THE MORDOR COOKING COMPETITION IS ON THE MENU!

"Going to Mordor!" Cried Pippin. "I hope it won’t come to that!"
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On the far side of the Black Market, in the middle of one of the many reeking pits of sulphur, stands a large black tent. Throughout this tent are multiple rough wooden tables (coated with asbestos to prevent them from spontaneous combustion), various crude baking dishes and utensils of questionable origin, and a long table in the middle full of various ingredients (many of which are maggoty) from throughout the Black Land.

At the back of the tent is a large oven for the purposes of baking. Smaller creatures should take care as they could easily fit into the oven. If your food cannot fit in the oven (or you fear that you may be baked in said oven), try your luck with the sulphur pit you’re standing on.

And at the front of the tent is a long table for the judges. Prominently displayed behind the table are a variety of torture tools. Whether the tools are for the contestants or for anyone unlucky enough to become dinner is unknown.

SCORING

You will be judged on:
Presentation/Creativity
Taste


Presentation/Creativity is determined by the strength of your RP. (When it comes to the actual dish presentation …who are we kidding? This is Mordor. No one cares anything about presentation … maybe).

Taste is based on the judges taste buds, which will be determined by a dice roll. At the end of your cooking posts, please indicate which dice you would like for that round.
A D6 dice will give you the amount of points you roll
A D12 may give you more points OR it will give you a penalty. Even numbers will get you points, odd numbers will get you a penalty. Penalties will negatively affect your score and will include a unique prompt that you must respond to.

Bonus points may be awarded for cheating, squabbling, attempting to murder/cook contestants/judges, sabotage a dish, or other forms of minion behaviour.

If you try any forms of sabotage, RP your attempt and the judge will let you know how successful said attempt was … again this will be determined by rolling a dice. Please tag the person who you are trying to sabotage to give them a chance to react if applicable.

(Attempted murder/cooking of contestants will not be determined by dice roll. If another contestant tries to kill/cook you, handle it within the RP itself. This specific rule is in place to respect the characters that we have all created.)

Since this is Mordor, there is no limit to the amount of sabotage you may attempt, but for the sake of your GMs’ sanity please limit it to no more than one per participant per round.

RULES

-You May RP as any kind of character you like - and you can have up to two contestants. Extra spectators are allowed and encouraged! We will need tasters!
- No godmoding except by the GM. If you move to interfere with someone else’s dish via a sabotage, just RP it as attempting to do whatever it is, then the GM will tell you if you’ve been successful
- No editing your post after the deadline
- Please mark OOC clearly at the bottom of your post. No need to white out if you don’t want to.
-There will be 5 rounds of cooking and each round will involve a different prompt from the judges.
-HAVE FUN

To participate, simply RP entering the tent, introduce yourselves, and get ready for the most exciting and possibly the most dangerous cooking experience of your life.

Eliminations may occur and they may or may not involve becoming dinner …

GET COOKING!

May the most rotten and delectable dish win.
(An operation run by Sil and Dimcairien)
Last edited by Dimcairien Luiniel on Wed Sep 15, 2021 9:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Goddammit, not again!

Phlegm saw the giant tent in the Black Market and assumed the worst. Her son had done something, he was part of some new and stupid scheme meant to make money that was going to blow up in his face and cause her even more embarrassment that he already did. Everything in her told her to just walk away and pretend like Fleeg wasn’t her son and everything he did was no reflection on her. She really should have left him to be exposed and eaten by wargs as a baby. Well, technically she did just that, but the wargs refused to eat him (they just pooed on him and left). Curiosity, though, got the better of her. It was her one flaw, really, curiosity. Orcs might say her small stature was a flaw as well, but then she’d bite, hamstring, and leave them on special meat hooks to ruminate about their poor judgement.

No, curiosity was her flaw. She wandered over to the tent, ready to wince and run away as soon as she got a decent enough look at whatever madness Fleeg was doing. Reg would certainly be there too, those two never went anywhere alone. It was weird because they did nothing but talk about how much they hated each other. Why was her son? Just why?

When she arrived though, she was greeted by something almost well put together. Clearly it was not Fleeg’s doing. If it was not Fleeg, then what dimwit had thrown up a giant tent in the middle of the Market? Okay, now her curiosity was going to get her killed for sure. She knew this, yet she entered anyway.

“… the hell is all this bull shire?” she said aloud. It looked like… a cooking competition? That was, okay this was really weird. Fleeg probably was behind it after all.

She looked around and found the place to her liking though. Phlegm Fleegsdottir was not much of a cook. No one can be much of a cook when their main sources of protein are centipedes, rats, and whatever mushrooms Reg happens to leave behind.

“Oh why not?” She shrugged. Fleeg wasn’t here and that meant it was an okay place to be.

