The most common foods in Baldur’s Gate 3 are everyday items that can be found in any world: eggs, bread, cheese, sausage. But a few dishes are quite local and typical for regions from our world. How do they come to Faerûn? Fans explain the connection.
Who is the wizard?
- Elminster is one of the most famous figures from Dungeons & Dragons and the reason you find loot in dungeons.
- The wizard is one of the Chosen of Mystra, the goddess of magic, and travels through the different planes of the multiverse. He is also one of the most powerful characters in the world of D&D and the most powerful NPC in Baldur’s Gate 3.
- In Baldur’s Gate 3, you can meet Elminster when you are with Gale. The wizard is part of the personal quest of the prodigy from Waterdeep and provides plenty of XP if you take him down.
What does Elminster have to do with food? In a thread on Reddit, a user asks about “hot takes” that other fans have, i.e., wild assumptions that can be made about the world.
The top statement: the existence of poutine implies that Franco-Canadians canonically exist in the Forgotten Realms. The dish, made of fries with cheese curds, topped with piping hot gravy, comes from Canada.
Another user jumps in immediately and says: That’s not quite right. There is food from our world on the Sword Coast, but it’s not because people from Earth’s countries exist in the Forgotten Realms. Elminster is the reason.
Everything we know about the Forgotten Realms comes from Elminster
Elminster enjoys traveling to different worlds and one of them is ours, Earth. This is canonically part of the world of Dungeons & Dragons, as Elminster often meets Ed Greenwood in the lore of the Forgotten Realms – his creator (via Forgotten Realms Fandom).
Ed Greenwood created Elminster as his character and has written tons of books about his adventures. Already in the 1980s, Greenwood stated: He and Elminster meet quite often. The stories he writes are based on what Elminster tells him.
In return, Elminster brings interesting things from our world to other worlds – like poutine. Another user in the thread adds that Scottish dishes like haggis and tattie scones can also be found in Faerûn.
Elminster himself, although one of the most powerful figures in D&D overall, also has a weakness for good food, especially cheese. He will even tell you this in Baldur’s Gate 3 himself and is not exactly subtle about it.
Faerûn and the Forgotten Realms are not only connected to our world. The multiverse has – as the name suggests – countless planes that are all (somehow) reachable, though more or less safely. One of the most famous worlds is likely that of one of the largest trading card games in the world: Because of the most annoying thing about Dungeons & Dragons, we have Magic: The Gathering today and every roleplayer will get it
