Three-Hour Lantern

Roadside

Haunted

Poor prices

Three-Hour Lantern

the half-burned inn where the same storm comes back each night

You arrive to find a low, blackened building leaning against the moor; one wall is charred away to splintered beams and a sagging roof patched with tarred canvas. Inside, the hearth is perpetually half-stubbed — embers glow, but no steady flame takes hold. The air tastes of rain before it falls, metallic on the tongue, and every hour the dying lantern flutters and a thin sheet of cold rain breathes through the rafters though the sky beyond remains oddly still. The room is lit by guttering candles and the pale shimmer from the inn’s damaged lantern; patrons speak in low, hurried voices, watching the clock on the mantle that always reads three hours fast.

Over the door

A soot-dark iron lantern hangs on a crooked bracket over the door; its glass is cracked and rimed with white ash, and a faint smear of night-blue paint forms a circle around the wick as if someone once tried to mark it with a sigil.

The keeper

Bram Underhollow

Human

Manner

Bram runs the inn with a weary, practical patience; he is kind to strangers but brusque when questions pry at the inn's routine. He will serve you food and a cot first and answer only the smallest questions until he trusts you.

Quirk

Bram winds the inn's battered pocket clock three times every dusk and hums an old tune while doing so.

Stats

Use the Commoner stat block; carries a small dagger and a soot-stained pocket clock that glows when lightning nears.
House special

Lantern's Wake

5 sp

A small measure of spiced rum and nettle tea poured over a charred ember — it warms the bones and leaves a lingering hum; once after drinking, the imbiber gains advantage on one Wisdom (Perception) check to notice things in stormlight within the next hour.

Prices

Poor (5e lifestyle: about 2 sp a day)

The menu
Food
Blackened bacon and oat cakes
6 cp
Hearty bone broth with root mash
6 cp
Damp-berry pie (served warm-ish)
6 cp
Salted turnips and fried onion
6 cp
Drink
Barrel ale (house)
4 cp
Smokey nettle tea
4 cp
Sour cider
4 cp
Hot spiced water (for the rain-weary)
4 cp
Rooms
Shared cot near the hearth
1 sp
Upstairs cot (shared loft)
1 sp
Ground-level cot against the boarded wall
1 sp
Staff

Mella Thatch · barmaid

Mella serves drinks with a nervous smile and keeps a ledger of who comes and goes, whispering names to the keeper at dawn.

Old Kirn · bouncer

A scarred ex-caravan guard who quietly watches the road from the doorway and smells like wet leather and smoke.

Regulars

Hulda Greaves

A shepherd who swears the storm drinks the minds of lost sheep and wants help reclaiming her missing flock.

Renn Buckley

An itinerant cartographer mapping the ruined track toward Blackfen Marsh; he trades secrets for ale and worries the storm is drawn to a ruined bell.

Sootpaw

A mute tabby-like beast with a singed ear that refuses to leave Bram's side; townsfolk whisper it points at things when the storm lifts.

Rumours
  1. 1

    The Obsidian Bell at the heart of Blackfen tolls at midnight; Renn Buckley says its echo is what draws Bram's nightly storm.

  2. 2

    Hulda Greaves claims her flock vanished toward a cart-track marked by burned stones three nights before the storm began returning.

  3. 3

    A peddler named 'Marrek of the Low Road' sold Bram a fractured weather-engine part last winter; the peddler vanished on the third night after the sale.

Look out for
Every night at the same hour a thin, local storm rains through the inn alone; lightning is faint and the puddles inside never spread.A mantle clock forever reads three hours ahead; if characters examine it closely they can find tiny scorch-marks in the case that match the shard under the bar.

Made with the free LoreKeeper Tavern Generator · Free to use at your table · Licence

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