“Where do I sign up?”
Strange Fruit got holes in the flesh but it ain't gonn' spoil cause it never was fresh

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Granny Appie Smith had heard that there was going to be a cooking competition in Imladris and had set off, rolling pin and cane in hand. Unfortunately for the geriatric hobbit woman she got lost. And not a little bit lost, but absolutely horribly lost, and entirely missed the competition held in Imladris.

She also found herself very much in a strange black land that smelt horribly burnt. "OHHHH DEAR SOMEONE LEFT THEIR FOOD IN THE OVEN." Was heard more than once across the planes as the feeble looking hobbit tottered across them, one might think that such an old woman on her own in Mordor would of course be easy pickings for goblins to take down, but Appie had not lived to the ripe (she always chuckled at this pun) old age of 91 without knowing how to turn goblin heads into golf balls.

The first goblin that had come towards her had caused her to squint looking to see if there was a golf hole around, she thought she saw one up in the distance and turned her cane over and...
WHACK.

It had not been a hole in one and Appie had much to the horror of the goblins, and possibly the mirth of the orcs, gone on to putt the head into a lava spout.


That had caused more than one goblin to rethink going near the teetering toothless old woman. And it was in this manner that Appie arrived tired, a wee bit bloody and looking for where the hole was for the latest goblin that had decided to test the assumption that she was incapable of defending herself, she knocked the head into a fairly sizable pit then caught sight of the sign on the tent that read cooking competition.

"OHHH GOOD I'VE MADE IT FINALLY." She said. "ALWAYS THOUGHT THE ELVES WOULD BE BETTER DECORATORS THAN THIS." She said as the wobbled through the tents door way to one of the cooking tables where she set down her handy dandy rolling pin. Smacked her lips and decided it was time to suck on a toffee (mostly as she had no teeth left with which to CHEW the toffee - which might explain how she still had a pocket full of them after leaving the Shire months ago)

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Bûbosha, JUDGE

She turned this way and that, critically examining her reflection. She looked like the product of a doomed love affair between a deformed potato and a toad. Pretty good, Bübosha thought. Of course, the mirror was particularly flattering, being a puddle of mud and blood that she had passed after an orc had lost an argument with a troll. The goblin blew herself a kiss that ended in a mucus-laden bubble and flapped on over to The Tent.

“Hi Zâram,” she said nasally and self-importantly as she shouldered her way past the presented candidates, removing her collapsible hat from her bag and propping it on her head. The other woman was a half-breed - disgusting - but she was rumoured to have good taste buds. Bübosha whipped her reporter’s notepad out of her bag and tucked her pencil behind her ear. “Anyone tasty show up yet?”

She eyed the couple of hopefuls critically. One of them looked weirdly familiar. Bùboshä’s eyes narrowed.
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Zâram, JUDGE

Standing in the tent, Zâram heard the sound of footfalls behind her. She whirled around and was about to pull out the dagger carved from an oliphant tusk that she always kept on her person, but her hand stayed on the hilt as she recognised the individual. "Bûbosha," she sneered back. The goblin always seemed to dislike her, more than the usual amount of dislike the goblins shared for nearly all minions. It wasn't her fault that her father was a Black Numenorean.

Glancing at her fellow judge, Zâram's eyes turned towards the entrance of the tent where two newcomers had entered. One was an orc, who looked disturbingly like the odd character Fleeg. "Melkor slay us all if Fleeg has family," Zâram muttered under her breath. The other individual was a hobbit. It took Zâram several moments to process the fact that there was a hoppit out here in the Black Market. Granted, the creatures weren't strangers to the Black Land, but they typically found themselves as target practice at On the Rocks, not freely wandering about.

"That little old lady appears to be quite tasty," she said with an evil grin. Taking a step forward, she said to the two, "Welcome to the Mordor Cooking Competition where you either cook well or are well cooked." She reached down under the judges table and pulled out a heavy piece of parchment. "Sign your name in your blood and find a table to work at. More contestants should be here soon."

OOC: We'll give it a couple more days for folks to join. The more contestants, the more fun it is!

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Minor tremors shook the earth as the lumbering figure wandered towards the strange object by the market. Ugh had never seen it there before, and having nothing better to do he'd decided to investigate. It was big and dark, and as tiny neurons tried to spark across the vast gaps in his massive head, his brain managed to assemble the thought that it must be a cave. Like most mountain trolls Ugh liked caves, there were usually lots of crawling, wriggling, skittering eatins to be had and he could enjoy the dark and the quiet. Unfortunately as he stomped through the entrance it was quite bright, with all the fires burning, and he could see there were quite a crowd of folk starting to gather.

"ERE, THIS AIN'T NO CAVE, WAT'S THIS DOINGS ALL ABOUT?" Sadly, like most trolls Ugh was unaware of paltry social niceties such as indoor voices, so his voice was a little much to take in the confined space of the tent, whether because of the blast of sound or the accompanying spittle which was flung from his mouth as he spoke. As he gazed about his eyes caught again on the fire, no the oven, and the table of yummy ingredients all set out.

