251: 50% Milk

## Summary

The group head to Tinker Tavern and have fun experimenting with the innovative tube-based drink delivery system, before deciding that next they should visit the Highground district and investigate the temples they heard about while at the market. On the way there they bump into the dean of Beartoggle University, Igor Kellerman who welcomes them to the city and tells them of the troubles he's been having with the Sooty Gang. Gwen offers to help deal with them and the group are invited to have a tour of the university.

## Synopsis

The party settle down at a booth that can comfortably accommodate them all. Will takes care that the booths on either side are unoccupied. Raphina knows this place, but it never had these tubes before. *"Guys this is weird. If anything other than cheese comes out of those tubes, don't eat it"* she says.

From inside the booth, they can see that the tubes all run down into a machine on the wall at the back of the table. It has a series of labelled buttons and a coin slot. The labels read "Water", "Ale", "Tea", "Coffee", "Whiskey (1s)", Milk", "Tomato Juice", "Special Combo (1s)". There's a stack of glasses next to the machine and a place where it would make sense to put a cup. They guess that "1s" refers to the drink costing 1 silver piece.

Gwen presses the whiskey button, but nothing happens. She places a cup in the machine, puts a silver piece in the slot and tries again. There's a whirring inside the machine and an amber liquid begins to make its way along one of the tubes above them, before shooting down into the machine and depositing a shot of whiskey into the glass. Gwen is quite impressed with this, and after only a second's consideration, she drinks the shot back in one.

   Batthwack puts a silver piece in, and presses the special combo button. There is a lot of whirring this time, before all the tubes above their heads can be seen to fill with liquid. It shoots down into the machine and the glass is filled to the brim with a brown frothy liquid. Will laughs, now convinced that the special combo is just a mixture of all the drinks. Batthwack decides against chugging the entire glass, but does instead bravely take a healthy swig. He discovers that the drink does indeed appear to be a combination of all the listed drinks. *"It's disgusting"* he says, as the others wonder if he'll change size or grow more hair, but nothing of that sort happens. Gwen thinks this machine is the best thing ever, puts in another silver piece and orders another whiskey. Wondering if it'll grow on him, Batthwack takes another sip of his special combo, making a face as he does so. Will stares open-mouthed, not able to believe that he would keep drinking that.

Will *Prestidigitates* a glass, and holds it up to the light before putting it in the machine. He tries the coffee button before putting any money in, just to check. Nothing happens, so he puts a copper piece in the slot and tries again. More whirring. A dark brown liquid shoots down one of the tubes into the machine and a steaming cup of coffee is deposited. Will's pretty impressed with this, but not enough to drink it, so he shoves the cup to the middle of the table. Raphina tries it, discovering that it's very hot and very strong. She puts it back in the machine and presses the milk button, but nothing happens. Will reaches over and inserts a copper piece, and when the button is pressed again, milk is deposited into the cup in the same manner.

Batthwack offers his drink (having now worked out why it's slightly warm) to Raphina. She politely refuses, so he takes another sip, making a slightly less pronounced grimace this time. Will can't take any more if this, so orders Batthwack a whiskey and tells him to drink that instead. Batthwack maintains eye contact with Will while he has another sip of his special combo, and then switches to the whiskey. *"Gross"* says Will. Out of interest, Will begins experimenting with the machine, discovering that the water isn't free and if you put a silver piece in and order one of the cheaper drinks, you don't get any change. He knocks on the machine. *"Hello! Where's my change, you contraption?!"* He tries pressing for milk without putting any more money in, and the drink is delivered. He tells the others there's three more drinks on credit, but Sheemie has to point out that there's actually eight more. Clearly Will doesn't deal in fiddling small change very often.

Raphina wonders how you get food delivered. Will's ready to go and find some staff and give them a hard time, so opens their booth's curtain and makes his way out. However, he can't see anyone, there's no desk or anything, so goes back into the booth. *"Guys, I think this is just like a weird milk bar"* he says. Sheemie asks for an ale, but Will asks *"Wait, how old are you? Eight?"* He doesn't actually have a problem with it, but Gwen says that Sheemie is a child and not allowed to drink. Sheemie insists he's not a child, saying he's 14 years old. Will orders an ale from the machine anyway, but Gwen casts *Mage Hand* and snatches the cup away. Will casts *Mage Hand* too and slides Gwen's whiskey over to Sheemie. Gwen says he's not allowed to drink that either and Sheemie asks how old he has to be to drink it.

