Food, Drink, Drugs, and other Consumable Consumer Products

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Artemis
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Food, Drink, Drugs, and other Consumable Consumer Products

Post by Artemis »

If it goes in your body, it goes in here.

No, not like that, Shroomy :p
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Re: Food, Drink, Drugs, and other Consumable Consumer Products

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

:P

Man, these kinds of threads were totally the shit in old OZ. Wasn't chocolate a vital produce in the interstellar trade routes or something? Man, OrGazmo!
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Re: Food, Drink, Drugs, and other Consumable Consumer Products

Post by Artemis »

Chocolate and caffeine, yep. Not entirely sure why, but I decided that caffeine was like crack for Krioli and Klashies :)
"The universe's most essential beauty is its endlessness. There is room and resources enough for all of us. Whether there is room for all of our passions is the question, and the problem that we work tirelessly to find a solution to."

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Re: Food, Drink, Drugs, and other Consumable Consumer Products

Post by Artemis »

And speaking of...

Caffeine (Coffee, Tea, Takeoff)

Caffeine a natural stimulant derived from the beans and leaves of various plants on Earth, the Terran homeworld. It has been used by Terrans for tens of thousands of years as a natural stimulant and concentration-enhancer, and it has taken on a great cultural significance for many Terran societies - for example, the ceremony and symbolism that Asians have built around tea, and the hard-boiled romanticism of the American coffee culture. Caffeine continues to play in important role in Terran society in the 2270s, and the chemical has taken well to the biostructures and cultures of other races, as well.

During the trade explosions of the 2210s, coffee beans and tea leaves were one of the primary Terran exports to the Commonwealth, as Hamechels and Krioli had both taken a liking to it, in much the same way Algians had taken a liking to Terran wine. While the Hamechels incorporated coffee and tea into their diets at slow, steady rate, the Krioli went absolutely bonkers for tea, especially when they realized they could add sugar and other sweeteners to it. While what the Krioli do with tea would be largely considered sacrilegious to most Terrans, none could deny that it has, in just more than fifty years, become an intrinsic part of Krioli culture almost to the same degree it has for Terrans. The most commonly drunk tea among Krioli is a fruity, lemony blend, called Lan-Neia Black, served chilled with a large helping of sugar and fruit juice, usually mowah or apple. Most Terrans (and indeed every other race) consider this blend a little too sweet for their tastes, but there are exceptions - in the southeastern United States, Lan-Neia has caught on rather quickly, competing with local, traditional sweet tea recipes, and many Muslim cultures, including Turkey, north polar Mars, Enceladus, and New Kurdistan find it... intriguing.

The Klashnoi, for the most part, ignore tea entirely, but have developed a fascination with coffee. This started during the T-K War, when the Confederation army invaded the New Kurdistan region of Avalon. At first content to stick with their issued rations, Admiral Mamaud's raids and counter-attacks began to thin out Confederation supply lines, and the soldiers were forced to resort to foraging on Avalon. After testing various foods and drinks to test their safety and nutritional value, coffee beans made the grade, and started being issued to Klashnoi soldiers as quick snacks. The bitter, crunchy beans quickly became a favorite among the soldiers, and their psychoactive effects seemed be even more intense for them than it is for Terrans. When a few entrepreneurial Clear Water Tribe soldiers realized that the beans were meant to be brewed into a drink, there was practically no stopping the (figurative and literal) flood of demand for the stuff within the Confederation army. In fact, in the nervous years after the end of the T-K War, one of the events that prompted peaceful trade between the U.N. and the Confederation was the Klashnoi's sudden liking for coffee and coffee-related products. To this day, coffee is the #5 export from the U.N. to the Confederation, beating such necessities as computers, uranium, and steel. Klashnoi have started growing coffee plants on their worlds, but most drinkers agree, if reluctantly, that "the Terran stuff" is better.

In 2247, a Saryan geneticist and part-time herbalist, Miswe Kla, combined the tea and coffee plant into a single life-form, primarily as an example of how combining two things that everyone likes doesn't necessarily create a better product. He gave samples of the drink made from the leaves of this plant to listeners at a speech he was giving at the 3rd Interstellar Trade Conference, to make that very point. Unfortunately, he was proven entirely wrong, as most people in the audience, Terrans included, found it if not tasty, then at least invigorating. Fortunately, Miswe was able to get a universal patent on the genetic code for the plant, and started up a successful business marketing what he decided to call "Takeoff," a portmanteau of tea and coffee, and reflecting its concentration-enhancing and energy-giving effects. The taste of Takeoff, when unsweetened, is more like coffee than tea, but it does not have the bitter aftertaste of the former, replacing it with a somewhat floral and clean flavor. It also has a lighter, more ephemeral texture than either, sometimes described as "foggy." Takeoff is a popular drink among pilots, programmers, artists, and other people who need to stay up for long periods without losing their alertness or mental flexibility. Takeoff does tax drinkers, however, when they crash - 12-hour naps after a Takeoff binge are not abnormal, and the drink has been said to trigger strange, often lucid dreams. Qhilao, Miswe's son, business partner, and current owner of Kla Beverages, has said that he intends to fix this problem, but many consumers say that they rather like the dreams.
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Re: Food, Drink, Drugs, and other Consumable Consumer Products

