Beers and Beards: A Cozy Dwarf Tale

When I’d come to Schist about contingency ideas in case of another riot, or if things went sideways with Harmsson, we’d made a long list. Schist had considered it a fun thought exercise, and I’d considered it good planning. We’d come up with a lot of ideas, but nailed down the one we’d thought would be maximum chaos with minimum destruction.

Which meant the entire garden exploded into chaos when I activated the magical trigger in my pocket and several hundred barrels of Dragonator detonated upwards, covering the entire beerfest with smoking, sticky beer.

During our tests, the Dragonator had shown to make a highly effective smokescreen when exposed over a wide area in a short period of time. When combined with an alchemical additive in the charge, we were able to increase the ‘stickiness’ factor as well.

I stuck a finger out from under the table and pressed it against a pool of beer. I had to exert a good bit of effort pulling it back out again and nodded with approval.

All according to plan.

I activated my Manasight, and green figures began dotting the smoke. It was hard to catch individual people, but it was good enough to dodge out of the way as sticky, angry dwarves flailed about, unable to get free from the swamp of beer. I began counting down in my head; sixty seconds was enough to avoid the worst of the stick, and plotted my escape route in my mind.

We all had designated exit points into the service tunnels below the beer garden. Mine was in a mausoleum about twenty paces to the east from here. That was, of course, assuming my memory was correct.

I began edging through the mass of people, moving aside any time a slowly moving mass of green mana got too close.

I let out a sigh of relief as I spotted the telltale brown mana of stone, and my outreaching hands felt the cool surface of the Mausoleum. I stumbled around it, keeping away from the figures currently glued to its surface, and felt for the lock.