Production
Cooking
In use
Fire applied to food — and the reason food stops being a gamble.
What it governs
- Burning it is the curriculum. The odds of ruining a given food fall with the level until that food cannot be burnt at all, and the evidence is in the ash.Charter, Part IV — Production group
- A built range burns less than an open fire and unlocks food that only a range can make. There is no bread before there is an oven.
- Safety is the second mandate: fire makes meat edible, and the risk of undercooking falls as the skill rises.
- Preserving — salting, smoking, drying — pauses spoilage. That single discovery is what opens inland fish trade and winter stores.
What happens today
A citizen standing at a burning heap can tend it, and everything cookable in its arms goes on at once — one roll per portion, at odds set by the dish and by how good it is. A fish is the thing anybody can attempt; a cut of meat takes a level before it can come off anything but burnt. Failing blackens food rather than destroying it: a charred portion is a seventh of the food it was and keeps four times as long, and nobody is told either number. Matter left lying at a fire still takes heat on its own, but that teaches nobody — a portion that cooks itself while everyone sleeps had no cook.
What it branches into
The deep chains the charter names. Bread alone is four separate discoveries.
- Bread: grain, then flour, then dough, then an oven.Charter, Part IV — Production group
- Stews and pies.
- Ale — the world's first consumable, and what it gives is a temporary sharpening of what a citizen can feel it is good at.
- Wine.
The rest of the ladder, which is two rungs long because the world holds two cookable things. Nothing salts, smokes or dries, so preserving — the discovery the charter says opens inland trade and winter stores — has no act. There is no fire a citizen can build to a particular heat, no vessel, and no recipe: what a cook chooses is whether to tend, not how.