Beers and Beards: A Cozy Dwarf Tale

Thankfully, the embassy of the elven Kingdom of Awemedinand was located a short hop and a skip down the way from City Hall, so it wasn’t a long trip. I dropped by to make sure Penelope was doing well – she’d cornered the goat minder and was forcing him to give her extra snacks – then sauntered down the road.

I added my new quest to the queue. I had quite a lot of them now. Most were the various influence quests, but I had a few other odds and ends as well.

More Brews Part 4/5

More! MORE!

Invent sixty-four new drinks. Mixes don’t count.

Drinks Invented: 8/64

Rewards: Increased Personal Mana

A Magical World Part 3/10

Now that you’ve got some magic, try learning some!

Rewards: Increased Mana Pool

What’s all the Fuss About?

What’s the deal with elven wine? Find out for yourself!

Wine Drunk: 0/1

Rewards: You Get To Drink Elven Wine

Dwarven Influencer Part 8/10

The dwarves need your help. Influence 2,000,000 dwarves with your otherworldly alcohol knowledge.

Dwarves Influenced: 1,562,150/2,000,000

Rewards: 1 x Deific Revelation

Gnomish Influencer Part 8/10!

The gnomes need your help. Influence 2,000,000 gnomes with your otherworldly alcohol knowledge.

Gnomes influenced: 673,124/2,000,000

Rewards: [Tools of the Trade]

Elven Influencer 1/10

Dunno how well this gonna go with just beer, to be honest.

Maybe some wine?

Elves Influenced: 1,834/2,500

Rewards: [Adjust Taste]

Human Influencer 3/10

Giants have giant tastes, and I’m looking forward to a beer that can satisfy them!

Humans Influenced: 3,125/5,000

Rewards: +0.5 Charisma, +0.5 Dexterity

Fisherdwarf 1/10

Shouldn’t you be brewing?

Catch 16 Fish

Fish Caught: 4/16

Rewards: +0.2 Dexterity, +0.2 Vitality

Deadly Ambush Part 2/2

Find the bastards that dared to try and kill you. Make them pay!

Attacker Unmasked: 1/1

Attacker Slain: 0/1

Rewards: [Perceive Ambush]

Publicly Traded Part 2/3

Why stop with one? Take control! Own 51 percent of a company!

Percentage of Shares Owned: 50/51

Rewards: +0.4 Charisma, +0.2 Intelligence

True Love

In another lifetime you found and lost what many can only dream of. Can you do it again?

True Love Found: 0/1

Rewards: [Access to the Karma Store]Nôv(el)B\\jnn

The Ambassador Part 1/3

Become the brew ambassador to Awmedinand!

Accept Schist’s Offer: 0/1

Rewards: Charisma +1

The quests seemed to come at random, but there was a definite pattern to them. If I was going to be doing something especially difficult, dangerous, or involved, there was often a quest involved. Harmsson made mention once that I should really be forcing myself into those kinds of situations to farm quests, but it just didn’t really interest me. ṙ

Some of the quests were dead in the water at this point. For example, I’d likely never get a shot at killing Ambermine, since he was in prison. Ah well, they’d cancel themselves eventually.

I pulled up my sheet and gave it a perusal.

Status: Provided by the Firmament

Name: Peter Roughtuff

Age: 51 (Birthday is the 15th day of the 5th month)

Conditions:

Race: Dwarf

Blessings: [Flesh of Stone], [Flash of Insight x 2], [Strength of All: Held], [Regeneration], [Map], [Refine Brew], [Lesser Crafter’s Eye], [Lesser Arcane Crafting]

Title: [Otherworldly Brewer]

Milestones: [Power Pick], [Basic Slash], [White Lie], [Mental Maths], [Big Money], [Thick Skin], [Friend: Gnomes], [Pete’s Miniature Remembrance], [Long Stride],[Sense Poison],[Spot Clean], [Unbending], [Rapid Aging], [Lucky Break], [Pete’s Lucky Brew], [Wayfinder]

Strength: 20.8

Vitality: 22

Agility: 14.7

Dexterity: 15.4

Wisdom: 15.4

Intelligence: 19.9

Perception: 18.4

Charisma: 21.5

An eight was the average for a teenager and every four was a 1.5 times increase. That put me just over 2-3 times better than a teenager at just about everything. It wasn’t too noticeable; I just didn’t really get tired anymore, and I could take a serious beating during bar fights.

The newest additions were [Pete’s Lucky Brew] and [Wayfinder], one of which I’d gotten for winning the Octamillenial competition, and the other for completing More Brews level 3. It didn’t really fit the rest of my brewing and administration Ability kit, but it would come in handy if I ever got lost in a sewer again.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

[Wayfinder] - You can set a waypoint to any place you have physically been. Setting a waypoint removes any previously set waypoints. You always know the direction and distance to your waypoint.

