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Harrows' End and Valoranian Cuisine

CupcakeTrap·11/28/2014, 7:29:50 PM·6 votes·2,204 views

http://ih0.redbubble.net/image.12870880.6001/sticker,375x360.png Pictured: a delicious cupcake, just like me! Tasty and safe. So safe. C'mon.

What do you guys think different nations of Valoran eat this time of year? I was recently thinking that it would be fun, and thematically consistent, if the Harrowing ended with a Thanksgiving-esque "Harrows' End". (I figure that feasts and parties are big during the Harrowing, because people don't want to be alone with so many spooky ghosts about. Lots of cultures combine a "day of the dead" with family events and feasts. And it's a nice way to harmonize the fun aspects of Halloween the Harrowing with its more serious aspects.) This got me thinking: what are they eating and drinking at these parties?

Can anyone come up with some entertaining Valoranian food items? Or ideas for how cuisine looks generally from nation to nation?

Noxus

I enjoy Noxus having a Roman feel to it. The backstabby power politics, the emphasis on status and power rather than later Judeo-Christian notions of "compassion" and "charity", the militarism, the drive to conquer—it just feels right. (The Harrowing sounds right up their alley: Romans were obsessed with ancestors and family heritage. I think there was a custom about people marching through the streets with busts of their deceased ancestors held in front of them.) So one option would be for Noxus to have Roman food: flatbread, olive oil, stuffed dormice, garum, strong wine, all that sort of thing. Perhaps add in the occasional goblet of blood raised with a joyous shout of "TO EVIL!"

Alternately, it could be similar to Demacian food (European medieval). I'd think the main difference during Harrows' End would be that in Noxus, you give the turkey a knife and the chance to win its freedom by slaying the chef in single combat. (In Demacia, the turkeys roast themselves out of a profound sense of duty.)

Demacia

Probably the standard European feast fare. Most likely place in Valoran to have pumpkin pie.

As an aside, I think it would be neat if Demacia also had something like Diwali.

Ionia

The most natural choice would be essentially O-Bon food: o-hagi and the like.

I do wonder about Ionian food generally, though. I've often said that, while LoL thrives on tropes and references, the line has to be drawn somewhere, and I think it should be drawn just short of Champions announcing they're going to get some "Ionian takeout" after the match.

Bandle City

I get that this might be derpier than most people like, but I really enjoy playing up the silliness and fun of Bandle City, including having them regularly feast on cupcakes and juice boxes. (I like the idea that yordles get trashed on juice.) A more "serious" version would probably give them the sort of food that hamsters and other small mammals eat: nuts, berries, grasses.

I'm not sure quite what the Harrowing is like in Bandle City, given how communal yordles are. I wonder if the Mothership starts playing back audio from past Harrowing feasts, or if dead yordles manifest as spectral hextech holograms. I don't know.

Piltover

Victorian food, I guess? Probably seems a lot like Demacian food.

Zaun

I think Zaunites are much more into the Halloween stuff than the Thanksgiving stuff. Neon candies made of sugar syrup and alchemical stimulants, chocolate infused with trippy techmaturgic elixirs, all kinds of foaming fizzing drinks. They're the kind of people to drink Soylent. Their Harrowing is probably a time when a bunch of wild-eyed hextech researchers run around trying to get some groundbreaking publishable findings about ghosts and specters and how they might be able to trap them with energy fields.

Icathia/the Void

Madness, nightmares, screeching demon-stars, Twizzlers, dead gods, non-Euclidean angles.

Shurima

Bread crumbs, sand, collapsed ruins, sand, shattered dreams, sand, sand, sand, sand, baklava, sand.

10 Comments

LordHippoman11/28/2014, 10:01:29 PM5 votes

This is a fun topic.

Freljord

They've got a ton of Barbarian types, they wear pelts...I think they probably eat a lot of meat. Hunting Parties and whatnot, headed out into the wilderness to find wild animals...boars, perhaps...Yetis? Although a few champs might have objections...

Noxus

I really hope the Noxians have a sort of Iron Chef competition. Kinda like the Japanese version, where there are fire jets everywhere and the host screams every single word.

Demacia

Demacia probably has a lot of well maintained gardens and farms and such. I could see them making really fancy food, maybe using ingredient imported from their border villages.

Piltover

It's in sort of a deserty area, right? Probably simple food, easy to eat on the go. Not much time for fancy cooking when you're building robots or exploring Shuriman tombs or punching people with your metallic fists.

Zaun

Every meal is mystery meat. Don't eat in Zaun.

Bilgewater

Seafood, of course. Also citrus and rum, to stay prepared for those long ocean voyages. Gangplank could probably make some money selling oranges with his face stamped on them.

Ionia

No idea, really. Tropical island style food?

Bandle City

Sweets, cakes and such. Yordles don't seem to have the most healthy dietary habits.

A Superb Villain11/28/2014, 11:40:24 PM4 votes

Alternately, it could be similar to Demacian food (European medieval). I'd think the main difference during Harrows' End would be that in Noxus, you give the turkey a knife and the chance to win its freedom by slaying the chef in single combat. (In Demacia, the turkeys roast themselves out of a profound sense of duty.)

And I suspect on more than one occasion the turkey has won.

cshakes11/29/2014, 12:56:54 PM3 votes

I'm from Finland, so I did some digging around into Lapland's traditional foods. Essentially, a lot of berries and game, with fish and potatoes added. From the grains, only barley is durable enough to be cultivated.

So, Freljordian cuisine would consist of a lot of berries (hilla, karpalo, puolukka, mustikka) and game (birds and animals both, moose and reindeer being common), with some fish (salmon) caught from clean tundra streams, and perhaps an unique subspecies of potato in the south. All parts of the animals are likely to be utilized, so it's likely that Sejuani would be eating a cooked piece of reindeer gut filled with blood (tunka) or a soup made of reindeer bones (koparakeitto). The cold environment would offer a natural freezer, so food wouldn't spoil.

During the 1800s, rich people in Lapland would eat four meals, at around 8, 12, 15 and 20'o clock.

Source. It's in Finnish, but Google Translate may be capable of helping you. Then there's this for the truly dedicated.

Ingredients in Finnish: poro, hirvi, peura, riekko, peruna, riisi, karpalo, hilla, puolukka, juolukka, variksenmarja, mesimarja, vadelma, mustikka, väinönputki, lohi, siika, hauki

A Superb Villain11/29/2014, 3:49:45 PM2 votes

On a more serious note, I suspect that due to Shurima's less than hospitable climate, most of the food enjoyed by natives includes sparse flora, some baked goods, and small game; trust me, scorpion is not half bad.

However, I believe that Azir himself, and likely many others who share a privileged position in Shurima's rapidly revitalizing society import the vast majority of their fare, much like many powerful empires of the ancient world. It is a show of power, wealth, and prosperity.

Kinjishi11/30/2014, 2:46:42 AM1 votes

Ionia would have curry as well. Shurima would have a type of curry... before all the sand.

Zaun... probably a ton of crappy fast food with a few nice places to eat here and there.

Bilgewater would be an amalgamation of the different places that the residents have come from over the years. Primarily good ale, meat, veggies, and bread for a meal.

Zephyr90912/1/2014, 8:31:02 PM1 votes

Nice topic! That said, I think most of what I would have possibly come up with has already been said by you wonderfully creative people, so... I guess the only thing for me to add would be something along the lines of a New Year's Festival event for Ionia. It seems to em that Ionia is one of the more under-developed regions in Valoran, and I'd love to see a New Year's Festival, Asian-style.