This idea started as a joke based on a tweet I saw earlier this morning about what might happen if someone’s character took a drink from a 5,000-year-old bottle of rum. I couldn’t stop thinking about it the rest of the day and this is the result – a creature that you could include in an ancient wine cellar to torment your players.
Usually, when wine gets too old, it simply turns to vinegar and becomes undrinkable. Sometimes, however, the result is something much more dangerous. Whether by magic or some other means, a wayward spirit sometimes becomes trapped within a bottle of wine, stuck in there until someone opens the bottle or its prison is otherwise broken. As it’s trapped within the bottle, the alcohol interacts with the spirit in unexpected ways, turning into a creature known as a Fermented Spirit. Moving erratically and babbling incoherently as if permanently drunk, these creatures also exude an aura that has an intoxicating effect on those that get too close to it. Attacking anyone that gets too near to it with wild swings, they are thankfully not a common creature, though certain necromancers or evil clerics attempt to create them by binding the souls of the recently deceased to bottles in their wine cellars to surprise any would-be heroes that raid their manors or thieves that try to steal from them.
So there you have it. How would you use these creatures in your campaign? Any other joke ideas turn into actual threats for your own games? Let me know below.
Ben Erickson
