Category:Teas

'Tea' is a term referring in its most general sense to a beverage of plant matter steeped in water. This is one of the most basic methods in Creation for preparing medicinal herbs, and also a widely popular drink across Creation's peoples and classes... the poor find teas of various sorts easy preparations to stave off the pangs of hunger, while elites indulge in the unique scents and flavour possibilities opened by the process.

Tea also refers specifically to a type of plant, the Tea Bush, which is the most common plant used in making tea... though the Tea plant is used in other preparations, and other plants are used in teas. This linguistic intertwining, which exists in most of Creation's languages with the exception of Old Realm, dates from the aftermath of the Primordial War, when the gods who had supported the Primordials were purged from the Celestial Bureaucracy. Striking Magnificent Potentate was the god of steeped beverages, which included that from the leaves of the tea bush which were the purview of Tealescent Absolem. Potentate opposed the rebellion of the Incarnae and their Exalted, and after their victory he was denounced to the Unconquered Sun by several divinities of the Culinary Conclave and rendered into Starmetal, forged into the Bowl of Righteous Ascents. Absolem was elevated in his place as a reward for his loyal service to the Incarnae, and decreed that henceforth his purviews ought be considered one and the same. The gods of food are largely unperturbed by this pronouncement, but the same cannot be said for the gods of language.