101 Taverns

[reason]

...

The Cordage House

The Cordage House is a rough tavern in one of the narrow cobbled streets behind the Berths and dockfront. Seafarers' Guildsmen, fisherfolk, dockside toughs, thieves and their hangers-on are the usual crowd. Every battered item of furniture in the Cordage House - up to and including the heavy wooden bar itself - is lashed down tight with good, thick rope to eyelets in the planking. Good coin is paid for burly thugs and lesser Guildsmen to keep the peace inside, but their paymaster, Shipmaster Komashk, is the most common cause of the frequent brawls in the House and on the cobbles outside.

Komashk owns the Cordage House, lives on the upper floors, and is rarely seen elsewhere. He is deeply suspicious of strangers, crude and surly, but nevertheless a font of sea tales for the few he trusts. The Shipmaster - absent a ship for as long as any of the dockfolk can recall - claims to have been a raider and shiptaker out on the Farthest Sea, wrecked off the Enclave coast and cast ashore on a broken spar many years ago. Like all of his stories, the particulars change with each telling and the whole is only barely plausible. Komashk is a proud man and challenging his words is unwise; more than one seafarer has been beaten near to death in the Cordage House.

Reason
Principia Infecta

 

[Conaill]

Conaill's Cocktails

Here's an inn borrowed from the ENWorld collaborative city project "Mor's End" from (yikes!) two years ago. More info (including stats) to be found on the Mor's End Craft & Trade Submissions page.

Conaill's Cocktails (or "Conaill's C*** & Tails", depending on what our mighty ruler lets me get away with...)

Conaill's is a tavern located in a sturdy dwarven built two-story house between the posh and dwarven districts of Mor's End, specializing in... mixed drinks.

Conaill is a retired adventuring Fighter (his greatsword hangs on the wall behind the bar). During his many travels he has had the opportunity to sample a wide variety of peculiar local drinks,- often to great risk to his own health . He started to experiment with mixing them in order to preserve the "kick" of the original but make them somewhat safer for human consumption.

After retiring from adventuring life, Conaill decided to settle down in Mor's End and open up a bar. He hired Flibbert, a gnome with some knowledge of alchemy to run the place. Flibbert has expanded significantly on Conaill's experimentation, adding in the occasional alchemical or potion booster as well.

Conaill's Cocktails is one of those bars that has a hundred and one different colored botles on the wall behind the bar. It may not have some of the high-quality brands the Downpour carries, but it has an even larger variety. In particular, it carries a number of beverages which are not normally advisable for human consumption, such as Thundering Brew, Elven Feywine and Dragon's Piss. The latter is an exceptionally strong liquor which acts as Acid on any race that doesn't have the Dwarves' strong stomach lining. It is served in small ceramic cups,handled with metal tongs. Conaill and Flibbert have also concocted human-potable versions of almost all of these drinks, including "Dragon's Ale", which is often used for Human vs Dwarf drinking contests.

The main tavern area is approximately 40x40, with the bar along part of one of the long sides. The other walls are lined with benches. The place is lit by lanterns, with a single Everburning Torch over the bar. The area behind the bar is raised, so Flibbert can stand eye-to-eye with his patrons. Two young human barmaids help out during the busier times. For security, Flibbert keeps a Tanglefoot Bag and a crossbow with blunted bolts behind the counter. Just in case, he also has a first-aid kit with 2 Antitoxins, 2 potions of CLW, one Delay Poison and even one Neutralize Poison. You never know what race might happen to have a bad reaction to some of the more "experimental" drinks!

Behind the common area are the restrooms and a small kitchen for Conaill and Flibbert's personal use. The full-size basement underneath the bar holds storage rooms, as well as Flibbert's personal room and his Alchemist's Lab. The second floor holds Conaill's private rooms.

Conaill gets along great with the dwarven population of Mor's End, and up to one in three of his patrons tend to be dwarven. Although his bar is located in a somewhat better part of town, Conaill's adventuring friends occasionally come by to rile up the place, and Conaill himself has been known to dip a little too deeply into his own merchandise on occasion...


Plot Hooks:

- Flibbert and Conaill have accidentally concocted the first "designer drug": a complex mixture of alchemy, potions and exotic liquors that produces a veritable ambrosia, but is also highly addictive. As soon as he realized its addictive effect, Conaill immediately stopped production, but somehow the word has gotten out and now someone's after the recipe.

