Chapter 59

A Simple Label and a Complex Problem

It wasn’t long before I reached level 350 and earned the skill Flash Ferment. Fermentation was the longest phase of brewing beer, but I could now brew a single 250ml bottle in mere moments. Those small bottles were the ones I decided to brew for Dellia. Half would be hoppy beers, and half would be oatmeal stouts.

When I tried to donate a beer to Dellia, it didn’t work. Instead I received a quest.

[New Quest! Who Are You?]

[Design labels for Tavern Ale quality beers.]

[Reward: None.]

Thus I spent the first half of my day brewing GloomGlower’s beers, and the rest of the day pondering how to go about labeling my beer.

I didn’t have paper. I couldn’t carve into waterskins. Although I could carve into barrels, it was time consuming and I was going through a lot of barrels. Not to mention that most of them were GloomGlower’s. Although I had been coopering a few times each week, I was only slowly amassing my own 15.5 gallon barrels.

Thrush and BarnacleEyes had some great ideas, but I was looking for something simple and sweet. So as a resort, Thrush helped me forge a small branding iron. We bent spare metals to form the word HAWKIN and it was a crude success. I branded the barrels that were mine, and the waterskins.

The quest was still incomplete, so we thought to do a little bit more. We made two more branding irons. One said HOPPY. The other said OATMEAL STOUT. They both worked like a charm.

[Quest: Who Are You?: Complete!]

[Reward: None.]

“I’ll talk with Boggo,” Thrush said. “They make these waterskins, so maybe they can make hide or leather pockets you can put bottles inside of. Then you can brand the hide and use those instead of waterskins.”

“Not a bad idea,” I said. “You’re going to need more warm-warm beer for them, aren’t you?”

“Not anymore. Since it’s getting warmer, they want something more refreshing, and less hoppy.”

“I can brew a simple ale for them,” I said.

“They like the simple ones,” Thrush said. “The simple Tavern Ales.”

“I’ll switch to working on those, in that case.”

Thrush and I went into the cellar, guided by the light of an earwax candle. We went over all the beers I had that we’d been accruing. Everything was organized except for piles of waterskins. Barrels were all in rows and propped on boards so they wouldn’t roll. We’d stacked them as high as they could go.

There were a few different bottles mixed in along the wall right beside the entrance. Clear bottles, amber bottles, 250ml bottles, and slightly drooping 750ml bottles. All of those sat beside the four foot long, Ale of the Vale of Ara, stone bottle.

“Quite a collection,” Thrush said. “I can’t sell fast enough to keep up with it.”

“Hey, if it's helping you level up your merchant class, then by all means take all of it. All except the beers I’ve received in loot chests, and the Vale of Ara ale.”

“When will we try another new one?”

“Tonight if you’d like, if we can find BarnacleEyes. It would be nice to make her feel included, don’t you think?”

“Then I should smoke some fish right away. Haven’t had any since breakfast and lunch.”

We left the cellar and the cabin. Thrush went to his igloo, and I tended to the fire pit. It was muddy and all the stones and logs had been displaced. I tidied things up as best as I could and started a small fire. I made myself comfortable and tried donating one of my newly labeled Hoppy beers to Dellia.

The waterskin transmuted into a Planes Cutter shard. Light refracted around the shard in needles of rainbows. The shard twirled slowly in place.

I used my ethereal harvest of barley and hops to brew another beer. A simple Tavern Ale. Using Flash Ferment earned me a beer that was near instantly ready to drink. Ready to get to work on the ethereal plane, I consumed a Planes Cutter shard and found myself on verdant summer hills.

I saw the evidence of my earlier harvests. I’d gone through a small yard of the earth, growing barley and hops. Since I had a whole day here again, I continued where I left off. The only skill I couldn’t work on was Flash Ferment, but I hopped right on that when I returned back to the firepit.

I only had a few 250ml bottles, so I went about things a little differently. I brewed 250ml batches of beer, Flash Fermented each one, and then poured the beer into a simple 5 gallon barrel. Then I repeated the process for the rest of the evening. I repeated my daily grind the next day and the day after that, until I leveled up and could Flash Ferment beers in 500ml bottles.

On that day, BarnacleEyes came to me with a problem.

“There’s smoke coming from the south,” she said.

We pulled Thrush from his smoker and investigated. With his impeccable sense of smell, Thrush located the source of the smoke with ease. We came upon a large group of goblins. 50 goblins were huddled around a campfire. A pile of burning pine needles and leaves sent a column of smoke to the sky.

The goblins were drunk, and several were filling cups from one of my 15.5 gallon barrels. When we came upon them, they scattered behind leafless bushes, behind the barrel, and behind trees.

“Go away,” one of them said.

“That’s my barrel,” I said. “I recognize it.”

“It’s ours,” a goblin said. “We earned it at the battle of FlyBooger’s Spanking.”

“That’s not what happened,” BarnacleEyes said.

“That’s not what we heard,” a more distant goblin said.

“That’s the barrel you stole when FlyBooger attacked?” I said.

“Same difference,” another goblin said.

“There’s no use in hiding,” Thrush said. “I can see you. All of you.”

“Go away,” the goblins repeated.

“Listen,” I said. “You can keep the barrel, but bring it back to your ships.”

“We do what we want,” a goblin halfway up a tree said.

“Yea,” another said. “What are you going to do about it?”

I had no idea what to say. I couldn’t physically move 50 goblins from these woods. I didn’t want Thrush to eat them. Asking nicely wasn’t working.

“That’s what we thought,” the drunkest goblin said, lurching from tree to tree. He fell face first into the base of a tree. He was out after that and his comrades poked him until they realized he wouldn’t be waking for a bit.

“I’ll fight them,” BarnacleEyes said, seething. “Just give the word and I’ll fight them!”

The goblins burst into an uproar. They came out of their hiding places, nearly red in the face, shouting and shaking fists. It was evident that the clamor would soon turn to fighting. By the way Thrush smiled, I think he wanted to eat the goblins. He wanted a good reason to devour them.

I had to shout louder than anyone to be heard and stop a potential brawl. When the goblins finally listened, and their shouting finally fell to murmuring, I told it like it was.

“I can’t stop you from coming out here. I’m just asking you not to damage the forest.”

“What?” A goblin said.

“Don’t cut down trees. Don’t smash bushes.”

“No smashing bushes?” A goblin slurred. “What? Why not?”

“Please don’t,” I said.

“You’re not our king,” The smallest of them said.

“How about we make a deal,” Thrush said. “How about I give you your very own ship. I’ll bring one up from the bottom of the sea. There’s still a bunch down there. I’ll even help fix it up for you.”

“You can’t do that,” a goblin said.

“I’ve done it before,” Thrush said. “In exchange, you stay with your ship and you don’t come back.”

“Show us the ship,” the smallest goblin said. “Then we’ll see.”

“Follow me,” Thrush said.

He headed off towards the coast and the goblins followed him, abandoning those that had passed out. The last of the goblins plugged the barrel and rolled it through the muddy forest.

BarnacleEyes turned to me with big glossy eyes.

“Thrush can give ships away?”