Tough As Dirt #12

Tough as Dirt took their rest at the Gateway Clipper, inviting Roach to join them. The necromancer sisters were still hard at work trying to pinpoint the divine disturbances in Vault so the group decided to accompany Roach on his relic hunt at Zapoi Distillery

Arriving at the strange and erratic Zapoi Distillery, the group was escorted by an automaton through colorful hedge gardens leading nowhere, spinning doors, and nausea inducing patterened halls to stand before a projection of Zapoi himself, who told the group a tour through his factory involved gathering ingredients for all 16 flavors of rum

The group undertook the tour challenge but soon found themselves doing insane tasks, such as handling muddy pigs, gathering the sweat from rotund dancing dwarves, and even bloodletting.

After many of these trials, some of which bordered on the dangerous and murderous, Tough as Dirt recognized the distiller had a shocking lack of respect for the well-being of others

They met with Zapoi at the end of the tour, surrounded by automatons, and discovered the special "spice" flavor so popular in his rum was actually being harvested from a living creature chained in his chambers

Roach also discovered the relic in Zapoi's chambers, and was given it freely, in exchange for the prize the group was meant to get for completing the tour

The group decided to free the creature making the spice and made ready to do whatever it took to meet that end.