Spider Guts & Breweries

So.
 
I’m writing this while sitting on a corpse of a big, fuck-off spider. I’m surrounded by five other spider corpses and covered in three different spiders’ guts.
 
And I didnae kill a single bloody one!
 
That’s what I get for signing up with a posse of kill-stealing wankers with a habit of finishing off everything I soften up for ‘em.
 
Aye, and I couldn’t be happier. Not that I’ll tell them that.
 
I’m watching Bort, the wee shitbag that he is, repair the walking flamethrower he somehow manages to keep in his pocket. Torwynn, bustling around eagerly trying to encourage us to get our arses in gear because the sooner we sort out the forest problem the sooner she gets her hands on some gilded trinkets, Rynaar is waving his staff around (not that staff you dirty bastards!) in a strange rehearsal for the next fight and Thal is making sure everyone is healed up while trying to pretend the magic books we keep finding are just regular holy tomes or something. Buggered if I know what he’s really playing at, but I don’t care.
 
How did we get here?
 
Well after I scribbled down some notes after we spoke to that fancy-schmancy Lysander fop, we kept on drinking in the pub. Overheard a couple of blokes complaining about a haunting at the brewery, and not just any brewery but the Eldbury Brewery. Aye, that one, the one that brews some of the finest ale outside of the mountain.
 
Apparently the lady who ran the gig lived in the flat above the barrels so we decided to go and see if we could help the wee ghostie problem and get the free beer.
 
Then someone said we needed to swing by the mayor’s place to get our reward for killing the goblins first. FINE. I quickly finished off everyone’s drinks for them and off we went.
 
Fancy-Schmancy was right, mayor gave us a big sack of gold and told us we had to let the Duke of Whitmore, Whitemere? Whitmere? know what was up. I don’t have much time for the political backstabbing of the lords and ladies, I’m much more of an axe to the face kind of negotiator, but I’ll definitely give that lil’ pass phrase secret code thing a whirl.
 
Or bring out one of my negotiation tools.
 
Anyway, I think the gold we had in our pockets was heavier than our resident wee shitbag by this point so we clinked our way up to the brewery. And what a brewery it was! It’s a grand old place, wall to wall barrels, hops and barley in the air and the grand old Eldbury crest above the entrance.
 
We were met by an old (for a human) lady, who was the owner of the place and daughter of the master brewer who passed away a few months ago. Course she denied any whispering of a haunting but after some axe-free persuasion by Torwynn and Rynaar she agreed to give us a tour of the place. Won’t lie, I took advantage of the free samples on offer but it didn’t take a genius to know there was something off about the first batch of ale…then the second…all the way up to the fifth. Aye, I had to try all of ‘em to be sure, and sure I was.
 
So I broke it to the old lass gently and told her it was absolute shite.
 
Not quite sure why my delicate touch and delivery of the news caused her to burst into tears but that’s humans for ya. She moaned about how she’d followed her old man’s recipe to the letter but something wasn’t right and the brew was, as I’d accurately put it, fucking shite. Clearly something was up, so we decided to investigate.
 
Well, everyone apart from me. I decided to do some more quality assurance testing of the product to make sure it wasn’t all shite.
 
Until I got dragged along to the basement cellar by Thal. Rynaar and Bort had taken the winch lift down because gnomes love a tinker while Torwynn went with Margaret (that’s the old human lass) to see if there was anything in her office.
 
A few more quality assurance samples later and Torwynn and Margaret joined us, with a journal and another one of those it’s-just-a-holy-book-but-its-not-really-is-it-Thal? tomes.

Interesting wee read, that journal. Spoke of Margaret’s dad, maybe her grandad, I was only SLIGHTLY tipsy at this point so hard to remember which one, anyway they were acting like a crazy bastard, which is the important part.
 
Didn’t have time to ask much more because Torwynn was already trying to prize off a wall panel with a crowbar she’d found.
 
Fuck me sideways, when that panel came off the air changed, I felt…well…I was this close to shitting myself. WHICH I PUT DOWN TO THE ALE.
 
Had a vision then, all of us did. Of a young lad being sacrificed on an altar. Guess we’d found the magic ingredient in the brew. But then the shite really hit the fan because a Lumos-damn shadow monster rose from the ground. All whispy and smoky and damn near impossible to slice through with an axe. Bugger brought a few friends too.
 
All I knew was in that moment I had to get my arse as far away from that bastard thing so I ran. WHICH I ALSO PUT DOWN TO THE ALE.
 
Naturally, being the quick thinker that I am, I styled it out by saying I’d left my axe in the corner of the room and had to pick it up before I cut the shadow bastards a new one. Everyone believed me. EVERYONE.
 
Well, you can guess what happened next. The damn shadows started trying to suck our souls out through our faces, with Ruynaar’s being especially delicious by the looks of what it did to him. Thal, the scared bastard, ran into a corner and started throwing fire at ‘em. I WASN’T SCARED IT WAS THE ALE.
 
