Quest’s End: Sandkheg’s Hide is the fantasy spirit you’ve been waiting for. Matthew Lillard (Scream, Scooby-Doo, Five Nights at Freddy’s) has worked with some star-studded talent, but even he got starstruck working with the legendary talent at Critical Role. Quest’s End: Sandkheg’s Hide is the first collaboration between Lillard’s Find Familiar Spirits and the tabletop RPG juggernauts. It expands on the lore established by Matthew Mercer in Campaign One: Vox Machina and makes the potent liquor from Marquet a reality.
I got to talk to Lillard about the latest Quest’s End launch, and he wanted to hammer home two points: Sandkheg’s Hide was made with Critters in mind, and when it’s gone, it’s gone.
Quest’s End Sandkheg’s Hide Is Ripped Straight From Critical Role
Lillard and the team at Find Familiar Spirits aren’t newcomers to whiskey or including narrative pieces with each bottle. Every Quest’s End drop features stories set in the team’s Dawn of the Unbound Gods saga. However, Sandkheg’s Hidebound them to entirely new rules dictated not by them but by the lore of Critical Role.
Thankfully, they had a pretty comfortable cushion to fall back on: Matthew Mercer’s legendary DMing.
The reason we picked [Sandkheg’s Hide] is that Mercer does a great job of sort of describing the bottle, and everyone has these incredible in-world reactions to when they drink it. It’s a funny moment. And there was so much to hold on to, like the flavor profile. The way he described the bottle allowed us to go out and build that bottle. He talks about it being a wine bottle dipped in wax, and so we found this incredible glass out of Italy that has all these chips and imperfections in it. It’s green glass and then we dip it in wax.
Matthew Lillard, Find Familiar Spirits
The team assembled Sandkheg’s Hide with Critters in mind
Despite working with Mercer’s information, Lillard knew Quest’s End had to do right by Critters, Critical Role’s fandom. The actor has always stressed the importance of fandoms in our talks, and he recognizes that they don’t get much bigger or more passionate than Critters.
Quest’s End has always been a super-premium line of whiskey, so the first thing was to bump down the price of Sandkheg’s Hide to make it more accessible to Critters. But Lillard and Find Familiar Spirits don’t want to profit off a community’s passion. Instead, they want to create something they’d be happy to purchase.
“We know that we have to deliver in a way that [Critters] are going to respond. Part of our whole thing is that we want that adventure to start when you get [Sandkheg’s Hide] on your doorstep. The box is in-world [and] there’s a whole booklet that comes with it. All the way through, we’re really trying our damndest to build something for the community that they’ll love and want to be a part of.”
Matthew Lillard, Find Familiar Spirits
Quest’s End Sandkheg’s Hide expands on Critical Role lore and features a found journal of the first in-world person to create Sandkheg’s Hide, written by Jasmine Bhullar.
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Check out my full interview with Matthew Lillard below!
Quest’s End: Sandkheg’s Hide is available now on the official website. The limited sale runs for three weeks through May 23.
Are you a fan of Critical Role? Will you be getting a bottle of Quest’s End: Sandkheg’s Hide? What other fandoms would you like Matthew Lillard and Find Familiar Spirits to partner with? Let us know your thoughts on social media, and keep following The Illuminerdi for more content like this.
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