"Ugghhhh ..." It might have sounded to everyone else that he was introducing himself, but his mouth continued to make shapes long after the sound died away, until finally his brow unfurrowed as the thought came together - they was doin' cookin'! Ugh liked cooking, when he remembered not to simply squish his prey beneath his massive boots. He liked using his knife, it was simple and made sense, and once you got everything onto the fire the voices tended to stop shouting so he could have a bit of quiet.

As he stood there (most likely waiting for the next thought to turn up - it could take a while) his squinty eyes locked on the doddering, tiny figure of the hobbit. Any other self-respecting creature of the Black Lands might have commented at how nauseating it was to see one of the Free Peoples within their borders. And probably rather graphically described, and then demonstrated, how easy it would be to rip their limbs from their body, skin them alive, remove their bones, and roast their flesh in the ovens as a rather appetising entree that would certainly be awarded some form of bonus marks from the judges. Alas for Ugh, his mental faculties were not quite up to the challenge of such erudition, and he instead swung a meaty fist out in the hobbits direction, uncaring whether he made contact, and pointed one large finger at Appie, while asking suspiciously "Wat's this nassty little rabbit here for then?"

Luckily, seconds later he was distracted by the announcement as he tried to work through the instructions. He didn't know how to spell, or how to write, and he couldn't be doing with trying to get through his stony hide for some blood, so if they wanted that they'd have to settle for him using someone elses. "Ugh be here." he settled for announcing to no-one in particular before he lumbered away to the largest table in the room.

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Vauddut was a serious orc with serious business to attend to. He was not some frivolous, flight of fancy orc that when to that culinary school down by the Sea or Núrnen. No, he was a brown collar orc who had to pull himself up by his bootstraps, none of that mithril spoon stuff. Naturally, when he saw a flier for a ‘cooking competition’ he ignored it. It was nothing but a waste of time. He had better things to do with his time, like…

And that’s when Vauddut ran out of reasons not to at least go check this place out. He was correct in assessing that he was no cook. He was quite possibly the worst cook in Mordor. His lack of skills rival Éowyn of Rohan (not that he had any idea who that was). His clam chowder was more likely to give you food poisoning that licking a puffer fish. His roast rat sandwich would send you into an early grave. His water in a glass with a side of toast was sloppy and burnt. That’s what that rich, bougie school down south had told him anyway.

It had dampened his spirits, obviously. He didn’t cook for a whole year after that rejection. Eating raw agreed with him in a way he didn’t expect. He tried to get others to try this new diet of his, but he had about as much success in that as he had climbing the corporate ladder (he was still technically in an entry-level position). What better way to spread his new ideas than at a cooking competition?

It didn’t take long for the bulgey-eyed orc to scuttle his way through the crowded, filth street streets of the Black Market. He smelled the tent long before he saw it. The sulphureous odor was like a balm to his weary soul.

“Oy, ‘ey you dere,” he asked the little goblin lady who was glaring at everyone and looking official. “Zis where de cookin’ competition s’pose ta be ‘eld? Oy’d like to put me name in da hat, so t’speak. Name’s Vauddut. P’r’haps ye’ve ‘eard of me?”
Strange Fruit got holes in the flesh but it ain't gonn' spoil cause it never was fresh

High Lord of Imladris
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Her sister had set out on a journey and there was no way that Honey was about to let Appie have all the fun. No, the younger and more nimble of the two sisters had taken off right after her sister following her cane marks with a tenacity that would make a Ranger of the North fearful. After all with the accusation of the murder of Earl the two sisters Honey Crisp and Appie Smith were constantly seen together tittering around Oatbarton picking apples and making jam.

It wasn't long after Appie arrived that a second hobbit with a cane and a pink shawl followed a rather large surly looking fellow as well as a strange bug looking creature judging from its eyes as Honey squinted, her eyesight worse than Appies but her hearing blessedly better. "Rabbit? And I thought my eyesight was bad." She said with a chortle as she headed over to her sister ducking under the giant bloaks hand. "Appie, did you really think you could enter a cooking competition without me?"

Appie was not listening. Appie was never listening. "APPIE!"

Still nothing.

"APPIE!" Honey wrapped her cane in front of her older sister and shook her head, the movement caching Appies attention more so than the shouting of her name like a banshee. Of course it could be that she was in front of a goblin and not Appie who was standing beside another goblin since she had forgotten where she'd put her spectacles. (which were of course on top of her head and had been there for months now)

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Zâram scowled when the troll apparently did not know how to sign the contract. Muttering under her breath, she scrawled the trolls name using a bit of blood that was on the table. There was no telling how old it was or who it belonged to, but it would have to do. Another orc (Vauddut) entered the tent and he looked to be a semi-promising contestant. "I'm afraid I have not heard of you," Zâram replied, enunciating every word. The low speech of some of the natives bothered her. Granted, her travels throughout Middle Earth afforded her a greater opportunity to learn how to speak.