*"How old are you?"* Sheemie asks Gwen. She says she's 24 years old. *"I mean, when I went off on my own, I did what I wanted and, well, Sheemie I guess you're on your own now. If Will is going to be responsible for you and your actions after you have this ale then I guess I don't see an issue."* Will puts more money in the machine and orders two whiskies, sliding one towards Gwen and the other towards Sheemie. He takes a sip and says *"Eh. It's alright. It's not Bufflin Whiskey."* Gwen just silently knocks hers back in one. Her third drink. Will asks *"How many whiskies can you have before you fall over Gwen?"* Gwen takes this as a challenge and asks if Will wants a drinking contest. Will laughs at the sheer ridiculousness of the idea, saying he doesn't drink, so she'd win easily. Sheemie says he'll do it, but Will shuts this down too. Gwen seems keen to take him up on it and teach him a lesson, but Will insists it's a bad idea. With this sudden change of direction, it seems Gwen has taught Will a lesson instead. He slides the water and milk over to Sheemie and Gwen necks his whiskey.

The conversation turns to what the group want to do next. Gwen wants to find out more about the foot race and learn more about the pamphlets saying that unicorns weren't real, recalling that it said to visit the Grand Tabernacle of Bahamut. Will says he'd like to visit the House of Zol Berdia, which was right nearby, and get a little touch of home. Raphina reminds them that they need to meet with the paranoid elf lady too, though that's not until the evening. Gwen asks if she knows where they're meeting her, and Raphina whispers that the secret meeting place is the Pineapple War Memorial Garden. Batthwack says he wanted to look into the airship situation, but reminds them they'd heard it had been damaged in a fire and burned down.

Will says he's worried about a certain person, *Messaging* Batthwack to say *"Ricardo Ulysses"* before he's reminded that the elf lady advised him not to communicate with that spell. He tells the others by way of an impression of Ricardo, and while Gwen orders another whiskey, he says *"We need to keep an eye out for that, just because we know that he said he was around here."* Will quickly follows this up with casting *Detect Thoughts* on Sheemie. His surface thought are *"What can I do to impress these people?"* but when Will probes deeper, he becomes aware of the spell and asks Will why he's poking around in his head. Will says *"I don't know, I just had to make sure!"* Sheemie says *" You can trust me Will"* and winks at him. Will pats his pockets and checks his bag to check that nothing's been stolen, and is reminded of the auto-writer Sheemie stole for him.

Will suggests it's time to move on. *"I mean, I don't want to drink milk out of a tube"* he says, which gives Gwen an idea. She puts a silver piece in the machine and tries to fit her huge dinosaur-ish maw into the cup place. Will begins to panic about this highly unsanitory behaviour and everyone agrees that Will lives his life in too much fear. Will has to admit that Batthwack was pretty brave to try the weird drink.

Gwen asks if Highground is on the way to the Pineapple Memorial and Raphina confirms it is. Gwen suggests heading there, and maybe on the way they'll spot another guard station and she might be able to speak to them and clear things up. Raphina agrees, nervously. Will suggests that while they still have relative privacy, they should come up with a code word for making sure they're always speaking to Raphina and not Ricardo in disguise. Gwen says she did something similar with Moondreamer, but Raphina points out that Gwen might have been speaking to the fake one at the time. Gwen's face changes as she tries to straighten this whole thing out in her head, before saying *"I need another whiskey,"* and trying to get her head under the tube again.

Sheemie points out that Batthwack is short too, so perhaps they need a codeword for him as well. Speaking quietly, and listening out to make sure he can't hear any conversations outside the booth, Will suggests they could all have a codeword each. Sheemie is tasked with coming up with them. *"Alright, er... Raphina, you're Roger. Er, Gwen, you're Gary. Batthwack, you're Barry. I'm Falcon. Er, and Will is... is... Shark."* Gwen can't understand why Sheemie gave himself and Will the cool names. He claims he just couldn't think of anything good for them.

The party get up and exit their booth, leaving the curtain open to indicate that it's now free. Gwen sticks her head under the tubes again one last time as they leave. They step outside, back into the sunny afternoon.

As they walk, Will listens out for conversations amongst the general public about Ricardo Ulysses, but doesn't pick up on anything. They head down the street in the direction of the river, since Highground is on the opposite side. Before they can reach the river though, the group arrive at a small square, and hear a deep voice proclaim *"Oh ho!"* They see a large half-orc dressed in bright orange robes, holding a yellow mortarboard to his head as he runs towards them from the other side. He has his robes hiked up as he jogs over, slightly out of breath, a huge smile on his face. Raphina immediately recognises this as the dean of Beartoggle University, Igor Kellerman. Raphina side talks this information to the rest of the group just before the dean reaches them.

