A Drunkard's Tale

A Drunkard's Tale is a Book Collection found in various locations in Mondstadt.
==Vol. 1==
In the land where the dandelion wine flows like a river, tall tales have a way of spreading far and wide, following closely in the wake of the whiff of wine.
Far-fetched fables are always sure to spread when boasted between burps by inebriated bar patrons. For these stories share something in common with the slurred speech and sea-sickness-inducing swaying that so often accompanies them, which is that despite being clumsy and awkward, they are also highly entertaining.
Legend has it that there was once a famous drunkard in Mondstadt. It was said that he could hold his alcohol as well as any hunter from Springvale in the off season. And yet, still he would drink till he was drunk, every time that he drank, he would not budge so much as an inch back from the bar at the tavern until not a single Mora was left in his coin pouch, and not a single drop of wine remained in his glass.
One night, this drunkard was doing his best to stumble home after a particularly satisfying session of especially heavy drinking. A combination of his spinning head, blurred vision, and zigzagging stride served to navigate him towards a forest populated by wolves.
Today, of course, Wolvendom is presided over by the Great Wolf King of the North, and the ominous atmosphere that emanates from inside the forest is sufficient to deter most sober-headed visitors from approaching the area. According to the elderly hunters, the Wolf King gathered the spirits of the wolves there to prevent outsiders from trespassing into territory where they are not welcome.
But this was an age long before the Wolf King and the north wind had descended upon that forest, bringing order and peace to the wolven race. At that time, the forest was a perilous place where wild wolves fought for survival. A fierce blood feud between wolves played out deep inside the dense foliage, concealed from view and unbeknownst to any man.
Least of all to the drunkard, who had by this point managed to transport his drunken self quite some distance inside the forest.
He stumbled forward in the darkness with that dogged determination that only drunkards possess, deterred neither by the tree roots that would trip him up every few steps, nor by the stray branches that would slyly slap him in the face from time to time.
Before long, a pair of green eyes began darting through the forest, their gaze fixed on him, tracking his every move.
Those eyes belonged to a lone wolf, who silently pursued the drunkard from behind, all the while musing to itself:
"This is the most peculiar sight I have ever seen in all my life."
No one had dared set foot in the wolves' forest in hundreds of years, be they a knight clad top to toe in shining steel armor or a desperate fugitive dressed in rags. Even the callous nobles refused to exile their slaves there, for fear of inciting the wrath of the wild wolves and bringing unwanted trouble to their own territory.
"And yet, this odd fellow dares to stroll in here all by himself. How very strange indeed!"
The lone wolf pondered this strange phenomenon as it followed the drunken intruder through the forest, doing its best to ignore the stench of alcohol that was wafting its way.
==Vol. 2==
It is a well-known fact that wolves have a far keener sense of smell than humans.
Another way of putting this is that their noses are much more sensitive.
Little wonder, then, that the stench of alcohol emanating from the wolf's now historically intoxicated prey was quite stifling, and caused tears to well up in its eyes.
"Awoo..." the wolf thought to itself.
Having been born in the wilderness and grown up in the forest, the wolf had never had any contact with human civilization before this night, and though it had once caught the faint scent of wine wafting across Cider Lake, it did not know the scent's origin, less still understand the significance of that substance to human kind.
"Perhaps this peculiar fellow is a relative of the skunk, for it seems that he discovered my presence quite some time ago, and now means to poison me in an effort to secure his escape!"
The wolf pondered this possibility as it braced itself against the onslaught of alcoholic fumes, picked up its pace, and discreetly maneuvered its way into the drunkard's shadow — the perfect vantage point from which to inspect its prey.
The wolf is a creature of caution and calculation. The drunkard, meanwhile, is a different sort of creature entirely.
And yet, though wine tends to dizzy the mind and dull the senses, it sometimes affords its consumers the curious capacity to detect the subtlest of changes in the direction of the wind.
Perhaps this could explain how a bumbling drunkard, fumbling through the forest, was suddenly able to discover the presence of a wolf that had been stealthily following him the entire time.
Or perhaps the alcoholic fumes given off by the drunkard were sufficiently potent to diminish the wolf's mental acuity, to the point that the wolf became less mindful of the terrain beneath its paws, the resulting sound of snapping twigs thus alerting the prey to the predator's presence.