She was just about to announce the first item on the menu when in walked yet another hobbit. Her eyes briefly lit up at the thought of more snack option later on, but then quickly shook her head. It would not do to try and eat the contestants … yet. But, before she could return to the task at hand, a commotion set in when the second hobbit grabbed the neck of a goblin, though she had apparently meant to grab the first hobbit.

Hoping to avoid a quarrel, Zâram quickly leapt to the top of the table and shouted, "ATTENTION!" With the shout out of the way, she continued, "Welcome to the very first Mordor Cooking Contest. The first stage of the competition will now commence. You are required to cook a dish that represents your homeland. But, as this is Mordor, there is are some special local ingredients you must include. Your dish must incorporate eyeballs and maggoty flour." As she said this, a snaga entered the tent dragging a sack of the flour in one claw and holding a jar of eyeballs in the other. Both items were deposited on the long table of ingredients.

"Good luck! You have 3 hours." With that, Zâram hoped down and turned towards Bûbosha. "This could get interesting," she said. "And those hobbits look mighty tasty."

OOC: You have roughly 72 hours to get your first cooking posts in.

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Granny Appie Smith

The elderly hobbit saw the troll swing it's ruddy arm and point it's finger at her and she wondered what 'Troll Finger Roast' would taste like but she was interupted in that thought by her sister toddling in.

"HONEY! IF YOU THINK YOU"RE GOING TO WIN THIS YOU'VE GOT ANOTHER THING COMING!" Appie said with a chuckle heading over to her sister who turned towards her once she spoke it was hard to miss since Honey was blind not deaf. She noticed Honey looked like she was about start baking and decided that she'd start baking as well. She toddled to get some flower and whatever the other thing was. When she got to it she looked confused at first.

"OHHH THESE ARE FANCY CANDIED APPLES INDEED." She picked up a bunch of them never even thinking that they might be actual eyeballs because who would do that? And took them and bunch of flour to where she could cook. She found a bunch of spices - cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves and tossed the eyeballs in enough that one couldn't tell they were eyeballs, and set them off to bake some of the moisture out of the 'apples'. While she waited for that she started mixing up some sweet batter. It was a bit lumpier than normal but looked like it would be good she poured half of it into a loaf pan and sprinkled it with more butter and cinnamon nutmeg and cloves and then pulled the baked off 'apples'

"OH DEAR THESE SURE DID SHRINK MUST BE JUICY APPLES" She decided there weren't enough so pulled out some of her green apples and added them in fresh with a bunch enough sugar to give a mumakil diabetes before putting the rest of the batter on top and baking it.

She sat back and pulled a new toffee candy from her purse and popped it in her mouth while she waited. Once she could smell her apple fritter bread was just about done because as all good bakers nothing was done with measurements or hard set times she went and found some lemons and sugar and make a lemon sugar slurry that once the loaf was done she pulled it out and poured the slurry over the entire loaf.

Yes an excellent dish indeed. Did it represent the Shire? Sort of it was one of her better known dishes that people liked even if it wasn't... conventionally made.

Honey Crisp


Honey heard what they were baking with and was confused. Who bakes with eyeballs and maggoty flour? She figured they were talking about some sort of halloween candy of sorts and went and got her own goods.

She sat and thought and thought and thought. Trying to decide exactly what to bake with these things. Finally she decided on Brownies. But not just any brownies. If this was going to represent the Shire these were going to be special brownies.

She went around sticking her finger in tins and licking them looking for cocoa and vanilla. as well as butter and sugar and molasses to go with the flour and eyeballs. Having everything she went and and rendered the butter and then she looked around - which was utterly useless since she was blind- before dumping a bunch of pipe weed into the butter. If nothing else everything would be tasty for the judges after round one because they'd have hella high. She mixed the butter and the sugar and the molasses and the the flour and the cocoa.

There was a lot of cocoa. She dumped it all into a tray and then started lick the batter in the bowl. She too was going to be fantastically high. The best way to bake anything.

She finished the bowl and the spoon and was looking for more when she remembered she needed to pull the brownies out. She set the brownies aside and they were just cooked a little under which made them fantastic and gooie. Honey of course waited only long enough for them not to burn her when she cut them up and set them on a plate in nice squares. She proceeded to nibble on the rest of the pieces that did not make it onto the plates.

Edit: a d6 roll each please
Last edited by Fuin Elda on Mon Sep 20, 2021 7:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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It took a while for Ugh to decide what to make, first he had to work out what ‘represent’ meant, a feat that was again accompanied by a lot of frowning and silent mumbling. Once he had that figured out, it was a little easier to make a decision, though he did get distracted for a few minutes by the sight of a whole jar of eyeballs. Ugh could feel himself drooling at the thought, and he knew he shouldn’t waste that. Quickly fetching a cooking pot he swiped up some of the viscous drool from his lip, and shook it into the pot before going to collect more ingredients. Massive arms laden with goodies, Ugh dumped everything on his table as he worked out what to add first to the stew he had decided to cook.

