How is the auction going to be flavored IC? Some rich influential guy's pet project?
Mysterious benefactors, God-Machine Patronage, warp miracles, civilian philanthropists and minor orgs.
Will we get more food related options or are they gated behind the gormont?
You'll want Gourmand yeah. As incentive though, I'm willing to share the two gourmand subsequent projects
So basically whenever I make an old god temple, I make sure the following projects have at least one each of at least two of the following: an anchor, something that ties the god to real space, definition, something that defines a god or provides it texture, and power source, something that serves as a battery for divine acceleration. A good example of something that provides, for instance, texture for the toymaker is On Toys, as a holy book that shapes peoples perceptions of his scripture and reinforces certain perceptions. Power is basically any theurgy: they get an offering of soul energy to help grow and sustain themselves, and the magician gets the divine equivalent of a supernatural vending machine, with each rite giving more soul energy and more spiritual power for access to better vending machines. And then you get anchors, which are places and things in reality that are tied to them: tangible 'proof' they exist, or locations or items of significant significance, like temples and holy sites or places like the Huntek Workshop and peeps like the Muses.
So for the Gourmand, I'm thinking his power source is actually a festival: he's going to give you some theurgies that amplify festivals by calling upon spirits to bless food and assist chefs and, conversely, allowing people on festival days to make food that's supernaturally nourishing to spirits, causing them to go into overdrive on festivals from feasting on food, giving you a bunch of extra blessings. Feast of the Spirits, I'll call it.
Next we need something that provides texture or an anchor. As a minor god who orbits the Dancer, he can honestly just use the Great Gallery as an anchor: the benefits of being caught up in a bigger dieties orbit. So instead, let's give him texture. Basically, texture involves what tools you give a god to interact with the world, or things you utilize to shape a god. For an example of a really good universal texture upgrade, look at the calculator tech that creates holo-gods in the temples and holy sites. So, for texture, you know what we haven't seen a lot of? Holy books. So their project is most likely going to be some sort of cook book: now, it's gonna be kinda pricey since this is a secondary god, but on the other hand the extra resources basically means you can just skip to the good stuff, so his cookbook is gonna be, like, the kinda thing that makes gordon ramsey look weak. Genuinely the result of an organization spending multiple NASA programs amount of manpower, resources, and scientific efforts specifically on coming up with high end divine esoterica on the cosmic secrets of spice and flavor and how to achieve oneness with the Gourmand with maximal efficiency in the kitchen. Which would then likely get printed as its own Primer volume and find its way into grimoires, which means that when the Gourmand realizes and then later manifests, they'll have a way to influence the material world through their holy texts (visions, insight, help with miracles, etc).
@The Bird how does the laternkeeper help with warp travel?
It's not actually really their primary thing (they aren't really a travel god), but if you invested in their projects enough to manifest them you could probably create Warp Lanterns I guess (though like most of their things are supernatural protectors and morale maintenance). If you want more warp travel stuff, invest more in Roadguide things, since that's more his thematic niche.
