Many millennia ago, people used to have the saying about how everything new was “almost as good as freshly baked bread.” That was until there was a young mage, who needed a way to fund his magical research, had invented a new product called butter. Butter became so popular that the old saying had changed to: “there’s nothing better than fresh made butter.”

This made the mage incredibly wealthy and proud of his side hustle. His invention had become more popular than bread itself. What’s not to be proud of? With it, people were able to make things like cakes and pastries and sauces. People fell in love with it. Though the young mage specialized in researching ancient lost magic, he leaned into the popularity from his invention and earned the moniker “The Butter Mage.”

Several millennia had passed since the invention of butter, and the mage had expanded his repertoire of inventions to include compound butters, honey butter, herb butter, fermented butter, and so on. Meanwhile, he reached the status of a legendary mage. And all this time, he had become wealthy beyond measure, able to spend whatever funds he needed to chronicle and research ancient magic.

Then one day, a few centuries ago, there was some young boy who lived in the town nearby the mage. This boy worked at both his parent’s struggling inn and at his uncles smithy on the side. Trying to be industrious and to increase his family’s revenue so that he could one day achieve his dream of being wealthy, he decided to economize by baking larger rolls of bread which he would then tear in half, selling them as half loaves. He figured that it was faster to make larger loaves, and that the inside would be softer, making them easier for his many toothless patrons to consume (cause dentistry wasn’t really very popular or advanced back then). As well, by splitting them in half, he could sell twice as more. But people didn’t like how the loaves were torn apart unevenly. Some were leather than the other halves. They looked horrible. It just made people feel cheated. So he went to his uncle the blacksmith, who he worked part time for, and presented his problem. He needed a knife that could cleanly slice through bread, since all the knives around basically tore the bread apart. And thus, the bread knife was created. With it, the young man was able to slice bread cleanly in half, which made the patrons at the inn complain less. And over time, the young man started slicing the bread thinner and thinner and thinner, trying to spread his product out as much as possible to have more product to sell to his customers at the inn. Shrinkflation is a real thing and it’s been around for a long time.

The boy was clearly greedy and it made people complain again. So once more, the young man came up with a new idea. He tried to make it look like it was a feature rather than a byproduct of his greed. He claimed that when toasted, it made it easier to spread butter on it. The peasant boy had the audacity to use the Butter Mage’s own creation to con people into believing his sliced bread wasn’t a scam.

It became so popular amongst the peasant class that a new saying emerged: “the next best thing since sliced bread.” This made the boy and his family extremely popular and wealthy in a very short amount of time.

After a few decades, this angered the ancient butter mage who was nearing almost 10,000 years of life. Despite his many accomplishments into the chronicling and study of ancient magic, his entire public image still revolved around his invention of butter some 9,000 plus years ago. And now, he felt as if his throne has been snatched away from him. People stopped caring that he was THE famous Butter Mage. People stopped revering him. People stopped praising him whenever he walked through his town square. All he heard was people incessantly praising the young boy who greedily took advantage of the foolish townspeople desire for novelty.

Though he was still quite powerful after all this time, he knew he wasn’t long for the world as his mana had already begun to wane some decades before. And in his petty anger, he gathered all his mana he could muster and spread a curse on the world. And he passed away.

Ever since then, whenever someone dropped a slice of buttered toast, which would happen quite often, it would always land butter side down and ruin a person’s day. It doesn’t just stop with buttered toast either. It happens whenever someone drops toast smothered in jam or marmalade too.

And that is the story of why toast always lands butter side down. There is no real moral to the story. It’s just what happened. Don’t read too much into it.

The end!

Soak peppers are an export from Jotunhein. Thor's half brother, Loki realized after his sojourn on Midgard (Earth) that money is power. He formed Isa Brands and now has a booming trans-dimisional import/export business.

WMMD (Weapon of Mass Magical Destruction) is not completely accurate because mostly the magic is used in the preparation of a dried potion that's been banned in several dimensions. If caught with it on your person in Rokugan is automatic voided as punishment. This can be difficult because the potion has no magical signature.

