Wilderness
Haunted
Poor prices
The Last Knot Lodge
the lodge where the lake remembers
Built on pilings over the rim of a frozen lake, the lodge smells of wet wool, smoked fish, and a sour, coppery tang that no one seems to fully wash away. Pale light from whale-oil lamps throws long shadows on the ice; the floorboards creak as if someone walked beneath them. Conversation is low and hushed; patrons instinctively turn their faces to the windows where, under the skin of the ice, smudged shapes drift and something taps now and then like knuckles on a belly of glass. A battered stove hisses in the center of the room, hanging fish sway from the rafters, and a patchwork of furs covers every bench and stool, but even wrapped in fur a chill will crawl up your spine here.
A weathered wooden panel carved with a single knotted rope loop; frost clings to its edges and one of the carved knots is filled with a dark stain that looks like water frozen in place. No words, only the carved knot and a small iron rivet hammered through the top.
Marta Grunn
Human
Manner
Quirk
Stats
Bellkeeper's Hot
4 cpA steaming cup of spruce cider spiked with a measure of smoked spirit and a pinch of crushed winter herb; it warms the stomach but leaves a faint metallic aftertaste, and the drinker sometimes hears a distant bell toll in the minutes after drinking.
Poor (5e lifestyle: about 2 sp a day)
Hollin Mear · barmaid
Half-blind from windburn, Hollin pours ale with quick hands and listens faster than she speaks; she knows which patrons come for coin and which come for secrets.
Torrek Sors · cook
A taciturn ex-fisher turned cook who seasons everything with smoked lake-weed and tells tall catch stories in gruff mutters between ladles.
Morrin Pike
A gaunt, moon-faced fisherman who claims his brother's knuckles tap from the ice and will trade any favor for a chance to pull the brother up.
Old Sael
A retired bell-ringer from a long-sunken chapel who hums fragments of a dirge and will pay handsomely for anything that proves the chapel's bell still tolls.
Jun the Tracker
A silent hunter who comes to listen for the knocks and maps strange cracks in the ice; she will hire guides to follow a sound she cannot place.
1
Morrin Pike says the drowned are tapping in Morse to spell a name—'Kest'—and that pulling the body with that name up will stop the knocks.
2
Old Sael claims a submerged chapel called Glassfinger Spire rings itself when moon-ice shifts; he wants brave hands to dive and retrieve the chapel's lost brass cross.
3
Jun the Tracker heard a bell beneath the ice last winter that tolls exactly at midnight; she thinks a broken anchor lodged in a ship's hull keeps it ringing and will pay handsomely to salvage the anchor.
Made with the free LoreKeeper Tavern Generator · Free to use at your table · Licence
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