Greenstar Market
Located near Little Lirgen and Yemhasin is an open-air market specializing in the produce, meats, and heritage foods shared by Lirgen and Yamasa. Lizardfolk also frequent the market, which carries an unparalleled selection of salted and fermented fish from the Sodden Lands, as well as live specimens transported in water barrels.
For decades, most vendors have been Yamasans selling homegrown produce and meals, and most buyers have been Lirgeni who, due to their easier assimilation, have long had more money to spend. Thus, the market has become a mirror for the ambivalent relations between the two groups.
Because Lirgen and Yamasa were neighboring nations with similar soil, climate, and cultivars, their people ate many of the same foods. Spices and cooking methods were similar, and the pounded root starch called mamasu, served as a doughy base for heavily spiced fish and vegetable stews, was a staple for both nations. When their people fled the Eye of Abendego, however, only the agricultural Yamasans thought to bring mamasu plants, speckled peafowl, and domesticated catfish with them. When they settled in Absalom, they continued their farming traditions, while also adding native cultivars and adapting to local conditions.
Today, Greenstar’s heritage foods are a complicated link to the past. Many Lirgeni are obsessed with trying to cultivate “authentic” connections to a fading heritage, even though a few short generations ago, they disdained these traditional foods as belonging to the backwater, un-assimilated Yamasans. The Yamasans, meanwhile, are divided between eschewing their traditional diet as stigmatized poverty food that they ate during their refugee years, elevating it as a symbol of true Yamasan identity before their beloved country drowned, and experimenting with modern fusions of their own traditions with the many others in Absalom.
For decades, most vendors have been Yamasans selling homegrown produce and meals, and most buyers have been Lirgeni who, due to their easier assimilation, have long had more money to spend. Thus, the market has become a mirror for the ambivalent relations between the two groups.
Because Lirgen and Yamasa were neighboring nations with similar soil, climate, and cultivars, their people ate many of the same foods. Spices and cooking methods were similar, and the pounded root starch called mamasu, served as a doughy base for heavily spiced fish and vegetable stews, was a staple for both nations. When their people fled the Eye of Abendego, however, only the agricultural Yamasans thought to bring mamasu plants, speckled peafowl, and domesticated catfish with them. When they settled in Absalom, they continued their farming traditions, while also adding native cultivars and adapting to local conditions.
Today, Greenstar’s heritage foods are a complicated link to the past. Many Lirgeni are obsessed with trying to cultivate “authentic” connections to a fading heritage, even though a few short generations ago, they disdained these traditional foods as belonging to the backwater, un-assimilated Yamasans. The Yamasans, meanwhile, are divided between eschewing their traditional diet as stigmatized poverty food that they ate during their refugee years, elevating it as a symbol of true Yamasan identity before their beloved country drowned, and experimenting with modern fusions of their own traditions with the many others in Absalom.
Type
Market square
Parent Location
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