Ravenloft Riffs: Some Cultigens & Domesticates of the Lands of Dread

Special thanks to friend of the blog Solomon over at World Building & Woolgathering and his recent post Produce of Punth for inspiring me to get this post off the backburner.

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Bluetspurean Sugar-Kelp

There's a city out in the Mists that lives alone inside a nightmare. This city is called Fort Forbiddance, and it squats beneath an endless storm between chuul-haunted fjords. Fort Forbiddance is the sole significant human settlement on that island called Bluetspur. It is home to nobody but misfits, mystics, outlaws, and imbeciles.

The people of this city are afflicted by terrible nightmares - that is unless they are drunk, infested with madness fleas, or have imbibed a draught of archanum. Only the rich can afford a steady supply of the third, and the second is a stigmatum of the indentured servants of the Aubrecker Marine Company, so for the self-respecting and hardworking citizens of the Fort alcoholism is the way to restful sleep.

The bloody-fingered scrabblers of Mount Makab's foothills distill foul wine from the island's unseemly fungi, while the city supplies itself with beer brewed from the sugar-kelp which grows in the bordering Felgmøsge Bay. Every morning boats are rowed out into the Bay, and divers slather themselves in lard to withstand its chilly waters. With sickles in hand they swim down to the base of the sugar-kelp's stalks, braving sharks, venomous octopi, and nastier things to take their harvest. The survivors sell their harvest to Fort Forbiddance's many breweries - the city's pride - which turn the sugar-kelp into ales, lagers, stouts, and a dozen varieties of drink besides to knock people out for another day's work.

Falkovnian Corpsing Hog

Falkovnia has a problem: every full moon, its dead rise from their graves and attack its living. Falkovnians are practical people. Falkovnia has come up with solutions to this problem. Among them: the corpsing hog. Pigs with smooth, chubby baby-faces, noses sharp as truffle-hounds', and jaws that can snap through a femur like it's a bar of chocolate, corpsing hogs are unleashed in packs into Falkovnia's fields and forests to root up graves and reduce potentially-lethal corpses to much less lethal pig shit. In recognition of the hogs' utility, tenacity, and ferocity, several of Falkovnia's conscript-legions have been bestowed with the hogs in their heraldry.

Unfortunately, sometimes corpsing hog packs discover they prefer living flesh to dead, and devour their handlers then escape into the wilderness. These feral packs can be more dangerous than a mob of zombies.

Palman Roses

White roses that turn red then wilt and blacken when exposed to the scent of blood. Grown by monks of the Palman Order in Borca so that no murderer would be able to escape discovery and subsequent justice in their presence. The roses' actual utility has been limited by random nosebleeds, menstruation, getting pricked by the roses' own thorns, and smells close enough to blood, such as rusted iron, triggering their wilting reaction. The monks have taken this failure as a sign that justice may only come by the will of St. Ezra. To Borca's elites Palman roses have become an expensive party trick - and it's rumoured that the lord of Blaustein kept a bouquet of the things beside his bed so that they'd confirm the virginity of his brides.

Richemuloise Champagne Bulb

Named for its fluted shape, and for the bubbling of its digestive juices when its bulb has trapped some poor creature. Descended from a species from the swamps of Souragne, the champagne bulb was taken to by Richemuloise high society for its exotic appearance and sweet smell. When it was found that the plant preyed voraciously on rats, who were lured to drown themelves in its bulbs in such numbers that those bulbs could be torn from their stems by their weight, that was all the better. Unfortunately it grows wretchedly in Richemulot's climate, requiring greenhouses to thrive, or else it would be planted everywhere in the city.

Rumours of champagne bulbs large enough to trap a grown man, or of children whose heads have been stuck and dissolved in bulbs, are as of yet totally unfounded - or so their aficionados claim.

Blood Pomegranate

The treasure of the gourmands of Ghastria. Tastes like the tenderest candied meat, with treacly juices that spurt out like a nicked artery with every bite. Its tree is symbiotic with a species of wasp, which it relies on for pollination and pest control, and to which it lends some fruits every season to feed on and make their hive within. These wasps have jewel-like teal carapaces which contrast beautifully with the crimson of the blood pomegranate, and bear a venom so painful it's said to feel like being impaled by a red-hot iron spike. Serfs made to harvest the fruit are first numbed with lashes of stinging nettle so that they can run in and out with them before passing out from the agony. Those that pass out regardless are left to rot - for it's said that the most delicious blood pomegranates grow from trees that have tasted flesh.

A blood pomegranate branch and a wasp queen were smuggled off Ghastria in the hollow cane of an enterprising Barovian aristocrat, and the fruit is swiftly becoming a hip delicacy across the lands of dread.

Hazlani Mephithound

A dog breed created by a wizard of Hazlan, as much by magical grafting as by conventional methods. A mephithound is small and soft-pawed, with cat-like grace, a snub-snout, and short ears topped with tufts that easily break away should one try to grab them. Their keen sense of smell is adept at picking up traces of the infernal and elemental, which drive them into a predatory rage. Their metallic, wiry coat deflects flames, acid, cold, and claws.

Used by wizards to take care of minor problems around their labs like escaped imps and homunculi crawling from the bubbling effluvia of their cauldrons. Mephithounds are traditionally named after one's arcane rivals.

An apprentice of the wizard who created mephithounds is working on a variety which is more lapdog than hound, with opalescent eyes that can be gazed into like a crystal ball for scrying purposes.

Mordentish Elfshand

A wonderful herb, named for the delicate "fingers" of its leaves.

When finely ground the seeds can be used to produce a deep violet dye, and the smoke given off by burning them is pleasantly woody, and is said to be like a wall of knives to malign spirits.

Elfshand's stamens can be made into a bright blue dye, and the smoke of them induces a blissful trance in those who inhale it, opening them to the influences of the universe - a property which has made braziers of the stuff popular at seances.

As history's marched on, consumer preference has led to varieties of elfshand being bred more for their stamens than their seeds - the former bloating to ridiculous excess, pulling its flowers earthward. The herb's capacity to invite possession has likewise swollen well beyond its ability to ward it away.