Underground
Haunted
Poor prices
The Candle in Bone
the tavern beneath the boneways
You descend a short flight of damp stone steps and the world narrows to candlelight and the whisper of old bones. Candles sit in sockets bored into skulls set along the low walls; they gutter and hiss, throwing long, skeletal shadows across flagstones. The air smells of tallow and earth, with a sharp metallic tang undercutting the fumes. Conversation lives in low, cautious murmurs — miners, night-watchers, and a few scholars trading information like coins. A curtain of moth-eaten velvet marks the way to the sleeping cots; beneath it you can hear the soft, irregular thump of someone counting heartbeats or keeping time. Despite the chill and the dust, the room is tidy: chipped tankards stacked in a row, a hymnbook propped against a skull, and a ledger chained to the bar with a small iron padlock.
A soot-blackened iron hoop holds a single bleached skull threaded with a stub candle; wax trails down the brow and the skull's jaw is cracked like a grin. The paint on the wooden board behind it is flaking, and no words hang on it—only the skull and the candle's smear of smoke.
Morven Crowhollow
human
Manner
Quirk
Stats
Skulllit Draught
4 cpA heavy ale brewed with charred bone ash and a bitter root; it warms the chest and makes memories feel closer for an hour—drinkers sometimes glimpse a single vivid recollection of whatever skull the candle was set in.
Poor (5e lifestyle: about 2 sp a day)
Noll the Tapkeeper · barmaid
A thick-forearmed half-orc woman with an easy grin who slides ale to patrons and knows every secret route to the surface.
Fenn Quicktoe · stablehand
A wiry gnome who tends the occasional mule left in the alley and keeps a careful inventory of who sleeps in which cot.
Rudek Gravewarden
A dour gravewarden who wants the missing ledger of the western ossuary returned—he believes someone in this tavern knows where it went.
Sibyl of Knotted Threads
A shawled fortune-teller who listens for names in the candle-snaps and is hunting the 'mute bell of Saint Hyrn' to finish a rite.
Little Jorn
A pale street urchin who sleeps in a corner cot and insists there's a door under the bar that opens at midnight to a cold, black staircase.
1
Rudek Gravewarden claims the western ossuary ledger was stolen and that the thief met a pale child near the Candle in Bone last fortnight.
2
Sibyl of Knotted Threads swears the 'mute bell of Saint Hyrn'—a battered iron bell said to call spirits—rests sealed beneath this tavern and that a ritual could wake it.
3
Little Jorn insists a bricked door under the bar opens at the third midnight bell to the Third Archway, where a nameless crypt breathes cold fog and something scratches at the mortar.
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