Finally, someone brings up the real issues.
How am I supposed to roleplay a Guild Artisan cheese maker like this?
For those of you who don't know, here are all the missing cheese:
- Arabellan Cheddar
- Askata
- Chessentan lotus cheese
- Damarite Red
- Elturian Grey
- Farmer's Cheese
- Green Calishite
- Lurien Spring Cheese
- Mist Cheese
- Nut Cheese
- Pepper Cheese
- Sjorl
- Turmish Brick
- Vihon Blanc
- Vilksmaarg
- Yak Butter
And of course the best cheese: Death Cheese.
To be fair, including all these cheeses would be difficult and not necessarily accurate. Yak Butter, Vihon Blanc, Turmish Brick, Sjorl, Green Calishite, Damarite Red, Chessentan lotus cheese, Askata would probably be uncommon to find along the Sword Coast. And then you have toss ups like Pepper Cheese and Nut Cheese and Mist Cheese which you might find in adjacent regions and could conceivably show up. And Arabellan Cheddar is said to travel well so.. maybe (also it is implied that there are other forms of cheddar but none are listed so maybe there is more cheese)? Not to forget that Elves may refer to Mist Cheese differently than other races; and there is also a high probability that Githyanki and other outsiders would've possibly heard of Death Cheese if they went to Sigil (where Death Cheese is imported to Imel's Happy Tongue tavern in the Market District). And Lurien Spring Cheese has addictive and hallucinogenic effects on Halflings (Larian will have fun implementing that).
Although, the exclusion of Elturel Grey cheese is a little odd as it is one of the local cheeses to the region and Vilksmaarg is said to be popular in the Sword Coast.
Oh and canonically the source for many of these cheeses is 100 years old; so the cheeses might have evolved or shifted over that time. Especially with the Dragonborn being late arrivals to Faerun who may have their own styles of cheese.
Basically what I'm saying is that cheese is one of the primary cultural characteristics of the Forgotten Realms and really all of D&D lore. It's one of the few cultural products that is traded and exchanged across the multiverse. D&D lore is really just an exhaustive explanation D&D cheeses.
P.S. I will say that this is really a cursory look at the cheese. I should really dig deeper and get some more primary sources. And I don't know if Ed Greenwood has tweeted anything because that technically might be cannon (they wrote the contract before twitter, its a big mess, luckily he's good about leaving the door open and the time skip kind of smooths it all over maybe).
P.S.S. I know there is Rothé Cheese as well (esp. in the Underdark) but I already said I wasn't digging deep enough.
