Beers and Beards: A Cozy Dwarf Tale

“You see Balin, the main ways to earn money quickly are stealing, winning the lottery, or gamblin’. We already won the lottery with gunpowder, but all the advance went to our indenture, so we’re left with stealing and gamblin’.”

“I think yer gamblin’ here Pete.”

“Naww, I disagree. I have a monstrously high vitality, and dwarven ale doesn’t affect me much. I’m nearly guaranteed to win this competition, which makes it practically stealing.” I grinned at Balin, who simply shook his head.

“It says here ya needed to sign up a couple o’ days ago.”

He pointed to the slip of paper, which read:

Barck’s Bounty Beer Brawl

A drinking competition sponsored by the Lord of Minnova

In cooperation with Minnova Casino and the City of Minnova

The deca-millenial Crack Drinking Competition approaches!

Compete with Minnova’s best and prove your worth!

Top three will go on to represent Minnova at the Capital. The last one standing wins!

First Prize: 72 Mithril

Second Prize: 12 Mithril

Third Prize: 12 Gold

Inquire at Minnova Casino for more information. All entry forms must be completed by the 30th.

No alcohol immunity allowed.

Currency converted to roughly twelve silver coins to one gold coin, and then twelve gold to one mithril coin. A single silver had roughly the same buying power as a ten dollar bill back home. That meant the first prize was over one hundred thousand dollars.

I held up a copy of my completed entry form for Balin to see. “I signed up a while back. I’ve been thinking about this for a while.”

Balin read over the form. “There’s a fifty silver entry fee!?”

“Yep. I used my own money, so don’t worry about it.” Fifty silver could go a surprisingly long way in a medieval society if you were willing to subsist on nothing but erdroot, bread, and beer. I didn’t want to subsist on erdroot, bread, and beer, dammit.

“Don’t worry about it? Pete, we may need that silver soon!”

“No, we already need it now. You need to spend money to earn money, Balin. Any capitalist could tell you that.”

He sighed and scratched his head. Balin had mellowed a lot over the last week. He’d achieved his short term goal, which was meeting Annie. The next step was to obtain her family’s approval for a courtship. Right now things were too up in the air for that conversation to happen. Speaking of which.

“Listen Balin, if we earn enough money to save the brewery, think about what that will mean for Mr. Goldstone. We could probably skip right past the ‘are you a good match for my Annie’ step, and jump straight to ‘Will you please marry my daughter you marvelous bastard’ step.”

I had a few reasons to be so confident. I had noticed that drinking was social rather than competitive; dwarves mostly drank to enjoy the taste and experience of the beer. I’d asked around, and apparently drinking competitions just weren’t a thing; chugging was disrespectful to the beer. On the other hand, people back on Earth were competitive about everything, and beer drinking had been turned into an art. Some of my techniques were unheard of, at least according to discreet questioning of Aqua.

I could see Balin waver. “I dunno, Pete. I don’t want it to look like I’m buyin’ her.”

I decided to give it one last push. “Balin, Annie will be crushed if the brewery goes under. She still feels that the current situation is entirely her fault. Tell me you won’t do whatever it takes to help achieve her dreams?” I barely kept my voice from oozing schmooze. There was no real need to convince Balin here, it was all my own money, but I wanted him on board. He would be loath to accept a ‘handout’ from me unless he was involved in the enterprise somehow. Even if it was only moral support.

Balin nodded a few times. “You know what,” His voice grew firm, “yer right, Pete. I was even thinkin’ of goin’ to tha dungeon and earnin’ gold that way. If ya think you can win, we should do it.”

“You’re in?”

“Aye, let’s do it.”

“Good, because I need you to go get every penny you own and bet it on me.” Ok, so maybe most of it would be my money.

“WHAT!?”

—

The actual competition was slightly later that afternoon, so we first arranged some time off from work, then went and secretly got me some semi-formal clothes. We’d made some polite excuses about ‘grabbin’ a drink’ to Aqua (which was true) as we left the building. I wanted to look good, but still be comfortable. I’ve done a lot of drinking competitions in my time, and even won some of them too. I knew all the tricks, and one of them was an expanding waistband. You didn’t want to limit yourself with a heavy belt, and dwarven outfits almost always had rigid armor accouterments like a heavy leather belt or girdle.

So I got a comfortable set of dark brown pants with a simple slip tie knot. They had the pinstripes that were the current height of fashion, as well as some leather greaves and deep pockets. The shirt was a soft white linen with three buttons at the top and a small ornate plate over the heart. The suit jacket was a dark brown, and was a bit more armored, though only with some leather vambraces and shoulderguards. The usual cravat was replaced with a fashionable leather gorget that was more of a weird tie than an actual armor piece. All told, it was the least ‘armored’ I’d ever been since I’d arrived in Minnova.

“I don’t like goin’ without armor.” Balin muttered. He was wearing the good armored suit, which Aqua had kindly starched and ironed for him. He was quite snazzy in it, and I think I saw Annie nab him and drag him off to a dark room when he’d first worn it into the brewery.

“Are you serious? You have a rare milestone that grants you armor any time you need it.”

“Aye, but that’ll only work once.”

“You only need it once!”

“Still….”

“You look fine, and besides, nobody is going to attack us at the Casino.”

Balin silently stared at me. I stared back. I began to gently and desperately shake my head ‘no’, and he made a slightly sad face and shook his head ‘yes’.

“Nooo nonono…. please tell me there won’t be an actual brawl. It’s a fancy casino…” I moaned.

