the Storm House Eatery
-Nuldrun Dragonbane, freelance Castle EngineerNuldrun Dragon by Eron12 using Hero ForgeThe Storm House Eatery is the best food you can find in Fumaya outside of a ducal or royal banquet hall. Even then, some nobles claim to prefer the Storm House over a lord's hall. The Storm House's wine and ale cellar is certainly on par with that of a duke's. You don't have to be wealthy to eat here, but you do have to be wealthy to eat here routinely. I like to eat here when I visit King's Lake for business but that is only once or twice a year. Sometimes my clients will invite me here to try to butter me with delicious food and hope that I will give them a more favorable quote for my services. It won't work, but I like it when they try.
The menu changes but there are usually four to seven entree options, three or four side dish options, and five or six drink options posted on a chalk board near the entrance. The menu is based on whatever ingredients the House of Storm has on hand. If a patrons are willing to provide a very large tip and wait a bit longer, they can order something not on the menu. If they want roast duck and roast duck is not the menu, they can send a servant to run to the nearest poultry shop and bring back a duck."The so-called chef is a thief and a fraud! He was fired by two lords and then went here because no one else would hire him. He stole several of my recipes and even with my exact recipes he can't make dishes half as good as mine." -Roodnat, gnome chef, giving a completely non-jaundiced review of the Storm House
Purpose / Function
The stated purpose is to serve varied quality food to high end customers with lots of money.
Wealthy merchants, adventurers, nobles, and guild heads often use the location as an exclusive place to meet.
Because it is so close to the Nonagon plaza, the local religious leaders like to use the location as a meeting place, and as a nod to their original status as a temple, they give clergy men and women a small discount.
Less wealthy individuals will scrimp and save to eat here on special occasions for things like courtships, weddings, major birthdays and the like.
Alterations
When the building was converted from a temple into an eatery, the wall and ceiling mosaics were kept intact but the altar and furniture were removed and replaced with tables and chairs to dine at and the back rooms were coverted into a very large kitchen.
The storage area was converted from a general storage area into specifically food storage areas, including a large artificial cold cave packed with off-winter ice.
Architecture
Like most indoor Nami temples, the buidling was constructed with a very high ceiling.
The ceiling is decorated with various kinds of weather. The sections of the eatery are now denoted by the ceiling above them. "The Rainbow section", the "Blizzard section", "the Lightning Section" and "the Sunny Section".
The backrooms have more subdued or neutral weather with lower ceilings depicting moderate cloud cover or a starry night sky.
History
Initially, we used the new temple for diplomacy with the king's men and the rest of the Nonagaon and for training new members but most worship services for the general populace were held in the old temple which was bigger and nicer. This went on for about a 150 years. Gradually, the Fumayan Rovers got more and more criticism from the other priesthoods and some lay people for unofficially making the official temple a bit-player. In the 1780s the Rovers got a very large donation from a retired adventurer specifically to upscale our official temple. After the rennnovations, the new temple was bigger and nicer than the old one, but the old temple was still a solidly constructed nice looking building. Rovers don't like to let nice things go to waste. The rest of the Nonagon likes to keep some distance between the holy and the profane, but the Lady of Winds doesn't believe in distinctions like this, so it was not considered sacriligious for the Rovers to sell the temple to a wealthy businessman. The Rovers put the money from the sale to good use and expanded the Temple of the Vines and the adjoining hospitals. The old temple was turned into a high class eatery. But they kept most of the original decor inculding ceiling mosaics of various kinds of weather. That's why it is called the House of Storms. The House of Storms is no longer a temple but we still have a donation box for Nami near the main entrance and we still collect almost a tithe of our total funds from that box."-Aleesia the satyr, Priestess of Nami of the Temple of the Vinescomissioned portrait of Aleesia the Satyr by Zeta GardnerThe Storm House used to be a temple of Nami as most know. King Ziven II, also known as King Ziven the Wise, wanted to establish a proper Nonagon in King's Lake. The Fumayan Rovers were happy to support the king and were completely on board with the king's intiative, so they promptly began working on a new temple...the fact that King Ziven offered a large monetary donation to go along with his edict had nothing to do with it. Anyway, just because we had a new temple, didn't mean that there was anything wrong with the old temple, so we kept using the old one.
Tourism
While performance troupes are not often seen, most afternoons and evenings there is a lone performer providing light ambience like maybe harpist or flute player. Such lone entertainers work for tips, but they are mostly paid for via free food."-Zajac of the Fumayan Lanternsby Eron12 with Heroforge"A lot of feasts put on by nobles hire muscians or play troupes to provide entertainment while guests eat at formal banquets. This is something that the Storm House has copied. If a guild master or other luminary wants to flex, he will invite his peers to dinner at the Storm House and sponsor some dinner entertainment. As an actor, I prefer to perform outside for large crowds of the common folk as oppose to performing for small numbers at rich people mostly focused on their own wine cups, but I'm not too proud to turn down the coin offered.
What's the big deal? Isn't this just a restaurant?
Yes, but restaurants are a novel concept in Scarterra. Like the real world medieval era, Scarterra has lots of places that will provide prepared food in exchange for coins, but few places resemble a modern restaurant. Most food vendors sell one thing or a small number of closely related things. Scarterrans buy ale from ale houses and they pies from pie shops, and they buy bread from the bakers shop and so on and so forth. A baker might have a few cakes and rolls but mostly sells loaves of bread unless someone orders some specific baked good in advanced. A pie shop might sell more than one type of meat pie but they probably make pies based on whatever meat they have available. Likewise, a soup kitchen probably has one giant pot of soup and the soup has whatever ingredients are seasonally available. If you don't want that kind of soup, too bad, that's all they got. Scarterran Inns normally serve food, but only to people staying the night and the people staying at the inn don't have much choice, they can eat whatever their hosts make or they can eat whatever they brought with them. The idea of going into a building and choosing from a list of things to eat and not necessarily eating the same thing the person next to you is eating is a unique experience...and expensive. Generally a meal at a good inn or tavern with a bit of pork or fish, a vegetable, and some bread or potatoes costs about a copper piece, maybe a copper and a half. At the Storm House, meals start at three copper pieces and can go as high as twenty coppers if the guests insist on ordering something off the menu.
Founding Date
1525 (consecrated as Nami temple) 1789 (rechristened as eatery)
Type
Pub / Tavern / Restaurant
Parent Location
A wonderfully written locale, a place worthy of praise and visitation, however I must especially pay praise to our opening stanza here, the engineer's quote. It really sets the table (pun intended) beautifully, really sells us on this eatery's prestige and pedigree right away, with a bit of a fun little ancedote within as our engineer friend informs us of a very real business practice we are all familiar with, the trope of 'definitely not a bribe, but totally is a bribe' buttering up or attempting to butter up individuals for a better deal. I like both his acknowledgement of this, but also his steadfast claim it doesn't work. Whether or not he speaks the truth is unimportant. What's important is how real the statement feels and it really sells us for the rest of the article at least for me. :) Very well written a great submission for this prompt!
Thanks, one of the most valuable bits of constructive criticism I've received is a recommendation to use more quotes. I revamped a lot of my older articles but going forward I certainly try to have as much info as possible relayed by in-universe characters as opposed to me playing an omniscient narrator. I even created this article to keep track of the narrators and try to reuse them. Master List of Quotes