Village
Haunted
Modest prices
Bell Beneath the Well
the inn with a cellar that keeps breathing
A chill lives in the rafters here even on summer nights. Oil lamps gutter with a blue edge and the common room smells of boiled barley, wax, and something older — damp stone and iron. Conversation lowers when patrons glance toward the hatch to the cellar; from it comes a faint, irregular tapping like metal on stone, and sometimes breath that fogs the threshold though no window is open. The crowd is small: farmers with clay under their nails, a traveling tinker who speaks to himself, and a mourning woman who keeps to a corner table and fingers a rusted trinket beneath her shawl.
A weathered iron ring hung from a chipped wooden slab; the ring is pitted with rust and the plank bears a faded iron-stain where a bell once swung. No lettering remains, only a smear of darker wood as if something was wiped away.
Marek Hobb
Human
Manner
Quirk
Stats
Midnight Ring
5 spA hot brew of black ale, smoked honey and a pinch of ironwort — it warms the teeth and blurs edges for an hour, easing fear but leaving a metallic tang and a faint ringing in the ears.
Modest (5e lifestyle: about 1 gp a day)
Hettan · barmaid
A jumpy half-elf who moves like she expects the chairs to sprout teeth; she slips overheard secrets to customers for a copper.
Bromm · cook
A broad-shouldered man who swears his stew keeps ghosts calm and slams a ladle for anyone who speaks ill of the cellar.
Old Fen · stablehand
Silent as a shadow with a glass eye; he hums a low tune whenever someone approaches the hatch to the cellar.
Marta of Brindle Low
The village gravedigger who suspects the bell's spirit stole her marker and wants it back before the dead forget their names.
Tinker Joss
A traveling repairer who believes metal remembers its maker and has been trying to craft a key to open the cellar without breaking the binding.
Harrel the Millhand
A pragmatic man who refuses to sleep anywhere but the common room after his sister vanished near the well six months ago.
1
The rusted bell ring: a farrier in a neighboring village claims he forged a matching ring and that if both rings are rung together the spirit will be drawn out.
2
Brindle Low grave-marker: Marta the gravedigger believes the bell's binding is stitched to a carved stone that went missing from Old Gern's grave two winters ago.
3
The cellar latch: Tinker Joss says there's an iron key with a spiral tooth hidden in the well's base that will open the secret hatch beneath the bar without breaking the binding.
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