Beers and Beards-Chapter 23Book 4: : Sing The Songs That Remind You Of The Good Times
I first met Mirelda in the Briar Rose a few months ago. She’d made her way from the Eastern Kingdoms as an exile on the run, for crimes most vowel.
Namely, she’d penned a naughty romance novel starring the local Count and the crown prince of the Kingdom of Benneton.
She’d let me see a copy, and it was saucy! Right up there with Caroline’s romance novels, like with the dinosaurs and the other anatomically questionable lovers.
Apparently the royals had found it to be illegally saucy, and she’d been forced to flee. She’d made her way Westward and Southward, doing her best to survive on the meagre pay she could make doing basic book-keeping work.
Her tale started with close calls with [Assassins] and [Slavers], clandestine meetings with printers, friends and enemies made on the run, and ended here in the Briar Rose. Her dream for a future of ubiquitous fantasy and romance novels was now just that – a dream.
Books on Erd tended to be utilitarian. Because studying hard brought literal blessings from Archis, there was a focus on magic, math, and history. Fiction books existed, but it wasn’t anything close to the sheer volume and breadth we had back on Earth.
So, Midna, the greasy Goddess of Spirit and Communication had sought someone to shake up the writing world of Erd. Her Chosen was plucked from England, where she’d been working full time as a writer.
“So, do you have fifty books yet?” I asked the aforementioned Chosen, while sipping at the absolutely delicious Latte. Seriously, Ability perfected coffee had to be tasted to be believed. Between Briar Rose coffee and Elven Wine, I was certain I was still barely scratching the surface of what was possible in my own brewing.
“Har Har,” Mirelda rolled her eyes. “I’m not even at ten yet, let alone fifty. Do you have any idea how hard it is to do everything by hand? No keyboard, voice to text, spellcheck, or anything?”
“I just finished over a year of paperwork. Trust me, I empathize.” I sighed, massaging my wrists. “I imagine there must be an Ability for that.”
“There is. I even found the exact path of Specialisations I need to get it,” Mirelda groaned. “But I haven’t gotten any new Quests in ages.”
“Not even one?” I asked. I hadn’t gotten many over the past year, since I hadn’t really been pushing my boundaries, but I’d at least gotten some! And finished a bunch to boot!
“No. I think I’m stuck in a rut. I’ve felt it before, back when I was writing ‘A Court of Proms and Posies’.”
“That was your breakout hit on Earth, right? Do you think you’re stuck because you’re kinda, well, literally stuck?” I asked, gesturing around the garden.
Mirelda hugged her shoulders and looked downcast. “Probably. I haven’t managed to finish a single book since arriving in Tree. How about you? Gotten any good Quests lately?”
“Not since the ones to build the school. And those are done as of last week. The rewards didn’t quite feel like they matched the difficulty though. And I still have the stupid ‘networking’ quest.”
In fact, I actually had less quests now than I had when I’d first arrived.
I ran through them in my mind’s eye.
More Brews Part 4/5
More! MORE!
Invent sixty-four new drinks. Mixes don’t count.
Drinks Invented: 23/64
Rewards: Increased Personal Mana
A Magical World
Now that you’ve got some magic, try learning some!
Spells Learned: 6/8
Rewards: Increased Mana Pool
Dwarven Influencer Part 9/10
The dwarves need your help. Influence 4,000,000 dwarves with your otherworldly alcohol knowledge.
Dwarves Influenced: 1,232,120/4,000,000
Rewards: 1 x Deific Intervention
Gnomish Influencer Part 8/10!
The gnomes need your help. Influence 2,000,000 gnomes with your otherworldly alcohol knowledge.
Gnomes influenced: 1,211,212/2,000,000
Rewards: [Tools of the Trade]
Elven Influencer 4/10
Dunno how well this gonna go with just beer, to be honest.
Maybe some wine?
Elves Influenced: 2,834/25,000
Rewards: Increased Mana Pool
Human Influencer Part 4/10
Updat𝓮d fr𝙤m ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com.
