What Do Enchanted Gems Taste Like?

[bilbous]

You are assuming that kran even have taste buds, or that the silicon based taste buds they might have would react similarly to the carbon based ones people have. This is a topic that can only be decided arbitrarily.

[MishkaL1138]

You are assuming that kran even have taste buds, or that the silicon based taste buds they might have would react similarly to the carbon based ones people have. This is a topic that can only be decided arbitrarily.

"Kran are sad individuals that have gastronomy only to emulate their cohabitants, and because they look so stupid sitting on the ground eating sand"

Would you rather I had said that?

[LigH]

You'd be surprised. The most strange meats can have the most gentle of flavors. Like Klyros meat...

Oh, funny, that reminds me on my first selfmade PlaneShift joke ... 

P.S.: Sorry for the bad grammar, I was still a newcomer in these days.
__

I believe it is fair to assume that most kinds of lifeforms have basic abilities to detect and avoid threats to their health and life; if not, according to Darwin, they would probably go extinct. Successful evolution is a matter of telling apart hostile and hospitable environments. Taste is one possible indicator for further developed lifeforms to detect nutrious or poisonous food.

[Illysia]

Well, that was interesting.

One, Kran have taste something or another because the books say they can taste. On the Silicon based thing, I think that it is becoming an increasingly less important aspect as kran settings are developed. The silicon thing is older than the settings for kran composition though. As to their taste being like humans, well... that might be a rather large stretch considering that Kran really aren't like the other races. But until the settings team makes a stand it is all open.

However, the official settings books in the Stonehead, *Nudge* Have the information on Kran diet and physiology. So they can derive nutrition from coal but not from other people foods presumably due to low concentrations of needed minerals. And magical gems would probably have effects on their health, like medicines have on ours.  After all, Kran still have a residual amount of the magic Talad used to create them. So maybe like medicine they can be used to treat non stand kran ailments by balancing the magic in them. Hmm... Care to treat the humors anyone?

[Rigwyn]

Regardless of chemistry and physiology, the kran's interpretation of the crystal's taste would add another layer to this. Further, it is difficult to describe things like taste and smell to someone without refering to a familiar experience. Since there is little familiar experience between a kran and ylian or enki, describing taste poses an interesting challenge.

It reminds me of the basic question, "does the blue that you see like like the blue that I see?" The perception of the tasting experience, and the words used to try to describe that experience

You can tell a kran that your wine tastes nutty, but if kra has no expereince of a nutty taste, the the description means little.

I think you are onto something, Illysia, though I still argue that magic gems taste like skittles and that Skittles make you fat and stupid. :p

[Illysia]

They do not make you stupid!

However, taste has been somewhat tackled in regards to precious metals and crystals with a general pattern of association that relates taste more to perception of a food rather than a one to one correlation.  Hence, gems and precious metals are to kran as sweets are to us. It is not so much that these things are sweet but they fit that niche in the Kran diet.

In one of the books I wrote for the Stonehead reading shelf, I have proposed my own such system of organizing what Kran eat:

  Crystals
 Acid - Metal
Sand - Coal - Stone

So sand (silica), coal (carbon), and stone(various mixed minerals) are the staple foods while acid and metal introduce further needed "nutrients" such as pure elements and acid which is needed to keep their stomach acid replenished. At the top are crystals which aren't necessary but taste "good" and provide aesthetic appeal, see the kran books on that last part.

However, adding magic throws in an extra loop that has not been addressed. However, deciding what is what would actually be helped along by understanding gem enchanting better than I do. I'm not even sure what the different kinds of enchanted gems are.

[bilbous]

Enchanted gems differ as to base gem used and particular way and glyph used. Rubies are the easiest to enchant, diamonds the hardest. Only specific glyphs can be used to enchant any particular gem and there may be some glyphs that cannot be used at all, although I am not positive about that.

What does magic taste like? Can you eat a glyph? Did the drink that npc have that weakened him due to being prepared in the presence of the dark way glyph taste any different? He did not seem to notice. Perhaps magic has no taste. Perhaps it is so subtle that only an advanced practitioner could detect it.

[Illysia]

So maybe we need dweomer taste detection now?

[Rigwyn]

That or some creative folks to rolls some krans and join you for a magic gem tasting event.  o.O

[Illysia]

Or rather a scientific inquiry event. Inquiring minds must know what certain things taste like.

[Eonwind]

Enchanted gems can be eaten by Krans with no risk of explosion
There are not even short term beneficial effects (in fact you don't get any extra bonus for that) however there could be long term effects like when using "doping" effects on ordinary food
e.g. faster growth, allergies, headaches, feeling more active (like when drinking a good coffee), ...

[MishkaL1138]

Actually, silica, calcium, iron and organiccompounds make up the structure of wine... so it's possible for a Kran to taste a wine.

Albeit quantitatively.

[Illysia]

Well, there are minerals in just about everything, I would imagine, but how much are we talking here? It's not that Kran can't eat organic people food, it's just that they can't derive nutrition from it. I've long though that there is a way of making squishy people food that krans can manage and kran food that squishy people can manage. Not quite sure yet how to do it though.

[Donari Tyndale]

As for the precious metals, you know, gold, platinum, silver, [...] They possibly have the best taste of all for Kran, though, given how scarce and rarely found they (supposedly) are.

So I could infer that Northern white rhinoceros meat taste like heaven. 

That, and it actually makes your you-know-what grow.

[Eonwind]

Actually, silica, calcium, iron and organiccompounds make up the structure of wine... so it's possible for a Kran to taste a wine.

Albeit quantitatively.

That is yet to be determined, and it will be fully developed at the time brewery will be released (currently under development).
I remind everyone that kran biology (and in general most of the species biologies) is fictional, so scientific information about silicon based biologies may not apply; I also remind that while researches RPs are always welcome the settings mostly lacks the necessary instrument to fully develop modern biology, even for "ordinary" races. On top of it there is magic which is also a key element in Yliakum world and is supposed to work not in a scientific way (but this doesn't mean the way magic interact with the world is random or unpredictable at all).