Instruction in the School of Taste (AI art)
At any Five Senses university, the School of Taste is the largest and most profitable, a cash cow, one might say, to support the other four.
It is also the school with the most non-mage students. Aspiring chef apprentices as well as seasoned masters from all over the world enroll to develop and train their taste buds. A fair amount of herbalists and pharmacists are students too, along with agriculture specialists who cultivate new crops and livestock, and vintners and sommeliers round out the enrollment.
Unlike the other schools, the School of Taste has a two-year curriculum. The first year concentrates on the basics. Each type of taste — sour, sweet, salty, bitter, and umami — receives its own class, as well as one on heat (chilis and the like) and one on texture. The anatomy of the mouth and tongue comprises another course, and the act of digestion, one more. This first year is useful enough on its own, but students have the option to continue their schooling with a second year where they apply their new found skills in an actual cooking school. First year graduates are known as Culinarists, second year ones, Cuisinists.
Two of the delightful dishes created by graduates of the School of Taste.
Students who opt for a magical path must pass both years before learning Taste magic, making this one of the more difficult and time-consuming schools of magic. Graduates are known as Gustamancers and are comparatively rare in Five Senses magic, yet are highly employable by houses of royalty and wealthy aristocrats who seek to outdo each other with lavish banquets. Many Gustomancers also go into business for themselves, often specializing in potion creation and sellers of fancy foodstuffs.
It’s common for a Gustomancer to take on Aromamancer certification as well.
Would-be Gustomancers learn the following:
- Enhancing / changing one’s own sense of taste
- Enhancing / changing other beings’ sense of taste
- Creating false tastes, taste illusions, or adding taste to existing illusions
- Endowing flavors with magical qualities
- Using the unique tastes of food or other items as spell components
- Creating magic items that employ the sense of taste, food most importantly, but potions and medicines as well
- Magical means of preserving food
- Magic involving the tongue, mouth, and digestive system
Gustomancers are often derided for being useless or weak in adventuring situations, but the truth is they have plenty of offensive spells that target the mouth, bowels, and stomach at their disposal. Learning other magic is possible using spells modified to include elements of taste, such as a Summon Fire Elemental spell that uses five different kinds of rare chili peppers. As with the other sense schools, schooling for the mage must be taken in order and uninterrupted over the term or it is considered invalid.
The School of Taste contains both classrooms and kitchen facilities and is likely to consume a large part of whatever spices, meat, and produce come into its locale. In the basement area ice rooms and pantries, and there is a library of cookbooks, culinary histories, and cooking techniques. Guest lecturers from other lands and races are common.
The crest for this school is a stylized mouth and tongue (similar to the Rolling Stones logo.)
(c) 2026 Cobalt Jade
