Bootlegger

Makers of illegal alcohol.

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Aptik

Using ancient recipes hidden deep in old tales, the bootleggers of the Violet Grith make fey wines and libations outside the regulations of the empire.

An aptik makes alcohol from magical fey plants. Fey plants tend to have an hallucinatory edge to them, so their alcohols are appreciated by those who want to get very intensely drunk and see something unexpected in the night. While anyone can work with fey plants, those that do so consistently end up being deeply affected by the plants and the powers of the fey, gaining strange abilities and the occasional affliction.

The fey plants that they use include the following:

• Aitil: a form of juniper used in gin to make the drinker feel like time has slowed down.
• Babeal: a cowslip added to wine to get the drinker drunk faster.
• Cloggorm: a bluebell used to enhance beers, ales, and wines, making them aromatic and euphoric. These flowers call fairies when rung.
• Corcrablath: a lavender used to enhance brandy, adding an aromatic flavor and an intense euphoria.
• Cruithneacht: a form of wheat used in many drinks that causes the drinker to feel connected to the subconscious of those physically closest to them.
• Dris: blackberry brambles (that grow throughout the Bramblebed) create sweet drinks that instill a sense of mischief in the drinker.
• Eoinwort: a form of st. john's wort that makes a liquor red, giving it mild mental healing properties.
• Fairy apple: fairy apples are used in the making of cider, creating a pleasant, cinnamony warmth and contentment.
• Farard: a form of sorghum that is used in various drinks that makes the drinker feel bigger than they are.
• Fey pansy: a pansy added to cider to make it aromatic and grant the drinker mild dreams.
• Fionchaor: a grape used to make wine that is a bright violet in color, causing the drinker to have lucid dreams.
• Garbhcomh: a form of barley that is used in many beers, ales, and liquors; it makes any drink richer in flavor and causes mild hallucinations, mostly auditory.
• Seagal: a form of rye used for whisky that gives the drinker a sense of deep understanding of the nature of dreams, unreality, and perception.
• Searbh: a form of slightly more bitter hops that makes any drink (usually beer) a potent hallucinogen.
• Silin: wild cherries that provide a miracle sure to many, many, many common ailments.
• Sionlamh: a foxglove used to cause wines to burn, mildly poisoning the drinker, and giving them an intense energy.
• Smearban: rowan berries used to strengthen wine, ale, or spirits, giving protection from fairy magic when used.
• Sun thyme: a form of thyme added to ales and ciders to make them aromatic and make the drinker feel lighter and more social.

As they use these plants, they sometimes gain the following powers:

• Green thumb: their thumb literally turns green and gives them the ability to encourage plants to grow by touching them.
• Olfactory reading: they can smell disease or problems with a plant.
• Plandagairt: the invocation of the mystical power of plants, they can invoke the magic inside a plant by breaking one of their seeds.
• Plant speech: they can speak to any fey or mundane plants, and some elemental and celestial plants, but never infernal plants.
• Taste of power: they can know the powers of a plant by tasting it. This can have consequences when the plant is poisonous.

And they are often afflicted with one of these:

• Bubbling consciousness: the aptik sees hallucinatory images in bubbles floating in their vision at all times. These bubbles sometimes speak to them with information from their deep subconscious.
• Fearful whispering: the aptik hears whispers that terrify them when they roll below a 3 on any roll.
• Insectoid delusion: the aptik thinks insects are crawling on them, though the sensation is mild, and they are used to insects due to their work with plants. Any time they roll triple 3s, they insects become real.

While primarily they grow fey plants to make alchohol, they are also capable of and knowledgeable of other fey plants and their properties:

• Bridewort: strewn on the ground at weddings, it makes the bride impervious to disease for the night.
• Cloggorm: a bluebell (see above) that calls fairies when rung.
• Feithleann: a honeysuckle used to repel magic and give dreams of love. It cannot be used in alcohol, but its nectar is a sweet drink.
• Fey elder: the elder tree is the most potent fey tree for protection from infernal powers.
• Fuinseog: the ash tree prevents the fey from stealing your children.
• Gort: an ivy that leads those who follow it to safety, to love, or away from death.
• Meadowsweet: a pain killer and cleansing flower.
• Neanntog: nettles that can be used to form a painful bed that saps the body of all toxins.
• Sabhaircín: a primrose that love, good luck, and inspiration.
• Saileach: the willow tree is a painkiller, but also enhances all witchcraft powers, and its branches can be used to find water.
• Sceach gheal: the fairy tree, the hawthorn, with many, many powers. This tree will open a gate to other realms, cause bad luck to those who harm it, banish evil with its sprigs (if you ask nicely), grant protection to a newborn if the afterbirth is hung from its branches, repel unwanted men with its sprigs, grant beauty with its morning dew, repel lightning when growing near a fey home, grant wishes on Beltane if ribbons are hung from it, medicinal leaves or berries, and more. Consult the GM.
• Straif: a blackthorn tree that keeps secrets and contains magic of witchcraft. Harming it will cause the person to be cursed.