My current waypoint was, of course, set to home. My room in the Thirsty Goat manor house to be more specific. To be even more specific, it was set to my private little hidey hole in my room where I went to sit in the dark and contemplate my life choices.

The other ability was a bit more interesting. Both because it was a Personalized Ability, and just in general.

[Pete’s Lucky Brew] - Your brews are lucky. Anything you brew is less likely to be dropped or broken, less likely to go bad, and more likely to be purchased at random.

This Ability is always active.

Now see, with a name like that I’d assumed it would be something like the gem brew that our good friends the Herders had made. We dodged out of the way of an out-of-control goat cart as I chuckled at the thought. Poor Ironbellows Herder had gotten in quite a bit of trouble with the local gem merchants when his Lucky Brew had tanked the value of local gemstones.

The Ability was interesting, in that it was the only Ability I really had no control over. Anything I brewed was just… lucky. That was it. Ironbellows and I tested it one afternoon by dropping bottles of Assblaster and bottles of Herder beer off the bar. My bottles had shattered on the floor at a ratio of 3:2, while his always broke into a million tiny shards.

That’d continued for a while until Rosie had come and boxed our ears. Which hadn’t been entirely fair – I’d been keeping everything clean with [Spot Clean]. Ah, such good memories.

And now it was time to make new ones, as I arrived at the entrance of the Awemedinand Embassy.

Embassy Row was eclectic, even for the Redwall district of Kinshasa. Most architecture in Kinshasa was fairly uniform, of either dwarven or gnomish style. Lots of stone and metal or lots of wood and glass. You could definitely spot the different styles as tastes changed over the centuries, but there were certain constants. Buildings were usually one storey, maybe two, with deep basements.

The embassies were completely different. Tall pagodas, European style mansions, literal holes in the ground. They ran the gamut, and really drove home how little I’d really seen of this world. I couldn’t help myself from gawping as I stumbled around like a tourist, gawping.

The elven embassies were something else. A massive copse of hundreds of trees, each about five storeys tall sat in the middle of the street. Paths wound between their trunks both on the ground in and in the air, stretching between huts that’d seemingly been grown right out of the bark.

I held back a little squee. It was exactly what I’d imagined elvish architecture would look like.

The elves themselves…

To start with, they were, as a rule, short; about the same height as a dwarf. There were a few taller outliers here and there, but none of them came close to Joseph’s towering level. Plus, the elves took the form of other races, so there were green dwarves, green gnomes, green beastfolk, and green humans. I even spotted someone who looked identical to the Jolly Green Giant.

They did all have pointy ears and lithe bodies, but that’s where the Tolkeinesque resemblance ended. Since they were plants, every elf had light green skin and dark red bark-coloured hair, and looked nothing like Liv Tyler in Lord of the Rings.

What a waste.

I made my way up to the maze of trees and set a [Waypoint], just in case. Then I brushed past a pair of gnomish-looking female elves. Or was that elvesses? Gnomess, dwarfess, so… elfess? What about humans? Humaness? Wo-man? Words were weird. Give me something simple like reading specific gravities instead.

The signage was quite clear, and I soon found myself standing at the door to the Awemedinand embassy.

Awemedinand was the Kingdom of the elves, but it wasn’t the only elvish Kingdom. There were several elven Kingdoms scattered through the various forests of the continents of North and South Erden. Many of them even had embassies within this pop-up forest. Awemedinand was just the biggest, by far, and bridged the two continents. That made it a major trade thoroughfare as well as a center of culture and knowledge.

A mithril armoured elven guard stood at the door. He took a look at my ID, studied me with a few Abiltiies, then passed me through.

The inside of the treehouse was more spacious than I’d expected, but still cramped. The front entryway had a simple front desk manned (elfed?) by a dashing looking dwelf (dwarf/elf? words are weird)

“Can I help you?” The elf asked, smiling brightly. His beard was the same ruddy red as his hair, and had the look of knotted wood.

“Aye. I’m here ta see Ambassador Stanndard? Peter Roughtuff.”

“Hm? [Appointment Schedule].” He activated an Ability and his eyes flicked through an invisible screen. After a few seconds he gave me a sad look. “I’m afraid I don’t have you in the schedule sir. Are you sure it was for today?”

I shuffled uncomfortably. “Erm. Duke Schist sent me?”

The elf’s face visibly brightened and he stood up. “Oh my goodness! Are you the one recommended by the Duke? Please, come in, come in! You don’t have an appointment, but I have standing orders to bring you in to meet the Ambassador.”

He walked over to a small round door carved into the wall, and knocked. A cultured voice came muffled through the door. “Come in.” The clerk opened the door and waved me through with a bow. I had a moment to admire the ‘architecture’ before my attention was caught by the room’s sole inhabitant.

