Lacris cheese

Lacris cheese is a rare specialty food created by lacris underground but rarely found in circulation among merchants on the surface above. This cheese is famous for it's extremely foul odor that is known to draw flies to it. It tends to be nicknamed corpse cheese due to the hint of ammonia found within it's smell.

The process of creating this cheese is not well known to the world above, but lacris gather spoiled milk which may come from any number of animals but most commonly comes from cows or caribox. The spoiled milk is generally used when it reaches 6 months old or is already past that point, but older is better. The curds and whey are separated but some whey remains and provides the acidic tinge to the flavour and odor of the cheese, then once it's been heated by ootheca lightbulbs it's shaped into wheels and left to sit in a dark, damp storage chamber with lightbulbs set up underneath the room to produce a gentle warmth for further months until it develops the characteristic black spots of mold on it. When made correctly the cheese should be soft, greasy, moldy and producing it's trademark stench. No matter how old this cheese gets it should also remain soft, according to those who have left this cheese to sit longer, it's known to last as much as 5 years while remaining soft and technically edible.

To the lacris, this cheese is a special food to them. They're quite fond of any cheese but this is the only real delicacy item they have to their name and can make. Since they're usually so busy doing necessary work for the colony time to make the cheese is short, so new wheels are only made every so often and added to the storage chamber to age. This is part of why this cheese is rare to find and get ahold of, the other being that only very trusted merchants who work closely with the lacris to provide supplies are trusted enough to buy a wheel from time to time.

Only a small handful of people outside of the lacris actually like the taste of the cheese. The small handful of people that do love this cheese however love it so much that they are willing to pay large sums of reigels for it, often going for at least Ɽ800 or even over Ɽ1000 just for a single wheel, with cut pieces selling for a fraction.

The small few merchants willing to stock this cheese are often nicknamed cheese mongers for the perception that only merchants willing to take advantage of any opportunity, no matter how niche their clienteles desired items may be, would even consider stocking such a pungent cheese with their wares. The name also comes from the fact that it's easy to tell from the smell alone that a merchant has some of this cheese in their stock.