Beers and Beards: A Cozy Dwarf Tale

Book 3: Chapter 28: Tablero da Gucci

It took a while, and a round on the house (me, I was the house) for us to calm an entire bar full of angry adventurers. Team Brightstar had done a number on the furniture and a few patrons, but with two [Healers] in attendance the injured got patched right up. When everyone learned what was going on they found the whole situation hilarious, but still wanted drinks for the trouble.

Then someone connected the fact that The Thirsty Goat and Lucky Jean’s were competitors for the next round of the Octamillenial Brewing contest, and things got heated again. As any good regulars, the patrons were very protective of their watering hole. “Dirty Spies” got tossed around a few times, along with “Tunnel Snakes” and “Beardless Rats”. Thankfully Ironbellows got the rowdy adventurers calmed down by saying we were actually “Good Mates”.

Still, the adventurers were bloody minded and the mood called for a show, so we decided to have a good natured Feud. Thankfully Eastern Crack was more accepting of drinking contests than the more traditional West, and their Golden Brew was palatable enough for me to stomach it. Ironbellows called up all his Journeymen and Apprentices, and we had a Thirsty Goat vs Lucky Jean’s drinking Feud.

I, of course, drank everyone under the table. With no pro-drinkers on the level of good old Ho-Ho-Ho Rumbob to compete with me, I ruthlessly crushed the opposition. The gathered drunken adventurers cheered as I emptied my tenth glass of Golden Brew while the last Apprentice Brewer of Lucky Jean’s slid unconscious off the bench.

My belch was a victory call that shook the heavens.

I was hoping the crowd would clear after that and we could go back to talking treasure, but instead Starshine got up and proudly announced that Brightstar had just passed their adventuring certification.

At which point the mob-turned-contest turned into a godsdamn party. Some bright soul ran out to get a [Bard], and half the bar turned into a drunken mosh pit.

With everything going on, there was no way we were going to get any more treasure hunting done. So instead I found myself seated across the table from a revived Ironbellows preparing to play one of my favourite drinking games: Tablero.

“I’m a big fan of Thud meself.” Ironbellows said proudly, laying out a familiar checkerboard. “Can beat most folk. Chess too.”

“Tha multiverse?”

“An infinite number of universes each of which contains their own version of a traumatized teenager in a spider suit.”

“What?”

“Just smile and nod.” Richter muttered as he watched me set up the board. “Ya lose less beard hairs ‘dat way.”

“Why don’t you go join everyone else at the party, Richter? Show yer support fer team Brightstar?” I snipped. “And mayhaps you all could appreciate my attempts at given’ ya grey beards!”

Richter shook his head. “I don’t like dis new style of music. Makes my ears bleed.”

Sigh. Couldn’t argue with that. The bard was playing covers of Raspberrysyrup’s popular new country mining songs. They hadn’t quite gotten the beat right, and it was worse than listening to Toby Keith.

“Can ya tell me what you’re setting up.” Ironbellows asked, pulling out his own beer journal and a pencil.

“Like I said before, the game is called Tablero da Gucci – Tablero fer short.”

“Is it common in – ,” Ironbellows looked around conspiratorially. “uh, yer hometown?”

“You know? Not really. It’s not as common as beer pong, that’s fer sure.”

“Beer pong?”

“Oooh! I know ‘dis one!” Richter said excitedly. “It’s great fun! We have some tables set up in ‘da courtyard at ‘de Thirsty Goat!”

“Aye, just come by sometime and I’ll play a game with you. As fer yer question, Tablero was created by a group of crazy people called the SCA – the Society for Creative Anachronism. My wife – Caroline – she was always more into than me; she loved doing crochet.”

Ironbellows frowned. “A society fer creatively being traditional? How do ya be creatively traditional? Then it wouldn’t be traditional.”

“See? Crazy! They sit around in old clothes and talk in old dialects while pretendin’ they live in old times!”

“I suppose I could see the draw.” Appletina admitted. “Our Ancestors did have lives worth celebrating and learning from.”

Richters eyes narrowed. “If they’re so crazy, how do ya know so much about ‘em.”

I grinned. “Who says I wasn’t crazy?”

“Of course.”

“Hey, I made mead. It’s impossible not to get involved with the local SCA if you make mead. And I got to throw axes!”

“What’s so special about ‘dat?

“Uh. Touche. But you really would've appreciated the music. Some of their drinking songs were gold.”

“Oh? Are ya gunnin’ to be the next Raspberrysyrup?” Ironbellows waggled his eyebrows.

I hesitated, and Ironbellows rolled his eyes. “If you think you lot were obvious,” he snickered. “She was a damn beacon! We didn’t want ta get near her, eh!”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Hmm…” I was suddenly concerned about our tight ties to Berry. If a simple brewery like Lucky Jean’s was privy to so much information about the Chosen Catalysts, what would other families have? Especially if they had old clanmates that were Chosen themselves.

Just like –

I felt my heart plummet. Just like old clans like the POTS.

How much did Copperpot actually know? How much did he suspect? His clan was founded by a Chosen; he had to know. He’d been too quick to jump on board with us. Too quick to believe in absolutely everything we did. I’d been putting it down to business acumen and the incredible success of Boomdust, but now…

I would need to have a serious chat with the wise-aleck [Engineer] when I next had the chance. Sooner rather than later.

I took a deep breath and put it out of mind. There was nothing I could do about it now, and it was better to concentrate on what I could do. Namely whupping this lucky SOAB in one of my favourite games.

“Last but not least we need a pair of dice,” I said, as I finished rolling out the chess board.