Grabbing a handful of the maggoty flour he sprinkled it into the drool, giving it a good stir to form a paste like substance. Ashy Mordor dirt, fetid water, a scoop of Núrnen mud quickly followed, and after a quick stir, Ugh set the pot over one of the fires to heat. As he waited for it to boil, Ughs hands moved quickly preparing the flavourings. Spiders ground up as his fist hit the table, strips of man flesh and elf ears torn into small pieces, small wriggling creatures that few could name, the prepared ingredients quickly piled up next to him. Giant hands easily scooped the pile into the pot, disappearing into the gloopy liquid as they were stirred. Staring into the pot of stew Ugh frowned slightly at the colour. Something wasn’t quite right yet, there was something else he needed, but he hadn’t seen it on the ingredient table. This being Mordor the answer was at least easy for the troll to come to, thank Morgoth, or the dish would not have been ready in time for the judges.

Like most trolls, Ugh could be stealthy when needed, in the same way that a mûmakil was stealthy as it thundered across the battlefield. In this case Ugh didn’t need to be, a quick lunge into the edges of the crowd where a few snaga crouched, and Ugh seized his prey by the ankle and dragged him across to the table.

“I’s be needin’ some blood. Don’t you be struggling.”

Snapping the sagas arm off as easily as most would snap a twig, Ugh set the arm aside for later, and held the snaga over the cooking pot, avidly watching the black blood pour into the stew. “Almost, almost, almost” he chanted, wanting to get just the right amount of bloody goodness. “There! All done!”

Ugh easily and happily punted the still struggling body of the snaga back into the crowd, where an opportunistic minion would probably finish the job, glad to be rid of the annoying screams. Usually he’d have simply squished it himself, but he was concentrating on the dish, and he didn’t have the time to be scrapin’ the muck off his foot.

Poking at the stew, Ugh saw it was almost ready, which meant it was time for his favouritest ingredient. Chuckling happily Ugh let eyeball after eyeball plop into the putrid brew after he’d taken the pot from the fire and it had cooled a little. And without knowing it, he started singing his favourite tune from when he’d been only a young troll, learnt at his mothers knee.

“Eyeballs, eyeballs, juicy, oozy eyeballs,
Smash ‘em, gnash ‘em, slurp ‘em from the stew,
Pluck ‘em from the corpses, theys is good for you!”

Pulling his knife from his side, Ugh expertly cut the snagas fingers from the lifeless arm, letting each sink into the stew. Setting the bowl on the end of the table, Ugh stirred up the stew with one of his massive fingers. He wanted the judges to see there was good eatins in the bowl, and how would they know if they was lurkin’ beneath the gloop? As a final flourish Ugh added Mama’s special touch; a couple of eyeballs cut in half floated on top of the stew, with a piece of snaga skin pulled from the arm curled beneath it; as Ughs' Mama would have said, it was stew with a smile.

"This be me Mama’s Mordor Stew. This be special as Mama gone now."

The troll was visibly moved as he presented the dish to the tent, or maybe visibly constipated, the stony features of the crag-like face worked as hard as they could to convey some kind of emotion, but there was only so much they could do with the materials available. The memory of Mama lumbering away was clear in Ughs mind; as with nearly all troll mothers his had dumped him in a cave as soon as he was able to fend for himself.

Pulling a hankie out from … well it was best not to ask questions about where the handkerchief had been retrieved from, but it was a touching moment as Ugh blew noisily into the .. fabric? Though the sharp-eyed may have noticed that the tough, leathery … thing, still bore a faint outline of the tree of Gondor; what on other, more alive substances would have been a ... tattoo? But again questions probably weren’t in anyone’s best interest here. Usually he would simply have tossed the handkerchief to the floor, or stashed it back … where it had come from. But an unusually coherent thought made itself known, and instead after the crescendo died away Ugh flung the handkerchief and its contents straight towards the table of one of the rabbits (Honey Crisp @Revered Grandmother), hoping it would splatter right on top of the brown squares she’d set out.

As he waited for … well he wasn’t sure what, no one had given him any more instructions yet, his squinty eyes sized up the competition. As thoughts sparked like a rare thunderstorm above Mount Doom, his mind started to make some connections; like the fact he was surrounded by a lot of lethal objects and folk that he’d need to get out of his way if he was going to win this.

D6 dice please

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Eyeballs and maggot infested flour. Phlegm chewed her lip. Well, she’d worked with worse before (no, seriously don’t ask). As first challenges go, this was not a bad one. She had expected, wait, had she actually expected anything? No. A lifetime in the shadow of the great eldritch volcano had taught her one thing: don’t actually expect anything except a fiery death.

