Beers and Beards

Book 2: Chapter 11: Guild Politics

Malt brought me down into the dark places of the Guild of Brewers. I was on my guard, for there were likely older and fouler things than Malt here, in the deep places of the Erd.

I waved my hand in front of my nose and tried not to breathe. That anything could be fouler was questionable, given the intense oniony scent wafting from him and every brewer I encountered. The place was mostly run by brown robed apprentices and journeymen, and the younger dwarves would bow and scrape and mutter obsequieties as we walked past.

Every once in a while we met a black-robed Titled [Brewer] and went through a series of formal greetings before continuing on our way. What should have been a two minute trip down to Malt’s office quickly ballooned into a twenty minute nightmare.

“It gets a bit much, doesn’t it?” Malt asked, as he waved me into a small room on the fourth basement floor.

“Pardon?” I said, trying to sound innocent. Had my thoughts been plain on my face? My higher charisma should have taken care of that!

“Oh, you didn’t need to say anything.” Malt chuckled. “Trust me, when you get to my age the formalities all seem a bit pointless. I haven’t got time to waste on bein’ mollycoddled.”

I nodded in appreciation. “Yes, I can see that.”

“Are you calling me old, whippersnapper?” Malt snapped, his voice cracking with anger. He peeked back at the apprentices lining the hallway behind us. I shrank back for a moment in shock, then followed his gaze and realized his game.

“If the boot fits.” I replied, my own voice rising to match his.

“I oughta have you thrown outta here!” He bellowed, moving to close the door.

I pitched my voice to carry down the hall. “I’ll have Whistlemop shut off the flow of bottles to tha whole damn Guild!”

We were glaring face to face, visible to the shocked apprentices, right until the moment the door closed.

Malt immediately plunked down on a plush leather armchair and pulled out a pipe. “Ah, I knew you were a smart one. Well done, well done.”

He lit the pipe and took a drag, the sweet scent of tobacco leaves quickly filling the space and overpowering the onions. I wasn’t the biggest fan of pipe-smoke, but it beat onion. “Let them think we’re playing hardball. But really, cutting off the bottle supply? Right when we’re all changing over? That’s dirty pool.”

I grumbled. “You shoved us into the deep end of that dirty pool by kicking us out of the Guild in the first place. We won that damn Feud, and it was wrong of the Guild to kick us out after everything they did to us.”

Malt sighed and pointed to a plain wooden chair across from him. “Sit young [Brewer], and I’ll explain. It’s a bit more complicated than you might think.”

I took a seat. Malt’s cave-like office was very different from Whistlemop’s, with much less concern for comfort - outside of his own plush chair. The walls were essentially plain carved stone and the majority of the space was taken up by several desks covered in paper. No plush carpeting or smoked-glass here.

“Why do I get the shitty chair?” I asked.

Malt sighed and took another drag of his pipe, then billowed out some smoke rings before answering. “This is my personal chair actually, the Guild normally only has those Godsawful wooden affairs, and they’re tha Nether on me back. Pipe?” He held his pipe out to me.

“No thank you, I don’t smoke, it’s - .” I paused for a moment, considering. Did I really need to worry about smoke inhalation or lung cancer in a world with magical healing? Especially as a healthy, wealthy, long-lived dwarf with a high vitality?

Malt shrugged in a ‘suit yerself’ gesture. “Drink then?” He pointed to a small keg and a pair of Whistlemugs on one table.

“I try not to imbibe during business dealings.”

Malt smiled like a shark. “Ah, much wiser than many of the other [Brewers] I’ve worked with over the years."

I gulped as I considered the cagey old dwarf in front of me. That offer had been a trap! I wondered briefly if the pipe was spiked with anything, then discarded the thought. There was a pretty major difference between business drinking and literally poisoning your guests.

I tried to get comfortable in my hard wooden chair but quickly gave up. Discomfort didn’t matter when I wasn’t planning to be here long. “Can we get down to business, Malt? I have another meeting after this.”

“Ah.” Malt frowned. “Meeting day is it? My condolences, we’ll get right to things.”

I nodded my head in appreciation. “Thank you. Here’s my reason for visiting: we want to participate in tha Octamillennial Brewing Contest, so we want back in tha Guild.”

“Yes, I figured that would be the case.” Malt nodded. “I approve.”

“That’s unfortunate, because I.. what!?” I had leaned forward to launch into my spiel and nearly fell to the floor at the sudden turn.

“I approve.” Malt nodded. “These bottles have been great, and regardless of the general feelin’ in the Guild, I think your improvements to the brewing process should be considered. How could we call ourselves followers of Barck and not take this chance to innovate after all? There’s just one, tiny problem.”

I waited for the other steel-shod boot to drop. “Yes?”

“More than half the Guild hates your guts after the incident with the Feud.” Malt shrugged.

“That was not our fault.” I protested. “And Browning’s gone now, so why does anyone care?”

“That isn’t how the membership sees it, they consider the entire event a black eye for the Guild. And while I have a lot of sway as Guildmaster, I don’t have complete control over who gets to join.”

My stomach sank. “Is that why we were kicked out? Nobody wanted us around anymore?”

