The Rumster Clan is one of the major Halfling Clans best known for their culinary skills and their pie-making empire. This sprawling house of Halfling merchants contains some of the sharpest minds of the Halfling nation. With agents and members spread across all the Empire, their "penny pies" and "travelling meat breads" are infamously cheap and slightly dubious fare. Wherever there is cut-price meat or spoiled flour, a Rumster is there, cornering the market and warming up the ovens. They'll put anything in a pie, even, it is whispered, each other.[1a]
Rumster is perhaps the Reikland's best known clan of Halflings. Rumsters — and their infamous pies and pasties — are ubiquitous across the province, and indeed the entire Empire. Human, Halfling, and Dwarf alike sample their wares on a regular basis from street hawkers and small bakeries, though their preference for thick pastry is a touch indelicate for Elven palates. Humans assume that all pies bearing the legend 'Rumster' come from the same source, but in truth there are hundreds of separate Rumster operations active in Altdorf alone.[2a]
As most Rumster pies are of decent quality, this can lull Humans (whose intestinal fortitude is somewhat lower than that of Halflings) into trusting the quality of a dubious Rumster's pie, which can lead to a bout of 'Rumster's Revenge'. Almost all Rumster Halfings work as cooks or merchants, making pies or selling them. A handful of Rumsters work in other fields, supporting their diffuse pie-making empire. Some work as servants and coachmen, delivering hot pies across the Reikland, while others serve as guards, protecting secret recipes from rivals, and pie-sellers from irate, discontent customers. However, Rumsters can be found in other, surprisingly diverse fields, such as rat catching and grave robbing; the meat has to come from somewhere, after all![2a]