The feast will usually start with a round of raucous toasts, plus maybe a fight and quick song about Grum. After that, the meal itself comprises three dishes: Rastacah-runn (‘red vegetables’) – the meat of a herbivore, such as a horse or a dire antelope, which counts as a vegetable to the Barbarian palate.
Lidhmugh (‘fightmeat’) – the centrepiece course, which must be an animal capable of killing an adult Barbarian.
Yolledd (‘sweetness’) – foods violently stolen from other people, garnished with looted jewels and precious metals. These foods are almost always meats, rather than desserts as you might expect; the sweetness comes from the satisfaction of taking them.[31]
Lug-glug-lugl[32] – Although the Lizardmen are largely insectivorous, you’ll be astonished by what these scaly culinary geniuses can do with the contents of a shaken bush. At this rustic establishment in the deep jungle, you can enjoy candied tarantulas, stir-fried weevil grubs and antcake, all while enjoying the sight of captured Space Men duking it out with swarms of small but angry creatures in the Combat Holes.
Getting Around
Clearly, given the technological state of Grondorra,[33] not to mention its general aesthetic, muscle power is the only way to get around. The low gravity favours travelling on foot, but if you’re planning on doing any looting, it’s worth springing for a pack beast. Fast travel necessitates booking transit aboard a Space Man rocketship, however, which will seem terribly exciting until you’re crashed in a swamp, choking on chemical smoke and desperately trying to thin a swarm of scorpions with a faulty ray gun.
Currency
Among the Barbarians, gold and valuables are hoarded only as markers of status, and the idea of using money as a token for the exchange for goods or services is laughable. As such, the only way to acquire anything is to take it by force or be given it as a gift,[34] and so what you can get largely depends on how massive and charismatic you are.
STATUS
ACCOMMODATION
FOOD & DRINK
ENTERTAINMENT
SOCIAL PRIVILEGES
You are physically fragile and entirely unlikeable
Sleeping in the dust at the edge of a nomad’s encampment
A quick slurp from a Wirrux’s udder
Watching a fight from the back of a crowd
Capture, followed by ten years chained to a millwheel
You are modestly strong, with a winning smile
A night in a medium yurt, on a stack of used wolf pelts
Several mouthfuls of raw goat meat
Hire of a rusty sword and shield for a raid on a Sorcerer’s tower
The right to punch a camel square in the jaw
You are a granite-jawed titan; people weep to behold you
A night beneath a tent of golden silk, fanned by a legion of adoring eunuchs
A diamond-encrusted bucket of dinosaur nuggets
Travel on a palanquin, borne on the shoulders of forty less-fortunate tourists
A crown, entitling you to seize your destiny by toppling an ancient civilisation
Suggested Outings
The botched sacrifice
Join up with a group of young Barbarians, infiltrate Urrizan’s Holy Quarter as dusk falls, and don priestly robes to attend the weekly sacrifice at the Temple of Krung the Foul. Wait for the very last moment, as the knife hovers above the victim’s chest,[35] then toss a banana skin beneath the executor’s feet and dive to the rescue. The virgin will be secured with manacles of such poor quality that they pop apart in your hands, and the temple guards will literally fall over each other in their scramble to catch you. After that, it’s simply a case of escaping the city via a thrilling raft ride through an underground river and a bit of catacomb-blundering before you emerge into the Eastern Badlands. You’re likely to face moderate quantities of Skeletons, but a good spray of Lazenby’s Skeleton Repellant will see them off.[36]
Lasers and lizards
Stay with the Space Men at Research Station Zeta, their sweaty outpost deep in the Fireheart Jungle. Zeta has poor air con and is plagued by tropical diseases and animal attacks – but you won’t be there long. Simply imply that you’ve seen a strikingly beautiful woman wearing animal skins somewhere in the trees, and the Space Men will scramble to assemble a search party. As a matter of certainty, this search party will be captured by Lizardmen during a thrilling duel of spears and ray guns, after which you’ll be carried to the scaly ones’ picturesque treehouse capital. There, on realising you’ve fallen in with a bad crowd, your hosts will free you, letting you enjoy their exotic home in comfort and peace as the Space Men are carted off to the Combat Holes.
WASTES OF SPACE
There is one exception to Barbarian fiscal policy – when dealing with Space Men, the tribes have agreed on an extended practical joke. Stifling cruel laughs, the bemuscled berserkers swear blind that they use teeth as currency, pointing to the tusks and fangs they wear as jewellery to evidence the fact. Unfortunately, there are no animals on barren Clax, where the Space Men make their home, so if they want to ‘buy’ anything from the Barbarians, they are forced to use their own teeth to pay up. There are few sights sadder than that of a Space Man ‘master trader’ sighing miserably through increasingly empty gums while a smirking Barbarian asks him to up his offer on a sackful of meat.[37]
The Temple of Gak
For this trip, you’ll travel with the warband of Brengann the Unstoppable, a relatively affable Barbarian lord. After a warm-up skirmish with a group of Lionmen, followed by a victory feast in which you’ll be faced with the dark question of whether it’s cannibalism to eat the meat of a Lionman,[38] it’ll be time to embark on a gruelling, 200 mile yomp to the Great Temple of Gak, the ant-faced god. There, you’ll fight your way through increasingly dingy sandstone chambers, against cultists who get more and more disconcertingly ant-like as you go. At the temple’s heart you’ll find, replete with blood and reclining on a giant pile of treasure, one of the avatars