Post by Siege »

How is it that I am somehow completely not surprised that Krioli drink their tea with a ton of sugar? And I'm guessing Starbucks is now present not just on every street corner, but on every street corner of every planet! (Surely even hard-boiled Klashnoi cannot withstand the appeal of a good cup of white chocolate mocha with whipped cream?)
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Re: Food, Drink, Drugs, and other Consumable Consumer Products

Post by Artemis »

Some of them, sure. But I think most Klashnoi drink their coffee blacker than a gravitational singularity. Out of a JUG.

Also, considering there's a good chunk of Seattle and Portland, Oregon that got put into Ganymede, I think you're right - except in Nova City, you can also probably buy a bag of really good weed with your frapuccino at Starbucks.

Also - fini!
"The universe's most essential beauty is its endlessness. There is room and resources enough for all of us. Whether there is room for all of our passions is the question, and the problem that we work tirelessly to find a solution to."

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Re: Food, Drink, Drugs, and other Consumable Consumer Products

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

You know what's worse than a bunch of space rhinos coming at you to ruin your shit with hovering gunships?

A bunch of space rhinos coming at you to ruin your shit with hovering gunships, while in a coffee rush!

Man, the sight of it. Angered Klashie stormtroopers kicking ass and ruining your craps, blasting you in the face with a stormcannon, while chewing gratuitous amounts of coffee beans in their mouths like Somalis on khat! Mang!
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Re: Food, Drink, Drugs, and other Consumable Consumer Products

Post by Artemis »

"Christ, sarge? What the hell happened to this town?"

"Klashies, son. Klashies happened."

"But what were they here for? There's no resistance cell in town, no ammo stores, these people barely had any food."

"Barely, sure." *picks up empty, bullet-holed-filled coffee tin* "But just enough, evidently."
"The universe's most essential beauty is its endlessness. There is room and resources enough for all of us. Whether there is room for all of our passions is the question, and the problem that we work tirelessly to find a solution to."

-Qhameio Allir Nlafahn, Commonwealth ambassador, during the signing of the Kriolon Treaty.
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Re: Food, Drink, Drugs, and other Consumable Consumer Products

Post by Booted Vulture »

:D That's crazy cool. Though it does open some interesting questions about intersteller trade. Say there's a substance which is a common drink for one species but for another its an illegal highly dangerous drug? How would you regulate that? I mean do border controls board vessels and confiscate all their drinks before allow them entry or what?
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Re: Food, Drink, Drugs, and other Consumable Consumer Products

Post by Artemis »

I think most of that kind of regulation is street level. If Speaking Tea (gettin' to it, gettin' to it...) is legal in the Carepakeh Empire and the Klashnoi Confederation, but a Terran is living in the Empire and wants to try it, a responsible shop-keeper ain't gonna sell it to him, for fear that it will make her customer's liver implode and bring forth all kinds of police down on her head. Not that there isn't a rather huge black market for things like that.
"The universe's most essential beauty is its endlessness. There is room and resources enough for all of us. Whether there is room for all of our passions is the question, and the problem that we work tirelessly to find a solution to."

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Re: Food, Drink, Drugs, and other Consumable Consumer Products

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Liver implode? Sounds interesting. Yes, the biochemical and physiological differences between different species is something that's often neglected in sci-fi - particularly the ones where people fucking dumb forehead-ridge aliens end up producing, ugh, "hybrids". But yeah, if lots of pharmacological and dietary things nowadays, can produce adverse reactions in just different kinds of people due to incompatibilities - like shellfish/peanut allergies, dogs eating chocolates and then croaking, etc. - I can just imagine how terrible it'll be when we've got entire alien species to deal with.

Perhaps it can be regulated in a way like how restricted medication and prescription drugs are regulated. You can only get xyz-drug if you have a doctor's order, and you can't take abc-drug if you are pregnant or else it will mutate your baby with congenital disorders/cause abortion, and if you are a human/krioli/hamachel you can't eat this carepakeh bug juice or else your liver will explode.


