Whiskey of Life

Amongst all the beers, ales, wines, whiskeys, and other alcoholic beverages found in the world of Onil, Merrybrew Ale usually tops the list for most people. Some are even rarer and more refined but there is at least one drink that almost no common folk have even heard of. Those that have, usually regret it.

The Whiskey of Life is the result of a particularly skilled but bored vampire. He had long since mastered the craft of every fermented beverage and his product was sold for hundreds or gold pieces a bottle or more. He and boundless lands for his vineyards. His mastery came with a dullness though, and so he began to experiment.

Several decades later the first sealed Whiskey of Life was in his hands and he was addicted. He was also skilled in the arcane and he found that, unknown to the victim, he could tie somebody's soul to the drink and bottle it in with the liquid when sealing it. When somebody uncorked the bottle, the victim's soul would be torn apart violently. Wherever they were even a different plane of existence, they would fall dead, and a faint scream could be heard coming out of the bottle as the soul dissipated into the air.

He further experimented and found that the length that the soul was kept sealed changed the flavor of the whiskey in parallel with the fermented liquid itself aging. He also found that the type of victim he bound mattered. A penniless scoundrel on the streets tasted much different than an aristocrat. He began to use his network to sit with the most influential individuals in the land, and tied their souls to a bottle of whiskey while with them.

This quickly became his most prized collection. When he even entertained selling them, the bottles connected to low status people in the world still cost tens of thousands of gold and the kings and queens? Millions. This wasn't sold in shops or bars, one of these bottles was a gift of a lifetime

After enough time had passed he found himself a nice side effect. In the cellar that he held this unique product, he had the power of a God. With a simple destructive spell the cellar could collapse and the world of Onil would crumble in the loss of so many in power at once. It went much farther too, he spent more and more time on other planes of existence, though there was generally more wariness outside of the material plane when it came to magic such as this. Still, he added plenty to his stock

Secret: Out of a sense of daring, 'call of the void' type thing, he tied his own soul to one of these bottles. Maybe he even mixed it in amongst all the others to give a feeling of danger every time he opened a bottle of gifted one to somebody, that he might die at any moment.