“There will probably be a brawl, Pete. How long have you been a dwarf now? How often did Grim’s whinin’ ever stop us from havin’ a row?”

“I just thought things would be a bit more civilized at an official competition...” I had to stop a slight whine from entering my voice.

“Oh, it is. You’ll get a pair of silver knuckledusters to tha back o’ tha head instead of plain iron ones.”

“I’m glad I have you then.”

“You’ll be fine, ya always could handle yerself in tha mine!”

“You may have missed it, Mr. born fighter, since you were always in the thick of it. I spent most brawls hidin’ under Opal’s skirt.”

“Ooooh, I hope Bran never finds out. He’ll be right mad at ya’.” Balin winced.

“It’s a figure of speech Balin. Opal doesn’t even wear skirts.”

—

Evening arrived, and we made our way to the casino. Between the two of us we’d collected just under twelve gold to bet. I still had about half my initial hundred odd silver, and we’d earned quite a bit more from our work at the Brewery. We wanted to work for plain room and board, but Jeremiah refused, saying ‘free work’ had no real value. Balin and I were pretty sure Annie and Jeremiah would try to stop us from using our gold this way, so we’d kept it under wraps. It would be a nice surprise for them later!

The casino itself was one of the very few multistorey buildings in the city. Anything over a single storey seemed to be limited to official city structures, religious buildings, or clock towers. It made for rather easy navigation, as landmarks were simple to spot. The casino was a beautiful beige-granite castle-like edifice, with light shining out of nearly every nook and cranny. There was so much obvious magic and power on display that it practically hurt to look at.

I’d come by earlier for my entry form, but hadn’t really explored. I’d taken to staying indoors and chatting with Aqua while I worked myself to the bone in the brewery. She was an absolute landmine of information. Not a goldmine, since I had to pay incredibly close attention to every word I said around her. Aqua was a Blessed of Midna, and had access to [Truespeech] which gave her some small insight into truth and lies. It wasn’t a true lie detector, but it provided a bit of context for why so many dwarves were straight laced: It was a survival strategy for dealing with a population of empaths.

I’d asked Aqua if human society was similar, but she said human society was simply so fast and loose, and humans so capable of self-deception, that trying to separate fact from fiction was impossible. I filed that under ‘make my own judgements later’.

Balin and I joined the throng entering the casino. We were swept alongside armored sequined dresses, mithril plate, and black leathers until we were brought before a couple of guards. They looked us over, pronounced us acceptable, and then let us in.

If you’ve never been inside a casino before, they’re almost always a giant open room. That provides the perfect acoustics to hear when someone wins big. The idea is that it fosters a feeling of shared excitement.

It’s also really loud, and crowded.

There were tables filled with dwarves everywhere. There were dice games, roulette games, some kind of peg games, tumble games, and a lot of other games I’d never seen before. There was an abundance of beer, a notable lack of cards, and at least two ongoing brawls.

“Balin, where are the card games?” I had to exercise my self-control to keep from yelling at the top of my lungs just to be heard. I’d figured a few games of blackjack or poker would help cool my nerves. An easy win was in the bag, but performance jitters were completely normal. Not that my wife had ever complained about my performance.

“Why would ya want cards in a gamblin’ hall?” Balin asked, confused. “‘Please accept my condolences that ya’ lost all yer gold?’ ‘Congratulations on bein’ a lucky bastard?’”

My eyes widened. “Wait, you’re saying that playing cards don’t exist?”

“What dwarf would want ta’ bet on paper? The only thing worth bettin’ on is cold, hard, cash!”

Literally cold and hard! Every table and every game seemed to involve the use of gems. There was a roulette that had a pair of diamonds rolling around in it. One brightly lit game had gems of different cuts falling down pins. They flashed and twinkled like the gamblers’ starstuck dreams, before landing in a slot that said ‘House Wins’. A few games of ‘cups’ were ongoing with dwarves trying to guess which cups had what gems hiding beneath.

“Dear Gods, It’s nothing but gems!” I filed ‘playing cards’ into my valuable innovations pile alongside chess, go, and a myriad of other games. “What are people supposed to compete in?”

“Dice, mostly. Have ya’ ever played Liar’s Dice?”

“Aye, the drinking game version mostly.” Liar’s dice was a fun little game that was easy to play, but hard to master. Each player got a cup and six dice to play with. You’d spin the dice inside the cup and then plant it upside down on the table, trapping the dice underneath. You were allowed to look at the dice under your cup, and then had to state how many of a specific number of dice were likely to be under all the cups at the table. For example, I might say “I think there are three fours under all the cups at the table. The next person could either call a ‘bluff’ or had to increase the chosen number or the number of dice, say to “four fours” or “three fives””.

There were a few monkey wrenches. Sixes counted as any number, and the dealer would always throw a cup of six dice down as well, but didn’t need to guess. Additionally, if you called ‘bluff’ or if someone called ‘bluff’ on you and you were wrong, you lost a dice. Dwarven dice seemed to be large cut gems, but it was otherwise what I was used to.

“Do you want to play a round?” I asked, it would probably help to do something I was used to, actually.

Balin shook his head and pointed towards an enormous sign that read ‘Drinking Competition’. “I don’t want ta chance you gettin’ knocked out. Let’s head over, Pete.”

“Alright, let’s go win a hundred mithril.” I rubbed my hands together and strode confidently towards the stairs.

“Seventy-two.”

“Same difference!”