"Who's that? Don't s'pose you know which way the toilet is, by any chance...?"
The bumbling drunkard rubbed his bleary eyes.
"Foul-smelling human," snarled the wolf, "Who are you, and whence proceeds your stench?"
The wolf flared its nostrils, bored its fangs, and growled.
Not only was the drunkard unafraid when he heard the wolf's gruffly voiced threat, but he even became quite animated.
"My friend!" the drunkard replied, "Clearly I've offended you, somehow... sorry 'bout that... but anyway, Mondstadt tradition says you're not allowed to be drunk and bored at the same time... So! Here we are, out in the woods on this glorious moonlit night... How abouts I tell you a story?"
His proposal was promptly punctuated by an almighty belch.
Before this point, the wolf had had no intention of listening to the belching buffoon's drunken ramblings. In fact, it was poised to deliver a fatal blow to its prey by lunging for the neck, sinking its fangs in, and tearing his throat clean out.
But the drunkard's belch blasted a further bout of fumes in the wolf's direction, assailing its nostrils with such force that it ruined the wolf's appetite entirely.
Grudgingly, the wolf agreed.
"Grr... Perhaps I'm not so hungry after all... Let's see what nonsense tale you have to tell."
The drunkard stretched out his arms and let out a loud yawn, disturbing a few dandelions in the process.
And with that, the drunkard began to tell his tale.
==Vol. 3==
Legend tells of a lone wolf that roamed a barren wasteland far, far away.
Once, he had been king of his pack, leading them in the hunt, in battle, and in the search for a home... Now, the sole remaining legacy of those days were the scars that covered his body.
He has led the way as they ran across open plains, navigated through abandoned ruins, and passed through the domains of monsters and the Seelie.
The wasteland was a cruel place. The wolf-king grew older with each passing day, and the other wolves gradually dispersed. As time went by, the wolf pack's history faded into distant memory, until finally only the aged wolf-king remained, the sole survivor of its pack.
This wasteland is said to be a land beyond the dominion of the deities, inhabited only by the grotesque ghostly remains of fallen gods, where the former palaces of the Seelie now stand empty.In the original Chinese version of this sentence, the term refers to The Seven, while refers to gods who preceded The Seven. This indicates that the wasteland is the Dark Sea. So when the solitary old wolf passed by a gray palace and heard the sound of music coming from within, it caught its attention.
"Never before have I heard a sound so pleasing to the ears, whether it be a song of bird or insect, that it stays the pangs of hunger in my starved stomach as this tune does."
Intrigued, the wolf stepped inside the gray hall, trod across the overgrown weeds, and passed by a broken sarcophagus, on which a portrait of the deceased ruler was still clearly visible.
Finally, he came to an inner room, where he saw a fair maiden strumming at her instrument.
Her skin was ashen white and her head was bowed down, her slender fingers gently stroking the fragile strings of the lute as she played a long-forgotten and mournful melody.
The wolf sat down in front of the pale young maiden and forgot all about the pain of hunger, thirst, and loneliness for a short while, as it listened in silence to her song.
"The chirping of insects on a long-gone autumn night is the chorus of exiles, singing mankind's most ancient song as they live out their plight..."
"Stripped of all that the body once held close and the soul once held dear, song and memories are all that now remain of yesteryear."
"The last singers, the first Seelie, they played their final tune in the halls of angels."
The tiny Seelie playing in the forest were also drawn to the young maiden's tune, and flocked to her to pay their respects.
"What is this song that you play?"
The wolf asked, puzzled, for it understood every line, every word, every syllable she spoke — and yet, hers was a language that it had never heard before, quite unlike that of any other living being.
"A song of the Seelie,"
Replied the pale young maiden in a soft voice.
"Long, long ago, we wrote this song for the human savages. Yet now, we sing it to mourn our own fate."
The wolf began to sing along, albeit clumsily, to the maiden's tune.
The wolf's voice was husky and broken, filled with a lifetime of sorrow.
"What are you singing?"
The maiden asked of the wolf.
"This is our song,"
Responded the wolf.
"It sounds ghastly."
The maiden made no attempt to soften her criticism as she continued to caress the lute strings.
