Province food

Settlers eat every day. A well-fed settlement works harder; a hungry one slows down, loses heart and at last loses its people.

How well fed

The settlement's food status is well fed, fed, lean, hungry or empty, read from how long the food will last and how many kinds are in store. Well fed needs food for the better part of a week in three kinds, and lifts building output, construction, morale and the yield of mining, smelting and gathering. Lean pulls morale down and weakens the shrine's healing. Hungry also slows the other buildings and construction. An empty larder halves the work, stops the healing and drives settlers away. The food buildings never slow from hunger, so a settlement can always feed itself back up.

The council is warned when the food runs short, and a hungry settlement always posts a food run on its job board. province and check food in the food hall show the status, with two lines:

• "At today's rate of eating, the food in store lasts" weighs what you hold against what the settlers eat now. It moves with every delivery.
• "A full granary would last" weighs a brim-full larder. It grows only when the settlement gains storage.

The stores

Food is kept by kind: meat, fish, grain, roots and greens, milk and butter, and cured and cooked food. Fresh food spoils: fish fastest, then meat and milk, grain slowly, and cured food hardly at all. Summer spoils most and winter least.

A council member can fit the storehouse with a store for each kind, built in steps: the granary for grain, roots and greens, the ice house for fish and meat, the cold cellar for milk and butter, and the smoke loft for cured and cooked food. Each kind fills its own store first and spoils more slowly there. Type install in the storehouse to see the next step and its bill; the later steps need an Advanced storehouse. Each smokehouse also adds room for food.

Bringing food in

• Sell to the butcher in the food hall, east of the long table. He buys what you caught, carved or foraged yourself, never bread, a cooked dish or meat from a shop, and pays more for a kind the settlement is short of. He takes only a day's worth from each seller.
• Preserve at the smokehouse. preserve all turns a whole pack of raw meat and fish into stores at once (preserve all meat, preserve all fish or preserve <item> for less). It pays nothing and has no daily limit, but the racks rest between batches and take only what the stores have room for. It is the fast way to fill a larder.
• Collect from the farms, pastures and fisheries. They bank what they grow where they stand, and it spoils there. Someone has to stand at each and type province collect: a council member, or a worker on the board's Bring in the Harvest order.

At the smokehouse, cure stores (or cure stores meat, cure stores fish) turns stored meat and fish into cured food that keeps through the winter. Stay while the batch smokes.

Farm, pasture and fishery

Once a day one person can take each building's turn of work, a few minutes long. It pays experience and standing, trains a skill and gives you a share to cook; the rest goes to the stores. The sign by the door and the job board's "Today's work" say whether the turn is open.

• Farm (plains or meadow) grows grain, roots and greens, but nothing in winter. The work follows the season: sow in Waking, weed in Living, reap in Waning and mend fences in Sleeping; tend farm does whichever is due.
• Pasture (plains, meadow or small hills) keeps reindeer and goats: herd, or slaughter in Waning; tend pasture does either. Your share is meat.
• Fishery (a lot with water beside it): tend nets, through the ice in winter. Your share is a fish, and while a fishery stands the butcher pays more for fish.

A council member can add a dairy to a pasture with install. It then gives milk, its spring and summer work is milk, and there you can churn butter from three jugs of milk you carry or make cheese from four. make cheese stores is paid work with the settlement's milk.

Once the settlement knows you, set trap at a fishery or set snares at a pasture. It fills while you are away; check trap or check snares takes the catch, and part of it goes to the stores. upgrade trap makes it bigger, and lift trap takes it up again. The sign at the fishery or pasture gives the prices.

Bring in the Harvest

When food waits at the food buildings and the stores have room, the job board offers Bring in the Harvest to workers from outside the council. Take it, go to each food building and type province collect. The order counts each unit as it goes into the stores. When it is full, mission complete at the board pays you. If time runs out, or you give the order up, while food still waits that the stores could take, your stake goes to the treasury and your standing drops.

The food hall

eat, order                the plain meal at the long table
order <dish>              eat a serving from the shelf
buy <dish>                take a serving away
cook menu                 the shelf, its prices and the recipe cards
buy recipe <name>         a card for your own cooking
buy pot, buy cookbook     a cooking pot; a book for your cards
buy <bread>               chaos, ice or fire bread, with your herbs
cook <dish>               cook a batch for the shelf
ask cook about lessons    learn cooking, for the treasury
check food                how well fed the settlement is

Each player may take one meal an hour here, and one at the inn. Servings cost visitors more than members, and the plain meal is there when the shelf is bare.

To cook for the hall, carry a recipe card and type cook <dish> at the hearth. The settlement's stores fill the pot, so bring only what they do not keep, such as game meat. You are paid in experience and standing when you finish, and your share of each serving's price goes to your bank when it sells. You need Newcomer standing, your skill must reach the dish, and the shelf must have room.

A dish cooks in stages, and now and then it needs your hand: you are told what to do, such as use stir the pot. Answer in time and the dish comes out as well as your skill allows; miss the moment and it suffers. Watched dishes add to your Cooking mastery.

The plainer recipe cards go to those the settlement knows, the grand ones to those it trusts. Each hall keeps a house dish, and the council of a hall from the second tier can choose another with council house dish. The butcher also sells some of the stores' staples, never the last of them.

Seasons and the feast

The year turns through Waking, Living, Waning and Sleeping. Fields give little in spring, most in autumn and nothing in winter; pastures and fisheries slow in the cold. The whole settlement sees the season turn, and check food says what the next one brings. At each season's end the best-fed settlements and those who fed them are named in the province news.

Each autumn the settlement sets a winter goal, split between the stores; the job board shows how full each is. Reach it by winter and the settlement earns a feast that costs nothing.

Once a season the council can call a feast: province feast says when it is and what it costs, and province feast confirm in the food hall calls it. Bring a dish you cooked and give <dish> to cook before the toast; the best is named. Be at the long table when the meal is served, or come in and eat while it lasts, to share its good cheer.

Now and then a blizzard, wolves, ice, a drought or rats trouble a settlement. The job board posts the work that ends it, and it passes by itself after a couple of days.

Trading food

Settlements trade food in sealed crates. In its own settlement, a council member can council provisions sell <kind> <silver> what it can spare, council provisions stop <kind>, or council provisions buy <kind> <crates> to post a job for what it lacks. A worker from outside that council takes the job, packs the crates at the seller's smokehouse with pack provisions, and delivers them at the buyer's storehouse yard with deposit crate.

See also

provinces, province buildings, province, cook, homes