Josephine is a human waitress that works in a dungeon's tavern. Usually, that doesn’t mean much to anyone. However, those who have seen her on the job find themselves impressed by her… resolve. Her job unsurprisingly consists of filling her client's tankards with beer when they call for refills.
But this tavern isn’t the usual run-of-the-mill establishment that you can find safely within a city’s walls on the surface. No, this is a dungeon’s tavern that lies ten thousand leagues deep beneath the earth. There are trolls, orcs, goblins, giants, elves, dwarves, humans.... all kinds of silly things. Especially that last one, brrr, what a terrifying species.
To give you an example of how frightening humans can be, on Josephine's first day on the job, she was given the simple task of keeping a gang of orcs flooded with beer. Now that doesn't sound too hard, right? Wrong. First, she had to get down to the tavern's basement, a cold hell-pit where a single misstep could cost you a toe, as the pools of frozen water are deadly to the touch. Second, she had to convince the dragon guarding the inventory to let her leave with a keg without filling five different forms explaining why she needed it.
“I don't see why these creatures can't drink lava just like I do. It is never a good policy to dig into our stocks; what will we do when summer comes if we eat into our reserves now? What about winter? And autumn? Huh? You didn't think of that, did you? Ha! Spring! We can't give beer out now, spring is on our doorstep, and the inventory must remain untouched.” She barely finished asking for a keg of beer that the dragon was already overwhelming her with words aiming to fend off her request.
“Lava? Aren't you an ice dragon?” Josephine asked, too baffled and off-balance to catch the rest of the dragon's nonsense.
“How else would I get drunk?” The creature raised its huge eyebrow, which disturbed the huge chunks of ice that accumulated there and made some of them fall off.
“Never mind that.” Josephine shook her head before she made a sidestep to avoid a block of ice that was as big as her head. “Orcs need alcohol to get drunk, there is some in beer. Ergo, I need a keg of beer.”
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“I refuse! This request is preposterous, have the owner come down here to explain this ridiculous demand! A whole keg of beer all at once, she says! Ruin! This new waitress wants to bankrupt this fine establishment!” The ice dragon roared with fury.
Josephine could have sworn that the being was messing with her, but how could she have made sure when the being in question possesses the power to crush her with a single swipe of its paw? Josephine chose to remain silent and to simply go find a keg herself.
After a fruitless adventure down in the alley of spiders, always a goblin favorite, Josephine found a closet with a green skull painted on its doors. She stared at it for a second. “That looks like some kind of orcish warpaint to me.” She concluded with a lazy shrug because she really didn't feel like digging through the snake-pit for a beer keg.
Josephine opened the closet doors, finding dozens of small kegs inside. She stuck two of them under her armpits and made her way back upstairs to the gang of orcs who were impatiently waiting for her. As soon as the orcs caught sight of her, they held their empty tankards out to be filled.
Josephine obliged and opened one of the small kegs to serve them with the... green liquid inside. The orcs didn't seem to care though, so neither did she. As the night went on, they drank and drank, and oh boy did they drink gallons of that green substance. Occasionally, one of them would roar and fall over, immobile, on the table. As is the custom among their tribe.
Josephine was somewhat surprised that none of them died that night. Her first thought was that the green liquid would melt their stomachs. Once that didn't pan out, she started looking for signs of poisoning. An uneventful hour later, she gave up guessing and just kept serving them while occasionally checking some of those that fainted on their tables for life-signs.
Josephine never found out what she gave them that night. She just didn't care enough to bother looking the next morning. By the third day, she had all but forgotten about her first day thanks to her selective memory, a skill that she sharpened her whole life and perfected as a teenager.
Josephine was obviously hired with full pay and the owner's compliments. After all, she came back out of the basement alive and not as an undead. What more can you ask of a waitress? Dungeon inhabitants aren't barbarians.
If that was her first day, what do you think she can do to you now that she's dealt with the worst of the demon lords, the most pitiful of heroes, and... dwarves? The moral of the story is: don't mess with the staff because there is a good chance they’ll kick your ass if you piss them off.
Worse, they might even be humans.