by Peter Archer
Hunting Food in the Wild
Plenty of food is on the hoof in the lands beyond which ordinary people stray. If any in your party have reasonable skill with a bow, they can probably bring down a pheasant, goose, or even a deer, rabbit, or wild boar. (See page 97.) However, there are certain instances where game should be left alone. For instance, if you’re going into a dark wood on a winding, difficult path, and your host, who lives near the edge of the wood and probably knows as much about it as anyone alive, tells you not to shoot anything in the wood because it won’t taste good and you’ll waste your arrows—don’t shoot at game in the wood. Just stick to the food you brought with you.
Hunting Magical Creatures
Hunting magical creatures for food (or pretty much any other reason) is strongly discouraged. For one thing, they probably won’t taste good, and for another, killing them usually brings bad luck. Dragons are, of course, the exception to this rule. Following is a recipe for dragon.
Savory Garlic Dragon
Ingredients:
1 medium-size dragon
2 tons table salt
1⁄2 ton black pepper
2 wagonloads garlic
4 hogsheads white wine
4 bay leaves
Dig a fire pit approximately 100 feet by 50 feet. Fill with branches, fire, and let burn until reduced to glowing coals. Cut dragon into small, bite-size pieces, reserving bones for stock and the skull for display. In large (15-foot) skillets (as many as necessary), sauté garlic. Add dragon, seasoning frequently with salt and pepper. When cooked to pinkness, remove from flame and set aside. Deglaze pans with wine. Add bay leaves. Reduce sauce until it coats the back of a wooden spoon. Serve dragon on platters, with sauce poured over. For an extra flourish, garnish with parsley.
Hunting Deer
While it’s fine to hunt deer, and venison is a good source of nutrition for adventurers, you are strongly advised to avoid hunting any of the following:
White deer that appear, as if by magic, at the edge of a clearing
Deer that lead you on a long chase through strange woods, across wide valleys, and to a path that ends at the gates of a mysterious castle. Shooting the deer under these circumstances can, at best, turn out to be unfortunate. There is also a small chance that the deer may actually be the daughter of the castle’s owner, a girl who’s been enchanted and is trying to lead you back to her father so you can break the enchantment and marry her. Shooting her under these conditions is unlikely to lead to wedding bells.
Deer that flit past in the twilight, making barely a sound, and vanish before you can leap to your feet and pursue them. Just let them go. They’re nothing but trouble. Something better will come along.
Stealing Food
Many adventurers consider normal rules of morality suspended in their case. After all, when you’re fighting bad guys (or creatures), you can’t be too picky about your methods. So it’s a time-honored tradition among adventurers to steal food when it’s handy. For example, suppose you come across a group of trolls. The trolls are sitting quietly by the fire, not bothering anyone, bantering among themselves, perfectly content to wait until it’s time for them to go back to their troll hole. Meanwhile they’re dining on delicious roast mutton and mugs of beer. What do you do?
An experienced adventurer might drug the beer, wait for the trolls to pass out, steal the mutton, and for good measure, steal any gold or silver that the tolls had acquired and stored in their hole. The adventurer might also slip a dagger into each of the trolls, thereby elevating vulgar assassination to the level of epic story.
Stealing food doesn’t, of course, have to mean slaughtering those who have prepared it. But in the course of your travels you come across a savory apple pie sitting unattended on a windowsill of a passing farmhouse, remember: The ends justify the means.
Drink
Along with whatever food you’ve scrounged, hunted, or stolen you’ll naturally want something to drink. Broadly speaking, drinks come in three varieties: ale, wine, and water. In general, elves prefer wine, dwarves prefer ale, men like wine and ale, and hobbits like anything, as long as there are generous quantities of it. Pretty much no one prefers water, but they’ll drink it at a pinch. (Orcs and goblins generally drink foul-smelling, disgusting stuff but they also drink water; dragons drink entire lakes dry; and giant spiders, of course, drink blood.)
Ale, Ale, the Gang’s All Here!