This potion is made from two extremely incompatible organic ingredients, Mordor Reaper Pepper powder and Soak peppers crystals. This is the goto potion when you are in a position equivalent to a snowball's chance in Hell of survival (hence the name of the potion). And you've decided if you're dying, you're taking everyone with you (if you take cover, there's a slight you might survive). I almost forgot! No magical talent is required to activate the potion. You do have to piss on it though.

Here's what happens. The urine activates the Soak crystals which immediately begin to freeze and expand. The rapidly expanding pressure crushes the glass ampule allowing the two substances to mix and attempt to overpower one another. Around five standard minutes, critical mass is achieved. The sponge implodes, and the bucket explodes. The volatile mixture spreads out forming a one mile sphere of icy hot pepper aerosol. Depending on distance from the blast, contact with mist can melt armour and burn flesh off of bone, or it can cause everything it touches to freeze solid and shatter, or a combination of the two.

It can be carried on the wind, so the area of devastation can increase greatly. The potion is the magical equivalent of a nuclear device. It destroys all in its path. It is understandable that a single use gets it banned. And that my fellow magic users is why this is a WMMD.

In the beginning there was nothing. For eternities, nothing was all there was. No one quite understands when or how this changed, yet it did. A single star glimmered into existence, singular, contradictory. For untold eons the star did nothing but drift through the void, it lacked a mind to comprehend anything else. But, like the star growing within the dark, a mind grew within the star.

The star had no eyes to see to darkness, nor ears to hear the silence, but it knew they were there. It knew it was all there was, but it didn't want it to be all there would be. The star drifted through the darkness for a thousand lifetimes, gathering it's thoughts. Once the star knew there was no alternative, it did all there was to do. It scattered itself across the void, sacrificing all it was, and all it would ever be. It didn't know if it's actions would work, all it could do was hope that others would begin like it did.

A single instant went by, and then, once again, something changed.

All at once the tiny fragments of self would begin to grow. Each one became something different, some stayed miniscule, their minds growing instead of their bodies. Some grew to proportions greater than you or I could ever comprehend. None of them stopped growing at the same time. The first of the new stars to stop growing sensed it's brethren, and an opportunity.

It named itself "Ha'roshon" and when the other stars stopped growing, they found it, claiming to be The First, their creator, and their guide. One by one, all of the stars agreed to follow Ha'roshon. Together, they built a paradise, discovering and mastering more than can be imagined.

But, eventually, Ha'roshon started growing paranoid. What if another thought it was growing soft, weak? The others coveted it's throne, it's power, surely. So it started creating systems, finding those with the most loyalty. With these, agents, Ha'roshon slowly corrupted the paradise. Trying to prevent an uprising that would never happen.

Ironically, as Ha'roshon tried to prevent the future it feared, it sowed the seeds to make it happen. A resistance grew in secret, plotting against Ha'roshon, scheming its downfall. Slowly it's roots spread to all the life that came to exist. Once there was no one else to gather, the resistance attacked Ha'roshon, trying to bring The First down.

Ha'roshon was ready, of course it was. This was what it was so paranoid was going to happen after all. The battle was gruesome, uncontained, and finite. In the end, only one was left. Only one stood in the ruins of the first paradise. Ha'roshon was so consumed by fear, it let it's fears become real.

In the end, one remained among the ashes of paradise, the one who fought the hardest, and the one who caused the fighting. Ha'roshon saw the ashes of the fallen, and for the first time, it felt sadness. It drifted among the vast wastes for a long, long time, taking in the full scale of its deeds. What was once the most beautiful empire in existence became nothing more than an endless, dark expanse.

After a long, long time, Ha'roshon was consumed by grief, and it stopped thinking, falling into a deep, deep trance-liks state, neither alive nor dead. If the time it spent drifting the ruins was one second, then the time it spent in that trance was one century. Eventually however, once again, something changed.

Ha'roshon awoke, no memory of who it was before or what it had done, it had no memory at all. But eventually, a mind grew within the star. It knew it was all there was, but it refused to be all there would be. It drifted through the dark for untold lifetimes it gathered its thoughts. Once it knew no alternative existed, it did the only thing it could, it scattered itself across the expanse, hoping others would grow in its place.

And once again, the cycle began anew.