Gastronomicon

--=Introduction=--

It's been popping up all over the place, lately. A surprisingly high-class restaurant chain with a sort of strange ambiance and an even stranger theme - after all, all the good grub stops have themes. It's called the Gastronomicon, and advertises itself as the "Premier Cosmic Horror Dining Experience" and "A Taste That'll Drive You Mad!". It's very tongue-in-cheek, honestly quite silly, yet... for all the mockery for dishes like the "Black Plate With A Thousand Fries" or the "Broiling Chaos", most critics have to agree that it has a fun atmosphere, and the food is /phenomenally good/ for what it is.

But there is a dark side... For all the joking around about it, the proprietors of the place were actually quite astute. Hiding in plain sight, the Gastronomicon chain actually /is/ affiliated with unknowable monstrosities from beyond the stars. The fabled "VIP Room" in most places is actually an extensive basement level, fitted for... debauchery on an epic scale. Massive-scale kitchens for cooking... decidedly sentient meat. Cushy rooms equipped with all sorts of interesting devices for playing with one's food - or each other. And even a few even more secretive rooms where dread glyphs are encoded onto the floor...

--=The Main Floor=--

It's sort of like a fancy steakhouse, when you enter your typical Gastronomicon shop. You wait to be seated, and have a fairly impressive menu to choose from. Its food style is derived from what would in the real world be classical American commercial restaurant fare, but there are a few more interesting dishes, and the slightly-zany theme days often include more exotic fare as well. While in what we'll call the Realm of Bells, regional branches (it doesn't /quite/ have broad international brand penetration, but it's getting there!) often do have sometimes even wildly-different menus. In the Nexus, the food style is even /more/ varied, to account for the sort of interdimensional nature of the place.

For the sake of RP Convenience... Mi-Go Mondays feature more seafood, Tindalos Tuesdays introduce premium steaks, Worm-That-Walks Wednesdays are... actually oddly enough where a salad bar is brought out. Tsathoggua Thursdays are based on barbeque meat of all kinds. Flying Polyp Fridays focuses on more unusual seafood like shellfish, Shub-Niggurath Saturdays are the special all-you-can-eat promotion with lots of comfort food entrees... and finally, Shoggoth Sundays is when the restaurant brings out its fondue-making equipment for a variety of dishes.

--=The VIP Room=--

However... People with a reputation as predators, deviants, or other less than savory things will sometimes receive strange invitation letters for the VIP Room. It has a separate entrance near the back or side of the building (sometimes even in more unusual places, like a block away and through an underground tunnel), which leads into a part of the restaurant that can only be reached by such means or, ostensibly, another staff entrance. It's usually, almost always, a basement, and a shockingly expansive one at that. Some must wonder how they even get the permits to build all of this stuff...

But, either way... it's as noted before. Expansive facilities for all manner of debauchery, a full-service kitchen that has ovens (and fryers, and rotisseries, and... Honestly it begins to strain credibility for both cost and space concerns. Maybe something flagrantly supernatural is going on?) all sized for at /least/ adult humans or larger with equally large prep tables, private rooms, and a few even more secretive areas where dark rituals are probably carried out.

In here, one can order almost whatever one wants. One of the lesser wait staff... a number of different sentients... The options are vast, and special requests can be made to be fulfilled within the week, as well. One can, further, have it /prepared/ however one likes - even alive, so as to better be consumed for torture or via unusual means. The Pre-Play option is quite popular, as well - the option of having the meal-to-be for a negotiable amount of time to torment as one wishes, until dinner time arrives. For more enterprising predators, kitchen rentals can be reserved as well.

--=The Delivery Room=--

Not the one used by the 'normal' restaurant, but for the VIP Room. This is where meals-to-be end up. Most are kidnapped at random or at request... but there are many cases of enemies of the cult or nosy investigators becoming part of the menu. And quite possibly there are large areas where prey are brought in from as well. Given their doomed state, it is actually the victims that know the most about what goes on here, not the VIPs. The cult's dark god, as part of its contract with the cult leaders, uses its realm as a means to store and transport meals in what's a win-win for it - it uses the prey for more 'sustainable' feeding until then, before then giving it over for use in sanctified dining that still ends up benefiting it in other more indirect ways. In this way, every VIP customer unknowingly is a direct participant in the cult's rituals, consummating the blessing put on their meals and empowering the dread entity with their feasting.

Still. A victim of the Gastronomicon's menu can expect blurred hours, days, or even weeks of storage in terrifying fleshy 'cells', fed and fed upon alike while being abused (often sexually, but not always) by whatever unknowable beast is doing all of this, before being deposited by a tentacular mouth into one of the ritual chambers designated for incoming meals. They're then brought out bound for inspection by the customer, before their fate is decided - they could be bought for some molestation first, could be taken for a live and whole feeding (sometimes even an intimate one, for those who can take in meals with genitalia or stranger places), or could be brought to the kitchen. In there, they'll nearly always be seasoned and garnished, but then cooked in all sorts of ways, from broiling to deep-frying to steaming to regular baking, roasting on a spit... Some whisper that there are even horrors in the dark entity's realm that can perform cooking on behalf of the kitchen staff, strangely enough.

