waiting outside suddenly seems winnable.

That is what gastromancy tastes like: magic you can eat.

Part one: where it came from

A people without wizards

Halflings have never had many mages. The Shires rarely have more than one or two at a time, and the Assembly and the Muster Master prize them highly. Even the most famous halfling inventors, Percival Arbuckle and his apprentice Paddy Bobart, had modest gifts: enough to put magic into the machines they built, but not enough to hurl fireballs.

Among the artificers of the Shires there are some who bind metal with their minds and some who enchant objects. There are healers with modest magic and a handful of battle mages – too few to keep up with enemy wizards in a great battle. That is why, in the workshops in the hills north of Tanmill, at the hidden Holdfast, artificers enchant strange metal shapes mounted on poles. Carried like banners, they are meant to cancel enemy spells in their vicinity.

Halflings do, however, have one trait that explains a great deal: they always find a use for even a modest talent. The best example is gastromancy.

Recently revealed

Gastromancy is new. Until recently, hardly anyone had heard of magic food. Of potions, yes – alchemists have known how to brew them for millennia. But a potion is a single draught for a single person. A gastromantic dish can feed hundreds, even thousands, at once.

The name, it seems, came from Paddy Bobart himself, master of the Holdfast. Introducing the creator of a feast to his guests, he spoke of "what I call Gastromancy, food mixed with magic". The name stuck, and the art began to spread beyond a single kitchen.

Part two: the menu

Gastromancy is still developing – at the Holdfast they said plainly that the experiments were ongoing. From what is known, three dishes come first.

Golden bread

The backbone of army rations. A loaf looks like ordinary bread, only golden, and tastes better than any other bread the Holdfast's guests had ever eaten. It gives strength and stamina. Fatigue vanishes moments after eating, leaving the soldier alert and ready for the road.

For how long? Mama Beata, once asked whether her bread would let troops march ten leagues and still fight at the end, was offended by the very question: ten leagues, and twice ten if you want. An army on golden bread can march all day and then all night, its legs eating up the distance as if they would never tire.

It has its limits. After an evening of wine, the guests at the Holdfast found that even Mama Beata's bread could not entirely undo the effects of one glass too many.

Courage Pudding

Courage Pudding works not on the legs but on the spirit. A warmth in the belly, a feeling that everything will turn out well, that the people around you are friends you can count on – and together you cannot fail. You may well guess that the pudding is behind it, but knowing does not change the feeling.

On the battlefield that means one thing: fear disappears. Fear of magic too. Ranks that would once have broken and fled before the fire and lightning of an enemy wizard stand their ground after the pudding and shoot at him from every side until he falls.

The pudding is issued in wrapped portions, with strict orders not to touch it until the commander says so. Sometimes there is very little of it. When supplies run low it is cut into tiny slivers so that everyone gets at least a bite – and not even the cook can say whether such a small piece will still work.

Cat's Eye Tart

One of Mama Beata's "surprises", the kind she preferred not to talk about in advance. Whoever eats a Cat's Eye Tart can see in the dark like a cat. Not quite like daylight, but well enough to follow a road under the trees on a pitch-black night.

There are never enough tarts for everyone, so a few soldiers in each unit get them and the rest follow. Scouts with a tart inside them can go ahead with covered lanterns, count off their paces and uncover the light only towards their own lines: friends can see it, the enemy cannot.

And sweets for special occasions

Mama Beata does not cook only for the army. She caters weddings too, and then nobody knows how much gastromancy is in the food – only that the guests have an unusually good time. She has been known to slip the newlyweds tiny sweets in gift-wrapped boxes, with instructions not to eat them until bedtime. What they do, the sources tactfully leave unsaid.

Part three: the bill

Not for horses

Gastromancy does not work on animals. Horses and oxen fed golden bread march not one step further. A ten-league march is within the endurance of cavalry mounts and aralez even without magic, but the beasts hauling the guns and supply wagons start falling behind towards evening. Infantry that could march through the night has to accept that its heavy equipment will be left trailing.

The long sleep

Golden bread's strength is not free. Anyone who lives on it for a few days and then stops falls into a deep sleep for a day and a night. A single meal does no harm, but soldiers who have been eating the bread for days need a safe place to sleep it off. A commander who chases the enemy on bread alone risks half his army falling asleep at the worst possible moment. The choice is to keep feeding them while supplies last, or to plan a halt in advance.

Supplies are a problem of their own. There is never as much bread as one would like, and the pudding usually stretches to a single battle.

Greedyguts

The most terrible side effect has a name. Some unlucky souls become addicted to gastromancy. They stuff themselves to bursting until they grow into deformed, hideous creatures that will eat quite literally any living thing that crosses their path. The halflings call them Greedyguts.

They are almost impossible to control, so they are kept caged and restrained until a battle. There they are turned loose, in the hope that they will eat enough of the enemy to sate themselves until the next fight. They are the long-kept secret of the Saucerors. Few knew of it until hulking figures, bloated by gastromantic feasts, lurched out of the darkness straight at the foe.

