Half-Eaten Mass

Half-Eaten Mass sits on a scarred wooden counter, a pale, irregular slab the size of a small loaf and oddly supple to the touch. Its surface gleams with a thin sheen of brine, like something kept too long in a kitchen that forgot the clock. Edges curl in on themselves, as if someone pressed the bite-marked silhouette back into a form that didn’t quite match the appetite that created it. Delicate fibers pull away with the slightest pressure, and a faint, coppery aroma lingers—rust and salt, with an undertone of something sweeter and oddly medicinal. It looks half-assembled, as though a larger banquet was interrupted mid-sentence, and the memory of that interruption clings to it like a rumor. Lore players tease out in whispered markets: a remnant of a banquet thrown in the wake of a famine, a token from a failed expedition, or a chef’s curious experiment gone stubbornly alive with memory. Some say it’s a morsel scavenged from the belly of a collapsed caravan, eaten by a night market’s catacombs of shadow. Others insist it’s a relic from a long-vanished kitchen in a fortress where meals doubled as messages, where cooks fed more than stomachs—fed stories, too. The Half-Eaten Mass is never just food; it’s a clue, a rumor, a clue that the world’s hunger outlives its merchants and that a single bite can carry a city’s uneasy grin. In the flow of daily life, the item has a practical pulse, threading its way through provisioning tables and campfire debates alike. Some crafters insist it’s a key ingredient for offbeat recipes—things that don’t win beauty contests but do surprising things to a party’s morale or a guild’s courier chain during crowded festivals. It’s not simply sustenance; it’s a conversation starter, a riddle spooned into a stew of common goods. For wanderers who trade in oddities, the Half-Eaten Mass becomes a test of a buyer’s curiosity and a seller’s patience. Salvagers will tell you that when a caravan’s last lantern flickers out and the night market hums back to life, this is the kind of item that makes a story worth a night’s travel more than a night’s profit. And then there’s the market’s heartbeat, the way a single rumor travels faster than a caravan wheel. Saddlebag Exchange is where such whispers take price, where the piece moves from rumor to receipt and back again with the turn of a coin. One morning you’ll see a stallkeeper asking a handful of copper, and by dusk a veteran trader is asking for a whole silver, claiming a fading famine narrative has sharpened demand. Prices swing with the market’s mood—the Half-Eaten Mass becoming a scarce curiosity when a storyteller’s tale of a ruined feast catches fire, or cheaper when the crowd decides a practical meal is more needed than a memory. It’s price as performance, a reflection of what hunger means to the city that keeps eating its own stories. So the Mass travels—from counters slick with rain and oil, to campfires where boots squeak in the mud, to the exchange where risk and appetite meet. It’s more than a curiosity; it’s a fragment of the world’s shared appetite, a reminder that in a crowded, hungry place, even a half-finished bite can tell a larger tale.