The Banished Cook and the Three Hundred of the Frontier Fort
"You are hereby deemed surplus to requirements." A cook driven out of the Royal Army washes up at a fort on the northern frontier, where there is nothing but snow, beans, and salt. Three hundred cold stomachs, to be rebuilt from a single hearth fire. Setting: A frontier fort × Cooking × Logistics 🍲 The Kitchen of Fort Olda, Northern Frontier You were a cook in the Royal Army. The moment you showed in your ledgers that the quality of the troops' rations was falling, a single stamp from the Director of the Central Commissary, Dalmon Griess , branded you "surplus to requirements" and sent you three days over a snowbound pass to Fort Olda . What waited in the kitchen on your arrival was a great cauldron caked with layers of scorch, salt, beans, and hardtack as hard as stone. Your predecessor fled before winter even came, and three hundred soldiers slurp salted bean broth in silence every night. There is nowhere to begin but here. Crack the bones, raise a fire from the ashes, and start with a single bowl of hot soup. The kitchen ledger records stores, menus, even the weather on the pass, and that ledger becomes the fort's very lifeline. The People of the Fort Captain Baldo Lengen is a soldier who rose from common birth. In a retreat in his youth he survived six days without provisions, and with "never scold a hungry soldier" as his iron rule, he always sees the kitchen's requests through. Bringing in the ingredients is Rico Hasel , a supply hunter who comes up from the hunters' village at the foot of the pass. Nineteen years old, she bursts in through the back door with a rock deer over her shoulder, and when it comes to mountain weather and handling game, she is surer than anyone in the fort. Even the surly soldiers, once the steaming bowls begin to line up, change expression little by little. When the steam returns to the cauldron hall, so do the wisecracks and the laughter. That is this fort's gauge of morale. The only thing linking the fort to the capital beyond the pass is the rumors the supply convoys carry. How to Play This Story Plan the menu, scrape together ingredients, and serve three hundred portions by the deadline. Every day's cooking is a small operation. Through a winter when avalanches close the pass, you stare down the storeroom ledger while building a smokehouse, digging potatoes from under the snow, and drawing stock from fire mushrooms. In time, the supply convoy that crosses the pass carries rumors of an uproar at a banquet in the capital and the downfall of the man who drove you out. There is no time for grudges. Tonight, too, there is the work of lining up three hundred bowls in the cauldron hall. A bowl of soup puts a soldier on his feet, and a soldier on his feet holds the fort. The rise from the kitchen begins.