Part four: the cooks and their kitchens

Mama Beata

Beata Glyndwr – "Mama Beata" to everyone, because that is how she likes to be called – is one of the first widely known practitioners of gastromancy. Stout, grey-haired, in a flour-dusted apron, smiling from ear to ear. She speaks plainly, in her own way, and takes no nonsense from anyone. She calls her cooking an art and lets nobody else decide when a work is finished. When an artificer at a council of war remarked that many new levies were untrained, "with a lot of young, old, and women in them", Mama Beata asked at once what exactly was wrong with women – and whether he thought they belonged in the kitchen rather than defending their homes. She did not let him finish. He wisely chose not to try again.

At councils she sits at the same table as the commanders and engineers, and after a meal she lights her pipe like everyone else. Sceptics get fed without being asked. One cavalry commander who eyed her wares doubtfully never stood a chance: "A loaf o' bread, a dash o' pudding, and a Cat's Eye Tart for dessert! You can't leave without somethin' to eat, man!" After supper his weariness was gone, his doubts had turned to certainty, and he rode off into the night as if he could see the path in broad daylight.

Mama Beata does not keep her art to herself – she teaches it to others.

A kitchen that never sleeps

In wartime a gastromancer's kitchen looks less like a kitchen than a manufactory. At the Holdfast golden bread was baked around the clock, by the ton. Mama Beata's crew of cooks worked almost without pause until there was bread for four days of marching for the whole army and pudding for one battle. The finished rations are loaded into special wagons stuffed to the brim and guarded like a treasury – and rightly so.

The other great kitchen of gastromancy lies beneath Hodenburg. This is the Grainbarn, also called the Larder – a vast underground storehouse that supplies food and beer to every public building in the city. It also holds a great many rare and exotic ingredients. Some whisper that a few are forbidden. The Grainbarn is the domain of the Saucerors, and foremost among them is Mama Beata. In its dark passages the gastromancers hand out enchanted rations, and from there, when needed, the Greedyguts are released.

Saucerors

The army's gastromancers are the Saucerors. They cast battle magic like wizards and also imbue the provisions with gastromancy. Their spells can sap an enemy's strength, and when needed they reach for explosive potions too. Above all, though, they are the reason halfling units are stronger, hardier and braver than their size would suggest.

Part five: an army that marches on its stomach

Halflings eat more for their size than humans, and make no secret of it. The Shires are the breadbasket of the region: fertile fields, orchards, vineyards, cheese, beer. Scholars have long wondered whether sorcery has a hand in that remarkable abundance. Even the arch-mages and professors of the Euhedral Library are at a loss.

Food has always been at the heart of the halfling army, too. Ahead of the main force go swarms of light infantry who hunt anything edible, with the army's cooks following behind. They are often led by a Feastmaster – because the last thing a marching halfling army wants is to walk all day and then wait for its dinner. Whatever the scouts trap, shoot or snare goes in the pot. And if they come across enemies? Well, people say they have seen some odd-looking meat in halfling pies. Even forest trolls are recruited with the promise of adventure and the inevitable, stomach-churning feast after a glorious victory.

Gastromancy simply added a new chapter to that tradition. Halfling armies now carry rations that extend endurance, increase strength and give courage. A commander with Mama Beata's kitchen behind him can plan what others would not dare: set out at dawn, march all day and all night, and strike at first light an enemy who thinks the halflings are still far away. Soldiers with Cat's Eye Tarts lead the way through the dark, and the Courage Pudding is handed out just before the fighting starts. The only things no kitchen can plan away are the horses, oxen and guns trailing behind – and the sleep that comes when the bread runs out.

Part six: how it differs from ordinary spells

At the College of Warcraft in Eowolf, battle mages show cadets a spell that increases the strength of one person or a whole unit. It works in an instant, but it does not last long. Healing spells drain the mage, who has to draw all the power from himself. Battle magic is a matter of the moment: cast here and now, by a mage who has to be on the battlefield.

Gastromancy reverses the order. First you cook, in a kitchen far from the front, and then you wait. The magic rides in the wagons with the soldiers and works when the commander orders them to eat – even if there is no mage anywhere near. Golden bread lasts a whole march, not a few heartbeats. What it demands instead is time, hard work in the kitchen and good supplies.

Paddy Bobart saw one more difference. Mama Beata's food helps not only the body but the spirit as well. The bread gives strength, the pudding lifts the heart. A people with one or two true wizards at most found a way for a modest talent to feed thousands.

What others say

The Holdfast's guests rave about the taste. Halfling commanders count: so many loaves for so many days of marching, so much pudding for one battle. The artificers of the Holdfast proudly name Mama Beata's kitchen in the same breath as the airship, the flying grenadiers and the war machines, among all the things they have cooked up for the war – in her case, as they add, literally.

And the enemy? Those who went down into the dark passages of the Grainbarn, helped themselves to the kegs of ale and heard cages opening in the gloom left no account of it.