Anonymous asked: okay, favourite city in alleirat and what the street food is like there
Oh my god, let me talk to you about my very favorite Alleirat city: Dase, the city of stone, called by her own people and all those with sense the jewel of the east.
Perched on the easternmost coast of the Alleirai continent, Dase (pronounced dah-SEH) is the biggest city in terms of population if not physical size, and presides over the finest harbor in the world (the southern coast, with their sprawling river delta, politely begs to differ, but look, they’re wrong, okay, good talk). Beyond her size, Dase’s claim to fame is her towering four-hundred-foot coastal cliffs, and the semispherical harbor the ancient citizenry excavated straight into the stone wall with a combination of magic, explosives, and sheer determination. The harbor is massive, able to comfortably house even the tallest ship without scraping the mast along the ceiling and protect quite a number of vessels in the event of a storm. The city itself was originally built almost entirely out of the excess stone removed from the harbor, and as further expansions have been executed under the eye of the city stone workers, the buildings have been expanded since then with the same material, either taken from expansions to the harbor or knocked off another part of the cliff. Dase mostly gets expanded up rather than out, since it’s approximately a half-circle facing against the cliffs on one side and there’s a city wall hemming it in along the curve, but it’s still sizable, about three miles in radius. It’s also the place where Crispin and Brenneth grew up and lived until things went badly–Brenneth used to own a smithy on the blacksmith’s row that’s still standing, and her old sword is mounted in the audience chamber of the gothkenla (like a city hall crossed with a citadel, literally ‘city center’).
Because I have no impulse control, here’s a brief excerpt of Brenneth and Crispin returning:
“Welcome back to Dase, the jewel of the East,” Crispin said, switching fluidly back to Alleirai and raising his bound hands as if presenting me a gift. I turned, and looked, and all my exasperation with Crispin drained away to be replaced by the sun-warm, dizzy ecstasy of being back.
Dase was less beautiful and more striking—all its beauty was in strong lines and hard angles, like the cliffs it commanded. It was tall, about three or four stories on average, and built almost entirely out of the hard silver-grey stone of the cliffs, with wide windows cut into the walls and the sun turning it into a labyrinth of brilliant light and impenetrably dark shadows. The air smelled of salt at the cliff face, but the city wind itself could change on a dime, bringing the scent of the farmlands from the inland fields. From our angle were the places where Kal Dase—Dase Below, the subcity of tunnels—could be accessed were invisible, but we could see where the stone was ragged enough to be scaled to the eaves of the roof level. Shadows moved, quick as starlings, overhead, thieves about their business in Lai Dase, Dase Above.
…From above, the city would look like a ragged half-circle, butting right up against the edge of the cliffs with an absolute disregard for the potential drop on the other side. At what would be the center of the circle, if it were complete, was the gothkenla, the city center—the citadel building where the gothed lived, received audiences, passed judgement, and completed all their other duties. City-side of the kenla was a sprawl of empty space that spread all the way to the cliff, serving as the central marketplace and, occasionally, execution grounds. The ten major streets radiated out from the city square, a nest of alleyways interconnecting them, and led all the way to the city limits. Every sector had its own markets, its own hierarchies and systems—the city in miniature, divided up by class. The path to the cage, sardonically marked Drop Alley with a wooden sign, butted up against one of the major throughways, the one that ran immediately cliff-side. Unless they had moved everything around rather a lot, which I imagined would be a challenge, the kenla was about an hour walk from where we stood, depending on foot traffic.
But so, as you might imagine, food in Dase tends toward fish for meat and depends on her protectorate lands for kestho (the main grain grown in Alleirat, a very hardy, adaptable plant that produces dense breads that taste sort of like…rye?) and other farm products. The ten city sectors often have smaller markets to service day-to-day needs, with the large market outside the gothkenla being a once-or-twice-a-week thing for more variety, but that’s, like, raw cooking material.
Since street food is generally stuff that can be acquired and cooked with a minimum of effort and expense on the vendor’s part, I’m guessing that smoked meats (maybe venison/other wild-hunted meats in seasons where they’re plentiful and therefore cheaper, chicken/beef if a vendor could get a good deal, most commonly fish) play a big part. I’m kind of thinking of a kabob-like situation, with chunks of smoked meat served on a skewer with whatever suitable vegetables are in season. Spices and seasoning would be easy, it’s a trade city and you can make spices last a long time if you know what you’re doing, so please assume that all of these are very flavorful.
Straight-up fruit vendors are also a pretty common thing, especially in the richer parts of the city where the fruit is nicer and possibly imported (maybe from the west where apples do better, or the south where everything does great, or even the Outrigger Islands where more tropical stuff can be found). Fruit vendors also do phenomenally well in the hostel district where there are always sailors who miss real fresh stuff and are willing to shell out of their wages accordingly. Like, the fruit vendors in the hostel district charge more than they maybe ethically should but the sailors don’t care enough to try to change it.
Oh, and bread stuff, that should fill out the basics. Since kestho grain doesn’t easily grind down into really fine flour and tends to be very dense, fluffy pastries aren’t really a thing like they are here, but miniature loaves of bread (like, the size of two fists) with various things baked into them are a hit. You can go with meat/veggies for savory or (often dried) fruits for sweet–they’re often baked as an easily transported ration, too, although not so elaborately. Kestho loaves with meat and hot Island spices do a booming business on the training grounds and as a traveling ration for the city guard, because they’re quick and easy to eat with protein and carbs for energy and a good kick. That specific combination is actually called a soldier’s meal, because they were the original kestho loaf cooked by soldiers during the ancient pre-unification wars.
I wrote this on a bus with no dinner in sight and now I’m ravenous and I could murder a soldier’s meal with like some strawberries after, Jesus this was a bad idea.
