According to all the gossip and banter going on around in Pormont... well, just about everywhere, the Dark Harvest season is approaching. What was the Dark Harvest, actually? Some disdainful looks and realizations a Yladian obviously wouldn't know of Falderen's traditions later, Sylpha understood that it was essentially a festival where lots of beer is drunk, lots of candy goes around for the children and people both young and old get frightened by various "scary" things on purpose. Basically, Halloween. Sylpha used the opportunity to buy ingredients to bake. Since it was going to be a festival, she wanted to use this time to get some bread done and send it around the NPCs, hopefully improving her standing with them. Using some sourdough and rye as the star ingredients, Sylpha produced several loaves of pumpernickel; a dense, slightly sweet bread with a dark color fitting the occasion. Only after bribing several villagers with them did she find out that the hops farms and breweries were in dire need of help. One loaf later and they were willing to let her and whoever else she could bring come along and make a difference. Obviously, a single Yladian wouldn't be enough to make much of a change, so... She contacted whoever she's happened to have met before through a Mail and waited. Perhaps someone would answer the call. @Verity @Solaria
It had been a bit of surprise for the healer as she was gathering herbs in the woods. A blinking envelope on her UI distracted her from her most recent find, a small batch of mustard leaves hidden in the brush. "Oh, it's a message from Sylpha. I haven't seen her since the troll attack, have I? I hope she's well..." She waved her hand a bit to open the message. It had something to do with helping locals with their harvest and use of crops soon after. Looking closer, she noticed that @Sylpha Astarte seemed to be including another familiar face based on the message's 'received' information. So Verity would possibly be joining too? With the three of them, surely they could do great things. She began to type a message with swift movements through the air. Solaria I'm more than happy to help! I'm in Brisshal's woods gathering, actually...I bet some of these herbs could really help bring out some flavor! I'll be there in a bit, so wait for me kay? I'm on my way now! The moment she'd sent her message, the alchemist bagged her findings from the forest and ran as quickly as she could down the path to the golden plains of Pormont. It had taken her time to get to the meeting place, but she was surprised to be the first one there aside from the one requesting her to join in. "@Verity's not here yet, huh? But still...With the three of us, we can do amazing things! Let's help make some yummy treats. I hope the harvest will go well."
Verity just finished not only to gain some experience for his combat masteries but also gathering some herbs for his Alchemy mastery, which he planned to make some new kind of potion to aid in future battles. However, that might have to wait as he noticed a blinking envelope in his UI as well, which caused him to groan that another quest was interrupting his busy time again. However, once he saw the names from the message, he was surprised that the two women that he previously met will be working with him once more. Not only that, the recipient wanted an alchemist to complete this quest. This made him change his mind about the quest as he did need to find a way to create a new potion. Also, he might able to know more about @Solaria and @Sylpha Astarte if he could. With that, he typed in his reply to the message: Verity I wasn't planning anything for Halloween in this game. But since you need an alchemist, then I'll be happy to help you on your progress. With that, he spent the few hours heading towards Pormont where the Terrasphere version of the Halloween festivities called a Dark Harvest was held. Once he arrived, he noticed the green-haired Yladian and the blue-haired Yladian waiting for him. "Sorry that I'm late. I was in Stokbon beforehand and it's difficult to go here without a mount. So we have to make some treats for the Dark Harvest, correct?"
Of the mass-mail she sent, Sylpha only got two replies: One from Solaria and one from Verity. She had asked those willing to come in the mail to come to Pormont and meet just outside a village near the farms. The first to arrive was Solaria, one of the few other Yladians Sylpha ever got to know. Her green hair and cheery voice marked her arrival. Her first statement was, to Sylpha's surprise, an implication that she had already known Verity. "You already knew Verity? That would save time for introductions." Sylpha said. "Also, I'm not sure if you can define beer as 'treats'..." She added. Before her train of thought could continue, Verity showed up with his trademark scruffy look. He clearly rushed, but Sylpha didn't expect him to groom himself if they were going to get down to work. He, like Solaria, said something similar about making treats for the Dark Harvest. "No," She repeated. "Unless you consider beer as a treat, but neither of you strike me as alcoholics." Now that Sylpha thought about it, perhaps she could throw out an offer if they were really interested in making something festive. "If you're really interested, though, we can bake some things together after we're done. We can discuss this while we move." Starting to walk, Sylpha lead the party over to the farm that agreed to let her help out. Of course, they weren't relying on them alone (which would be a very silly thing to do), so they would be approaching a noisy farm as a scant few people scrambled to harvest the matured hops plants of a farm larger than they could handle. Instantly recognizing Sylpha, one of the farmhands rushed over. "Oh, thank god you're finally here." was the greeting they were given as he then peered at the other two. "Are these the helpers you brought? That's not enough..." Before Sylpha or anyone else could interject, another farmhand's raised voice shouted: "Three more people means three more portions NOW GET THEM OUT HERE!" Following his command, the party would be ushered to a tool shed, equipped with long sticks, large baskets and rushed out onto the yard. Men and women, young and old were rushing to knock down the plants with the sticks and picking out the hops flowers into the basket. It was easy and intuitive. "Well, time to get to work." said the azure-haired Yladian as she nabbed an unplucked branch from the ground and began to fill her basket with the hops.
