Sand Wurm Stew
History
Near the beginnings of the Third Age, Humans, Dwarves, and Gnomes ventured out into the Blasted Wastes after their affliction by the Curse of Flesh. The first peoples that would become the nomads faced many challenges in the hostile environment, chief among them the mighty Sand Wurms. However, in their exploring, a group of nomads came upon the fresh corpse of a sand wurm, defeated in a territorial dispute. They were able to easily reach its meaty insides from the many wounds in its chitinous hide, and camped in the shadow of the corpse. From the meat of the wurm, as well as some local plants and vegetables, they were able to make a salty stew that provided many nutrients to the nomads, in addition to being very filling. They used salt from a nearby river to preserve much of the other harvested meat, and travelled back out into the desert. When they encountered another band of nomads, they shared with them the recipe and some of the meat, and from there the recipe spread among the many nomads of the wastes. Now the recipe is commonplace among nomadic bands in the wastes wherever a sand wurm corpse can be found.
Components and tools
The main ingredient of the stew is sand wurm meat, usually harvested from a fresh corpse, from unprotected young wurms, or in an extremely rare case one brought down by the nomads after having been previously weakened by another wurm. The meat is salted with halite from nearby rivers and added to a broth of cleaned river water, bones from the wurm for flavor (which are removed before consumption), as well as various edible plants and vegetables found in the wastes.
Participants
Full bands of waste nomads participate in the creation, serving and eating of the stew. Oftentimes, when two or more groups of nomads come to the same wurm, the bands will make larger batches of stew to eat and enjoy together, as camaraderie among nomadic bands is common in such a harsh environment. Such sharing of the stew is sacred in nomadic culture, as it leads to closer bonds between bands, alliances for survival, and camaraderie between individuals.
Observance
The stew is commonly eaten as a shared dinner among all of the nomads in a band, where everyone pitches in to make a large batch, and everyone eats their fill of the result. It is very rare to see stew still in the cooking pot by the end of the dinner, as each nomad eats as much as they can when such a decadent meal is available compared to meals they usually have access to.
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