Some races are better at brewing ale than others. That’s all there is to it. You may hear stories of the hobbit 1420 (one of the best brews in the history of the Shire) or of Old Moria Stout and Iron Hills Pale Ale. But you never hear about Rivendell Rogue Ale or Lothlórien Lager. There’s a good reason for that; elves think beer is vulgar. They don’t drink it, they don’t make it, and they hold dwarves in some contempt for introducing malt beverages to the world. Hobbits, too, have gotten very good at brewing beer, and every tavern in the Shire and the surrounding area functions as a kind of mini-brewpub.
Find the Best Beers
Finding good beer is like finding anything else: You have to be willing to spend a while looking. And, fortunately, that means a lot of tasting. In fact, it’s entirely possible that the whole purpose of your adventure is to expand your palate and discover new and better beers. For the uninitiated:
Pale ale uses primarily pale malt and is a pale yellow in color.
Stout is made with roasted malts and is a dark, heavy, thick beer. It’s ideal for an adventurer; a little bit goes a long way, and it has considerable nutritional value. Or at least the people who drink it a lot think it does.
Wheat beer, as the name implies, is made with wheat and malted barley. It’s a lighter beer with a distinctive taste.
Lager is one of the most widely known and drunk beers. Most pubs you come across during your travels will have its own lager, which the owner will be anxious for you to sample. Take him up on his offer.
Wine
The best wines in Middle-earth are those of Dorwinion, but there are plenty of others to go around. Although only elves have access to the rambling cellars of the Last Homely House, we can suppose that Elrond keeps an extensive wine cellar on which he draws for banquets and special occasions, as well as for his own personal taste. There is plenty of wine to go around the banqueting halls of Gondor as well, where the king sits on his golden throne, drinking from a jeweled cup. You might not ascend to those heights, but there’s no reason even in the Wild not to enjoy a decent draught of good wine.
The Mead-halls of Rohan
The Riders of Rohan may sample wine when they ally with their cousins to the south in Minas Tirith. But at home in Edoras, they prefer mead, a drink made from fermented honey. The main advantages of mead are that it’s easy to brew, it stores well, and it gets you good and drunk, and in the mood for a wild cavalry charge in the face of hopeless odds.
Carrying Drink With You
The accepted way to bring drink along on any adventure is in a wineskin. The wise adventurer not only takes several of these in his or her pack but replenishes them at every opportunity. Even if this means sneaking down to the cellars of the Elven-king in his palace in Mirkwood, it’s well worth it—and easier to accomplish if you happen to be invisible.
It’s not a good idea to take drink in bottles or jugs, and barrels are unwieldy, although once you’ve drunk all the beer or wine you can ride the barrels along a river. That is, if you don’t mind bobbing around and getting soaking wet.
Double-check your skins for leaks; you don’t want to run out of alcohol at a crucial moment—say, right before beginning a battle with a giant or a confrontation with a hoard of hobgoblins.
Water
As mentioned previously, water is the preferred drink of almost no one. That said, it’s the easiest one to find in the Wild. A couple of significant points about finding water:
FRESH WATER COMES FROM STREAMS AND/OR RIVERS. Don’t drink water from an ocean.
IF YOU HAVEN’T HAD WATER IN A W
HILE AND YOU COME ACROSS A DISGUSTING, OILY, FOUL-SMELLING STREAM, DON’T BE PICKY. Water’s water, and you don’t know when you’re going to find some more. Drink your fill and fill your skins.
IF, HOWEVER, IN SUCH AN INSTANCE, YOU HAVE A FRIEND OR COMPANION WHO OFFERS TO DRINK FIRST, LET THEM. If they fall over in convulsions after drinking, you’ll know it’s time to search for a different water source.
IF YOU’VE BEEN SPECIFICALLY WARNED NOT TO DRINK FROM A STREAM IN THE MIDDLE OF A FOREST BECAUSE IT CAUSES SLEEP AND FORGETFULNESS, DON’T DO IT. Don’t question why, don’t argue, just… don’t.