Eyeballs and maggot infested flour. She had a few ideas. She grinned and, unlike her eldest son, her teeth didn’t point in all directions when she did so. She actually took care of them and made sure to go to the dentist when it was required. Right, not the time. Not the time. She rushed forward and grabbed the ingredients. The eyes were… human? It was hard to tell. She wasn’t an eyeball connoisseur. She’d eaten a few warg eyes in her time, and more than a few fisheyes. These were bigger, far bigger, but overall she shouldn’t have any trouble doing a similar recipe. Fry them up and serve with peppers? They’d need some cleaning; goblin gods knew what they had been exposed to before now. She scooped up a half a dozen. How many judges were there going to be? How many dishes was she going to have to prepare? Didn’t matter. She could sort that out later.

The eyeballs were slimy. Dammit! She flicked what felt like snot off her fingers and dropped the eyeballs into a bowl of water. The water, too, wasn’t clean, but one had to deal with what one was given. A competition in Imladris would have been better, but being a goblin, she would have been exposed to all sorts of horrible racism and classism. Here at least she was just exposed to incredibly unsanitary conditions. She could deal with that.

The maggot flour was almost too simple. She scooped up several bowlfuls of the stuff (and picked out a few wriggling blobs to check for taste) and began sifting it, separating the flour from the bug. She could turn the flour into a sort of crisp flatbread and the maggots she could turn into a sort of hummus.

She separated the flour into two piles, one for the flatbread and one for the fried eyeballs. She sniffed the flour. It wasn’t… horrible. She could cover the smell and taste with some Núrnen reaper peppers. She collected the maggots in a mortar, added some pine nuts that only looked slightly stale, some green stuff (oregano and thyme but Phlegm didn’t bother learning what they were called) and began to smash it all together with the pestle until a nice gooey, umami smelling paste was rendered.

Next, the first pile of flour, the one for the flatbread. She scooped out some of the eyeball soaking water, just enough to form dough. It was slightly sour and slimy but that was okay in her book. Next she flattened the dough out to make a sort of tortilla or whatever. She slammed it on the table several times to make it flat. Using a rolling pin made it inauthentic.

She sliced up some terrifying looking dark red peppers next and looked around her. This was a strange sort of competition. Hobbits and trolls? What the hell were they doing around here? Was that Fleeg’s girlfriend? Great. That’s all Phlegm needed, her future daughter-in-law. Was she a judge or something? Could this get any dumber? She looked at the troll. Yup. Yup, it could. It was time to take matters into her own hands. Forget the peppers for her flatbreads. They would be too hot for the judges, being able to melt through stone and all that. Spike the troll’s (@Zôraphêl's) stew with insanely hot peppers. The troll was the real competition here. The hobbits and the orc were amateurs.

Phlegm tossed the tortillas onto a griddle and watched them cook. There were a few maggots that escaped the sifting. She snatched them up and ate them. What? Cooking was hungry work.

Right, now for the eyeballs. She sliced off the stalk and the veins and all the nasty bits (eyeball stock anyone?) and set them aside for now. She put a pot of oil on the stove and, after making sure no one was going to throw her in, set it to bubbling and troubling. She rolled the eyeballs in the flour and sprinkled Lithui salt (full of minerals you can’t get anywhere else in Middle-earth) and red pepper over them before tossing them into the fryer. The smell was… good?

Well there she had it: fried human eyeballs with maggot hummus and flatbread. Creative? Sure, why not?


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Fish eye stir fry! Not only was it going to be tasty, but it rhymed! Vauddut was quite proud of himself. He was nervous when the ingredients were unveiled. He was thought he wouldn’t have any good ideas for eyeballs. He’d never eat an eyeball. He was too sensitive about his own bulging oculi. They looked surprisingly appetizing. He wiped a bit of drool from his chin and scooped out a good dozen or so. How many were in this jar anyway? He was the last to come up and there seemed to be an endless supply. Must be have been an eye-popping day at the Black Pits! He chuckled to himself. He was, in fact, very funny. Just no one knew it yet.

The maggot flour. That was tricky. The maggots he could use in the stir fry, another source of protein, but the flour? Maybe he could bread some of the veggies before tossing them in? Sure. Sounds good. Let’s do it!

Vauddut indiscriminately grabbed whatever looked like a vegetable to him. Bamboo shoots, corn, peppers (some Núrnen reapers, four of them), onion. All of it. He didn’t have time to check to make sure each ingredient was fit for stir fry. This was a competition! He chopped everything into bits and… didn’t he have 5 fingers on this hand before? Strange. Oh well. He tossed the veggies into a bowl with curry, paprika, the flour, garlic powder, and allspice and mixed it all together. Some oil in a hot pan on the stove and away he went with the veggies! They sizzled and popped and… those peppers are really spicy. Yikes. Okay, wow. The air was a little hard to breath. Vauddut hack and coughed and sneezed. The judges were really going to like this! He cleaned off the eyeballs and trimmed off the odd bits, then sliced them into quarters before into the stir fry they went! After them he tossed in a bottle of hoisin sauce (not literally) and some sesame oil. He felt like this recipe was too short though. Could he prolong it to make it seem like he worked harder on it? Nah, it’s good. Vauddut knew being overly lugubrious and verbose were not ways to win points. Burning the judges faces off with hot peppers was the way to win, clearly. And there we go!

