The discord was talking about worldbuilding, as per usual, and we were trying to figure out what the people in Horizon eat/grow. So, armed with the encouragement and companionship of @elsodex, I set out to every major settlement to take pictures of their food and crops. Warning: this is gonna be a long one.
First up on our culinary quest: the Tenakth! And the first of them is the Lowland clan. Let's see the food of Thornmarsh.
(For every image we look at, we'll start at the top left, move our way down, then go to the next column.)
On the top left there's a basket of artichoke (the only one I found) next to a basket full of fruits. I can't be 100% sure, but I believe the purple/blue fruits are plums, and the red and yellow fruits are apples and pears.
Next image. Left basket has dragon fruit and.. well the other fruit I'm finding difficult to place. At first I thought it was a durian, but looking at images it definitely isn't. The closest fruit I could find was the kiwano, but it looks as though the colors of the rind and the flesh were swapped. The basket in front of it also has the kiwano, as well as... okay I talked to several people about this and we couldn't figure it out. Honestly I think it might be a grub of some kind. Or really large mandarin orange slices? There's a better picture coming up. The basket on the right has the same miscellaneous fruits as before (here it's easier to see the pear), with an addition of onions.
Below that we have our meats and veggies. A basket of radishes, a basket of turnips and carrots, baskets of seagulls (the only unplucked bird we'll see), a basket of fish, and a container of what seems to be nakati, which is a type of eggplant.
on the top right we have a medley of foods, most of which we've seen already. We have nakati, multiple kinds of radishes, fish, dragon fruit, kiwano, and the new addition of bell peppers in the basket on the right. (spoiler alert, we're gonna see kiwano and dragon fruit a lot.)
Up next is the Sky clan, lets see what food they have at The Bulwark:
Alright so, top left we have some hanging foods, garlic, fish, onions, and what I believe are oranges?
both pictures below are boars, the skyclan is the only place I saw these, though it's possible I missed something.
The whole middle column is meat, with the hanging meat likely being boar, and the bottom being some bird (likely goose), and possibly sides of salmon?
Top right we have more boar and birds, as well as a crate of eggs below them. (I'm struggling to place them, they are speckled and many different colors, which neither geese nor ducks lay, but chickens do not exist.) Next we have sausage, more meats, oranges again, kiwano, dragon fruits, and now tomatoes join the fray.
We have all the same foods found in Thornmarsh here, bell peppers, radishes, kiwano, onions, and dragon fruit.
Next up we have kiwano, dragon fruit, and some bread. Under the table is some already shucked corn.
The final Tenakth clan is the desert clan, and well, they have some interesting things going on in Scalding Spear.
We've got our usual contenders in these crates, dragon fruit, kiwano, and nakati.
Next we have some racks of ribs, and a coil of sausages I originally mistook for a giant cinnamon bun.
next we have onions, eggplants, plums, pears, apples, corn, and green and red varieties of romaine lettuce.
Back up at the top we have the beginning of an interesting trend: "skewering foods and placing them near a fire". Do I even have to tell you what's in the top pic? say it with me now: dragon fruit and kiwano. there's also some meat that was absolutely not spiked on that wood.
next we have Dragon fruit and kiwano again, this time with bell peppers to shake things up.
At the bottom we have various small sausages and cuts of meat, sitting way too far from that fire to be getting any benefit from it. This level of meat preservation might explain every quest that's in the desert clan.
Now hold on! We're not leaving Scalding Spear yet. You may have noticed the bamboo being used to build the fire pits in the last image. Now you, dear reader, may be wondering where the hell you find bamboo in the middle of a desert. Well the answer is in Yarra's Personal Stash of Shit. (Or Drakka's, I guess, if you kill her. Does he automatically get her stuff? idk.)
On the left is potted bamboo. There were actually a few of these around her area. There's a few other plants as well, it's interesting that she chooses to cultivate these plants despite the clan's constant need of water. (Additionally, if that bamboo really is cultivated, then it is the only example of farming I've found in the Tenakth.)
On the right is what must be Yarra's pantry. we have an unknown spice in a dish on the left. Kiwano in the middle. The hanging fruits are probably mangoes, the green just looks blue because of the lighting. And other that we have those orange things again. I don't know maybe they're circus peanuts.
Next stop: Plainsong, both the foods and the planted crops.
Alright, you know the drill, top left is radishes, turnips, carrots, and a two new vegetables: salsify (the black one), and parsnips (the white one).
Under that we have a basket of the same, next to what I believe is a bowl of uncooked rice (though it could be another grain).
Next up we have a colorful collection of veggies. Parsnips, carrots, radishes, eggplants, peppers, romaine lettuce, rice, and scallions (though the leaves aren't correct so it might be something else).
We have rice soaking before it's being cooked (this is done to enhance the flavor and shorten the cooking time).
Then we have some beautiful honeycomb. (Mead, anyone?)
Then we have a nice array of dishes, I'm not going to try to figure out what they all are, but we have: a single baked sweet potato, various bowls of rice, and what seems to be various versions of a dish similar to lau lau. (Though lau lau is made with meat, so I'm not sure what they're using, probably something starchy such as the sweet potato.)
Finally we have some more root vegetables, along with some bamboo. (Waiting to be incorporated into plainsong? To be made into dishes? Exporting to Scalding Spear? Who knows.)
Now for the crops of Plainsong:
All of these are fairly simple. Up first we have some kind of bean plant, not certain on the variety.
Then we have either bananas or plantains, I'm leaning towards the former.
Then we have sugarcane, older and younger fields respectively.
And I wouldn't know the other if it weren't for these nice ladies, who are harvesting turnips.
Our final cuisine is that of the Oseram tribe. These include pictures from Barren Light, Chainscrape, and Hidden Ember, in that order. (Barren Light did not have Carja food as far as I could tell, at least not visually. The chef was Oseram and her wares were the same as the other two settlements.)
Okay first up we have an obscene amount of onions, corn, more onions, and.. Okay I really don't know what that is. It was grilled, I can tell you that much. If it's a meat, it's a bird, maybe a turkey patty.
Next we have a pile of sweet potatoes and some kind of flat bread. Somewhere along the lines of pita and naan (fingers crossed for naan).
At the bottom we have a bunch of sausages and some birds.
Chainscrape has this sick meat rack. It has whole boars, sausages, and two types of birds (it seems the ones at the top are turkeys, meaning the rest of the birds we've seen are likely geese). At the top right is more sausage and some pretzels. (I want to see the hook they use to get those down.)
Over at Hidden Ember we have more sweet potatoes and bread.
Radishes and sausage.
A bowl of onions and a leg of Boar.
But no exploration of Oseram food would be complete without discussing ale. Here's a lovely distillery found in Hidden Ember, along with other ale-related things.
Here we have a very proud man and his distillery (He's the herbalist at Hidden Ember if you want to see him.), kegs that were lifted to the third floor via a crane or pulley system, and some nice tankards.
And that's the food of the West! I didn't go to every settlement, so I might have missed something, though I should have gotten the broad gist of things. Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed- wait, what's that? I forgot something? The- THE QUEN?!? Oh no, you're right.. well, I'll leave that for another time.
I adore the Oseram aesthetic. All cosy warmth and solid wood and good, study iron. And beer, obviously. It speaks to me on a very deep, almost primal level. It says homesafetykinship.
Plus everyone knows I love glowy lights. And caged lanterns are a favourite.
