The Fifty Worlds

The Tavern

You enter the tavern. You can't understand the innkeeper, who speaks in a language which seems distinctly short of vowels, and he can't understand you. Nevertheless, he knows his job, and he gets the general idea that you're hungry and thirsty.

The food and drink, when it arrives, is fairly unpleasant. The food is dead rabbit boiled in mead, and the drink is a warm mug of the same mead. The dead rabbit is stringy, nastily-textured, and has a sickly tang to it. The sickly tang comes from the mead, which on its own is even worse than the boiled rabbit. You might try drinking a second mug of mead in the hope that you'll get drunk enough not to notice the taste; if you do, it doesn't work. The mead is fairly weak as alcoholic drinks go.

If you've got a reasonable constitution you probably won't throw up.

Your "room" is an empty corridor. Stacked alongside the walls are piles of cloth. If there were other guests at the tavern, you could use the pieces of cloth to curtain off part of the corridor as yours. But there aren't, so you put them to better use, wrapping yourself in them to keep yourself warm.

You wake up in the middle of the night with horrible griping pains in your innards. You crawl along the floor of the corridor to a place where there's a hole between the stones (that's what passes for sanitary arrangements here), and you evacuate a bellyful of diarrhoea into it.

Then you throw up.

After that, you feel somewhat better, and go back to sleep. Congratulations. You've survived your first day as an adventurer, and you're not dead yet.

By the time you wake up, you've missed breakfast. This doesn't particularly worry you. You find, when you return from your corridor to the main hall of the tavern, that plates and cutlery are being cleared away. There are two people, apparently guests, sitting at separate tables, sipping mugs of mead and making a point of ignoring one another. One is a wizard, and the other is a cleric. It doesn't matter which you approach first. Since the wizard can't understand you but the cleric shares a common language with you, you end up speaking to the cleric.

During the course of the conversation, you learn the following:

  • The cleric's name is Nmjjpjjro
  • The cleric comes from a temple west of here, at the other end of the pass you stumbled on yesterday
  • The cleric honours Pnmjje the Munificent, God of Commerce
  • The local language doesn't have enough vowels to be pronounceable by anyone but locals
  • Local plants are poisonous to anyone but locals
  • Boiled rabbit makes anyone but locals sick, at least for the first week or two
  • Boiled dog is safe for anyone to eat, but wild dogs are cunning and vicious and hard to catch
  • The local economy works on credit - all transactions are recorded
  • The boiled rabbit and mug(s) of mead you had last night have been recorded, as has your use of the corridor for overnight accommodation
  • Transactions are totted up at the end of each quarter, and anyone in debt is sold into slavery
  • Midsummer, the next quarter day, is a few days away
  • Nmjjpjjro isn't a guest at the tavern, he's come here to collect this quarter's list of transactions
  • You've been particularly fortunate - since you didn't countersign for the rabbit, the mead or the corridor, those will be carried over to the next quarter, ninety-six days away
  • You should countersign for the rabbit, the mead and the corridor as soon as Nmjjpjjro leaves

    If you promise to be a good boy or girl (as appropriate) and countersign promptly for your meals and accommodation in future, Nmjjpjjro will give you more useful information:

  • Below the tavern, there is an old mine
  • The mine used to be the source of rubies and emeralds
  • There aren't any rubies and emeralds in it any more, and haven't been for centuries
  • However, there is still a fair amount of ruby dust and emerald dust around the old workings, and anyone with a dustpan could, in principle, make a decent living
  • That is, if it wasn't for the monsters
  • People who go down into the mines alone tend not to come back
  • People who go down into the mines in groups of ten or a dozen do tend to come back
  • Ten heavily-armed people guarding one person with a dustpan is not a paying proposition
  • Nevertheless, a surprising number of people try it
  • At midsummer, there will probably be some adventurers showing up in the tavern to try it
  • Actually, it's often the monsters, rather than the ruby dust and emerald dust, which attract the adventurers
  • Strange things happen at midsummer

    If you ask Nmjjpjjro about the wizard, Nmjjpjjro will inform you that:

  • The wizard's name is Rjspldhmba
  • The wizard is always called Rjspldhmba the Pervert
  • Rjspldhmba the Pervert is an evil necromancer
  • If Rjspldhmba the Pervert isn't the most evil and disgusting person on the planet, it's not for want of trying
  • Rjspldhmba the Pervert is a permanent guest at the tavern, which is exactly the right distance from civilisation - near enough that luxuries can be transported here, but not so close that neighbours will object to having a disgustingly perverted necromancer living in their midst
  • Rjspldhmba the Pervert has a well-stocked library, most of it obscenely pornographic
  • You don't want to have anything to do with Rjspldhmba the Pervert
  • You really don't want to have anything to do with Rjspldhmba the Pervert

    After Nmjjpjjro leaves to return to his temple, you have a choice. If you want to become an evil necromancer, you could ignore Nmjjpjjro's advice and offer to serve Rjspldhmba the Pervert as his apprentice. Alternatively, and more sensibly, you could simply wait in the tavern for a few days, acclimatising yourself, until midsummer day.

    Either way, it comes to the same thing. Your next encounter happens on midsummer day. What happens is that a group of novice adventurers walks through the tavern door. If you thought you were inexperienced, take a look at them. I'm not going to repeat everything I've told you for their benefit. That's your job. Oh, and by the way, since you've managed to survive alone for some days on a strange world, you're now second level, and if you want to be, you're the party leader. Congratulations.

    Package Tour Arrivals Start Here

    If you're here, you're either:

  • Someone who has been hanging around the tavern for a week, waiting for something to happen.
  • Someone who answered an advertisement for people seeking adventure.

    If you are in the latter group, you find yourself at what is technically a stone circle. It is a circle, and it has stones. Ouch. Your heavy boots are following by dog-cart and will not be here for several days.

    When two teleport-loads of adventurers have been brought to the stone circle, a small, unpleasant-looking man pays off the wizard who brought you all, and then indicates that you should follow him.

    The path, which is littered with stones, leads you to a tavern. You are in considerable pain by the time you arrive. The small, unpleasant-looking man leaves you in the main hall of the tavern.

    At this point, the adventurer who has been hanging around the tavern for a week introduces himself. He has no more clue about what is going on than anyone else, but he does know a few of the survival essentials, and he proceeds to explain them.

    I haven't written up any more encounters at the tavern. I may; then again, I may not. Your best option is to enter the maze and hack away at monsters.

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