Giants have giant tastes, and I’m looking forward to a beer that can satisfy them!
Humans Influenced: 8,125/25,000
Rewards: [Friend: Humans]
Fisherdwarf Part 2/10
Shouldn’t you be brewing?
Catch 32 Fish
Fish Caught: 4/32
Rewards: +0.4 Dexterity, +0.4 Vitality
The Ambassador Part 3/3
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Go to the Winery!
Winery Visited: 0/1
Rewards: +0.2 Dexterity, +0.2 Agility
Networking Part 1/2
Get Acquainted with the rich and famous.
Wait, that’s you!
Rich and Famous Acquaintances: 55/80
Rewards: [Assurance]
Not bad, not bad.
Going through my completed Quests, my Publicly Traded questline had finally ticked when I’d set up the brewing school here in Tree. I owned it wholly, so I completed both parts two and three. That’d netted me a total of 0.5 Charisma, and 0.2 intelligence, as well as an Ability that I’d seen used once before – [Paper Pusher]! It let me put notes and papers into an extradimensional space and transfer them to other nearby locations. Now that [Big Money] was gone, it was nice to have a space based Ability again.
Firsherdwarf had levelled up with all the fishin’ I’d been doing with local nobs and expats. That’d netted me a boring 0.2 Dexterity and 0.2 Vitality.
Deadly Ambush had finally cancelled, firmly closing that chapter of my life.
The questline to build the school had granted mea total of 1 Dexterity, 1 Strength, and 1 Agility, as well as an Ability that I’d been pining after for a while – [Project Voice]! Now I could blast eardrums with the best of them. It’d already come in handy multiple times during speeches to interested new brewers.
Of course, I hadn’t been lax with my magic lessons either. I now knew seven total spells, [Fireball], [Gluten to Bacon], [Light], and three more spells that played off my Gluten spell. [Grapify], [Applefy], and [Carbonate]. The first two each made the selected fruit a bit more of that fruit, and the latter was with a variation on the Ability with the same name, which let me use my Mana to change a bit of water aether to carbon dioxide. I finally had a carbonation machine!
Richter hated the name I’d given the spells, but admitted they were an interesting application of magic. I had plans to use them to make cider and wine, and time would tell if they were useful.
Finally, my influencer quests were coming along nicely. Now that I was working directly in elven lands, I’d pushed Elvish Influencer up to level 4. It wasn’t skyrocketing like Dwarven Influencer or anything, but it was going nicely. Same with Human Influencer. In total, they’d netted me two Dexterity, One Charisma, and one Wisdom. No Beastfolk Influencer yet, but it would come!
And the Crown Jewel of my quest rewards was what I’d gotten from Dwarven Influencer Part Eight.
[Divine Revelation] - Can be used to speak directly with a God or Goddess of your choice. All nearby will hear your conversation, and know intrinsically that the Deity in question is speaking. You may ask one question, which the Deity will answer Truthfully to the best of their Ability.
I had a feeling that being able to call a God and have Them answer would come in clutch at some point in my life. Even if it didn’t, I’d save it up till I died and then ask something like ‘Where is the world’s greatest buried treasure that I can actually reach before I die.’
I realized that Mirelda was trying to get my attention and gave her a questioning, “Mhm?”
She chuckled. “Were you in game menu land over there?”
“Aye. What is it?”
“I was asking what your plans were now that the brewing school is done? Some more beers? I’m really liking the Goat’s new Red by the way. Really reminds me of a Rickard’s.”
“That was the idea, yes. And no, Annie and the crew have tha beer brewin’ side locked pretty tight. I want ta get started on winemaking, startin’ with some ciders.”
Mirelda’s eyes narrowed. “Why would making cider be working on wine?”
“Oh, caught that, did you?” I grinned. “Very good. Winemaking is defined as ‘the fermentation of grapes’ but cider works nearly exactly the same. Get some fruit, press it, separate it, add some yeast, and ferment it. I had some fellow vintners who used to laughingly call apple cider, apple wine. Especially at a higher ABV.”
