The bedrock of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons is its diverse community, bri✅nging ꦕpeople from all walks of life to the table to become someone else through pen, paper, and imagination. It’s a game that has always been about earnest expression, with countless players finding themselves through throwing dice and fighting beholders.
It’s fitting, then, that the focal point of Matthew Lillard’♛s D&D-themed whiskey company, Find Familiar Spirits, is kinship. An idea that Lillard and co. are taking further with their newest bottle, Quest’s End Druid, which is described as “honouring the journey of embracing change, connection, and the wild, magical truth of becoming yourself.”
“You Can Be Anything. That’s The Power Of Druids”
“It feels like a rebuke of what’s happening right now in America in a lot of ways,” Lillard tells me. “This idea that the otherisms isn’t celebrated, or somehow we are shutting down love of other people. And so this is 𓆏like our nod to being like, ‘Fu** that’. You can be you, and celebrated — as ♈a brand, we want to make sure that people know that wherever they’re at in their journey and whoever they’re becoming, we’re there. You can be as little as a mouse or as giant as a minotaur, you can be anything. That’s the power of druids and the power of loving our community.”
The narrative’s getting ske𒀰wed. It’s a minority right now. This wi🐷ll be wiped out. It’s a matter of time. It’s a blip. We’ve had incredible success — we had a Black president two terms ago. That’s been incredible. So the reality is that it’s just a small correction, and in the long scheme of things, this will not be.
That idea of acceptance is something Lillard himself has felt through this venture, along with his tabletop company, Beadle & Grimm's. Putting his stamp on the D&D community has helped him to feel comfortable about wh𒅌o he is, pushing past long-standing, deep-seated insecurities. “[It’s been] so fu**ing good, man. It’s been powerful,” Lillard says. “Look, I was a kid who didn’t go to college. I always had a chip on my shoulder that I wasn’t smart enough, and I had a severe learning disability, full disclosure. And so that story you tell yourself, that little idiotic, ‘I’m not smart enough’ bullcrap haunted me ﷺmost of my life.
“It’s not until I got into my late 40s, early 50s, I started to realise it’s just a story that wasn’t wo🐼rth telling anymore. And so the idea of building a company with an incredible partner and our team at Find Familiar Spirits, and having a vision, saying as one of the leaders of the company, ‘We’re going this way, this is how we’re going to do it. Let’s build something for people.’ Putting our energy into that vision 🤡has been really rewarding.”
“There’s No Way We Get Her”: How Lillard Brought Drowning Empire Author Andrea Stewart On Board
You might be wondering how whiskey can encompass acceptance and the idea of being your true self — that’s the unique hook to Find Familiar Spirits. Each bottle is accompanied by a story, in this case, the Unbound Gods saga. For season two, which will span not only Druid, but also Monk, Wizard, and Revenant, the team brought 🐲in famed D𓄧rowning Empire author Andrea Stewart to bring to life that message.
༺FFS has also worked with 🔴Mike Flannagan, who penned a short horror story to accompany Macabre Spirits RFL.
“We knew we needed a writer, and we were looking around, and I was like, ‘Well, what about Andrea Stewart?’ We all went out and read her work, and I was like, ‘There’s no way we get her, but we might as well ask.’ It doesn’t hurt to ask. So we put out a request before we went to [her] agents. We reac🦩hed out to her on social media, and she responded pretty quickly, ‘Yeah, I’d love to talk about it.’ And then we had a meeting with her, and we sort of said, ‘Hey, this is where we’re going. This is where it tracks out to. This is what the offer is — it’s not a gazillion dollars. It’s not the kind of company we have. But, it's super fun, and we’d love to have you on the ride.’
And she jumped in. And she’s been so lovely to work with. It’s something about her, like every time we engage, it’s like this breath of fresh air. She’s excited to be there. She loves t💎elling the story. She loves what we’ve built. We love working with her. And it’s been really fantastic.”
What Does Druid Taste Like?
Stewart’s story also informs the taste, as master blender Molly Troupe reads over the text before meticulously puzzling together what evokes not only the druid class, but the world they encompass. “I play druids as my main class, I love druid, and so we let her know about the world, and then she goes out and blends based on what we’ve given her,” Lillard explains. “The story opens up on this island that feels very Pacific N﷽orthwest. There’s like a druid grove right off the beach, and these huge oaks — she pulled those flavour profiles into the liquid, so it’s very herbaceous. There’s a vermouth finish, a barrel-aged finish, and there's a rum finish.”
And of course, when it comes to figuring out the taste of a druid, it means a lot of sampling. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:When we last talked, art director Tyler Jacobson told me that meant sitting🌜 on a Zoom call and sipping hard liquor at 9am. Two🌞 years later, not much has changed.
“We all get together, we all drink,” Lillard says. “Now the proble༺m is, I think this year we’re doing nine or ten drops, so there’s constant blends coming through. It’s pretty intense. Molly has been hard at work. The good news is, I think we’ve now completed what we’re doing for the rest of the year, which▨ is good because it allows us to stop tasting for a hot minute.”
“It’s Crippling And Horrible”: How Is Find Familiar Spirits Weathering President Trump’s Tariffs?
In just two years, this budding idea has blossomed into a passionate community, as each new re♋lease from Find Familiar Spirits has flown off the digital shelf, but unfortunately, there’s a shadow being cast over the tabletop world right now that puts a damper on the strides Lillard has made.
President Trump’s harsh tariffs have seen stock prices plummet and import taxes drastically increase, leading many in the industry to worry that decades of growth could⭕ be crushed practicall𓆏y overnight. Even Gloomhaven is struggling, as it faces a ꧒104 percent manufacturing cost increase. With Find Familiar Spirits rooted in D&D, as well as Beadle & Grimm's, Lil⛄lard has also been forced to weather thes🍰e sudden challenges.
While most tariffs have been temporarily paused, the 125 percent placed on China has not, which is having a profound effe🐭ct on the tabl🧔etop scene.
“It’s not easy,” Lillard says bluntly. “It’s crippling and horrible, and it’s really tough. The reality is that hundreds of millions of people are about to be wipeꦦd out based on the whims of an egotistical maniac, narcissistic idiot. So, I mean, the reality is that either the adults are going to come to the table, and things are going to change quickly. Or millions and millions of people will go without work, and that’s not going to be great.
“So our hope, on behalf of the people of the TTRPG world and these companies, these small companies like 💃ours, is that the greater minds prevail and that this lunacy’s over sooner rather than later, because it’s not gonna work. We’re not gonna be able to weather the storm. Anyone who’s doing any work overseas is going to be decimated.”
With no sign of the tariffs on China coming to an end, it’s a bleak outlook for the future of tabletop companies. But Lillard and Find Familiar Spirits march on all the same, and they have an exciting range planned for this year, embodying that idea of acceptance wholeheartedly with their new character, Ebeveros, a half-orc “who found his place amongst other outcasts in a sacred grove - only to find it threatened by d🌄ark forces”. You can read the first part of his story , which is available right now.
Matthew Lillard And Bill R🍎ehor On Making A D&D S🍃how Where Everyone Dies At The End
Matthewও Lillard and Bill Rehor tell us all about their new D&D show, Faster, Purple ꦛWorm! Kill! Kill!
