Drinking (recreationally)

Here's a running list of Terranuovan beverages and a description of the drinking cultures in different places.

Cordials and light refreshments
Sekanjabin - a very nice mint cordial drunk in hot Northern countries where alcohol use isn't widely accepted. It helps your drinking water taste nice, and can help filter out toxins from streams and oases.

Small beer/metheglin - yeasty, lightly fermented but won't get you drunk

Scoby/kvas - bread and organic scum on the top, surprisingly nutritious drink beneath. Good with mint.

Spritz - magically carbonated water. Why do Green Elves love this stuff? We don't know. It's said elven royalty actually bathes in it. What the hells.

Mild uppers or downers
Yerba - somewhere between a tea and a coffee, made of steeped and lightly toasted bean husks. A social drink that gets you wired but makes you twitchy. Temporarily remove a level of Exhaustion and get a double Proficiency bonus to Perception for 4 hours: then as the yerba wears off, get disadvantage on Dexterity checks for fine motor skills and return to your old Exhaustion level until your next long rest. You can just... take more and more, but the bonus doesn't stack and the come-down will get harsher, adventurers beware.

Yellow - an evocatively named citrus and yeast based extract that is totally non magical but very energetic. Helps you recuperate from poison or a hangover. If you're taking a long rest, the vitamins in Yellow will give you an extra +1 hit dice back (you'll get all your Hit Points back as usual - the extra hit dice will help you heal during your next short rest). Your urine will come out a violent yellow colour the next time you pee - hence the name.

'Ava (pronounced q'ava, with a glottal sound) - a mildly sedative brew made from roots and saltwater, unique to Archipelago cultures. It's a ceremonial brew, with a muddy taste, shared communally. Just one of the many strange things you'll be required to sample if you want to do business deals around Terranuova.

Lights Out - an evocatively named mix of Hoodwink (foxglove-type herb), passionflower extract and just a lot of booze. A Mickey Finn, more or less. Knocks you out in a round, though you might be able to get one last action in before you go take a dirt nap. It does have a certain taste to it, that the alcohol masks - a very good Perception check should be able to spot it. Heavy drinkers can also build up a mild tolerance to the stuff - they'll suffer two levels of Exhaustion but won't fall unconscious.

Teas/hot drinks
Catmint - you can smoke the stuff or make a tea out of it. As a tea it has a mild sedative effect

Coppertip tea - abortifacient and dangerous stuff, prepare with care

Chai - a rich medicinal tea made from camellia tips, very good at dispelling viral symptoms and temporarily removes a level of Fatigue. Camellia was brought to Desh in the Second Era and is still a cash crop in the highlands near the Heath. It's a pest plant in the southern Tropics - Kingdom Plantae will not like it if they find you planting or selling tea in their demesne.

Salepi - powdered orchid, milk, warm spices and cane or beet sugar.

Xocolatl - fermented cacao beans, some spices from the Hot Lands. Gives +1 Forward to Parley if you share it with someone.

Potions
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of Grape
Vino - take some sweet grapes, pulp them, get the juice, ferment it. Motherland wines were creations of beauty and elegance. The secrets of good winemaking were mostly lost in the diaspora, vines are still not quite what they were in the Old Countries - so vino is what you get nowadays. You WILL get a hangover the next morning.

Porto - vino that's been sweetened and often flavoured with spices as well - a bit like the love child of hippocras and port wine. Still packs a kick, but the spices help ease the hangover and the extra honey or sugar content makes this a powerful yet fancy beverage.

Jerez/Malmsey - sticky or fortified, sweet grape beverages. Extra expensive, given sweet grapes are hard to find.

of Grain or Starch
Mash-sack - Take maize or potatoes and make alcohol out or them. Then redeem this flammable concoction with honey. There's quite a nice lemongrass and potato version which bears the unfortunate name of Bison's Piss.

Beer - it's beer. Nobody was going to leave the Motherland without a supply of hops, malt and barley. Terranuova isn't a great place to grow malt or barley, however, so wheat beer has come into vogue, and the beer itself tends to skew quite bitter and zesty. Occasionally someone tries honey or agave sugar as a sweetener, it hasn't resulted in any great improvements.

of other origin
Octli - agave sap, fermented to make a milky, tasty beer-like drink

Chile liqueur - made with honey and hot red chili

Fireball - aromatic Hot Land spices (cassia and cloves) plus cheap corn alcohol. Carouse checks are a guaranteed 8 - you will party hard and you WILL regret it the next day.

Fermented milk - an Iberiyan ceremonial staple. Absolutely disgusting (Constitution check time)

Wormtongue - What is that terrible bitter taste? It's wormwood. It might make you a bit high, but mostly, that's the unholy amount of alcohol talking. For two-fisted drinkers and the seriously masochistic.

Ceremonial drinking
Xocolatl - fermented cacao beans, some spices from the Hot Lands. Gives +1 Forward to Parley if you share it with someone.

Social drinking
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