SSE 29: The Guild, part 2: Rivalry

I found Mallus at the Bannered Mare in Whiterun, just as Maven said he will be. Mallus is a worker at the Honningbrew Meadery that is sick of working for Sabjorn - and he's enterprising enough to seek out Maven Black-Briar to work out an arrangement...

Sabjorn is launching a new blend of mead and will be hosting a tasting session with the Commander Caius of the Whiterun guard. The savvy businessman is obviously vying for an endorsement from the commander. But before that, Sabjorn has a skeever infestation at the Meadery he must take care. If the commander sees the rats at the Meadery, he would likely close the place down than endorse Sabjorn's new mead... and so Sabjorn is desparate for a rat hunter to help.

Mallus explains that I am to pose as a hunter who will take care of Sabjorn's skeever problem. Once I clear out the rats, I will have access to the brewery beyond, where I will dump some of the poison into the vats. We're using only enough poison to make the commander sick, but not enough to kill him, apparently. 

Mallus will also make sure that the doctored brew is given to Caius in the tasting. Once the commander tastes rat poison in the brew, Sabjorn will be incarcerated for sure - and Mallus will happily take over the newest Whiterun branch of the Black-Briar Meadery.

As devious plans go, this isn’t a half-bad one... as long as Sabjorn doesn’t implicate me I’m the poisoning. Still, Maven’s orders... I successfully convinced Sabjorn to hire me for his skeever problem, and it's a good thing I went into the warrens well armed - there's some bloke called Hamelyn conjuring skeevers and under the delusion that he can control his rat army... Anyway he's inconsolable over all the skeevers I killed and I had to put him out of his sad, deranged, misery.

I poisoned the vat as decided and our special brew is presented to Caius. Commander Caius immediately tasted the poison and things go pretty much as planned. Poor Sabjorn's thrown in the cooler and Mallus takes over the running of the meadery "temporarily".

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