Failed Career: Cook

You get

A big iron ladle, a flour-dusted apron, one dull cutting knife.

What killed your love for cooking?

1. Curse: The curse laid upon the land by the Rasping Beast of the Wood makes it pretty hard to cook anything, when all of the egg yolks have been transformed into curdled blood, and the fish scream with every bite.
2. Etiquette: You had no idea that the herbs you picked for the Druid staying as your lord’s guest were parts of the dryad he loved. You snuck away in the night fearing his retribution.
3. Repulsion: The delicacies of the nobles has taken a turn for the unsettling. No longer will you produce pickled gnome eyes or goblins marrow pudding!
4. Framed: You lord was stricken blind after eating one of your Grete Pyes, but you swear it was that rascal of a squire who was always sneaking into your kitchen that poisoned them.
5. Boredom: A severe lack of interest in the local cuisine exhausted you. Maybe if you plunder the kitchen of the abandoned wizard tower you heard about will unveil new realms of flavor.
6. Mishap: You don’t know if perhaps the herbs you picked grew too close to the fairy stones, or perhaps your interpretation of the recipe accidentally resulted in a spell, but the soup you were preparing became animated, and it curses your name to this day for giving it its horrendous existence.

What keepsake reminds you of the old days?

1. Fairly Exquisite Spice Kit: Tins, jars, and pouches full of cardamon, ginger, nutmeg, sugar, and other spices. Maybe even a pinch of saffron.
2. The Lord’s Grain: Before leaving your lord’s employment you snatched a wheelbarrow, took it into the stores and completely filled it with flour before sprinting down into the wilds.
3. Bardic Creature: A catfish you were about to process looked you directly in the eyes and began to sing the most beautiful siren’s song you have ever heard. You now carry it in a large iron pot full of water.
4. Prophetic Fruit: A hedge warlock traded for one of your pies, and gave you a supposedly magical apple. He claimed that if you ask the apple a question whose answer is a being, and you take a bite from this apple, the answer’s face will appear in the browning of the flesh.
5. Peach Pie of the Sempiternal Scent: A delicious pie that always smells as if it was just pulled from the oven, always a temperature that is just shy of hot.
6. A Miraculous Recipe: Stolen or accidentally stumbled upon, you have the starting framework of a miraculous flat circle of bread covered in pasted tomato and covered in cheeses. If you can just get motivated and get the ratios correct you think it could be popular someday.

Inspired by Electric Bastionland, Knave, and Ten Foot Polemic.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.