Her eyes narrowed. “But cider isn’t wine.”
“No. But it could be considered wine, from a historical perspective. And some countries count it as wine for the purposes of trade and regulations. The province of Ontario, to name one.”
She laughed brightly. “Oho! Historically. Breaking out the big words to the author, huh?”
“Where should I start?”
Mirelda settled back in her chair and crossed her legs, getting comfortable. “Like any good story, start at the beginning and go until the end.”
“Ah, okay then. In tha beginning apes discovered that certain fruits, when allowed ta rot under the sun, made their heads feel funny. They considered this a fun pastime, and would fight amongst themselves fer tha biggest, most fermented fruits.”
“Not that far back. Though I do think it would be funny to see a drunk monkey.” She tittered, sipping from her coffee cup.
“If we had access to the net, I’d show ya. One of me favourite liqueurs, Amarula, is famously tha drunk elephant drink. It comes from tha Marula fruit, and the various animals of tha Serenghetti would get hammered on it. In its base form of a fermented fruit, it’s essentially a type of cider.”
Her jaw dropped open. “There’s no way that’s true.”
“Heh. The alcohol is real, but the elephant bit it is probably an urban myth. There are monkeys famous for mugging people for alcohol, though. The Vervet Monkeys of St. Kitts. There’s hundreds of years of stories about the alcoholic little buggers.”
Mirelda nodded. “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me. I always thought it was my monkey brain firing off at the club.”
“Cannae disagree there. And drunk monkeys can be total assholes.”
She gave a single bark of laughter. “Yep, sounds just like the gits at the club.”
I gave her a sardonic eyebrow raise. “When was the last time you were at a club?”
She sighed. “Before I died? Well over a decade. My husband and I had stopped clubbing for a year before our son was born. And after that? Well, time is a luxury when you’re a full time mom and fuller time author.”
The mood grew somber. Unlike me, Mirelda had died while her child was still only fourteen, and she fretted over him constantly. I’d offered to let her use my Divine Revelation to check in on him, but she’d told me I was bonkers, and to save it.
“Anyways,” I continued, “The first civilized evidence of cider we’ve ever found dated back to well before the Roman Empire, amongst the Celts and Gauls. The cooler British Isles weren’t very hospitable to grapes, but were perfect fer apples. The Celts mostly used crab apples, resulting in a dry, somewhat sour cider. The Romans, under Julius Ceasar, actually, are credited with bringin’ apple cider back ta Rome, from where it spread around tha world.”
Mirelda crossed her arms. “So you’re saying it was our fault. Typical Canadian, just blame Mother England.”
“If tha helmet fits. And even today, UK cideries produce more cider than every other country in Europe. Of course, the French were not ta be outdone, and they started makin’ Cider with their own, sweeter apples, sometime in the early first century. They also tried using pears, to some success. In fact, the modern English word doesn’t come from the Celts, but from the French ‘cidre’.”
“What?? Boo! Bloody Franks have to put their grubby mitts on everything good!”
I placed my hand on my heart in mock outrage. “Tabarnak! I’ll thank you not to insult notre belle cousine!”
An elemental floated by and gave an admonishing finger wave. We hunched our shoulders and spoke a little quieter.
“Pfeh, fine,” Mirelda hissed. “I’ll forgive them, but only because I love pear cider. They make something similar here in Tree, but it tastes just awful.”
“Aye, an Earther would think so.”
“And what does that mean??”
“It means that if you want to know more, you’ll need to get off your tuckus, and come help me crush apples at the school next week.” I waggled my eyebrows at her.
She looked down at her half-written page of writing, then sighed. “Fine, but only if I get half the cider.”
“A quarter.”
“Whatever. I’m not going to be able to drink that much anyways.”
We settled back in our chairs to enjoy our coffee in silence for a while. Conversation was nice, but we’d both come to Briar Rose for that most delicious of treats.
Silence.
