Smoking Traditions of Tamriel: The Valenwood

Although the Bosmeri Green Pact has severely stunted the popularity of tobacco and other fine smokables within the Valenwood, the Bosmer have developed a wholly unique smoking tradition in spite of it.

Imported tobacco and smoking devices are a popular option all around the border, at least among younger, less conservative mer. Typically these options reflect whatever is popular across the border: Redguard and Colovian options in the north, Khajiiti in the east, and imports from Summerset and Pyandonea in the west. Bosmeri smokers in these regions typically can’t afford to be discriminating, as tobacco leaf, even imported, is still considered something of a black market item in many areas.

The traditional smoking tradition of the Bosmer involves the use of long, richly-carved bone pipes. These pipes are deeply personal items, usually carved from the thighbones of a particularly auspicious ancestor or respected enemy. These pipes are considered heirloom items and often passed from parent to child over many generations. It is believed by some Bosmer that these pipes have a sort of spirit in them, infused from the original donor bone and amplified with imprint of generations of use. Bosmer will often smoke when insight or guidance is needed, silently puffing in a sort of meditative, trance like state, during which a form of divination is practiced as the smoker reads portents in the twisting curls of smoke. These pipes are rarely seen outside of Valenwood and are highly sought-after collector’s items, frequently bringing in thousands of Septims at auction. Occasionally, when important heirloom pipes fall into the hands of outsiders, the families that formerly possessed them will go to great lengths to secure their return, whether that means raising vast sums of money or pursuing less savory means. There are multiple documented cases of thieves guilds being contracted to acquire these items, and at least one known case where the Dark Brotherhood was (successfully) employed to secure the return of an heirloom pipe.

Younger Bosmer who have not yet earned, inherited, or crafted one of these important pipes can often be seen smoking simpler, animal-bone pipes, or ones crafted from horn, antler, or glass.

These pipes are almost never used to smoke tobacco, even the imported variety, to do such is seen as a nearly blasphemous act, and is likely to get one’s pipe re-possessed by family elder with such authority. Rather, the Bosmer have aquired a taste for a rather unique blend of insects, grubs, and caterpillars, plucked from the aromatic plants they feed on, suffocated in a leather bag, dried in a hearth, then packed in the pipe and smoked in much the same fashion as tobacco leaves. Special gardens are kept for this purpose, where bugs normally considered pestilent are purposefully introduced. These bugs will take on a degree of flavor from the plants they consume, and the range of flavors produced in blending can vary widely. Psychotropic and Entheogenic plants are often kept, and their effects carry over somewhat into the insect smoke.

Uncompelled by the statutes of the Green Pact, the Imga take great delight in smoking tobacco, typically through long pipes of Altmer make (or, more often, pale imitations thereof). The Imga grow their own tobacco, a breed called lo-to, which is grown in marshy conditions and pressure-fermented in hollow wooden logs at high temperatures. Lo-to is a dark, powerfully flavored leaf with a nicotine content high enough to make most humans physically ill. The Imga take this as just another indicator that they are the superior race.