7 Whiskeys

Agnak's Folly began as a complaint. The half-giant Agnak complained about the general quality of whiskey at the guild hall and the amount he had to consume to get a good buzz. The thing that got Agnak was that the Guild Hall had some interesting enchantments on it. His wish for a good bottle of whiskey resonated through the building, and through its future and its past, giving rise to the Battle of the Barrels, where dozens of distillers found themselves blessed with a Quest, to create a single special barrel of whiskey for a large, discerning, alcohol resistant being. Quests are rare things, and when one appears, it is unwise to ignore it. Thus, a great number of crafters set out to get those sweet, sweet gifts when the DungeonVerse sends a special request

1. Old Thornmere

This barrel of whiskey comes from the halfling settlement of Thornmere, a great surprise and a bit of misdirection in the name. Grimaldo Thornmere was first gifted with the quest when he was looking into his future as a potential adventurer, and instead of joining the Knife and Lantern, he went to the local distillers' group. He would eventually found his own distillery after serving at others for much of his life. This was not a bad life for a halfling, he made a name for himself as a prolific family man, good businessman, and good distiller. His son took over the distillery and ran it with distinction, gaining the quest along with the distillery and family legacy. About the time Agnak was born, Thornmere started putting up serious whiskeys, with the first round of eight year aged being very well received, and songs sung about the twelve year, The quest pulsed with urgency and Gaffer Thornmere, well over a century old, accompanied the wagon, his grandsons, and a team of sellswords to the guild hall. 

Old Thornmere is a family recipe, decades old, made in a distillery the family built. It is easily the gold standard of what is a very good whiskey. Some complain that it 'lacks character' or is missing something vital, and most other sensible people claim those complainers are looking for a specific flaw that suits their tastes, noting that infamous loudmouth Hubert Elderberry favored whiskey that tasted of old swamp buckets.

2. Rotgutt's Rye

Rotgutt is a geezer with an interest in disilling and alcoholism. The creature shuddered with delight and anger when it received the quest, as it had long thought itself forgotten by the DungeonVerse. This would have been fine with Rotgutt. The geezer sighed and slouched out into the fens where it lived, uncovered its still, and set to work. Quests are amoral, and the geezer raided several communities for parts it needed for its distilling, or hunger, or to sate its boredom as it worked, leading to dozens of deaths. The geezer made six barrels of a potent swamp rye, using barrels made from swamp sugar oak, and a regularly abused salamander to cook the mash.

Rotgutt's Rye isn't particularly good, and the taste is highly subjective, with people either hating it or really hating it. What is does have is functional resistance penetration. This dark whiskey can cut through the strongest alcoholic's tolerance, to racial resistances to intoxication, and things that don't have a metabolism can be rendered intoxicated by this substance. Regular folk can easily be poisoned by its potency. At the Battle of the Barrels, several people were incapacitated by the tasting, and it also demonstrated its other unpleasant feature; the barrels were found to be explosive, and the contents were somehow sticky when they burned.

3. Zeitgeist Bond Single Casque Whiskey

Perhaps the most temporally distant recipient of the quest, there was an alchemist who began his path to necromancy and lichedom with distilling. After the mortal man shuffled off his mortal coil, he remembered a quest that had dinged him when there were so many other pressing items on his agenda. After achieving most of his goals, he went back to that lingering quest, and was greatly surprised it was still active. The undead man set about returning to his original craft and established a distillery deep in Tir an Scathanna. It was difficult going at first as the ingredients for whiskey are somewhat scarce in the land of shadows, but he eventually created a suitable water source by creating a permanent miniportal to a glacial run-off in Tir Artach. Then he cultivated several dozen strains of grain trying to find the one that had the character and flavor that he remembered. This was solved with a temporal displacement spell where he literally jumped back to his childhood to steal a bag of grain from the miller near his home. The grain was cultivated, and along with the other grains he had engineered to thrive in Scathanna, the liche started to shift the land of shadows from pure hunting/scavenging to maybe having a bit of agriculture. The barrels were made from shadow oak, and charred with the fiery breath of a red dragon, and the whiskey was left to age. He intended a decade, but it ended up being closer to a century and he lost more than 90% to evaporation.

The finished barrels of whiskey were bottled, producing from his great venture, six priceless bottles. One was sampled by the liche and found to be of very excellent quality. Two were sent to fufill the quest, two were sent as gifts to undisclosed recipients, and the last was retained by the liche. Consuming a dram of the potent liquor had a profound effect. The consumer would be almost overwhelmed with a hot rush of childhood memories, profound emotional connection to lost family members, and a brief return to that state of innocence and joyful vibrancy.

4. Dryad's Drop

The quest was not limited to humans and common adventuring races only, many demihuman and humanoid species also received it. The dryad Hermione was one. Fascinated with the concept, the dryad spent a good deal of time cleaving to the edges of human society where after great personal effort, she learned the secret of distillation and the capturing of fire. She became possibly the first dryad pyromancer, as it was the resistances to fire granted by the class that allowed her to work with the distillation and charring processes. She took a husband, had multiple dryadling children, had a branch in creating a living tree village, engineered a peace between forest folk and farmers, and was successful in crafting a perfectly serviceable whiskey. Her magnum opus came from crafting the barrels for her legendary work, guiding the growth of trees to create barrels from a single piece of wood and then fitting them with lids, fairiewood, elfin maple, sun oak, moon birch, and more. She played with wood and alcohol, having great patience in her long, long life. As the liche changed agriculture in Scathanna, Hermione accidentally bred a subspecies of dryadfolk, a somewhat queer folk as she routinely would replace her deceased husbands with another local man, or on more than one occassion, a great grandson or great nephew. When it was time, and the final barrel was without flaw, she made her announcement, she was going into a deep hibernation and it was her wish that once she was completely in the deep sleep, she wished to be sealed inside the barrel she had crafted and then it be filled with her last batch of whiskey, and in twenty years, it was to be delivered to the contest,

When the great 500 gallon barrel of Dryad's Last Drop was opened, the liquid that came out was dark and rich, obviously enchanted, and was likened to the infinitely potent fae wine, but with the character of whiskey. Emotions ran high, the guests were overcome with arousal and fell to fighting and fornicating, The barrel was broken in the initial melee and Hermione tumbled out, incredibly intoxicated and looking not like a centuries old dryad matron on the verge of becoming a forest goddess, but as a lean long limbed coltish Lolita. Then the real fighting began, and the rest has gone down in history as the Folly. 

5. Terrasquestone Whiskey 

Having once began as a mining and dungeon delving village, Terrasquestone has a long established history with distillation. While whiskey is not the most popular potent potable in the region, it is a top choice. Few can hope to match the elegance and rich development of Terrasquestone's world famous gin. But that being said, whiskey has been made in the Orange city for centuries and when the contest came to the knowledge of the great crafters there, they made a simple decision, send a barrel from the deep vault as their entry. The High Lord Siveath Orranon escorted the barrel to Agnak's and ended up as one of the judges of the contest. There was nothing magical or special about the barrel she brought other than its high level of crafting and thirty year aging.

In the subsequent Folly, High Lord Siveath was sorely wounded, but was able to use her command of magic to keep the city around Agnak's guildhall from being consumed in a magic whiskey fueled firestorm

6. Dungeon Whiskey

Whiskey created by the bottle and barrel by the Hippo dungeon 

7. Beast of resplendent liquids whiskey 

whiskey excreted by a dungeon boss monster