Fuzzy: The Dragons Den
Gedd sits down with Darius to talk about mushrooms and dark ale. Darius's map certainly helps with the explanations.
"There's a strange old woman who the locals here call the Swamp Witch, who lives in a hut on the western side of the Tuskwater. She doesn't welcome visitors but will trade potions for black rattlecap mushrooms from the Mud Bowl, which is over on the eastern side of the Tuskwater. One of Lord Henry's exploration expeditions sailed over to the Mud Bowl and came back with one of those black rattlecap mushrooms. That's all they managed to get because the Mud Bowl is guarded by some sort of giant plant monster, or something like that. Anyway, they reported there were lots of different sorts of exotic mushrooms and toadstools in the Mud Bowl. But the catch is this - rumour says if the guardian monster is killed the mushrooms won't grow there anymore.
"As I was saying earlier, back home where we came from the dwarves used to brew three strengths of dark ale - dark, darker and darkest - with progressively stronger mind-bending side effects. One mug of their Dark Ale could knock you on your ear if you couldn't handle it, but I reckon there would be a good market for that if we could brew something like it here. Just the Dark Ale, mind, not the Darker Ale or the Darkest Ale.
"We don't have the key ingredient they used - something called shadowrock - but everyone's heard rumours about 'magic' mushrooms, right? Well, I'd bet some of those mushrooms from the Mud Bowl could give the right sort of kick to an ordinary dark ale to make it into something close to proper Dwarven Dark Ale. So, I would love to get hold of a good range of samples from the Mud Bowl so we can experiment with them over at our brewery."