Eyeball and maggot (and a finger for one lucky judge) stir fry with breaded vegetables.

A D12 for Phlegm
A D6 for Vauddut
Strange Fruit got holes in the flesh but it ain't gonn' spoil cause it never was fresh

Elven Enchanter
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The hubbub of cooking amused Zâram and she let out a dark laugh when one of the snaga's got put into whatever Ugh was concocting. Before too long, the dishes were completed and the four contestants brought their meals to the front table where Zâram and Bûbosha sat waiting to taste.

@Raisins With the various dishes laid out in front of her Zâram picked up a sharp stick (no one had forks in Mordor) and stabbed into the concoction the tasty hobbit (Appie) had called "Apple Fritter Bread". She didn't quite know what to make of the flavours. The old hobbit had followed the instructions regarding the ingredients, but she had some trouble telling what were the eyeballs, the maggots, and whatever this thing called an "apple" was. "It is a passable dish," she snarled.
Taste Score: 3/6

The next dish was also hobbit fare. Honestly, Zâram found the look of the old hobbit (Honey Crisp) a bit more appetizing than the brown mush that was sat in front of her. "What is this?" she asked, as she poked at it with a gnarled finger. After getting a good amount of it on her finger, she stuck it in her mouth and all of a sudden her eyes lit up! "Why, this is delightful! Though, appearances leave something to be desired."
Taste Score: 6/6

@Zôraphêl The troll (Ugh) actually appeared to be a competent cook, much to Zâram's surprise. The addition of fresh blood quite impressed her (not everyone realised just how important fresh ingredients could be from time to time), but there was an unusual spiciness to the dish. Zâram coughed rather strongly and reached over to down a large glass of elf blood. "What did you put in that?" she gasped, her throat feeling like it was on fire. Looking around at the other contestants she say the smug face of Phlegm and realised that the Flegg relation had added some extremely spicy peppers to the stew. She nodded in approval. Sabotage always amused her.
Taste Score: 3/6

@Abzû Unfortunately, the sabotage attempt had distracted Phlegm. Zâram shook her head as she scrapped char off of the flatbread. While most of the time, a but of burnt essence added to the Mordorian cuisine, today it took away. "And interesting combination," she said, her eyes wary as she looked at the bits of what appeared to be pepper. "But you let your food burn while you were throwing peppers into the troll stew." A moment later, she added, "However, your sabotage, if that's what it was, was successful. And you will receive some bonus points for your minionish behaviour."

Taste Score -3/12 You have activated a penalty!

The stirfry brought forward by the final minion (Vauddut) looked rather appetizing. She was a bit wary of the pepper shaped veggies, but this time the spice was expected and actually complemented the rest of the dish. The eyeballs and maggots paired quite nicely with each other, something Zâram hadn't thought of doing in the past, but was sure to repeat. Perhaps such a dish could even be added to the menu at the local pub.

Taste Score: 4/6

OOC: Final scores for everyone will be totaled after sil (@Galadrihell) adds hers.

Arien
Arien
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Boy, We Eat Today!

Buboshà inserted one skinny finger into her ear and rotated it. One of the small hobbit elders was shouting very loudly - possibly she was deaf, although in Mordor, looking that plumptious and making that much noise was practically a siren invitation to be kidnapped and eaten by a fell beast.

Appie

The goblin examined Appie’s Eyeball Apple Fritter dubiously. “It’s a nice idea,” she conceded, nasally, “but alas, the eyeballs were a bit too wet for the batter to crisp properly and a lot of them have burst.”

3/6

Honey

Bûbosha tasted the mix and her pupils blossomed into wide black pits of hell. “Did you mix any of this?” she said doubtfully. “All sugar, zero blood; no balance. And I don’t appreciate your handkerchief garnish either…” she added, picking off the shred that Ugh had flung…

YOU WERE SABOTAGED!

2/6

Ugh

“Impressive butchery and surprisingly good blood coagulation,” Bùbosha concluded, after she had finished vomiting up the additional peppers. After all, she could appreciate the artistry of troll cooking without enjoying it. A dish too hot and heavy for her, but impressive nonetheless. The sabotaged had become the successful saboteur.

6/6

Phlegm

Bùbosha stared at Phlegm dead in the eyeballs - The eyeballs in her face, not in her dish - as she broke off a piece and tasted it.