BE HELPFUL TO OTHER ADVENTURERS. Consider posting a sign by such a stream with large letters reading SERIOUSLY POISONOUS STREAM; MAY CAUSE FORGETFULNESS AND SLEEP AND OTHER BAD STUFF; OH, ALL RIGHT, DRINK IF YOU WANT, BUT DON’T SAY WE DIDN’T WARN YOU.
Shelter
Contrary to what you may have heard, four walls don’t make a house. Especially not if this house has no roof or the roof leaks in a rainstorm. After you’ve satisfied the cravings of your stomach, you’ll need a place to stay that’s:
Dry
Warm (or at least not freezing cold)
Safe (relatively)
You may assume that when in the Wild, it’s a case of any port in a storm, but in fact you should be careful when choosing your shelter. Here are some things to look out for.
Caves
Caves are great to shelter in because they’re (a) dry; (b) warm, if you build a fire near the entrance; and (c) pretty easy to defend against a frontal assault. However, they have significant disadvantages. The biggest one is, as Gandalf well understands, you never know how far back they go. Bilbo and his dwarf companions got a rather nasty shock when the cave they were sleeping in, high up in the Misty Mountains, turned out to be the front porch of a highly irritable band of goblins. So, even if you find a nice dry cave and it doesn’t seem big enough to hide anything unpleasant and unexpected, remember that there are always hidden doors, cracks, and pits from which creepy things can crawl out of the darkness.
Bigger Caves
The bigger the cave, the greater the possibility that there’s something in it that doesn’t want you there. Alternatively, there’s something in it that’s very happy to have you there, because it’s feeling peckish and you look like a particularly appetizing hors d’oeuvre. The first order of business when choosing a cave for the evening is to thoroughly explore it. That means eyeing all the little cracks and crevices, inspecting the walls for possible secret entrances, and keeping in mind that just because you can’t climb down and explore a hole in the floor doesn’t mean someone or something can’t climb up.
Really, Really Big Caves—We’re Talking the Kind You Could Fit a City Into
Really big caves can be great; they have incredibly beautiful stalagmites and stalactites, huge caverns with glittering walls and translucent ceilings, and miles and miles of twisting corridors that plunge on and on through the bowels of the earth. And that’s really the problem. A big cave offers plenty of shelter—you could probably hide a whole army and a half in the Mines of Moria—but its sheer size means it’s impossible to explore thoroughly. Just as Gandalf, Frodo, Aragorn, and company found a balrog living in Moria, so you may encounter quite a bit more than you’ve bargained for, if you go into one of these places. The best thing to do if you venture into one is to bring along plenty of friends, torches, weapons, and at all times a clear idea in your mind of the shortest route to the nearest exit.
And if you start hearing drums in the deep, run like hell.
Haunted Caves
Caves are apt to be haunted by spirits of the dead, or undead, or not-quite-dead-but-getting-there. After all, caves are dark and creepy, and lots of horrible things have happened in them, so there are lots of good reasons for the dead to hang around in caves. If, by chance, you find yourself in a cave haunted by the spirits of the dead, keep a cool head about you. Panicking isn’t going to help. It’s a natural reaction, to be sure, but running in a random direction screaming at the top of your lungs is just going to piss off the spirits and whatever friends they have. The best thing is to be confident, assertive, polite, and to have a good explanation for your presence. Something along the following lines should suffice: “Oh, is this your cave? I’m so sorry. We’re just passing through, and we were under the impression that it was uninhabited. We certainly didn’t mean to trespass, and we’ll be moving along now. Oh, by the way, you look really great. Death suits you.”
Who Lives in Caves
Naturally you may want an idea of who lives in caves and who you’re most likely to run into (in addition to spirits of the dead). Common inhabitants may include:
GOBLINS. Goblins have a natural affinity with the underground; most of their cities are underground, and they like tunnels and machinery and explosions and things like that. This isn’t to say they’re all that good at creating underground habitations; goblin tunnels are mostly twisty, confusing, rough, damp, and filled with sharp stones and low-hanging roofs. Goblins are easily scared but persistent. If you find yourself in their caves, remember that they know the lay of the land much better than you do. Keep an eye peeled for the exit.