@Sylpha Astarte's surprise left the ever energized elf to giggle, a hand reaching to idly rub her neck. She did know a number of people out of nowhere, it seemed like. For some reason, Solaria just had a knack for meeting people and remembering them well enough, even if she'd only met them once or twice. Her nervous laughter was ended by a simple explanation. "I was one of those kids that had a goal to make a hundred friends when I started a new year of school, you could say." @Verity's arrival began with an apology, which lead her to return to a more enthusiastic smile, her embarrassment of her own usual actions fading swiftly upon another familiar face in the crowd. "Been a while, hasn't it Verity? Looks like this time our job'll be a lot smoother at least. Let's work hard as a team once again!" Looking about the farmlands and the various plots of hops to gather, she followed along before being able to reply about the alcohol issue, the farmers rather adamant about having them help rather than chatter. As she took a spot not far from her friends, she tried to continue the conversation Sylpha had been explaining their mission with. "Yeah...I'm really not a fan of it. Alcohol, I mean." Her mind tried to vacate the concept immediately. She'd drunk once, just once, without intending to. It was a very uncomfortable moment to look back on, still. She began to fill her basket with the flora and the specialty grapes that would be used to make the brew. Sylpha had asked for alchemists and cooks, but what good did alchemy do in making drinks? The most she could do normally was making medicine and poison. "I wonder...What properties these have that could heal people, rather than just help them escape? Could they help heal wounds if prepared properly, too?"
From his perspective, after @Sylpha Astarte said this, he thought of them as treats since his colleagues' habit of inviting him out for a treat. Obviously, he didn't like to drink beer and reject their offer every time they do. "Whatever we call them and the dislike of drinking them, brewing a beer can be a different story for me as an alchemist. But I will try for the sake of this quest." Just as @Solaria approached him with a smile, Verity's eyes widen a bit as he felt a little uncomfortable around her. He was starting to trust her after a few encounters with her, but he was still conflicted whether if she might still hiding something from him or he was just exaggerating about this. "O-Oh... Sure..." Picking up his basket, he joined the girls on picking up some hop flowers as ingredients for the drinks. One by one, he carefully tried not to remove the petals from the stem as every one of them counts to make sure the brew was successful. As he continued, he turned to Solaria when she asked about potions. "I don't know. From what I know, internal wounds can be healed after you drank the healing potion. Though I didn't see any signs of their external wounds than that. It might be because my potion I given to them is a low-level creation that I made before."
As the azure-haired Yladian filled the basket with the green flowers that looked more like seed cones than flowers, she engaged in the conversation. After all, there really wasn't much else to do. The first topic that came up was regarding the properties of the hops. "Ah, you didn't know?" She said as she glanced up to her green-haired friend. "This plant is regarded as both a cooking ingredient and as an alchemy ingredient, so brewing beer with it actually counts as both and are thus affected by your skill. This stuff..." Sylpha coaxed the last flower off the branch she was working on and held it up as a gesture. "...supposedly treats both insomnia and restlessness." She placed it back into the basket before tossing her branch aside, picking up the stick and standing up to knock a new branch down to work on. She had known about the effects beforehand because she once had homework to brew beer at home and then bake bread out of that beer. The medicinal properties were the least of her concerns at the time, and her most vivid memory of it was... It stank. At least, it reeked to her. Her instructor liked it, though. "Apparently you can cook the shoots to eat, too, which is why it's a cooking ingredient. The flowers were added to soup and also made tea, but I don't know what would happen if you threw it into a potion." Well, Sylpha couldn't be blamed for her lack of knowledge on that. After all, she wasn't an alchemist like the other two. With a very monotonous task in front of her, Sylpha found herself opening up more than she expected. It could be said it was because they did not have much else to do other than talk. Even when she had to sit around and wait for dough to prove or for breads to bake, the room would become a place for idle chatter. When Sylpha started working for real, though, it was quite a rush to get batches of everything readied by the time the doors opened. In a real bakery, the customers were not going to sit around like they could and wait for their sweets to cook. Maybe that was why she took up the job so readily after hearing about the rush to get the beers brewing in time.
