How To Eat in Style While Defeating an Evil of Godlike Proportions
For BG3's 3rd anniversary, I participated in the Baldur's Writers III 2026 Anniversary Celebration: Three's Company. There are some amazing pieces in there that run the gamut from funny to heartbreaking to smutty (and sometimes all of the above).
I of course claimed some Gale prompts and since they're shorter pieces, I thought I would post them here as well, in parts.
This first one, How to Eat in Style While Defeating an Evil of Godlike Proportions is in response to the prompt:
Three times Gale cooks 💜 Three meals over three camp nights
Meal 1: Neverwinter Stew with Embellishments
"Here," said Wren, pushing her way through the weeds and bushes that had overgrown the small trail she'd located. Gale picked his way through after her, trying to avoid the thorny berry vines and stinging nettles that caught at his robes. He didn't have the thick leather armor his companion had, and he didn't want to ask her again to heal his burning hands. Who knew the slightest brush against an innocent looking plant could cause such agonies?
They emerged into a clearing that was indeed perfect for making camp. The river was only a short walk away and the ground was relatively clear. A large, flattish boulder near the middle would come in handy.
Wren walked straight to the boulder and dumped a sack on it. "I took these from those cultists," she said.
Gale looked at the sack with a mixture of curiosity and distaste. He was still squeamish about taking things off a corpse. Wren had no such compunctions.
"It's mostly food and ingredients," she said. "I thought you might want some of it."
The curiosity won out over the distaste and the sack exerted a magnetic pull on him. Before he could think about it too deeply, he was pulling items out onto the boulder: salt pork, several bottles of dark ale, a hunk of stale rye bread, a few potatoes, and something wrapped in brown paper. When he opened it, he found (to his surprise and delight) a fine cut of beef.
He set the beef aside and looked up at Wren, who was hard at work setting up their campfire. She looked as she always did in her dark leathers and cloak, her hair pulled back in its low ponytail. In his mind, however, he saw her as she'd been last night: dressed in linen that softened her curves, with her hair loose and tumbling over her shoulders. He blinked the image away and returned his gaze firmly to the supplies.
He'd begun mentally cross-referencing the haul against what they already had, working out how to put it all to best use, when he heard the harsh mutter of Elvish curses. He turned to see Wren struggling to keep her kindling alight. Why she insisted on starting fires manually was beyond him. "Would you like me to start the fire?” he offered.
"No!" She shook her head stubbornly. "I can do it as well as you. The wood is just damp."
"Very well," he said, with a slight smile. As she surrendered to convenience and called a flame into her palm, he was suddenly struck with an idea. Last night she had helped him with the orb. He should do something for her. As thanks. Yes, merely as thanks, and not at all because he desperately wanted to see if he could produce something delicious enough to earn one of her rare, tiny smiles.
"This cut of beef is too fine to waste," he said, keeping his voice casual. "I think I'll cook for us tonight."
"Oh good," Wren said. "I could do with some fresh meat."
"Actually," he ventured, "I was thinking of something rather more involved. With the supplies I still have from the Grove, and a bit of foraging, plus what we have here, I think I could make a rather nice Neverwinter Stew. With a few embellishments of my own."
Her eyebrows rose. "You can cook like that? I've never met a wizard who did their own cooking."
He shrugged, a little sheepishly. "I used to be exactly that type of wizard," he admitted. "But a year of isolation in a tower has a way of making one reconsider such positions. My mother insisted on teaching me when I was younger. I found that cooking her recipes for myself was something of a comfort."
"Oh," said Wren. Did he imagine it, or did something soften around her eyes? He went back to sorting ingredients before he started staring.
"Can I help? I've never properly learned to cook," she said, with a self-consciousness that sat oddly on her, "but I can forage if you tell me what to look for, and I can chop well enough."
"If you could get me some cattail roots from the river, that would be a great help," he said. "But I must insist on doing the rest myself. This meal is meant to be a thank you for what you did for me last night."
She looked at him steadily. The air around them stirred with a brief, sourceless breeze that died as quickly as it had come. It was her storm sorcery, he could feel the Weave in it. He was beginning to understand that she had a whole language of electricity and weather for the feelings that never showed on her face. He hadn't yet learned to read it fully, but he was trying. There were an embarrassing number of pages in his journal dedicated to the project.
"It was better than the alternative," she said, after a moment's silence. Then she turned and disappeared into the trees toward the river, silent as a shadow.
By the time she returned, he had the salt pork sizzling nicely in a pot over his own tightly controlled wizard flame. He had just put the beef in the pot to brown, the smell of it mingling with the woodsmoke, when she dumped an armful of cattail roots onto the stone.
"I didn't know how many you needed," she said.
"That's … well, that's more than enough, but better too many than not enough."
He pulverized the roots with a rock, then put them in a bowl of water to sit. While they soaked, he opened one of the bottles of dark ale and poured it into the pot. Wren lingered nearby, making a short, surprised sound as the beer hit the hot metal with a malty hiss and a rich dark foam surged up.
