Sugar from the South

 

The Southern Nomads trade hard boiled sweets for fantastic sums of money, which makes many of the Southern houses extremely wealthy. 

The secrets of the manufacture of these sweets, which are considered a royal delicacy from the Northern Steppe, through the length of the Barony, and up to the north-most borders of the empire, are a secret as closely guarded as those of the Star Weapons of the Northern Nomads. 

It is known that the Southerners farm (and sometimes hunt, for the rarer specimens), a type of hard-shelled, darkly iridescent ice beetle, about the size of a clenched fist. They dry out the carapaces, crush them to a powder, mix it with water and various oils and regents, and compact the mass in small, hand-portable pressure cookers that faintly resemble Imperial coffee pots. This first processing is well known, but when repeated abroad results only in a foul smelling slurry of pulverised beetle. The true secret comes afterwards. 

The pressurised mass is wrapped in imported paper, and taken by the house's Sweet-Maker (this trade specialism is passed down through families, and comes with a military raiding rank, roughly equivalent to a Baronial skirmishing captain) to one of the southern holy sites: a sub-zero pool of salt water, still and reflective, where the firmament is doubled perfectly on the terrestrial earth. Often, but not always, the house Star Seed will accompany them.

Something happens to the small bundles of paper and crushed up matter. It involves a small fire, animal fat, a series of glass lenses, water, blood, a broad iron dish that spits and smokes.

When the Sweet-Maker returns they carry four or five immaculate, black, glossy, sugar sweets. Each is worth a month's wages in the cities. The taste is difficult to describe - tartness, aniseed, citrus, alcohol, sugar, of course: something of all them, also different from all of them. 

'Paper-men' and 'paper-women', merchant bands made up of Baronials and Northern Nomads, trade wrapping papers to the southerners in exchange for a share in their sugar wealth. They also bring glass bottles to fill, because other export of the South is naturally-carbonated water, which can be found only in the chemical vents at the southern edge of the world, and which the White City has an endless, insatiable thirst for. 

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Southern Sugar Candy 

Each worth 500s if still in their paper wrapping, 150s if opened, 50s if loose. Reacts to water and heat as any hard sugar candy - poorly. 

A sugar candy counts as a ration that eliminates a single point of fatigue when eaten, but gives you a point of fatigue when you wake up the next day. They don't count as a ration if the last ration you ate was a sugar candy. 

Sparkling Water

Just water that tastes better and costs 20s a bottle. You should drink it with ice to get the proper effect. Just now catching on in the Barony.