Though she had sensed some sort of stutter in @Verity's reaction to her greeting, she ignored it. His later explanation of the way potions worked surely yielded a great deal of truth, but it hadn't been nearly as enlightening as @Sylpha Astarte's information- both, however, she was more than thankful for. "I wonder if hops were used in the tease my friend's family always makes then...? I can't imagine that if it's used for something festive it'd taste too bad, though..." Shaking her head a bit, she picked a few more of the flowers while thinking deeply for a rare instance. "If they can be used for insomnia, I should try to get some for my brother...Well, after doing more detailed research, perhaps. I'll try it myself first, either way." Her lips were somewhat even upon her face, not really turned up or down, though she seemed to hum a slightly happy melody as she tried to avoid talking the ears off of those around her. While Solaria was impulsive to a fault, she was also known to get pretty deep into whatever she did, stubbornly focusing on it until the task was done. There was no room for delay in this! Finding over time that her basket was getting fairly full, she stood and turned to those around her, before seeming to let her focus fall on Sylpha and Verity. "I think we're close to set. What was next on the agenda? Something tells me the brewing part is gonna take even longer if we want to do it right."
Well, the more you learned. Again, Verity wasn't the type to drink alcohol, but hearing about the properties of the hop flower in the game and in real life. Staring at the plant itself after he picked another one, he wondered if he might able to make something out of this after the quest if the NPCs allow him to take one. "For now, we should not focus on the plant shoot's properties in a form of a potion. After we completed this one, we can decide about it if we obtain this one ourselves," he said to @Sylpha Astarte before he went back on hop flower-picking duty. As a few minutes past, Verity managed to fill his basket of hop flowers full as he looked at Sylpha and @Solaria as the latter discussed the next step. "Unless we know about the full recipe and the instructions, we won't know if the brewing session would take long. What do you think, Sylpha?"
"It's actually bitter." Was the last comment the azure-haired Yladian left after Verity's suggestion to pick up the pace. While they weren't the ones in a hurry, it was clear that everyone else around them were quite frantic. After all, getting beer done wasn't something that could be done in a day if you considered the fermentation process. Their silence continued until all of them managed to fill their baskets with the flowers and the yard looked depleted of ripened plants. Verity asked about the details of the impending brewing session. "I know the basic process offhand, just the brewing process would take half a day and the fermentation itself... maybe a week or two." Sylpha replied. A voice from one of the farmhands cut off their thoughts. "Oi, get those baskets hauling! We still need to get the wort done!" "Ah, they're already calling." Commented Sylpha as she raised the basket. Since the hops flower was light due to a lack of water, the basket could be carried even by someone less physically able like Sylpha who was built more for magic. Even if she carried large trays of bread in real life, she wasn't sure how much of that muscle even applied. Since she could handle it, that was all she needed to know. "Let's go." Soon enough they reached a large brewery where they would add their baskets to the collection of others, where many others were sorting through the baskets separating the flowers into categories. After that, they were pointed towards a room with six copper kettles and a large wooden mash/lauter tun to hold all the mash of malted barley and whatever secret recipe of grains they had thrown in there. A very sweet scent emanated from the tun. From the many people working away at the kettles, someone approached the party of three. "You three must be the extra help Todd brought in." He said. "You can have those two kettles over there." Sylpha nodded and looked to the two. "Since you two are alchemists, I suggest you take the kettles. Basically, I'll get the sweet stuff from there" She pointed to the tun where the sweet scent was coming from "then I'll bring the first batch of hops and we'll get that boiling. This should take about one to one and a half hours...? Your job is not to let the thing over-boil while I add the hops at different stages. Over-boiling probably has similarly horrible effects on potions. When that's all done, we just dump it through a filter onto a tray to cool. Any questions? Anyone wants to switch roles instead?" Even if she divided the labour, she had to make sure the other two were okay with the plans. She didn't mind switching, but she wouldn't admit she picked her own role because she disliked the scent of the oil from the hops. At least, not outright.
Lacking knowledge of fermentation's time, particularly in a game, Solaria took each word spoken about the process in with caution. This quest was going to require more tact than she usually had, and more precision as well. For once, she'd purposely have to be serious. At least, to a point she wasn't normally used to anymore. Carrying her basket with a smile, the arrival at their next point of work was a relief. She wasn't fully sure what she'd have to do with it, but at the least, @Sylpha Astarte had a plan. Using their skills was likely the better method indeed, and as an alchemist, she was sure she could learn a lot during this to help make her potions much stronger and more helpful in technique alone. "I'm more than happy with a kettle. How about you, @Verity? For me, at least it'll be easier keeping things from overflowing probably than dealing with my usual mortar stone. But a watched pot never boils, but similarly, certain things show their cooking in different ways. Do we need to keep an eye out for film?"
