Chef's Buckler

It's designed for either protection or cooking, not for both. Unless you're an Ifrit, don't think you can grab this right off the fire.

— Adventurer

A Chef's Buckler is a small buckler designed to both protect people in combat and give people a plate to cook their stuff on on the battlefield. Considered a valuable asset in any adventurer's travelling kit, one may find variants of it across the land, both made as a standard-issue shield and more personalised designs.

Dining on the Battlefield

The common Chef's Buckler shares similarities with most other bucklers found in other equipment, no wider than one's head and held either in one's hand or on their forearm.
What differs is its modification for the grip to hing sideways, if not be removeable entirely. With a few pins keeping it locked into shield mode, removing those allows one to use it as standard eating plate. Some models also come with pull-out legs so it can stand on its own without compromising the shield's center bulge.
Common serving methods is to use the flat border for regular meals, while the hollowed out middle-section gets used for soups and stews. Some consider it unhygienic, but in the field it can be hard to ensure clean eating.

The fabled battle chef

Exact origins of the Chef's Buckler remain unclear, most believing it to be a natural evolution of soldiers and adventurers eating during long travels. Wanting to reduce carrying weight led to some using their bucklers as makeshift plates, which slowly evolved into designing the shield for such purpose.
One tale speaks of its creation coming from an unnamed chef who journeyed across the lands, offering a meal to an army when realising none had any plate to eat from. As such, he took their bucklers and served the meals right on them, starting a tradition to eat with them.

Item type

Armor