“Amazing maggot flour,” she begrudginglyadmitted. “Like a slap in the teeth with a thousand red hot flies.”

10/12

Vauddut

With her tasting ladle, Bubøsha recovered a finger. She looked at Vauddut, leaking slightly. She looked at the finger again.

“You need to clean your nails,” she said.

She put the finger in her mouth.

“Thoroughly,” she added. “And definitely before you use a restroom, is my advice.”

The breaded vegetables were soggy, but the rest was serviceable.

4/6
cave anserem
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Zâram snorted when she saw Bûbosha pull a handkerchief out of the hobbit's brownies. Somehow she had managed to miss that garnish, though considering it clearly did not come from the hobbit, it was easy to miss as it was as nearly as brown as the brownies itself.

She coughed to get everyone's attention and then said, "The first round of dishes were all delightfully horrible," and turning towards the two hobbits she added with a sneer, "though you two need to work on improving your ability to handle Mordorian taste buds."

Once again facing the entire crowd, she continued, "There were two accounts of successful sabotage this round. The saboteurs have been awarded points for minionish behaviour and the sabotaged, well, you lost some points." She jotted down the total scores for everyone and slammed the parchment on the table. "Here are the scores from the first round. Bûbosha @Galadrihell will be announcing the next task, but be prepared for some excitement."

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Arien
Arien
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ROUUUUND TWOOOOOOO
Bùbosha had turned to the drink already - early in the day, but quite necessary after the first round of culinary efforts. Discreetly she put aside her flask of fermented radishes and burped before pulling out a large notebook from her handbag and consulting it diligently.

“For the next round, we will be testing your foraging skills,” she announced loudly. “We wish you to go to the Black Market, obtain an item from one of the vendors - or otherwise - and return here to make a meal with your purchase.

Chop chop!”

Please make a post in the Black Market obtaining your item (Please do NOT godmode, but of course feel free to make up your own NPCs to interact with), followed by a post here making your dish. As usual, points for creativity: both posts will be considered! Sabotage welcome as usual.

@Raisins @Abzû @Zôraphêl

LATECOMERS ARE STILL WELCOME, But you will only be scored on dishes that you make: so to be in for an overall running; you’d need to cook multiple dishes.
cave anserem
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Arien
Arien
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dear cooks: Hallowe’en Hiatus is over: share your creations! @Frost @I hate Eärendil @I Said What I Said
cave anserem
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High Lord of Imladris
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Granny Appy Smith

She toddled back to the cooking tent, a rather large spider, probably one of the spawns of Shelob held by it's thorax while it thrashed earning itself more than one good solid bop on the head to make it stop squirming. She set it on her cooking bench and it tried to scuttle away making a complete mess of Phelgm's @Frost station leaving everything covered in sticky cobwebs. before she knocked the beast unconscious and dragged it back to her bench.

She flipped it on it's back and rubbed all the hairy spines off after they made her itch horribly and punched a small hole in the creatures body right behind its eyes not enough to kill it but it did make the creatures legs all curl in nice and tightly leaving it alive on its back its bulb ous but in the air as Appy pulled out the mushrooms she got and started chopping them up into a fine mince not realizing that she may as well have licked a toad when she touched them the world started to look a lot less black and grey and a bit more like how she imagined the Hippy elves of Imladris to decorate. She added some fresh sliced green apples from her bag to the mushroom sauté. She took the sharp knife that she had used to paralyze the spider and made the thinnest slit in its abdomen and pulled out its webby bits and found a bunch of eggs.

"OHHH CAVIAR PERFECT!" With that she dumped the hot psychedelic mushroom sautee into it's abdomen and gave it a stir making the spider let out a little shriek as it tried to wiggle its paralyzed legs to no avail. The mushrooms made her forget she was working on a spider not a fish (which she thought it was weird that a fish had legs but who knew what grew in the Sea of Nurn really?) as she set it out legs up so they could be pulled off and used to dip in the mushroom apple spider caviar mixture.

D6

Honey Crisp


It took her a bit longer to find her way back to the cooking tent mostly because she could hardly see three feet in front off her and everything was black on black here. Eventually she did find the entrance again and slipped in the bloody goblin head dripping through her once nice neat handkerchief. She quickly set a pot so she could blanche the hairs off the head so they wouldn't get caught in ones teeth before she dumped the water out into Ugh's @I hate Eärendil's fire place putting it out so that she could use the pot which was already hot to brown the skin and neck before tossing it onto the rack to cook over slowly over the fire neck side up so the juices would stay in better.

It was well over three hours later when she finally pulled the goblin head off of the rack and set it on the plate before digging a sweet red apple out of her back and stuffing it in the cooked creatures mouth like it was a stuffed pig.

D6 please

Éowyn
Éowyn
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*dashes in* Found an egg! *dashes out with egg*
Arnyn ~ Honor & Valor
Kaylin ~ Joy & Strength

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