Aptiks keep special gardens hidden throughout the city, as well as breweries, distilleries, and vinyards.

PRO / ATH +1 STR +1 AWA +2 WIL -1 PRS +1 STH /

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Botrusian

In the Green Grith, the making and selling of alcohol is done mostly as a side business or fundraising effort.

Botrusians are skilled gardeners and growers, vintners, distillers, and brewers. They know other plants that can be used in the making of alcohol, especially barley, grapes, and certain berries.

Butrosians know how to tap into the elemental energy of plants to heighten the potency of the drinks they ultimately create. To do this, they must bond with nature by communing with all the greenery around them, preferably in in their gardens or greenhouses. The butrosian must have a deep knowledge of the plants they are communing with and focus on them via meditation and, preferably, by inhaling their fragrances, touching them (without harming them), and even perhaps tasting parts of them that can be safely consumed without harming either the botrusian or the plants.

If they are a good keeper of plants and protector of nature, and if they succeed in their meditations, they will eventually, after many meditations, become attuned to the green and able to sense the elemental energy of plants. Once they are able to sense it, they can encourage it to strengthen or improve the plants they use in their work by making small offerings to the plants or by using special whispering chants.

They use this power to make the apples, apricots, barley, buckwheat, cereal grains, corn, dates, grapes, hops, juniper, plums, potatoes, rye, sorghum, and/or wheat better for fermenting, distilling, or otherwise turning into a drinkable form of alcohol. Other members of the Green Grith look down on them for using their powers so frivolously sometimes, but they tend to drink the results anyway.

PRO -1 ATH +1 STR / AWA +2 WIL +1 PRS +1 STH +1

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Kufera

Bootleggers make illegal hooch to sell for the Red Grith. They use hyperscientific methods to create potent alcohol that is banned in the empire and most parts of the world.

In the Red Grith, the kuferas use advanced scientific processes to create potent alchohol for sale. They create them via hyperscientific methods that allow them to run multiple experiments with the same ingredients at the same time. For example, if an experiment needs one fluid ounce of water, they can run that experiment twice at the same time with only one fluid ounce of water, allowing for use of controls and A/B testing to experiment more rapidly. In terms of the process of creating alchohol, this allows quicker generation of drinks and quicker development of new kinds of alchohol, giving the Red Grith an edge on competitors.

In order to tap into this power, a kufera needs special equipment - equipment made from a glass called potiri - and neutralized ingredients, and decades of study into hyperscience, specifically hyperchemistry and hyperbotany. The Red Grith sponsors promising members to school to learn these or recruits desperate students.

The processes of creating drugs varies by alchohol. There are six that the Red Grith specializes in:

• Bugum: pear cider with a tangy edge that is popular among younger folks.
• Bulam: a more potent variety of whisky that can cleanse the body of illness because of its burning intensity.
• Kukaw: a special variety of ale that has a sharper bitterness to it but fills the body like a proper meal.
• Kuny: a kind of reddish beer that alters itself to the preference of the drinker in terms of lightness or heaviness.
• Muvul: a more potent variety of gin that refreshes as much as it intoxicates; it has a subtly sweet flavor added to it.
• Woma: a form of mead that is more alcoholic while still maintaining its flavor.

Kuferas are skilled in hyperchemistry and may also know how to make other useful substances. The risk, however, of running multiple experiments or chemical processes is twice the risk of failure.

PRO -1 ATH +1 STR -2 AWA +3 WIL / PRS -1 STH +1

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Yeyuwo

The Blue Grith's bootlegging operations are mostly to create liquor with certain medicinal purposes or other positive magical properties rather than just selling moonshine.

There are three kinds of ailanthan plant that produce celestial alchohol:

• Elian olives: elian olives produce a wine that brings a sense of profound peace and calm to anyone who drinks it. It quells emotional turmoil and gently gives restful sleep. Elian olives only grow in very humid greenhouses carefully tended by yeyuwos.
• Miracle rye: miracle rye can be malted and made into a special whisky that gives the person drinking it supreme confidence in themselves and the good of all people. It is illegal to grow or distill.
• Tabaitian barley: tabaitian barley makes a beer that heals illnesses. It is extremely hard to grow and even harder to use in brewing, but the results are a potent drink that mildly heals disease.

Yeyuwos use ancient gardening techniques from distant lands to keep these plants growing, and they use their magical methods to turn them into wine, whisky, or beer. These arts are carefully kept secrets, but to tend the plants, the yeyuwos must have no ill will in their hearts and have a belief in the restorative properties of the plants. They must not abuse the potency of what they make nor profit from it. They can only produce small amounts at a time, so they use them strategically.

Part of the Committee for Support.

PRO / ATH / STR +1 AWA +2 WIL +1 PRS / STH /