Today let’s venture into a beloved adventuring site: the tavern. All kinds of adventuring stories start, continue, and end in taverns, and you might find some interesting details to add to your tavern below. Again, these details are easily noted by visitors, and you can use them as starting points to flesh out some other interesting things if the player characters choose to look around a bit more. If you want to roll randomly for one, use the handy number provided with each entry to figure out your result on a d12. You can also pick the one that works for the area in which your characters currently linger.
d12. Item
- A ripped leather pouch is under a table. Inside it are three strands of spun gold. A gold-furred mouse has made a home in here.
- A hook on the wall has what appears to be a basic brown wool cloak hanging from it, but it writhes and twitches now and again.
- The leaves that have come in from autumnal droppings have formed a drift behind the entry door. You can see a scrap of ivory parchment tucked away amid the leaves. It reads: “…too late for your assistance. The hoard…”
- A sealed glass vial filled with clear liquid has blue grains held in suspension within it. Shaking the vial causes the water to turn blue and glow dimly for a few minutes.
- A series of slender steel knives are attached to the underside of the table. One slot is empty.
- A scattering of white pebbles spreads out among three tables. Each pebble has a vowel or a number on it.
- Each stool at the bar has a crystal suspended by clear wire dangling under the seat. When someone sits at the stool, the crystal starts to glow.
- The chandelier overhead is crafted from the tusks of local felines. You can see tiny white spiders crawling all over the chandelier.
- A guest registry sits on the bar. The most recent entries were from several archmages who identified themselves as such. The last of these entries states, “When next we five archmages meet, the world will be ending.” Whether that’s joke or fact, you don’t know.
- An entire wall has been painted to show various creatures thought to be myths in your world. Amid the art, you can pick out symbols from a language you’ve seen before but that escapes your memory for the time being.
- This tavern has a water fixture in the middle, with plants that seem to live by the light of the dancing fireflies that hover around them. Each of the mossy stones that sit in the water also has a bright yellow dancing tentacled creature attached to it.
- Each tankard in this tavern is different from the next. Some are wood. Some are metal. Some are crystalline. Some are glass. A sign above the bar states the following: “If you steal from us, we will send our assassin minions to restore our property. ASSASSIN minions. You have been warned.”
I want No. 2. Now! It would freak my kids out in real life … and doubly freak out my players in game.
SOOOO many wonderful ideas from your articles!
LOVE 8,9 & 11!
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