"But, you are welcome to sing along with me all the same."
And so, a shared chorus sung by fair young maiden and weary old wolf filled the chambers of the long-abandoned palace. It is said that to this day, adventurers who pass by this place still hear a strange yet harmonious melody sounding from within.
"And then? ...The story ends here?"
The wolf licked its lips, somewhat ruefully, and then said:
"I suppose I shall tell you a story now."
And with that, the wolf cleared its throat and began to tell its tale.
==Vol. 4==
Legend has it that the first wine of Mondstadt was brewed in the age when the north wind howled.
In the age when the Kings of Ice and Frost fought for dominion, Mondstadt's forbears brewed rudimentary wine from wild fruits, even as they shivered in the biting cold. They did so to ease the pain of their frostbitten fingers and to give them the courage to face the harsh and unforgiving ice. For at that time, the land of Mondstadt was engulfed by ice and snow, and the dandelions had not yet reared their heads.
It is said that the first person in Mondstadt to discover the craft of wine brewing was a grossly negligent guard.
In a tribe beset by blizzards on all sides, it was the unenviable job of the hardy hunter-gatherers to stock the storage pits with food, and it was the guard's task to guard against intruders.
The sight of a human intruder was a rare one indeed in that harsh environment — but there were other creatures who could better withstand the cold, and they would burrow underground to reach the food stocks. The rules of the tribe were that one person should inspect the storage pits at all times, filling in any mouse holes discovered — or better still, catching them red-handed in the act of pilfering — to keep the tribe's food supplies at plentiful levels.
At that time, the damp, dark caves needed constant care and attention to prevent the food they held from going bad and rotting. On top of this, the mischievous little creatures that hid away out of sight would sometimes play pranks on the guards.
One day, a wily wind spirit noticed that the grossly negligent guard was once again being grossly negligent. So, the spirit took the form of a fox and crept into a pile of wild apples. There, it caused yeast to grow, ripening the apples and causing them to ferment. The grossly negligent guard was ravenous when he returned, and elected to partake of one of the apples. The mellow taste of fermented fruit delighted both his body and his mind. Immediately, he took animal hide and squeezed the juice from the apples, creating wine.
The grossly negligent guard who first invented brewing in the age of ice and snow also became Mondstadt's first drunkard. It is said he was the first person ever to fall into a drunken dream.
In his first drunken dream, he drunkenly dreamt that he had become a lone wolf. Somewhere in the long-lost past or possibly the far-flung future, he fought fang and claw with rival wolf packs, battled with humans for food in the midst of a raging snowstorm, and met the first Seelie.
The tribe-dwelling human and the pack-dwelling wolf could not bear to live in solitude. This newly brewed wine served to bring man and wolf together in their dreams.
But their attitudes towards these dreams were poles apart.
The human who knew only the wind and snow yearned for the wasteland where the lone wolf runs freely, but the lone wolf was fearful of the human's desire. It could not understand why this human was captivated by dangerous illusions and sought hope from within them.
What concerned the wolf even more was that when in a drunken human dream, it could no longer distinguish whether it was a wolf or a human with a wolven spirit.
So the wolf swore an oath never to touch the humans' poison again, to resist the allure of wine.
Wolves are not the children of the wind, and the land of wine and song is not their home. So the wolves left the humans' domain and settled far off in the wilderness and deep in the mountain forests, places where the scent of wine could not reach them.
"What you humans call wine, we wolves call the abyss,"
The wolf haughtily concluded.
But as the wolf turned towards the drunkard to say this line, it discovered that the drunkard was now lying fast asleep on a bed of pine branches.
The wolf was most displeased, and violently expelled a puff of air from its nostrils before leaving the still-pungent pile of sleeping human to his business, and going on its way.
==Trivia==
* The book's cover says in the Teyvat Language.
==Notes==
==Other Languages==
==Change History==
==Navigation==
es:Cuentos de un borracho
fr:Chroniques d'un ivrogne
id:Kisah Pemabuk
it:Racconto di un ubriacone
ja:酔っぱらいの逸話
pl:Opowieść pijaka
pt-br:Contos de um Bêbado
ru:История пьяницы
th:เรื่องราวของลูกค้าขี้เมา
vi:Chuyện Kẻ Say