In a World of Sugar Saturation
On the 11th of Vestian, in the year 563, a ruckus in the City of Gaudiguch was swiftly answered by Mboagn Lunarose, who confronted the disturbance in the form of a perturbed aslaran called Kariv Stoneclaw. He was, according to his own account, a gardener from within the Palace of Pleasure tasked with obtaining a flower the likes of which the Basin had never seen before, despite his own admitted inexperience with wandering the lands outside his home of Gaudiguch. His ill-content grumblings drew even more of a crowd, and, whether through a true desire to help or bemusement at the bullheaded determination of the mysterious visitor, an adventuring party tumbled from the city of Gaudiguch along the Old Imperial Road in the form of Mboagn, Brawrur, Mokotov, Silvanos, Shulamit, Nialla, Khnemu, and Coraline.
First, they came to Mount Zoaka, where it was reasoned that flowers should have rather a difficult time growing to fruition in such a sweltering environment. Dairuchi and the Skarch would likewise contain flora well familiar to the masters of the Palace gardens in Gaudiguch proper, and Kariv turned his nose up at the notion of such a commonplace offering. Coraline, for her part, zipped back and forth with a speed second only to the irrepressible Kariv himself, bringing forth rare orchids, sunflowers, and the like with which to impress the dry-humoured aslaran, to little avail. His offering, he said, had to be so outstanding that it put all other flowers instantly and completely to shame.
Moving at an ever-quickening pace, Kariv dismissed the Cavalier stronghold as a likely source of flowers, reasoning that spearblooms and halberd-hyacinths must not yet be in season. As the party of Gaudiguchians scrambled to keep up with the fleet-footed gardener, having utterly swept up a curious Orventa Trueflight in their mass by virtue of being on quite the wrong thoroughfare at quite the wrong time, the entire assemblage came to a stumbling halt outside the market stalls of the Gourmet Ghetto’s suppliers. It was well-reasoned that the worldly barkers of the market could well have come across the rare bloom that Kariv burned for, and indeed would cut down on any further fatigue-inducing exploration if successful.
The group split up and searched high and low through the market, quizzing the salespeople on their wares to little avail. Kariv himself, however, caught a whiff of a strange scent and dove between two stalls, seizing upon a flower within a mound of dirt but unable to relinquish his grip – or his precarious position – because of it. With assistance from his erstwhile compatriots, he was instead pushed wholesale into the hollow, creating a makeshift entrance and revealing a strange den, within which bloomed countless snowdrop flowers with the scent of tart lemon candy. More fascinating to the intrepid band, however, was the peppermint-striped gate barring access to a passage deeper within the cave.
Though Kariv was quick to claim one of the lemon-drop snowdrops as his own, an entirely coincidental gust of wind snatched the blossom from his grasp and sent it twirling beyond the gate. The gathered adventurers pushed, pulled, turned, chewed, gnawed, and licked the gate in a display of truly eclectic sleuthing, though it was Kariv himself who was able to move past the gate, merely by virtue of undoing its candied latches.
The party found themselves before an enormous castle fashioned entirely of pastries and candies, and hared off through the surrounding bluffs. As they wandered through the strange area, they discovered that it was not only the building that had been fashioned of sweets – it was the very land upon which they stood! From cocoa-rich earth to vividly viridescent liquorice grass, a bubbling river of soda to the strange gummy bears that cavorted alongside it, all had been meticulously formed from edible, delectable components.
As the group split up once more to search for the flower, to precious little result, Mboagn and Orventa wandered into a candied gorge and discovered something of their own. Rather than a snowdrop, Crumkane, Lord of Epicurean Delights was within the gorge instead, focused intently on sculpting the chocolate and honeycomb cliffs to His own exacting specifications. Flabbergasted, the Gaudiguchians inquired of Him how He had come to be there, while He inquired of them the very same. He had, He explained, begun baking and crafting His own Realm for the delight of any who would care to attend it, and had quite forgotten the passage of time in doing so.
Thus reminded of His more mortal obligations, Crumkane has enthusiastically rejoined His compatriot, Mysrai, within the Divine Pantheon of Gaudiguch, and set Himself once more as a true Epicurean, ever seeking new pleasures and fostering the same ambitions in those He calls His own. If any further sticky situations are to arise from His rekindled presence within the Basin of Life, why, only time will tell.
