Session 2 Introduction continued - the Welcome Wench

The Welcome Wench Tavern

Moving cautiously forward, you are able to creep closer and spy unseen through the tavern’s cracked and warped window-shutters.

Inside, the tavern is lit by guttering oil lamps.  There is a large central hall, an open doorway behind the bar leads into a kitchen area, while to the left of the bar is a sturdy door, presumably leading to interior rooms.

At the two central tables seven rough and dangerous-looking men are making merry, crossbows and melee weapons close at hand.  One man with greying hair plays a fiddle, badly.  Their obvious leader is a well-dressed man, all in black – could this be Lord Ollie himself?!  Of cruel but aristocratic countenance, he is quaffing from a goblet.  A hugely muscled brigand in leather sits close by to his right, toying idly with a heavy flail.  An eighth man in innkeep’s apron stands behind the bar, pouring ale from a barrel.  He is thin, balding, with a long droopy moustache and sinister leer. 

The seven male patrons are attended on by two attractive but harassed-looking female serving-slaves, both nude but for some cheap brass jewelry.  Each has an S-mark branded on her left thigh.  One slave is tall, perhaps 5’8”, a buxom and leggy brunette of some thirty summers, her hair piled up  in the remnants of an elegant style popular in Yggsburgh society – she is currently fetching ale from the bar.  The other is a brown Nerian girl of perhaps twenty years, shorter but equally pretty and curvaceous.  She sits in the lap of a bald, swarthy fellow who fondles her unmercifully, to the sarcastic and lewd commentary of his comrades.

Off to the left, two more women sit drinking at a side table, surveying the antics of the men with mild disapproval.  One is a very burly, mean-eyed and heavy-set middle-aged woman in rusty chain armour, a heavy bastard sword slung over the back of her chair.  The second is younger, perhaps 25, with the platinum-blonde hair of the Northlanders.  She is quite beautiful, as comely as the two slave-girls, but has a wild, fierce look about her, almost as cruel as the leader of the highwaymen.  She wears a skimpy red two-piece outfit in the barbaric style, a dark cloak hangs from her chair and a large dagger is strapped to her left thigh.  As you watch, the brown furry form of a small ape scuttles down from the rafters above to perch on her right shoulder, chattering in her ear.  She frowns distractedly and bats it away.  She looks vaguely familiar to Flynn – he has heard tales of a white-haired young ‘bandit witch’, Shadow, who matches this one’s description. By all accounts Shadow is nearly as dangerous as Ollie himself. 

 Nerian Tavern Slave

 Shadow the 'Brigand Witch'