*"Hello there! Hello! Hello!"* booms the dean and Gwen curtsies. *"I can recognise when someone is new to Beartoggle. Am I right?"* Gwen compliments him on the beautiful city. *"I always try to greet new and unfamiliar faces whenever I see them. I know everyone around here so it's very easy for me to spot them, plus you are wandering around looking up at things in wonder."* He offers his assistance with anything they might need and Gwen mentions their run in with a shady vendor. They note that the dean's robes have bright red stripes on the trim and around his neck is a big brass key on a chain. He apologises that he can't help with complaints about how the city is run and introduces himself. Batthwack reciprocates. The dean holds his big half-orc hand out and Batthwack shakes it. It's a very gentle handshake. He offers his hand around to everyone and Will and Raphina shake it too. Gwen does so as well, but much more assertively.

Igor says he's sorry to hear about their experience with the vendor and says they should also be careful of the Sooty Gang. Will asks if the city has a mayor and the dean explains that there's the Arbiter. Raphina, doing her best to disguise her voice, asks if the dean has heard of the Desert Mothers and if they're still considered to be elders of the city. He has heard of them, saying they're over in the Old Bear district, but he only describes them as *"a couple of old women,"* and says he hasn't had much to do with them. Will enquires what courses are run at the university and the dean says they run a few degree programmes and wonders if Will might be interested in enrolling.

Gwen asks, since the dean is so active in greeting new arrivals, has he seen Ricardo Ulysses in town lately? *"The famous thief? No. Oh, no. Is he around?"* replies the dean, concerned. He asks if the group are here from Carnivar on a clandestine operation, wondering if they work for the Grand Arbiter. Will explains that they have their own personal grievances with Ricardo, which is why they're curious about his whereabouts.

Gwen asks the dean about The Grand Staircase Footrace and he says *"It's a grand event. It's a bit of a gruelling endeavour. It's a bit of a climb, and then you have to come all the way back down!"* He tells them of a monetary prize, though he doesn't know how much, but he says he thinks it's a lot. He pats his belly saying, *"I don't think I have the stamina for that one!"* When asked about the rules of the race, he doesn't know the specifics, but assumes you can't *"push anybody off the edge or anything like that"* and that use of magic would at least be frowned apon.

The dean brings the conversation back round to whether the party might like to study at his university. He tells them that they have three degrees: a culinary degree, a puppetry degree and an economics degree. Raphina shouts excitedly at Batthwack apon hearing about the puppetry. Gwen tells the dean that she knows a thing or two about cooking already and he suggests she might come along as a guest lecturer. She tells him about her once thriving candy store and he says there's a whole course on candy. Batthwack shows the dean the body of Captain Clockface and asks if the professors at the university could help revive him. The dean thinks that it sounds like it could be a magical problem and promises to ask around. He says they can find him at the university. *"It's where I live and work."*

Remarking that Igor seems to have his finger on the pulse of Beartoggle, Gwen asks him if he's heard the rumour of the serial killer on the loose. He says he has heard "mutterings" to that effect, making reference to "some to do" at an event a few weeks ago and how odd it is that the city guard have been quite scarce since then. He says nothing has been said publicly about it, but he doesn't like to spread idle rumours. Will thinks it's odd that it could have had so many witnesses and yet not been in the news.

The dean agrees that it is odd, given that Beartoggle is a relatively peaceful town. He mentions that the Sooty Gang burnt down the airship tower and have been causing trouble at the university, which has had an impact on enrollment. Gwen offers to help get rid of them, saying she might be able to help scare them off and the dean says he'd be very grateful. He invites them all to the university and offers to give them all a tour. Will asks if the gang are new in the city and the dean says they've been operating for a while, mainly in The Warrens district. If he had to guess, that's where he'd say their den would be. Gwen accepts the dean's invitation.

Will groans. *"Oh man. I thought we were gonna have fun but now we're gonna go to school."*

## Trivia

* The episode title is a quote from Alex. The players were discussing Batthwack's "Special Combo" and how curdled it must be, when Eric suggests that the weekly Discord task to go with this episode will be for listeners to *"make this concoction and take a sip of it"*. KT suggests that anyone wishing to try this could be creative with the proportions of the ingredients. *"Maybe just one dash of whiskey and a whole bunch of tomato juice. And then..."* Alex pitches in with his suggestion: *"50% milk!"* You can view the debate around how best to mix a Special Combo over on the PFD Community Discord!
* This week's episode description describes the Pork Fried Dice wiki as: undefeated.

## References

1. ↑ See 248: I'm Bloodhorn Leghorn and I'm a Sheep
2. ↑ The password they chose was "Tippy Toes"! See episode 212: Hubbubbada Bubbada!
3. ↑ By my count, Gwen had six whiskeys in total!
4. ↑ This is probably the same person as the Prime Arbiter mentioned in episode 195: Open Up and Eat the Rainbow!. The "Prime Arbiter" was confirmed as being in Carnivar during that episode, and to this wiki editor at least, it seems unlikely that there would be both a Grand and a Prime Arbiter in the same city, but it's possible of course.