Tavern Thursday: Kahvegölge (Patreon)

Each Thursday I do a quick sketch of a new fantasy tavern as a paying-members-exclusive post. Each post includes an illustration and just enough tavern details for a GM to drop it in their game wherever they need a place for adventures to gather and quest to start.

Kahvegölge 

Appearance: The "coffee shade" (rough translation) is an open air courtyard covered by numerous color awnings, providing extensive shade at all times of the day. It is surrounded by shops and tradesmen's businesses, inclu9ding several that offer food and drink, which normally has a covered porch facing the Kahvegölge. Chairs and tables are often put out in the morning, and brought in when business slows (which may be well into the next morning, depending on weather and wealth). Yatak, simple mattresses made from worn carpets, sails, and similar cloth neatly cleaned and folded, are also common, and some patrons bring their own seats, ranging from saddles placed directly on the ground to ornate folding chairs, tables, and even pavilions.

(Art by Valeriy)

Origin: The Kahvegölge evolved in a major trade center in response to numerous ethnicities, traveling merchants, wandering mercinaries, and religious pilgrims all having their own rules on what could be drunk or eaten, and what establishments they were allowed to enter or be seen within. The Kahvegölge itself is not formally a business. Instead it is a courtyard with numerous different businesses surrounding it. The businesses themselves do not have sitting room, but their drinks and food can be bought and enjoyed in the shaded courtyard they all share.

Owner: The Kahvegölge is considered private property owned and maintained by an association shared in common by all the businesses bordering it. Those that offer food and drink pay the most to this association, and have maintenance duties they are expected to perform, including proving clean, well-maintained awnings an seating, and cleaning each day, throughout the day.

However, practically speaking the Kahvegölge is owned by the Night Kites, an all-women mercenary company who specialize in protecting civilian populations in times of war and escorting traveling families. The Kites are paid by the Kahvegölge Association to guard and administer the Kahvegölge itself, including collecting association dues, from which the Kites are paid. Retired Kites often buys shops bordering the Kahvegölge, and younger Kites often spend special time within the Kahvegölge.

(Art by まどか 佐原)

Food: None of the shops around the Kahvegölge serve full meals, but sweet pastries, cheese, and candied nuts are all available, as is simit, a molasses-dipped, sesame-crusted bread that comes in a circular shape.

Drink: By far, the most common drinks available in the Kahvegölge are coffees, including cezve, a thick and aromatic coffee made by boiling fine grounds in a copper pot and not filtering it. This leaves sediment in the bottom of your cup, and often fortune-tellers will come to the Kahvegölge and offering to perform scryings using the remains in a customer's cup. Also available at some shops are kefir (a yoghurt drink), and boza (a malty beverage made with fermented barley, sugar and water, and topped with cinnamon and roasted chickpeas).

There are numerous shops that follow the rules of specific groups, such as not selling alcohol, not selling hot drinks, or not selling both drink and food, but such rules are enforced only within each shop, not in the area of the Kahvegölge.

Lodging: None, though nearly every customer and shopkeeper can recommend a nearby hostel or lodging house, none of which serve food or drink or offer stabling, but some of which have bathes.

Stabling: None, though nearly every customer and shopkeeper can recommend a nearby stable or pen enclosure that can be paid to car for a wide variety of animals.

Clientelle: Much of the success of the Kahvegölge is that the individual stores around it can serve different groups, meeting their preferred edicts and social norms, and the courtyard itself becomes a public space where all these groups can come together. It is common for poor workers, rich merchants, local celebrities, traveling adventurers, hungry scholars, off-duty tax collectors, at-liberty students and apprentices, and retired experts and philosophers to all attend the Kahvegölge at once and socialize across lines of social status, sect separation, age, wealth, and species.

The respected board game shatranj is also very popular within the courtyard, and people of very different backgrounds and status often gather to find players matching their skill level, or to watch grand masters play while sipping cezva.

Rumor: The local nobles have decided too many people have been discussing potential rebellion or social realignment, possibly through collective action of the people, and have decided to shut down the Kahvegölge. Not wishing to pick a fight with the Night Kites or pass laws which could be challenged in courts, the nobles have instead decided to levy massive tariffs on all coffee coming into the city, so no one will be able to afford it, and the Kahvegölge will lose its primary attraction.

Numerous people in the Kahvegölge suggest that if this happens, it would justify a rebellion, or at least social realignment through collective action of the people.

Adventure Seed: The Night Kites are stretched thin, with many of their squads aiding refugee families fleeing a distant war. Through one of the retired Kites running a shop selling boza and simit, the Night Kites are looking to hire nontraditional auxiliaries to take care of some minor escort duties within the city, such as walking with some old philosophers from the Kahvegölge to a bath house, and back, each day. The philosophers are always angering one group or another, and their escorts must deal with people throwing rotten fruit, heckling the philosophers (who tend tom shout back, and get too distracted to have time to take their bath), and reverse-pickpockets trying to plant truly seditious notes in the philosophers' pockets to0 get them arrested for treason.