Distiller Background
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W
hether in the highlands evading taxes on a
home-made copper still, or in the city’s brewery
district on some highfalutin contraption, the
distiller is a welcome sight to most
communities. Combining the traditional skills
of a brewer and the borderline arcane skills of
an alchemist, the Distiller can make
intoxicating beverages, healing tinctures, and subtle poisons.
To discover the perfect distilled spirit, you’ve trained
yourself to recognize the flavour, aromatic, medicinal, and
toxic properties of many botanicals. You can use these skills to
identify a wide variety of domestic and exotic flora.
Your specialized equipment comes at a cost, though.
Expensive to purchase, expensive to repair, delicate and heavy
to transport; it’s often unwise to go adventuring with little
more than a portable alchemist's kit for necessity’s sake.
Instead of letting old wine or beer go bad, an innkeeper may
provide room and board to a distiller who agrees to distill the
fermented intoxicants into spirits. This isn’t without its
hazards, though. Depending on the legality of distilling in the
region or district, the distiller may be arrested for bootlegging.
Skill Proficiencies. Nature, Medicine
Tool Proficiencies. Choose two from Alchemist’s Supplies,
Brewer’s Supplies, Poisoner’s Kit
Equipment. Alchemist’s Supplies, Brewer’s Supplies, glass
bottle, and a flask, proofing dust
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You’ve spent hundreds of hours honing your craft. To reach
perfection you needed to spend time in front of your alembic,
column, or pot still ensuring the purity and flavor of the spirits
you’ve distilled. You’ve tasted it all, from the acridest heads, to
the sweetest hearts, to the funkiest tails. Over time,
consuming all these compounds granted you the following:
You gain advantage on saving throws against Poisoning
when ingesting or otherwise imbibing the poison (does not
apply if poisoned in any other manner); and,
You gain advantage on checks to identify poisons or
alcohols.
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Weight: 1 lb.
Cost: 75 gp
Similar to gunpowder, proofing dust is extremely flammable
under the right conditions. The difference is that its flash
point is calibrated to a very specific saturation of alcohol. It
will not light when wet or dry unless it’s saturated with fluid
that is at least 40% alcohol by volume. Liquids like water, beer,
and wine will not light while distilled spirits will.
Distillers use this powder to prove their product meets with
the guidelines of the various guildhalls, inns, and discerning
connoisseurs of the realms. A little bit goes a long way, it takes
only a pinch to “make proof”, untrained or unwary distillers
have been known to blow themselves up by using too much of
the powder.
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Weight: 0.1 lb.
Cost: 20 gp
Distillers can craft smelling salts. These highly useful single
use quasi-potions are a combination of distilled healing potion
and a stabilizing agent (typically salt). It’s held in a tiny
stoppered vial and looks like pink salt crystals.
The distilled potion, when mixed with the salt, creates a
restorative but slightly noxious odor. When the vial is
uncorked and held under the nose and inhaled by a creature
they gain 1 hp. If that creature is unconscious they
immediately regain consciousness. It can also be fed to a
creature - such as one that doesn’t have a nose - to the same
effect.
The components required (or an equivalent amount of gold
peices) to produce three of these vials are:
1 potion of healing
0.5 lb. salt (or some other neutral stabilizer)
It takes roughly 18 hours of dedicated distillation time to
produce enough healing potion concentrate to mix with the
salt.
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Distillation is the function of boiling a solution of water and
"other" to fraction and separate the compounds within.
People have been distilling for thousands of years. However,
the first documented distillation of alcohol as we know it
today comes from the 9th-century Muslim "philosopher,
polymath, mathematician, physician and musician", Al-Kindi.
Over the subsequent centuries, technique and equipment
became more refined allowing for a more controlled
fractioning and purification of alcohol.
The stills of today, though larger, shinier, and more
automated than the stills of yore, still operate on the exact
same principles as those found in Mesopotamia and the Indus
Valley: Boil a solution of weak alcohol, collect the higher-proof
steam, and condense it back into a liquid.
So the whiskey, vodka, or rum you're drinking today has its
roots in history when we, as a people, discovered the
properties of boiling things to concentrate them!
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Design, words, photos, and layout: Curt Carbonell
Designed in GM Binder.
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Thanks for checking out my distiller background!
I'm a professional distiller in meat-space so I wanted to
bring some of that passion into my make-believe. The pictures
in this document are the two stills I use at work!
I hope you enjoy this background and get lots of use out it.
Sláinte!
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