Pumpkin Snatch: The Pumpkin Deniers of Baftar, part 1

In our vast and unknowable world, there is no shortage of fascinating cultures and civilisations to discover. To the south lies the elven territory of Audacia, to the west the human Riverlands, and in one faraway valley, or so I am told, there are entire ecosystems of animals that carry symbiotic succulents inextricably rooted into their backs. But every so often, even an ethnographer as well-travelled as I can still be surprised. Enter the peculiar case of the city of Baftar, a nondescript riverside settlement whose citizens vehemently deny that pumpkins exist.

Like moths to a wisplight, Caine and I came to this place ready to conduct a harmless little experiment. We brought with us a single orange pumpkin we had purchased in Uffen (all the other fruiterers within a hundred league radius were mysteriously out of stock), and although it had deflated a little during the trip, it was still unmistakably a pumpkin. We touched down in the heart of the city, a grassy quadrangle framed by government buildings built from local granite.

Our first victim walked by: a middle-aged human man whose face was buried in a thick, leatherbound book.

“Excuse me, good sir, could you tell me what this is?”

“Some sort of mutated winter squash,” he said, without even looking up.

Yes, that was technically true, but not the answer we were looking for.

“Forgive me, sir, for my skúfr and I are but uneducated yokels from beyond the valley. We only wish to unlock the fantastic secrets of this mysterious fruit, but alas, the one thing we know not is its name.”

“No peasant talks like that. ‘Sides, I don’t know nothing about your lousy old pumpkin.”

“Aha, you said the word.”

“I gotta go,” the man said, rushing off into one of the nearby buildings. Caine tilted his head and chirruped curiously.

It seemed we had unravelled a conspiracy of sorts. Not the exciting espying sort, unfortunately, but intriguing nonetheless.