- Someone broke into Conaill's and stole among others a bottle of rare Yuan-Ti liquor. Not only is this an expensive wine with a light, delicate flavor, it is also highly poisonous to most humanoids. The poison's effects take a week to develop, after which death is nearly inevitable. Conaill hires the PCs to retrieve the bottle or find out who drank it before that deadline. He would prefer not to let the authorities know about this, because the posesion of such a bottle might jeopardize his tavern license. (If the PCs haven't found the bottle on the moring of day 7, Conaill will alert the authorities himself, and spread the word about the wine's posionous nature, so anyone who drank it might still be able to get medical help.

Here is a floorplan for Connail's Cocktails, created mostly using CSP tiles, plus a lot of hand tweaking in Gimp:

And here's the basement level, with Flibbert's quarters (Conaill lives on the top floor). Note the alchemist lab cum microbrewery, the drain to the sewers (plot hook), and the books on the coffee table.

 

[Buttercup]

The Girl & Goblin

The village of Gold River may be isolated, but everyone in the region has heard of The Girl & Goblin. The Inn & Tavern is famous for two reasons--its food and its unusual proprietors. The menu at the G&G is simply amazing. Roast goat medallions in wild mushroom sauce over home made noodles, goat a'la orange, curried goat on a bed of rice pilaf, fricasee of goat with baby vegetables, goat liver & onions with cottage fries, goat cheese & herb omelettes, goatmilk pancakes with wild blueberries--nobody can make goat taste as good as the chef at the G&G. And his wife is a master brewer & wine maker. Each fabulous dish is partnered with an equally delicious beer, ale, mead or wine.

Did I mention the proprietors? They're a bit...unusual. Beatrice is a 30 year old woman of average looks, and her husband is a goblin named Spilnock. Yeah, I said goblin. It really doesn't pay to think much on that relationship, I'll grant you. Still, they seem happy together, and no one can deny that the Girl & Goblin serves up the finest food in nine kingdoms. Unless you're allergic to goat, of course.

 

[reason]

...

Running a tavern must be so much easier in a mundane world...or maybe it wasn't. Hard to say, what with people being people. (Scroll back up the thread for a description of the Wayward Visitor).

An Evening at the Wayward Visitor

Blood! I wasn't gone for longer than it took to scare those young eelsuckers away from the mules and someone falls on a knife. I'll wager Kalei was holding it too, and now she's off hiding somewhere. Back to work, you eels! Make some noise, look happy! You know the way the Visitor goes when the mood gets ugly - break open a cask of the good stuff and strike up a song afore we see Trespassers and worse.

Stop your wailing! You're a big man, plenty of friends on the dockside, and if Kalei saw fit to stick you, it was at least half your own fault. You're getting bound up, good coins worth of spirit wasted on the wound; if it was anywhere vital you wouldn't have breath to be shouting. Blood! See this ax? Don't make my life any harder! Now quieten down, you and you, afore you spoil the mood any more and bring out something ugly from the Farthest.

Hah! You and how many others? Blood, I'd like to see it, just for the looks on your faces after The Cursed has her way with you. Go on with you, take that excuse for a man away. You're lucky I'm not making you scrub the planking clean!

Rednail! Follow those eels out and then find me Kalei. Blood, the air tastes like bad ale in here. It ended badly the last time that happened. Where's that cask of good grain spirit? No, the one with the circle mark, girl, not the regular rot. All you with coin! A gift from the owner, so drink up!

Reason
Principia Infecta

 

[reason]

...

The Lantern in Darkness

Across the Temple Plaza from the steps of the Temple of Three, the Lantern in Darkness is a cellar tavern favored by petitioners, Temple Guards and the fisherfolk who land catches at dawn. The cellar air is always thick with smoke from sputtering fish-oil lamps. The ale is strong and the food heavily spiced, but dockside thugs and thieves favor rougher taverns - or at least taverns not under the watchful eye of the Temple Guard. The regulars at the Lantern are honest commonfolk; fishers in the morning, petitioners during the day and Guards after dark.

The trapdoor and ladder to the Lantern are open at all hours of the day, oozing smokey air into the Temple Plaza. The establishment is run by a covy of old Vanished Isle women and seemingly endless supply of younger relatives. Rough-hewn, oil- and smoke-smudged carvings adorn the stonework Lantern walls; the exploits of Salin the Seafarer feature prominently; the central cellar support is shaped and painted to resemble the Fisher in Darkness. Islemarks have been carefully carved into the wooden tables - some say that the owners know more of Magi wizardry than they let on.

Reason
Principia Infecta