I was playing through toribash on my steam version when the game told me I had acheived the level of brown belt. however, when I checked on the forum acheivements, they stated I still had 13 more Qi to earn.

You currently have 504 QI, and have achieved Brown Belt, hence you got the steam achivement. I am not sure if you mean you got the achievement early or if it just popped up randomly.

my computer is telling me I do not have the achievement when I go to this forum's shop but it does show up on my steam account at the moment: http://www.toribash.com/usercard/undeamed.png
If it says otherwise It may simply be my browser doing something weird.

That is because on the Toribash Forums, you need to wait up to 36 hours (longest I had to wait) for an achievement to register. This is because the automated system has to do it and it takes time, whereas with Steam it is made to work quickly under the stress of all active users.

Anyhow, I can safely say that you do have the achievement on the forums, you will get a pm notification about it.

alright. Thanks for clearing that up Abyss.