Port
Festive
Modest prices
The Three-Fold Lantern
the inn where the first herring night is kept
The room smells of brine, frying fat, and the sweet tang of pickled fish. Lanterns—some new, many patched—throw honeyed light across tables gouged with oar-marks; the air hums with the creak of rope, a tuneless fiddle, and the steady cadence of fishermen tossing back tall tales. Tonight the crowd presses close: nets are draped over chairs, muddy boots steam at the hearth, and a band of apprentices beat a rhythm on wooden buckets while a veteran pipes a sea-song. Behind the bar, a long counter is cluttered with jars of brine, a bowl of salt, and a shallow chest where the first herring catch for the season is displayed on a bed of seaweed—ceremonial, glittering, and treated like a talisman.
A weathered iron frame holds three glass lanterns linked by knotted netting; one lantern is filled with bits of polished fishbone that wink in the light. The paint on the frame is flaked and the bottom lantern swings on a rope tassel.
Merrin Gable
Human
Manner
Quirk
Stats
Lanterner's Toast
5 spA small glass of warmed seaberry wine spiked with a sliver of smoked herring oil; it loosens tongues and steadies hands for hauling in nets—granting advantage on one Strength (Athletics) check to pull a heavy net if taken beforehand, or impose disadvantage on Stealth for the next hour due to garlicky breath.
Modest (5e lifestyle: about 1 gp a day)
Grit · cook
A broad-shouldered ex-deckhand who seasons everything with kelp and a curse, and will trade stew for a story of rough weather.
Rill · barmaid
Young, fleet-footed, and impossibly steady with a tray, she slips notes and coins between palms when no one watches.
Borin Tidehand
A weather-beaten netmaster who wants someone to fetch the harbor bell from the reef before the smugglers do.
Sena of the Quarterlight
A lantern-runner and minor fence who claims she can find where missing fish stocks really went—for the right price.
Old Joss
A one-eyed fiddler who insists he once saw a ruined stone face beneath the Old Quay and hums its name when drunk.
1
Borin Tidehand says the Old Quay's harbor bell has been dragged onto the reef by moonlight; he needs a crew to dive and retrieve it before Captain Havel's men plant it as a shipping claim.
2
Old Joss hums of a drowned stone face beneath the Old Quay—the 'Weeper's Brow'—whose mouth is said to hold a merfolk effigy that guides fish; a privateer named Kest is offering coin to anyone who can bring him a piece of that effigy.
3
Sena of the Quarterlight whispers that nets full of valuable smelt disappear into a cavern beneath the warehouses and a rusted hatch leads down to a cavern where two rival smuggler crews are fighting over a sealed crate marked with a coral sigil.
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