Cheesebeard

The Beard, the Name, the Legend

Overview

Magnus Erköse Cheesebeard - his middle name is his real first name, he changed it to Magnus because it sounded cooler - was the Stonekin dwarf who found out that feeding cheese to your beard is a method that it gets healthier for some reason.

But just putting crumbs or pieces of cheese into your beard is just not the way to go. Your beard is in need of minerals, care, moisture. It likes it warm, but not too warm; cold, but not too cold. And even when Dwarves rarely shave, the beard likes to be shaved.

What makes a good cheese?

A good cheese, you ask? Well, it is the firmness, the texture, the smell, the taste and the moisture. Not too much, not too little, just the exact amount of moisture, smell and texture.

Then there is the age. A good cheese has aged a few years to get ripe as needed. With flavour, the specific texture, the right amount of bacteria. But what is a good basis for a good cheese? Well, we use goat milk as a basis, let it boil, then add vinegar. Seperate whey and churds, add a bit of salt of your choice and the ingredients aiming for the flavour you want. Let it develop for a few days.

If the cheese is good, splendid. If not, rinse and repeat.

What makes a good beard?

Not everyone is born to a glorious beard. Humans can sing entire songs about the fact that their genetic material is denying some people good facial hair or at least a good basis. Others have too much of it, some the right amount.

But not Dwarves. We have a good amount of healthy beard in all of us. By Greybeard, even our formidable ladies are so awesome, they have beards. So, what does it mean to have a good beard?

Texture. Mostly. Not bristle or dry like branches or leaves in a forest during autumn. You want to have your hair smooth with a good scent and the power from outside to grow it into a mighty, respect-inducing, beard-beads-holding, next to untameable bush, worthy of even the Dwarven Brass Dye.

But you want to keep it. So you need oil, balm, patience, healthy soap. If you have the right products and/or ingrediences, even the most hopeless beard can grow into something more... honourable. And you need a good horn brush, preferably either one piece of horn with few brush teeth or a brush made out of boar hair. Or both, wouldn't hurt to have both at your person.

With care, time, the right care products and patience even the most stubborn beards can grow. Or one could use Cheesebeards Beardcheese. If the recipe is being found or at least re-discovered.

The Legend of Cheesebeard and his Beardcheese

Magnus Erköse Cheesebeard - originally just "Erköse" - was a lazy dwarf when it comes to beardcare. Or care in general. He was not so honourable as other dwarves to clean himself. And as every lazy person he was always trying to find the way of the least resistence or the least effort. Even when it comes to such an honourable task as to clean himself and to take care of his beard.

To be fair, Erköse had a glorious beard, even when it was dirty, untamed, uncared for. Well, at least legend states so. What he did was, after eating a good goat cheese, to notice that he had crumbs of said cheese in his beard. He left them there for later and figured out that the cheese somehow moistured the hairs in the close proximity.

What if - no, hear me out! - what if we could create a cheese based on goat milk which is infused with beard care stuff and you only need to apply it once a day or better, once a week?

Erköse got to work. At first he bought milk, herbs, ██████████, █████, ███████████████, ███████, pots and other ingredients. Then he started cooking. Weeks, months, years even. He was only seen during his refill tours with gold nobody knew how he had acquired. Did he do some work on the side, did he steal it or were those just his savings?

Nobody knew until he came from where ever he was hiding, his beard covered in something which looked like molten cheese, smelled like really good cheese and felt like molten cheese without being sticky as molten cheese. It was full of herbs and other strange ingredients nobody could identify. Erköse Cheesebeard couldn't tell them because he ate his own Beardcheese - which is indeed ediable, but you need more than just that to stay alive - and nothing else, so he collapsed and died due to malnourishment and exhaustion.

Since that tragic day Dwarves from all over the mountains are telling the Legend of Cheesebeard and his Beardcheese, which is a good ration for travels and a better solution for beard care. Nobody was able to replicate what they found in his beard and his home, scholars and other Dwarves try it to this day.