This reminds me. Arty, do you still have that awesome short story/snap for SOTS, the one with Bragulan commandos doing kung fo on a bunch of fools and where that Bragulan died because he ate a chocolate bar? :mrgreen:
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Re: Food, Drink, Drugs, and other Consumable Consumer Products

Post by Artemis »

Oh man, I WISH I did.

"Remember, citizens, in the Bragulan Star Empire, DONUTS glaze YOU!"

is the only line from it that I can remember by heart :(
"The universe's most essential beauty is its endlessness. There is room and resources enough for all of us. Whether there is room for all of our passions is the question, and the problem that we work tirelessly to find a solution to."

-Qhameio Allir Nlafahn, Commonwealth ambassador, during the signing of the Kriolon Treaty.
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Re: Food, Drink, Drugs, and other Consumable Consumer Products

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Man. I must ask Siege to recover it thens! Because, man, that was a hellarious move. I still remember the Bragulans having patriotic names for their martial arts moves.
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Re: Food, Drink, Drugs, and other Consumable Consumer Produc

Post by Artemis »

Mowah and Mowah-Derived Products

The mowah is a grapefruit-sized fruit that grows at the bottom of the deep, narrow saltwater rivers of Maonessa, the Algian homeworld. Growing from a thumbnail-sized seed, mowah plants cling to submarine cliff walls with seaweed-like roots, drawing on rich volcanic soil. A typical mowah plant is a massive organism, often stretching half a kilometer in radius from the place where the seed took root, and growing hundreds of individual fruits. So plentiful and vast are the mowah plants that their roots were the basis for many primitive Algian tools, including nets to catch food both in the rivers and on the shore. When a fruit has ripened, weighing about four to six pounds, it will detach from the mother plant and drift through the river current until the fruit, and the seeds it contains, either take root elsewhere, or are eaten by an animal.

As Algian diets evolved to become more omnivorous, the mowah became a staple food across the entire planet. It is a common joke among Algian anthropologists that one of the main incentives for Algians to move to a predominantly land-dwelling lifestyle was that saltwater ruined the taste of mowah, and only on land could they truly be enjoyed. At the same time, mowah only grew underwater, so Algians had to keep returning to get more of it, thus ensuring their evolutionary course as amphibious beings. Joking aside, mowah has undoubtedly had an effect on Algian culture just as any staple food does. Algians have found a dozen culinary uses for the plant, from juice to jellying to candying to deep-frying. The subtle differences in flavor and hardiness between local breeds opened up trade across Maonessa, and from that point on, offering a fresh, whole mowah is a universal sign of peace and friendship to Algians.

After the end of hostilities between Algians and Hamechels, in the early pre-Commonwelath days, trade was set up between the two races. The Hamechels, however, had little dietary or culinary use for vegetables beyond grains and the occasional herbal medicine, and the mowah remained on Maonessa and the Algian colonies that would support the plant. However, during the veritable explosion of new starfaring races in the 21st century, the mowah once again became a major trade item. The Krioli were desperate for any food source, their civilization and economy still recovering from the Evil Howling Death Storm, and they took to mowah as well as the Algians, if not better. The influx of food from the Commonwealth helped get the Krioli back on their feet, and mowah didn't disappear from their diet when they moved on to rebuild their civilization Grazel and Halbruk. The Saryans were initially only interested in mowah to catalog its genetics, but even to the stoic scientists the fruit proved a good companion to the Saryan diet of meat and ruffage, and the Saryans immediately began work engineering a land-dwelling variant of the plant so that they could grow it themselves. The Klashnoi ate and drank mowah and its juice the way Klashnoi eat and drink anything - a lot, and very quickly.

The Terrans took to mowah as well as any other race, but they are particular to mowah's story for one particular culnary breakthrough - the creation of mowah wine. Terrans had been fermenting carbohydrate-based food into alcohol almost since before the pyramids, and while they are hardly alone in this (the Saryans are excellent brewers, if one forgives/ignores their sometimes sanguinary additives, and the Carepakeh have crafted some of the finest grain alcohol in the galaxy), Terrans can be quite creative when it comes to the art of distilling sugars into alcohol. It wasn't long before an New Ivorian entrepreneur started planting mowah along the Worth African coast, and began harvesting it for the purpose of winemaking. The first batch of mowah wine, the Dabou 2128, was released to massive success - so much that not a single bottle of this acclaimed vintage still exists, to the consternation of wine historians and collectors the galaxy over.

(more coming - right now I'm still trying to figure out what the hell I'm still doing up at this hour o.0)
"The universe's most essential beauty is its endlessness. There is room and resources enough for all of us. Whether there is room for all of our passions is the question, and the problem that we work tirelessly to find a solution to."

-Qhameio Allir Nlafahn, Commonwealth ambassador, during the signing of the Kriolon Treaty.
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