Hunter's Pots
By any name, the basic concept is the same but there are hundreds of local varations. The idea is that a cooking pot of soup or stew is either never emptied or is rarely emptied and remains on a constant low simmering fire. The owner of the pot just keeps adding water, meat, vegetables, herbs, and spices as the pot gets depleted, so they keep using the same spot to serve many people over and over again. Even with a single pot, the ingredients are ever-changing based on what meats and vegetables are seasonally available and possibly fluctuating with ebbs and flows of the prosperity of the pot owners, though root vegetables remain a perenial favorite in most places.""I've traveled to every corner of West Colassia and spent a couple years in Umera, and Hunter's Pots are fairly universal but with infinite variations. Hunters Pots go by a variety of names by humans, including 'Eternal Stews' or even 'Turoch pots'. Grey elves call them 'uinsalph'which loosely translates into 'River of Soup' and Wood Elves call it 'Winter Soup', Dwarves call it 'Fortress Stew'. Gnomes sometimes call it 'Community Stew' whent they don't take another group's name for it.
by Eron12 with Hero Forge"I and many other sailors often judge the quality of a port by the quality of their unisalph. It can really set the tone for a period of shore leave, for good or ill." -Almon Genmaer, grey elf sailor
Participants
Anyone with a hearth fire and a steady supply of food can make a Hunter's Pot. Some large families or tight knit villages keep a communal Hunter's Pot going. A few castles and noble estates owned by soup-loving lords and ladies order their servants to keep such a pot going.
Armies on the march often have group stewpots similar in concept to a Hunter's Pot, but of course they will empty the pot as soon they break camp, but lengthy sieges can lead to lengthy tenures of a Hunter's Pot. Often they are called "Scroungers' Pots" instead of "Hunter's Pots" because they depend on whatever ingredients the soldiers can find.
but the majority of Hunters' Pots are found in inns and are used to feed the inn keeper's family and their guests. An inn keeper with a reputation for having an especially tasty Hunters' Pot will attract locals who don't sleep in the inn but never the less with beg or barter for soup.
Observance
Some hostile invaders will tip over the Hunter's Pots of conquered peoples as a symbolic gesture of dominance. Of course it's always a sad day when famine or economic hardship forces a family to give up on their Hunter'ws Pot. More often, a Hunter's Pot's cycle is broken for less dramatic reasons. If the tenders of a pot accidentally fail to regulate the fire and burn the bottom of the pot, forcing them to empty the contents and scrub it before filling it again. Or sometimes, a pot is accidentally spilled over due to mischance rather than maliciousness or famine. In Kantoc, it is a custom among the humans there to empty and ritually clean their Hunter's Pot once a year as part of the Beltaine festival, leading some Kantoca to call these soup's 'Beltaine Soup'. They will have priests and priestesses ceremonially bless their pots before filling them again. The record in West Colassia is at an inn in Uskala said to have been going constantly for more than two centuries which I have tasted. Rumor has it there are pots in Umera that have not been emptied in over half a millenium. I hope to taste one of these one day.I seldom stay in one place much to indulge in keeping my own pot of Community Stew, but I enjoy partaking of such soups and stews when traveling, and you can always make polite conversation with a fellow cook by asking how long its been since a pot was last emptied. Most keepers of said pots love to boast about their brew's longevity. Most people keep Hunter's Pots keep going until they stop. Either the family or organization with the pot runs out of food or are forced to leave.
"Most humans either live as nomads or farmers. In Codenya, we do both We subsist primarily on hunting and gathering in the spring and summer and head to our winter villages as the weather gets colder to live off of our farmed stores. Ironically, what human's called 'Hunter's Pot' are what we would more accurately call 'Farmer's Pots' though we call them 'winter soups' because we usually keep the pots going perpetually a third of the year, but then empty the pots and ritually clean them every spring." -Nambra Jocan, wood elf huntress
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