Malt breathed another smoke ring. “Yes and no. When Jeremiah retired, it technically meant you had no more representation in the Guild. Normally it would be a formality to vote in his heir to his old seat - that would be Annie Goldstone. In the case of the Thirsty Goat, the membership declined to vote, effectively removing her.”

I harrumphed. “Bunch of hypocrites. They were the reason Jeremiah retired in the first place!”

“Hrmmm… I won’t deny that.”

I angrily pursed my lips as I considered my options. Everyone in the Thirsty Goat wanted to take part in the brewing contest, and we needed to be in the Guild to get a crack at it. The event looked to be a ton of fun, and was a great opportunity to spread some of our new brewing techniques.

Plus, I was pretty sure I needed to be in that contest to win my soul back. When I’d met Barck last year, he’d revealed that he would own my soul until I beat him in a bet. He’d made it pretty clear that he needed a “sufficiently impressive” event to give me a crack at winning it back. The Octamillenial was my best chance.

The entire event was also practically custom designed to help me in my ongoing personal quest to save beer from its terrible predicament. A well-timed stout or a perfectly placed porter could launch the entire craft brewing industry.

Well, if the Guild didn’t want us, who cared! I’d go make my own Brewers Guild - with blackjack, and lookers!

“That isn’t to say that all is lost,” Malt continued.

I focused, my previous worries tossed aside. “Go on.”

“Since all you need is a majority of the Guild to approve of you, then the answer to your problem is simple.”

“Hmm… bribe them all with free bottles? I could liberally sprinkle gold around too.”

“Hah, no, though I wouldn’t say no to some free bottles. The answer is to invent something so lucrative for the Guild that the members will be forced to accept you!”

*Bing!*

New Quest: Guildsman

Get into the Brewers Guild! Do you have what it takes to get enough members on your side?

Members Persuaded: 3/16 Dwarves

Rewards: [Thick Skin]

Do you accept?

Yes / No

I actually laughed. My deep chuckles turned into booming bass laughs as my sides shook. My dwarven body could really get that awesome echo on each HA! “HA HA HA! You… you must be joking!”

Malt shook his head. “No, completely serious.”

I wiped away some tears and mentally clicked on ‘yes’ for the quest. “You want me to invent something sooo lucrative that all the members of the Guild will want it, and then just share it with you?”

“Why not? You did it once, if my conversations with Whistlemop are to be believed.” Malt shrugged. “These bottles and the Whistlestop are perfect for selling beer. I should show you the bottle we’re rolling out at Marvelous Malts!”

Malt rummaged around in a bag set beside him and eventually pulled out a brown one-litre Belgian-style bottle. It was wide at the base with a long body and a short neck. Right where the neck met the body of the bottle there was a bulge of glass to help with pressure. A wire rack at the top held a levered stopper. A sticker on the front declared it to be Marvelous Malt’s True Brew.

Malt passed it to me and I looked it over. It was very similar to our bottles, though ours used clear glass.

“Why the brown glass?” I asked.

“It matches the colour of the beer!” Malt said proudly. “And they look different from everyone else’s so it’ll stand out in the kiosks when we start putting them out there.

“Hmmmm…” I considered it for a while and was struck with a small pang of longing for home. I hadn’t had one of those for a while, but the brown bottle just reminded me so much of standing in the government liquor store, perusing singletons.

The brown bottle for beer actually had a different use back on earth - it protected the beer from UV rays. Clear bottles were susceptible to spoilage and souring whenever they were left in the sun. Brown bottles acted just like sunglasses by blocking solar radiation.

Green bottles became popular during World War One due to the war effort using up all the brown glass production. Green wasn’t quite as good as brown, but it worked well enough at stopping harmful light. Certain brands like Corona didn’t bother with brown bottles at all - after all, who was going to leave a Corona lying around undrunk?

Sun-spoiling wasn’t going to be a problem underground, but it was good to see the dwarves were future-proofing their beer. When I inevitably figured out how to ship beer to the human lands, those brown bottles would come in handy!

Maybe that would get me in the guild’s good graces? A new market? There were two non-imbibing races I had a connection with. The gnomes, and now humans through Kirk. I handed the bottle back to Malt while I considered it. “This looks great. I’m glad to see the bottles are doing so well, especially since I get money for every sale.” I flashed a mischievous grin.

Malt nodded. “If it wasn’t for Whistlemop taking so much of the credit, they might have been enough.”

“First the Whistlemug, and now the bottles too? That Gnome is going to get world famous based on MY inventions.” I rubbed the back of my neck and groaned. “Honestly, most of what I can give the Guild they probably aren’t going to want.”

“There is that,” Malt nodded. “But it’s your best chance, and you’d be surprised what some of the guild members may be willing to accept. And you don’t need all of them, not even half since some like Drum and myself already like you. You just need enough to tip the majority in your favour.”

“Alright.” I rose to leave. “Thank you for your time, Guild Master Malt. I’ll get back to you.”

“Luck of Barck be with you, Brewer Pete. I look forward to seeing what you come up with! Remember, the competition starts halfway into the 2nd Month, so you don’t have much time!”

Today was the 13th of the 1st month, so I had… just over four weeks. That wasn’t much time.

I left the Guild of Brewers behind and headed to my next rendezvous. I had a date with a diva.

Well, it was more of a surprise for a soprano, but still.