SPIDERS. Some spiders, it’s true, prefer trees, but big, nasty spiders enjoy the underground life, with its steady diet of bugs, hibernating bears, goblins, and the occasional adventurer. Spiders can squeeze their bodies into very small spaces and block tunnels with their webs, so their tunnels are extremely difficult to navigate. Spiders don’t, of course, create caves themselves, but they’re happy to take over ones made by goblins, dwarves, and others.
DWARVES. Dwarves are a friendly race for the most part (unless you’re an elf, in which case relations are a bit dicey). They’re superb builders and tunnelers, with a natural skill at creating huge underground cities—for instance, the vast city and realm of the Dwarrowdelf that adjoined the Mines of Moria. Stumbling into a group of dwarf miners can be a lucky accident for an adventurer, who’ll find herself plied with offers of beer, food, and often gold and jewels, which the dwarves have in abundance. Dwarves look upon themselves as farmers, in a sense, cultivating a vast underground crop that must slowly be tended and cared for so that it can be opened to even greater vistas. All in all, if you’re wandering around underground, lost, hungry, and cold, dwarves are good fellows to meet.
CRAWLY THINGS. All sorts of creatures burrow into caves, away from the light and fresh air. Some are pretty harmless, although it’s best not to disturb them. Others brood in the darkness, hating anything and anyone who comes from the world of light. There’s no way to anticipate meeting one of these creatures, but if you do, it’s a good idea to have a supply of riddles (or some other game) at the ready, as well as a sharp sword.
Trees
Just as caves are often associated with dwarves, so trees have an affinity with elves. Trees offer shelter to the weary traveler and serve as a canopy against storms, a place of safety that can be climbed and can be defended against enemies, and a source of firewood and, possibly, food. That said, there are ups and downs to choosing trees for shelter in the Wild.
Choosing the Right Tree
Trees are unpredictable. Some are happy to provide shelter, with their huge boles and tangled roots offering snug hiding places and nooks in which the adventurer can curl up and rest his weary head. Others are treacherous and evil, tempting travelers to lean against them for a nap before snaring them into cracks in their bark, slowly devouring them and drawing them in. Still others are simply wild, and they need a strong hand guiding them and preventing them from doing harm, accidental or intentional, to the passing traveler. When choosing a tree for shelter, stop and consider what sort of tree it is and whether it has reason to dislike you.
Trees, it must be said, have ample reason to be suspicious of humans, since we routinely chop them down, cut them up for fires or for furniture, or carve our initials into them. But it’s possible by laying aside things such as axes and flint and tinder to convinc
e the trees that our goal isn’t to destroy them. Unlike caves, trees are living things that can even be conversed with, on occasion.
Climbing Trees
You must climb a tree to get to the best shelter it has to offer. Choose a broad branch, well away from the wind and rain, and settle down. In the event that orcs or goblins come ranging around the base of the tree, you’ll probably hear them. If wargs start howling, you’ll certainly hear them. And if goblins try to burn down the forest, you’ll smell the smoke.
Tops of trees are generally best, since you can easily be rescued by eagles if things get tense. It’s true that no one likes to be in the top of a fir tree in the midst of a raging forest fire, but the top is safer than the lower branches, where wild wolves can snap at you and the spears of goblins might reach your legs. Even in the middle of all this, remember that trees have feelings, and you’re probably going to make some friends by being careful about where you put your hands and feet.
Fire and Trees
If you find yourself in the middle of a large, strange forest, and you have the urge to start a campfire, keep in mind that the best wood is dead wood. Don’t start chopping down trees, whatever you do. Remember that a tree’s natural enemy is fire. On the other hand, in colder weather, trees sort of like fire. Just be cautious when you light one.