Like @Solaria, he has no knowledge of the fermentation process, so he also listened to @Sylpha Astarte's explanation while taking notes in his small notepad. But as he did, he slowly realized that this quest will test his alchemy skills as well learning some new methods to it. However, he can agree with Solaria regarding the difficulty of this process. With the slow boil of the pot, it can be difficult to leave it alone nor keeping an eye on it while avoiding not to overboil it. He wanted to take over with the hops, but considering that he was an alchemist and not a cook, he felt using a kettle would be better just in case. "I'll take the kettle as well. But are you sure on handling the hops on your own? If you want, maybe I will take over after you put a few hops or so."
With their roles settled, they could finally get to the brewing. "Okay" Sylpha said with a little smile "Get the water boiling, but one of you should start half a minute after since I will have to work between both your kettles and timing is everything." And with that said, Sylpha went off to siphon two portions of liquid from the mash for their brews. This went into two wooden buckets, which she carried back. It clearly wasn't purely malted barley and Sylpha wasn't knowledgable enough that investigation mode would reveal at least all the grains used in the mixture, even if she could identify the grains if given individual samples. After that, she took a large basket and filled it with the first round of hops. When she finally came back, they would be able to start the actual brew. First, the wort went into the kettle with the water. Then, the hops. In hindsight, Sylpha should have separated the hops into two baskets like the wort, but she didn't want to carry two baskets unless she had to. Once that was done, the azure-haired Yladian went off to look for the yeast jar. She trusted the two to make a brew better than she could. After all, she was a baker, not a chef. The only things she boils on a regular basis is gelatine, chocolate and candy. Asking around lead her to finding it pretty easily. Lifting the lid, she saw that it was live. It had to be, because they weren't the only ones brewing. Remembering the yeast jar's location, she went back for a second and final round of hops. These would be added towards the end of the brew. Now the rest was left to her two alchemist friends. Rolls: 30, 34 +20 modifier (trained) 50, 54 Current Quality through Sylpha's efforts alone is average.
Impulsive as she was, Solaria opted to take the first stab at starting the water, boiling it consistently and watching it with a curious gaze. While bubbles would rise and fall, the water didn't seem to come out too easily, a relief for her even if it meant she had little more to do than watch for the moment. "Something relaxing about boiling water...Always makes me think about tea...I hate it, so why does it comfort me?" Her curiosity kept her busy until the first ingredient for the brew was added. Now that there was something to steep, she took a ladle provided nearby and used it to stir, making sure that each bit got a proper amount of water saturation and heat, and making sure nothing stuck together improperly. Making swirls in the water created patterns with each ingredient, which grew more interesting to look at until it began to soak in their pigments. Looking to @Sylpha Astarte while keeping an eye on the brew every so often, the green-haired Yladian smiled curiously. "How did you find out about this anyway, Sylpha? And...Do we know when it's near done? I've never brewed something like this before. Most of my potions are more like pastes...So I'm curious to know more about this one." After all, she planned to open a shop to sell medicines she was learning to make- some from recipes, and some from her own fooling around. Surely, this would fit a shop like that, wouldn't it? "How's yours looking, @Verity? This one's already an interesting color from the wort and other things. Does it seem like it'll be tasty soon?" (Roll) Dark Harvest Preparation Rolls: 81, 40 +30 Modifier (Proficient) 101, 70 (Because both are higher, these are the new brew qualities! Brew 1 is Supreme for sure, Brew 2 is..still average)
With the two girls already started, Verity didn't waste any time as he also started to boil the water as he stared at it very intensely. He didn't watch the water boil from his kettle back in the real world before, but he did watch his friend's cooking during his visits at his house before. Because of this, he didn't move from his place or keep his eyes away from the kettle as it boiled, which was a habit as it once burned the soup he made for Thanksgiving. When @Sylpha Astarte added the first batch of hops, he stood up from his seat and took a ladle nearby before he started to stir the mixture to make sure the flowers don't stick. When he did this, he was also curious at how the Yladian knew how to use this method to brew potions or drinks like this. However, he sighed regarding @Solaria's question about the hops. "I feel that this alcoholic mixture isn't what you called 'tasty'," Verity sighed as he continued to stir the hops as the started to soak into the pigments of the water. "But I think this mixture is okay for me. I just hope I did this right." Link to Roll Rolls: 78, 35 Modifier: +30 Total: 108, 65