"This is called deglazing," he said, moving automatically into lecture mode. "The foam will scrape all the cooked bits of meat from the bottom of the pan. Those bits are called fond and they're packed with flavor. It also makes cleaning the pot easier."
She said nothing in reply, but she didn't leave either. Encouraged, he took the bowl of water and cattail roots — now gone thick and cloudy — and spoke a cantrip over it. The water vanished, leaving behind a white starch, which he poured into the bubbling pot.
"You learned this from your mother?" She sounded skeptical.
He chuckled. "No, certainly not. Morena Dekarios always has a full larder. She has no need for tricks like this. I picked this up from a hag when I was —" He stopped himself. "Well. That's a tale for another day. It would be better if we had real flour, but this will thicken the stew in its stead." As he spoke, he crushed a hunk of rye bread into crumbs and tipped them into the pot along with the coarsely chopped potatoes and some barley left over from the Grove. The broth was now a cloudy, fragrant simmer, with warm steam rising from its surface in lazy curls. He noted with satisfaction the small inhale that drew Wren half a step closer. He set the remaining bread aside, near enough to the pot that the steam would warm and soften it.
"Now it's time to add flavor," he said, a note of showmanship creeping into his voice despite himself. He chopped an onion and tossed it into the pot along with dried juniper berries, thyme, and some wood sorrel and ramps he had found around the clearing. "And then we wait," he finished, "until the flavors are fully developed."
"It smells good," Wren said, sounding the tiniest bit surprised.
She began clearing the boulder so they would have somewhere to sit, and he rummaged through his pack until his hand closed around what he'd been looking for: the bottle of wine he'd been saving since the Grove.
He opened it and poured it into their battered pewter mugs. Wren stared. "Where did you get that?" She said it as if she expected he'd conjured it from thin air. Which, he reflected, he might have managed if he'd thought to plan ahead.
"I bought it from that halfling at the Grove that first night," he said. "I'm not entirely sure what I was saving it for. Perhaps for when we'd solved our tadpole problem. Regardless, I am feeling considerably better today than I was yesterday, and I believe that warrants cracking it open."
Wren looked at him for a silent interval that felt longer than it likely was, then shrugged. "I could certainly use it."
She settled on the boulder with her cup while Gale ladled the stew into two dented bowls, topped them each with a hunk of bread, and carried them over. He sat with his own bowl in hand, watching her intently for the moment she took her first bite.
She sniffed at the first spoonful, blew on it gently, then placed it in her mouth. Gale leaned forward. Her eyes widened ever so slightly as she tasted it, and after she swallowed she let out a small, satisfied sigh. A flush of pride spread through him.
She began making her way through the stew at a rapid pace, and the sight of it had him wondering what else he might make her. Unfortunately, every idea he had fizzled against the reality of their meager supplies.
He gave the stew a taste himself and felt his shoulders relax as he confirmed it was indeed a success. The beef was tender and full of flavor, the broth appropriately thick without being gummy, and the ale and foraged herbs contributed to a genuine depth of flavor. Best of all, it was different enough from his mother's version that homesickness didn't threaten to overwhelm him as it sometimes did when small reminders of the tower and family he’d left behind crept in unexpectedly.
He didn't bother to hide his grin as she reached the bottom of the bowl and mopped up the last of the broth with the bread. "Dare I presume that you liked it?"
She nodded, cleaning her bowl and spoon with a cantrip and setting them aside. "It was delicious," she said, and she sounded as if she meant it. "I can't remember the last time I ate so well, frankly."
Swelling with pride, he cleaned his own dishes and rose to put everything away. "I'm glad," he said. "I wanted to give you something special, but this is all I really have to give at the moment. You have been —" He stopped himself. He had been about to say something sentimental. Something far too sentimental to say to a friend.
She tilted her head, tiny frown lines appearing at her brow.
"You have been a good traveling companion," he finished. "You've saved me many times over now."
She shrugged. "You’ve done the same for me," she said, as though their contributions to each other's survival were remotely comparable.
"It's a fine night," he said. "I think I'll stay by the fire a while. I can take the first watch."
She rose and went to her tent, but returned a few minutes later with her sketchbook in hand, settling herself back on the stone. "I can wait a while before reverie," she said, by way of explanation.
"I certainly wouldn't mind the company," he replied, keeping the warmth carefully out of his voice. He retrieved a book and sat beside her on the stone, far enough that she could draw without him peering over her shoulder.
They settled into a companionable silence, broken only by the scratch of her charcoal and the turning of his pages. Though what he was supposedly reading, he couldn't have said. He glanced up far too often, watching her face as she worked, and stealing glances at the page as his likeness emerged from her hand. When she finally rose to take her reverie, he caught a brief glimpse of the image before she closed the sketchbook: a wizard bent over a bubbling pot, an expression of intense focus on his face.
Next time: Sun-Dappled Paella, feat. Halsin.
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