Archimedes Huck: Beer Mage -1-

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Chapter I: Herald of Beerzeus

Traveling by Beer Vessel can be a jarring experience. I winced as we dropped out of Ale-Speed, even though, as the pilot of the Fair Lady Mustache, I had felt my molecules transition over from Ale-Space before.

In a Pilsnery blur, I reassembled from beer back to flesh, and checked to make sure my passengers, Archimedes Huck and Billy Bock, had reconstituted as well.

The Fair Lady Mustache is a behemoth of a ship, it’s Keg-Radon engine as big as a small asteroid, so I had to set her down in a large forest east of Sedona, Arizona. Earth is probably my least favorite place to go, especially since most Earthlings are oblivious to the fact that there are other human worlds, and in those worlds BeerMagik is the dominant power in the land.

Back to the matter at hand; trying to finesse Lady’s large ass onto the ground while avoiding detection. That meant crushing as few trees as possible. We were cloaked, but if a human saw an invisible blob crush a huge tree-patch, we could possibly be discovered. In such a primitive land, it is best to avoid disturbing the locals.

“Aleready?” Billy Bock said, trotting out on his mechanical goat legs, little engines whirring and hard-drives spooling.

“Of course,” Archimedes shot back. He was wearing the garb of a BeerMage; monk-like robes, made from animal skins, garnered with dried hops, and he was wearing a necklace made of silver depicting a barley-snake coiling around a 750ml cork-top bottle. He wore no shirt under the outer-garbs, and sported a rotund yet muscular figure. He wore a loin cloth made of sewn hop stems, which rested under his beer belly. He was tanner than he had any right to be, and had a jolly yet youthful exuberance about him.

Archimedes Huck always had his wooden staff with him, but it wasn’t just any staff. Sitting atop was the Mug of Justice, a mystical glass beer stein given to Archimedes by Beerzeus. The Mug of Justice is indestructible, made from space glass, forged by German void-gnomes in the far reaches of the lower lager-dimensions. Any beer poured into cannot be spilled, even if the glass is overturned. Only its master can drink from it to remove its precious cargo.

Now that I had landed Lady, I turned on the vis-screen and said hello to my crew. It was such a routine action that they didn’t really respond, but kept discussing things while getting ready for the excursion that was about to get underway.  The 'crew' was just Archimedes Huck and Billy Bock.  Myself and the ship ran everything else.  We keep them, for the most part, out of trouble and well stocked with supplies and support.  On almost every outing, Lady and I end up doing some kind of daring, action-laden extraction, picking up Archimedes and Billy in some hectic situations.  The Fair Lady Mustache is a fine ship; out of all the Beer Mage guilds in the Galaxy, there are only a few Beer Vessels.  Out of those, only one is a TITAN class vessel, ours.  Lady.  We could maintain Ale-Speed longer than anyone else.

A series of bleeps and blops emanated from Billy as he processed data from the Lady regarding the terrain of Sedona, Arizona. Billy Bock was a Cyber-Goat-5000, the latest in animal cyborg human relations. He had an on-board brewery, capable of 5 gallons per hour of any type of beer. The left side of his torso opened up to reveal a spout that could pour fresh beer into the Mug of Justice, or the beer stein of a fellow beer-less and weary traveler.

The belly of Lady opened up, revealing the bright sun, causing Billy's auto lenses to tint in compensation.  Outside lay a world ready to explore, Ales to be drunk...


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