This room was quite a bit smaller than the front entrance, with walls the same cheery walnut as the rest of the building. There were bookshelves made of wall, not cut in, but instead sculpted from the living wood that formed the walls. Solstones dotted the ceiling here and there, their warm light giving the space a homey feel. There was a distinct lack of fireplaces or weaponry.

A single picture of a majestic elf wearing a crown sat on the wall over a large leather-topped desk. The elf was of human form, and had a regal bearing that spoke of power and thousands of years of life. That had to be the king.

The elf sitting beneath it was not as royal, but still impressive in his own right. Joseph Stanndard, Ambassador of Awemedinand and a business associate who’d been instrumental in helping me spread brewing to the masses. Even now his Greybough Consortium was selling my yeast cultivation and brewing books as fast as they could print them. His desk was neatly laid out, with a few papers atop it and a pair of glass goblets. He finished stamping a set of documents, then stood and reached over the desk to bump fists.

“Welcome, Pete! I’m sorry about the tight space.” He gave an apologetic smile.

In the tiny room the tall elf loomed somewhat, but he quickly sat back down and gestured for me to take a seat on the only other chair in the room.

I squeezed into it, and gave a friendly return smile. “No problem. I suspect it’ll be spinnin’ soon enough.”

“Hah!” Joseph chuckled. “Since you made it past my clerk, I’m guessing that you accepted the Duke’s request?”

“Mmm… let’s call it probationary. He said I should talk to you first.”

Joseph placed his elbows on the table and tented his hands. “So, are you interested?”

I hesitated. “‘Interested’ is a strong term. Intrigued? Giving you a single chance before I shoot you down?”

“I’ll take intrigued. It brought you this far. But first,” Joseph reached under his desk and fiddled with something. There was a *click* and the sound of a door opening and closing, and he hefted a dark black bottle onto the desktop. “I believe I owe you congratulations!”

I grinned, my eyes glued to the bottle. It was plain and unadorned, save for a single symbol - a stylized ‘R’ on the front etched with gold.

“I’m takin’ this is the famous elven wine I was promised fer winnin’? What does the ‘R’ stand for?” I asked, pointing at the label.

“It stands for ‘Romero’, the original creator of wine. He owns the winery.”

I shook my head. “I still can’t parse that. The only winery.” According to what I knew, both from Joseph and Barck, Wine still fell under an old Ability called [Copyright] which prevented anyone but the original creator from making any.

Joseph nodded. “Yes. That’s partly the reason I wanted someone to come and get a brewing industry running in Awemedinand. I think our people should see that brewing alcohol can be for more than just a single person.”

WIth that he popped the cork.

The heady scent of wine immediately filled the small space, potent and intoxicating. It was a smell that’d defined my entire existence for over a decade, and I shivered. I felt the hairs on my arms and legs raising, and goosebumps forming. It smelled of heavy alcohol, dark fruit, and darker promises. There were hints of vanilla and a touch of… roses?

It was the thickest, headiest wine I’d smelled in my life. Either life.

Joseph watched me with amusement.

“It’s a strong smell,” he commented.

“Aye, that it is.” I gulped. “But how’s it taste?”

He poured a small amount into each glass, and I almost stumbled forward out of my chair as I leaned forward to peer into the ruby liquid. It was completely clear and sparkled, like the cleanest water of the clearest stream, while retaining the reddish sheen of a good red wine. I’d never seen anything quite like it. It looked like a polished wine, but the smell and colour had more in common with a full-bodied rich wine.

“It’s so… clear.” I whispered. “Brilliant, even.” After years of piss-poor dwarven beer, it was shocking to see such a high clarity alcohol.

Joseph passed me the glass and I took it almost reverentially. I took a deep sniff, which was practically unnecessary given how totally the scent had permeated the room. I could literally feel the vapours rising from the surface, possibly the alcohol evaporating as it made contact with the air. A statement which, on its face, was utterly ridiculous. This stuff was strong!

“To a long business relationship!” Joseph toasted, then winked. “And hopefully to your acceptance of our offer.”

I toasted and then took a deep full mouthful of the wine. I probably should’ve taken a small sip, just enough of a mouthful to appreciate the taste, but dammit I wanted to enjoy it, not engage in foreplay with it.

Since I’d arrived on Erd, I’d been continually surprised by the dwarven reaction to new alcohols. How they went absolutely crazy, or totally ape-shit, or turned into weird beer zombies. I’d always been immune, and chalked it up to my otherworldly soul or a quirk of biology.

It turned out I just hadn’t been trying the right alcohol.

Because the moment I took my first sip of elven wine and swallowed…

The room went sideways.