"Regrettably, you won't be getting the real experience, since I forgot to restock my Bevin...I meant, my personal demiplane — cool! You have a word for that! — and so I don't have the spices and other ingredients like noodles and mushrooms and such. So it might be kind of bland and boring.

I only need a source of heat, since I can make everything else. Do you have a wide open space I can use for it?"

A personal demiplane. Okay. That's seventh circle. A druid who has Plane Shift and a demiplane.

"We can use the channel room for it."

He will lead the way to the channel room. It's a circular room 60 feet in diameter.

"What's a channel room? And yes, this room would work well...ah, so, I forgot that there are dozens of people in this fort. Shabu-shabu is meant to be eaten by like, fewer than a dozen people over a pot. But I can make multiple pots if there are sources of heat."

"We use this room for healing channels, which have a thirty foot radius. Many clerics can do it — Chosen Serra can't, but we have other clerics visit and do it. Having a room big enough to accommodate it is useful so you can pack as many people to be in the area of effect as possible.

And we aren't all going to eat at the same time. We stagger mealtimes so there are always people on duty."

"Ooh. I want to see one of those someday. And yes, that makes sense. How many heat sources will be available?"

He is going to Message...

"Sorry, the stoves in the kitchen aren't movable."

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

"Hm...I could take out the stove I was working on in my demiplane, but I'm still not too confident in its design and I'm worried it would explode. I can take out my normal one but it needs, um, lightning to work. But like, a continuous and regulated form of lightning. I didn't make that one, I just bought it. If I take out the lightning storage too...I think it will be fine for tonight.

I have two of those. Alright, I'm going to go into my demiplane to get them."

And he vanishes.

"Detect Magic."

No auras are to be found.

That's...he would have expected a moderate or strong conjuration aura, for a Plane Shift. But even if druid spells do things differently, druid spells would still have an aura...

Maybe Derek can conceal the auras of his spells? That seems like the most plausible reason why he can't detect anything.

Derek reappears with two induction plates, two large metal pots, and a minifridge-size home battery.

The black box containing 'continuous and regulated lighting' is totally not ominous and scary at all!!!!!

"Okay. Let me get everything set up now," Derek says, and he crouches down in the middle of the floor. He then gets wrapped by some sort of reddish membrane, which expands to become a white cuboid.

The cuboid then expands and deforms to become an 8-shaped table, with the heaters in the middle of each hole of the 8 with the pots on top. A reddish tube expands out of the table into the two pots and begin to fill them up with water. Bulges appear at regular intervals on the table, which then open up and retract to reveal bowls and cutlery.

All of the furniture and tableware is made out of ivory. Derek figured out the way to make ivory a while back such that it is dry with no biological matter inside and having the external pores be sealed to minimize porosity, and now this Worldwound fort will be able to experience it! The chairs are padded with white wool cushions. The edges of the chairs and the table are decorated by mother-of-pearl inlay in the pattern of blood vessel anastomoses.

What a wonderful spell.

"Typically, you would put in more things like vegetables and seaweed and such, but I don't have those, so I just put salt in the water."

The rest of the people who are scheduled to eat dinner right now file in, along with Conrad. He tells them to sit.

Derek has already connected the induction stoves to the battery and the pots of salty water are simmering by the time they arrive.

Once everyone has been seated, the same bulge-and-reveal thing will happen and plates of very thin sliced meat will appear, arranged in rows. There's slices of chicken, pork, beef, and mutton, which he has labeled on the plates by engraving them with Taldane text.

Derek will show the process of using chopsticks to swish the meat around in the broth until it cooks. "You want to put it in for two to five rounds or so, and then it's good to eat."

THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN WORLDWOUND RATIONS

...some people drop the slices in the broth and look vaguely uncomfortable.

"It also took me a while to learn how to use these. Here, I can..." and he will make hinged chopsticks for them with finger guides that work more like tongs. And then demonstrate their use.

They seem even more vaguely uncomfortable! But if the archdruid wants them to use it...

They find the experience of using it much easier.

Okay, great!

Derek offers to create more meat if they want and assures them that this is not limited in any way.

Brief silence.

"Can you do other types of meat too?"

"Yes, lots! I can do goat, bear, reindeer, cat, dog, human, sparrow, ferret, so on and so forth. Including aquatic animals too, but it's rarer to cook them this way, where I'm from. The ones I made are just the most common meats people eat."

Human??????????????

Maybe he just has a generalized meat conjuration power and that doesn't mean anything more. He kinda doesn't want to eat more of the meat now. But he's committed himself to this course of action — being the first one to ask things of Derek because he seems like he likes showing off, thus leading the way for the others to do the same.

"I haven't had bear meat before. Could you make some?"