Hot bone whiskey is more expensive than you think

by Zar'ral Helvimtor

I arrive in Yarrin in pursuit of an elf with soft amber eyes and buy a chicken. The stall keeper refuses to roleplay with me.

I move to the Joyful Jay tavern and find that the owner, Joyful Jay, is out. I proceed to sit around waiting to be served for a while before concluding that this isn't that kind of tavern. Moving up to the bar, I check the menu and decide to buy some Hot Bone Whiskey, which turns out to cost 600 gil per bottle. Feeling too awkward to back down from my decision after acting all cool, I spend all of my money on a single bottle of whiskey. Hoping that spending this much money will get me some information from the barmaid, I learn that hope is futile and return to my seat.

Hearing a crash outside, I go to investigate. I find an individual that speaks with two voices, has glowing red eyes and corpse-like skin, and fails to appreciate the finer points of stealth. We visit a house of ill-repute together.

There are spiders in a cage in the basement. They kill my chicken after I push it through the bars to distract them. Bastards.

We open the cage to avenge my chicken. I kill two with throwing knives and my perfectly normal companion finishes off the last one by having it explode all over their armor. Finding a dwarf wrapped in web in the corner of the cage, I determine that these spiders poisoned him with spider poison. We take him to the temple to be healed.

Our dwarven friend introduces himself as Secret Door and tells us that there was a Gurdi in the basement we found him in. We return there and go through into the tunnels behind it. Hearing flapping wings in the distance, we predict that there are spiders with wings ahead.

Arrex pulls a wooden panel out of the wall and we are attacked by a hot wing spider. It is missing 6 legs and 7 eyes. Fortunately its remaining eye makes up 80% of its body. I slash it to death from around a corner whilst it slashes me to half-death from around the corner. Arrex stands awkwardly between us in a state of some kind of anti-death.

Proceeding further, we find an abandoned room with a door leading to tunnels going beneath the local river. On a desk to the side of the room, we find an unfinished monster manual and learn nothing from it. We also find a letter from the elf with soft amber eyes revealing that she is part of some kind of marlboro smuggling operation in Padstow. We leave without investigating the tunnels any further.

I sell one sixth of the bottle of hot bone whiskey to Arrex for 100 gil, on the basis that things taste better when you pay more for them. Arrex does not like the whiskey but replaces the water in their water skin with it, then invites me to their cult. I politely decline.

We learn that an incoming airship is travelling to Padstow and decide to travel down together since we made such a great team and laughed at each other's jokes. Finding that I am too broke to buy a ticket, Arrex spends all of their remaining money on two airship tickets. Our adventure as a duo begins.