Bort pulled out a canon that looked like a flamethrower but started blasting magic energy at the buggers but missed every time. HA! Little shitbag literally couldn’t hit a pisshead in a brewery.
 
The craziest thing was Torwynn changing into a giant fucking hyena! Knew there was something up with her and now we found it, she’s a bloody shapeshifting, tree hugging, leaf munching Druid! Explains her magpie instincts, for sure. Anyway, she’s piling into the shadows, laughing like a hyena…because she was a hyena…you know what I mean… and ripping up the shadows with her teeth while I charge in, my ancestors by my side and slice my way through every damn cloud in front of me until I separated the gassy head from the gassy neck of the big bad bastard.
 
Yay. Woo. Aye. Saved the brewery but were there any teeth? NO. Because shadows don’t have teeth. BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY DON’T.
 
Great.
 
We looted the sacrificial chamber and there were some gems there, a dagger which Thal took and the snazziest, jazziest, most ornate tankard I’ve ever seen. Sure the bloke’s face on the front could’ve looked happier but I didn’t care. I found it, it was mine. Of course, there was a brief negotiation where I informed everyone that the tankard was mine and that I’d chop in half any bugger who disagreed.
 
The vote was unanimous. I had me a new tankard. Result! Strapped it to my belt next to my pouch.
 
After that, we went up to tell Margaret we’d solved her ale problem and that the solution was human sacrifice. Oh, and her Da (or Grand Da) was a dark nut-job who loved a bit of young lad murder.
 
Not quite sure what happened next but she gave us gold, which we then gave back in exchange for the key and deed to the brewery!
 
Yep, I now own a brewery. Or a third of a brewery. Right? That’s what happens when you split something by five.
 
We named it the Laughing Axe after the two lasses that won us the place (Torwynn the Hyena and my weapon), and it’s stuck as the name of our possee too.
 
Kragg Einarsson, proprietor of the Laughing Axe Brewery. Has a nice ring to it, no?
 
Yeah, I had to promise not the drink the place dry that night. So we went to sleep in our new flat above the place.
 
What next? Oh yeah, had another strange dream. Didn’t write about it last time because a dream’s a dream, right? But when you have the same dream two nights in a row and you can talk in it? There’s some strange shite afoot. So I’m standing on a beach, at least I think it’s a beach, never been to one. Then there’s this blood red ocean in front of me and this tall shadowy human calling my name.
 
So I tell the lazy bastard to bring his arse closer to me if he’s interested.
 
He then replies soon I’ll come to him.
 
Ha! Wanker.
 
Then I woke up.
 
Had that wee red crystal in my hand when I woke up too, buggered if I know how it got there. Must’ve been counting my teeth before I passed out and not put it back in the pouch.
 
What next? Oh yeah, Torwynn, Thal and Rynaar insisted we interview all the employees for their positions. Boring as arse if you want my opinion but I sat through it, doing some more quality testing with my new tankard. Funny thing, the more I drank out of it, the less it affected me. I think…I think…it’s a magic cup that keeps me sober!
 
Probably cursed as well but hey ho, rough with the smooth.
 
Didn’t pay much attention during the interviews until a dwarf showed up. Fella and I traded insults in dwarvish, he knew the handshake of our people, so I told the confused faces looking at me he was a good bastard and we should keep him.
 
Spent the rest of the day interviewing people and once the management crew were happy, we headed out back into Eldbury so Bort could buy a pair of sending stones so we could keep in touch while we were out adventuring.
 
After some blah blah bollocks bollocks have the jewels we found and some gold you swindling bastard with your dragon smoke pipe blah blah we (by which I mean Bort) bought the stones.
 
Then with the stones in our pockets, off we went to see another bloke called Old Tom who apparently could sell gilded shite to Torwynn. Once we got there it all made sense, because it was a tree hugger’s paradise. All vines and bark and shite.
 
Course there’s no way Old Tom the Bastard Wanker will just sell us stuff, we’ve got to solve the problem in the forest first.
 
Fine by me, it meant there was probably stuff to kill.
 
I think it was on that walk we decided to call our posse the Laughing Axes. I like it, makes me feel part of something. Didn’t have much time to dwell on it because the forest started to close in on us and before we knew it we were surrounded by spiders. The biggest bastard spiders you ever saw.
 
Yes!
 
Well, that was until one of the fuckers webbed my arse to the ground. All I could do was swing from the waist at anything that came close, or chuck an axe at ones far away. I got a few good hits in but not enough to finish the job. I MIGHT have missed one with a thrown axe and that’s why it was stuck in the tree. Worst thing? I had to watch Rynaar literally catch a web that was spat at him and just toss it to the ground, and watch Bort and Thal burn the other spiders and Torwynn change into a FUCKING BEAR this time and rip up the spiders while I was…stuck.
 
Not only did I not get a kill, Thal sent his magic floaty holy spirity cheater’s weapon to cut me loose.
 
AFTER THE FUCKING FIGHT HAD ENDED YOU ELF BASTARD.
 
So that’s why I’m writing this on the top of a spider I didn’t kill, covered in guts.
 
I bloody love this lot.