Brewer's Assistant

The Brewer's Assistant, the Barrel That Doesn't Know How to Stop

Temperament

The brewer's assistant has neither moods nor whims: it has a task, and it sees it through to the end. It measures, tastes, weighs, starts again, with a diligence nothing can distract, except a scent it has never smelled. Then everything stops, and it sniffs at length, like an old master bent over an unknown vintage. It never grows tired. That is your job, on its behalf.

Handling it

It obeys the object that commands it and two words, one to wake it, the other to put it to sleep. Give it one clear order, and only one at a time. Pour it any liquid at all: if it holds the faintest trace of poison, it spits it straight back out through its tap. Above all, remember to tell it to stop.

Rewards

It doesn't eat, doesn't drink, asks for nothing. What it loves are new ingredients: a spice brought back from a distant market, a flower that grows only at altitude, a nameless resin. It keeps them somewhere inside. It never forgets them. One evening, it gives them back to you in a mug.

At the table

Its 550 pounds have no love for stairs or rope bridges, and its tap drips when it's happy. If you forget to put it to sleep, don't be surprised to find your potions turned into an excellent beer. When evening comes, set down in a corner of the inn, it waits without a sound for the word that will wake it, and only the small red glow in the hollows of its carvings shows that it has never quite stopped tasting the air.