“You can use mine.” Richter said, pulling two six-sided topaz-coloured gems out of his pocket. Multi-sided gems with carved runes were commonly used in dwarven gambling, and I still hadn’t had an opportunity to introduce card games. I was really starting to miss rummy.

“We’ll be playing using Whistlemugs of Golden Brew as soon as – ah, there she is. Thanks Appletina.” I nodded at the pretty dwarfess as she put seven Whistlemugs on the table then rested her fist on her hip,

“Alright. You need to tell me what yer up to, eh?” She said, brightly.

“Gettin’ drunk. With style,” I said with gusto. “If you want to watch, that’s perfect – we’ll need ya in just a tick.”

Tablero was played on a seven by seven board with seven shot-glasses, though a chess board worked in a pinch. Lucky Jean’s was lacking in shots, but Whistlemugs worked just fine for the oversized dwarven chess boards. The wide leather roll-out chess boards were combined with comically large chess pieces to allow for easier kibitzing.

Yes. Kinshasan’s kibitzed at chess. Loudly, while drunk. Filthy heathens.

Well, at least it meant that we had ample space to play. I set the Whistlemugs lovingly down on the end squares one at a time. These particular models were “Octamillenial Special Editions”; Appletina had brought out the good glassware!

The first mug went on the closest right corner, then one more mug in alternating squares down the row. I then did the same on Ironbellows’s side. That put three on my end line, and three on Ironbellow’s side. The idea was that each mug could march freely down their column without running into another mug.

The seventh mug was placed on the center square.

“Alright,” I said, turning to Appletina. “We need you to roll the dice first. Whatever you roll becomes the Queen’s – er, I guess the King’s number.”

Appletina shrugged, took the dice from me, and rolled on the table. They came up showing six and two.

“Eight.” I sucked in my breath. “Well, that’s pretty average, but rough for your first game.”

“The rules Pete?” Ironbellows choked back a laugh. “Yer more distractible than a cat chasin’ a longbeard.”

“There’s one last step! You and I roll off. Winner gets the mug from the middle to put on their side of the board, and gets to go first.”

We each rolled, leaving me with a five, and Ironbellows with a four. I whisked the mug away and placed it in my left corner.

“Now. I’m going to roll the dice, and see what we get. Three and six! That makes nine! A good start! I now need to move two different mugs, one of them three and the other one six. The goal is to make a line of six or seven in a row, or make a diagonal of seven. We’ll move the mugs back and forth until one of us makes the line. If you can’t move a mug the exact number of spaces because you’ve run out of room, you skip your turn.”

“Seems simple enough.” Ironbellows rolled a two and a one. He groaned. “Argh, a low roll.”

“Eh, doesn’t really matter. There’s no benefit to having the line closer to your side or mine. This is a drinking game; there isn’t much strategy.”

“I can see that. Ah, before I forget to mention. Regardless of what happens, we're still going to try to win the brewing contest.”

“Wouldn't have it any other way.” I rolled a seven and tossed the dice back. “Seven, eleven, and twelve are a skip. So I miss my turn. Your go.”

Ironbellows rolled and soon we were moving mugs back and forth, chatting about life, beer, the contests, the monolith that was Kinshasa and more.

Eventually I rolled an eight. “Ah, the King’s number!” I took one of the mugs from the board and intoned, “Gods save tha King!” Then I chugged it back with a single gulp.

Ironbellow gave me a look of horror, and Appletina choked. “I couldn’t believe it when were competin’, and I still can’t. How did ya drink it that fast!?”

“Practice. Now, as you saw, if you roll the King’s number, you need to toast the King with a random mug. You can’t do it the same way twice, so get flowery with it; it’ll get harder as you get drunker!” I passed the empty mug to Appletina to refill, then placed it back where I’d gotten it from.

“I still get my turn though,” I continued. “If the King’s number was a pass number – that’s seven, eleven, or twelve – then I would put the glass on your baseline instead of back where I got it from.”

“And then skip yer turn?”

“You got it.”

After a few more minutes, Ironbellows made a row of seven. “Hah! Got it! Now what?”

“Now I drink half of them, rounded up.”

I tossed the four mugs back and shivered from the sour, cruddy taste.

Ironbellows watched me with a mixture of disgust and amusement. “Yer mad. I’ve seen dwarves knocked off their feet fer drinkin’ just three as fast as they could, and you just downed four faster than any dwarf I’ve ever seen.”

“What about ‘de other three mugs?” Richter asked, taking notes.

“I give them to whomever I want. INCLUDING the spectators. So that’s one fer Mister Herder here, one to you Richter, and one to you Appletina, thanks for watching!”

Appletina guffawed and drank hers with good grace, while Richter chuckled ruefully.

We soon gathered a crowd as onlookers came to kibitz at chess then found something even more fun to kibitz. People were soon shouting which mugs to move, who to give the extra drinks to, or what body part of the King to toast next.

We were on “May Yearn give a lovin’ tap to tha King’s left nut” when Ironbellows gave a massive belch and fell to the table.

“Argghhh… when does it end!? How do we decide who wins!?” he groaned.

“We *hic* –” I was getting a bit tipsy too, “We end it when we run out of beer. Whoever can’t fill a glass from the pitcher first, loses.”

“But…” Ironbellows eyed where Appletina had now placed out a third pitcher. “Me bearded beauty has been bringin’ out fresh pitchers. We’re not gonna run out of beer!”

I picked up a full mug from the board and gave it a demure sip. “Uh Huh!”

WIth that, Ironbellows gave another groan and slumped off the table, out like a light.

“And that!” I said as the raucous cheering began. “Is the other way to win at Tablero!”