--=The Cult=--

The cult, officially known to their members as the Sacred Order of Consumption, serves a being they call the All-Devouring Pleasure. The Pleasure is a strange, possibly-deific being from beyond reason and spacetime that grows stronger when acts of debauchery are performed under its consecration and in its name. It most prefers gluttony, though matters of slaked lust will please it as well, if often less so (though since such doesn't end the life of its prey, it will often encourage lewd treatment of captives while they await their final dinner bell). While most cultists of the order are already predators, any who may have lacked some predatory capacity will gain it as they gain the Pleasure's blessings.

The goal of the cult, honestly, is both simple, and very much like their peers in the horrifying eldritch cult community (not that such groups communicate with one another): They wish to hasten their master's coming to the mortal world. Some think they will be consumed by it and become one with their beloved horrible monstrosity, while others (often the more prideful predators) believe they will be elevated by the Pleasure's glory and become one of its trusted servants. While individual cultists are only as powerful as a typical person might be in their world, they still have the ability to use rituals to draw on their master's power - usually in the form of its servitors. Some submit to parasitization rituals and act as walking, talking deadman's switches that will unleash a carnivorous abomination of flesh, teeth and spines on their murderers... while others call forth and direct such beings to hunt their foes.

And woe betide those who would somehow enter into a direct confrontation with the All-Devouring Pleasure. It can consume anything lesser than it, no matter what that might be. A living being, unliving matter... And then things more esoteric, like energy, magic, souls, even ideas and laws of physics. Such things are taken into it and digested into a form it would rather it be in. The dread tomes whisper that within the Pleasure are the Thousand Realms Of Consumption, universes it ate whose entire fabric of reality now exists inside of the brobdignagian entity, serving some unknowable function as both organs and still as universes. The residents of a Realm of Consumption might not even realize they're just highly metaphysical padding on a deity of wanton devourment...

--=The Book=--

The book that is, for lack of a better name, also called the Gastronomicon (Though more pretentious or possessing-of-even-slight-shame scholars might instead call it the Grimoire Gustatorius), is an ancient work said to have come from a number of possible origins. Some claim it was penned by elven mages at the dawn of the heroic era who delved too deep into dark mysteries. Others suggest a madman scrawled it out all in one night under direct possession by an aspect of the Pleasure. Yet a third group believes the book itself is a servitor of that very abomination. No matter the case, they agree on this - The book is almost not one at all, in that it is bound in a chitinous shell like some kind of bug, and rather than pages of vellum or the like, thin leaves of gauzy, lightweight flesh that tremors with each page-flip make up its innards.

It has complex arcane diagrams, information about the All-Devouring Pleasure and its milieu, and... recipes, scribed on those leaves. Not just recipes for horrible-yet-mundane foods. Recipes for truly unnatural things with equally-unnatural properties. Despite the honestly-macabre or even dangerous nature of the tome (some believe, quite reasonably given its organic nature, that it is alive, hence the third theory on its origins), many seek it for these recipes, as secrets of immortality, secrets of mystical power, and more lie within. The secret mystic cabal known as the Espers seeks the book as well, mostly to prevent said recipes from entering the hands of others - they know that within its pages, a marinade and preparation method that can render an Esper's crystal capable of being transferred to whomsoever eats a such-prepared Esper exists - such a thing means they are actively hunted by the cult...

Regardless of the truth of the tome (( Which might even change depending on the RP! )), it is thought that the Sacred Order of Consumption does /not/ possess it. If they were to discover it, their power could sharply rise, the threat of their goal becoming imminent rather than looming.

--=RP Ideas=--

Trapped Meat: The basic RP for prey partners. You've been kidnapped by the cult for use in the VIP Room... or maybe for an even darker purpose still. How will you be eaten, and what horrors will be visited upon you before your churny demise?

The Special Menu: The basic RP for predator partners. You've been invited to the VIP Room, and end up having something off of their menu. Or, rather, someone.

Secrets in Waiting: Possibly the basic RP for long-term play. You're investigating the cult for some clue as to their crimes... will you be captured by them and made to suffer? Or maybe you'll score a victory and draw their ire... maybe you'll even be forced to go head-to-maw with one of the Pleasure's horrifying servitors!

Be One With Me, And Devour In My Name: You, rather than opposing or patronizing the cult, have become part of it! Maybe you joined as a normal cultist... or maybe, more bizarrely, you were, during your time in storage waiting for use as a meal, touched by the Pleasure itself and changed, made into an avatar of gluttonous, lustful debauchery and horror. Either way, you'd capture prey, prepare food, and certainly would have at least some of the meals for yourself!

The Realm of Consumption: What if what you thought you knew was just a greater being's plaything? In this concept, your universe has been devoured by the Pleasure (maybe recently, but maybe not...) and in being 'digested' into a more suitable form, things have become stranger. Maybe acts of vore have suddenly emerged as a rampant practice. Maybe unknowable creatures that consume and violate mere mortals have started appearing in droves. Such realms usually stabilize after a while, but no matter what happens, a Realm of Consumption is either drained from the god's feast, or made into an orgy of lust and gluttony as it instead symbolically 'eats' the world via the very notion of consumption becoming all-important there.

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All Unshown Sliders as Sacred_Bells.

(( The Gourmand's Tone amidst the Sacred_Bells. ))