Village
Seedy
Poor prices
The Half-Sour Ledger
the alehouse where every debt is written down
You push through a low, steam-dark door into a cramped room of leaning tables, oil-slicked benches and a smoky, sour smell that rides the steam from a squat iron kettle. Light is thin—a single lamp over the bar, a guttering candle on each table—so faces are half in shadow and half in the dim amber. The crowd is local and wary: stooped farmers, a grimy miller, a woman who never seems to leave the far corner; voices fall when the keeper glances up. Behind the bar sits a row of patched barrels, a ledger with loose pages, and a brass tap stained with the ghost of pale foam—an odd, faintly sweet tang rides the air whenever a mug is filled.
A weathered wooden board painted with a cracked tankard over an open book; the paint is flaking and someone has carelessly nailed a length of ledger paper under the rim with cramped inked entries visible in places.
Merrit Doss
Human
Manner
Quirk
Stats
Two-Lined Draught
4 cpA pale ale spiced with a pinch of preserved citrus and a hint of diluted barley—tastes of smoke and sourness; after a mug a patron feels luckier in small matters and slightly muddled on specifics for an hour.
Poor (5e lifestyle: about 2 sp a day)
Gwen Quick · barmaid
Moves like she needs to be somewhere else; remembers everyone’s tab but never sleeps at night.
Old Tomas · stablehand
Mostly deaf, fiercely loyal to Merrit, and smells of hops and hay; he'll fetch a horse but asks for a story in trade.
Bran the Cook · cook
A sour-faced man who stretches every scrap into something warm and filling and swears the stew improves with aged barley mash.
Father Marlowe
The village priest who comes most evenings for a weak ale and looks like he would sooner confess than be confessed to—except he never lets his ledger be seen.
Hedd Grane
A broad-shouldered miller who wants coin for a new waterwheel and keeps his opinion loudly to anyone who will buy him another pint.
Tilla of the East Croft
A sharp-eyed widow who watches comings and goings; she’s hunting a thing missing from her fields and trades gossip for a warm meal.
1
Father Marlowe supposedly turned a small silver reliquary over to an outsider last winter; witnesses say he left in a hurry and Merrit’s ledger has a coded entry about a "soft token".
2
The mill at Grane's Hollow (owned by Hedd Grane) has been running oddly at night—Tilla swears something took a bundle of uncut sacks from the top floor and left a trail of pale footprints.
3
A tax collector named Sareth passed through three weeks ago and paid Merrit in coin stamped with a strange mark; villagers now whisper the collector takes payoffs and keeps a list of those who refuse.
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