Roadside
Rowdy
Modest prices
The Brindle Spur
the drovers' rest where pigs race for coin
You push through a swinging plank door into a low-ceilinged hall alive with shouts, clinking tankards, and the sour-sweet reek of tack, smoke, and frying fat. Long trestle tables are scarred by years of elbow marks and spilled beer; ropes and horse blankets hang from hooks above benches. A pen made of roughly hewn boards burbles at one corner with irritable pigs, their bristles catching the lamplight. The patrons are a woolly, sun-baked crowd of drovers, teamsters, and betting men who trade stories and reckonings as fast as they empty mugs. Behind the bar a chalked ledger bristles with names and numbers; bets are barked in a dozen different accents. A battered scoreboard near the hearth lists last week's winners and carries an oil-stained smear someone swears is a champion pig's footprint. Music—if you can call it that—comes from a hurdy-gurdy and someone pounding a bench while a gambler rattles dice; at the far end, a dim stair leads upstairs where tired men rent a room by the night and the air smells of lamp oil and hay.
A weather-darkened iron spur nailed to a carved plank, streaks of mud and a smeared hoofprint across the metal; no words, only a painted hog's head beneath the spur
Hobert Gurn
human
Manner
Quirk
Stats
Bridlebound Sling
5 spA hot, spiced barley-spirited toddy with a dash of ironwort; it steadies the nerves and grants advantage on Animal Handling checks involving livestock for 1 hour (once made, the effect is obvious and drinkers boast of it).
Modest (5e lifestyle: about 1 gp a day)
Merri Dock · cook
A broad-shouldered woman who slings frying pans and insults in equal measure; her beef-and-barley stew is famous among drovers.
Button Low · barmaid
A quick-footed half-elf who carries three mugs at once and keeps the betting ledger tidy with a walnut stylus tucked behind his ear.
Gideon Rusk · bouncer
A barrel-chested ex-cartwright who breaks up fights with a single word and refuses to let anyone move the scoreboard.
Oren Tallis
A quiet herdsmaster nursing a chipped mug and searching for a carved whistle he claims will save his prize cow.
Jeb 'Two-Tooth' Harrow
A loud drover and habitual bettor who knows the secret routes for moving fat cattle and is always looking for a mark to fleece.
Fitz Mering
A wiry pig-handler who trains racing sows and is desperate to find his broodmare 'Widow's Luck', stolen two nights ago.
1
Widow's Luck, Fitz Mering's famed racing sow, was seen being led toward Blackwater Ford two nights ago by a man with a red scarf.
2
Oren Tallis claims a traveling brander named Marrek Lang owes him a silver piece and will 'reclaim' anything marked with his iron—Hobert might be hiding a whistle Oren wants back.
3
A ruined tollhouse half a day's drive north now holds a carved stone trough that hums at night and some drovers say cows lay down in front of it and refuse to move.
Made with the free LoreKeeper Tavern Generator · Free to use at your table · Licence
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