Tavern Thursday: Khanara's Caravanserai (for Heroes' Epoch) (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.

Today's entry is also a location in my Heroes' Epoch campaign setting.

Khanara's Caravanserai

Appearance: Khanara's Caravanserai appears to be a small keep set into surrounding mountains. It's front facing entrance has wide wooden front gates, two square mural towers, a stone wall topped by a wooden parapet, and a single barrel tower with a hoarding.

(Illustration by IG Digital Arts)

Inside the gate is a massive courtyard which takes up considerably more room than any of the surrounding walls or buildings. While the outer curtain wall is stone, a great deal of construction in the courtyard is wooden. There is no central keep or main building, with the interior spaces instead largely being built into the wall itself, or existing as a wooden buildings up against one of the walls or three front towers.

At the base of the walls are numerous arched alcoves, known as vaults, which can be closed off with a sturdy wooden gate. There are also numerous areas roped off with thick ropes laying across the ground, called seisins. Many have goods, crates, and even tents and campfires in them.

 (Illustration by IG Digital Arts)

Heroes' Epoch: In the Heroes' Epoch campaign, the Caravanserai is located in Evershadow Pass, in the northern Ebonspire Mountains, north of Ironbridge. The pass cuts through the narrowest point of the Ebonspires, and creates a link from the east coast of Arcataran (and thus the most heavily traveled trade routes from Hanjaseon) and the southeastern tip of the Uerngwen. While the Evershadow Pass is considered a dangerous land route (with many minor threats, and a few modest and major threats), travel through it takes just a few days, while sailing from the east coast of the continent to the Swordlands or the Hook takes 4-6 weeks.

Origin: Khanara's Caravanserai began life as a fortified mine entrance in the Titan's Epoch (5-600 years ago). The mine had veins of adamantine, which were extremely valuable but had to be smelted from slag rock to transport cheaply, as only 1 pound of adamantine came from 100 lbs. of raw ore (unlike iron, which would produce 50-70 lbs of iron from 100 lbs. of raw ore). Not only was the area dangerous, but the value of smelted adamantine made it a popular target for military raids.

As the mine produced more and more ore, the outer wall was expanded with towers. But when the veins began to produce less, the operation (including miners, guards, smelters, and so on) was simply too expensive to justify and the mine and the fortified entrance were abandoned roughly 200 years ago. Roughly a century ago, the young dwarven explorer Khanara arrived at the old Evershadow Mine, and began exporting adamantine again.

Owner: It's not known how Khanara began acquiring her adamantine from the supposedly played-out mine, as she restricts access to the mine and does not appear to have smelters set up. But enough adamantine ships from the mine for her to have been able to afford turning it into a caravanserai -- an inn with a huge inner courtyard able to support and protect merchant caravans, as well as provide water, supplies, and information about local events and news from along the trade routes.

Now considered a veteran dwarf merchant and crafter of experience and wisdom, Khanara remains the unquestioned owner of the Caravanserai, though she took it without ever consulting the heirs pf previous owners or any distant city-state that might have once claimed it. If any modern group thinks she is an interloper, no whisper of their discontent has reached any of the merchants who trust her caravanserai as a crucial safe waystop, and location to buy adamantine.

Khanara is now the closest thing to an authority figure anywhere within a week's travel of the Evershadow Pass, though she refuses to take any title at all. She has nearly fifty staff working for her, including miners, cooks, stewards, stablehands. scouts, guards, kennel keepers, and an ancient and frankly creepy bent elven magister named Aelthar Aeltharis who rarely leaves his chamber deep in the mine itself.

Khanara herself is also a bit of a mystery. Her attire and accent mark her as coming from the Northlands, but she speaks and writes at least a dozen languages fluently, is knowledgeable about cultures on multiple different continents, and appears to be an herbalist and horticulturalist despite making her fortune on ore and trade. She never talks about her past, and there's no record of her prior to her arrival at the Evershadow Mine.

(Khanara. Illustration by Laura Coolart)

Food: The Caravanserai has two kitchens, the Sally Kitchen and the Hot Tavern. The Hot Tavern is one of the largest interior rooms in the caravanserai with dozens of tables, chairs, and stools, serves full meals from dawn to dusk. It often has meals with a distinctly foreign flavor, as spices, recopies, and even cooks are brought from far continents to the trade routes that pass through its door. Regardless of the details, the Hot Tavern always has at least one dumpling, one pasta, and one soup available, and usually has one to three roasts that are served beginning late morning to mid-day, with slices carved off a spit.

The Sally Kitchen runs 24 hours a day, but is strictly for picking up baskets of food and flagons of drink to be consumed elsewhere (in a inn room for those who can afford them, otherwise in the courtyard or a specific merchant's seisin). It mostly offers hard cheese and dark, crusty breads that stay fresh for more than a week even when sliced, and thick grain porridge mush, but also has Dripping Sops, a hot stew made from scraps from the Hot Tavern and served in a bread bowl.

Drink: There is always fresh water and hot and cold tea available at no cost, not just from the Hot Tavern and Sally Kitchen, but from a number of spots around the courtyard and available to be delivered to private rooms. There is also a wide range of beers, mostly stouts, and ale available. A wine cut with juice can be had in the spring and summer. Khanara does not serve any hard liquor, as she finds tired guards from competing caravans and strong drink do not mix.

The Caravanseri is also well known for its Steeps, a kind of herbal tea made with stout beer, and served hot. While the potent herbal taste is not to everyone's liking, Steeps are also renowned for warming the belly and hands, easing aches and minor pains, and both making it easier to stay alter and awake, and to fall asleep when desired. The secret of how Steps is made is kept closely guarded by Khanara, and she never sells it by anything but the mugfull, claiming barrels of it would sour before they could be sold anywhere else.

Lodging: The Caravanserai has both large, comfortable staterooms for traveling dignitaries and wealthy merchants, and smaller, basic rooms with little more than a cot and a table with a chamber pot and an ewer for water. Khanara never discloses how many total rooms of each type she has, but has never had to turn away anyone with the coin for them. Most patrons at the Caravanserai, however, stay in the courtyard. Merchants can rent vaults to store goods and people in the massive alcoves that run the courtyard, and anyone who comes by can have an area roped off at no charge to form a seisin, a section of the courtyard the Caravanserai considers set aside for their private use, including the right to camp there, behind the safety of the fortified walls and towers.

Stabling: The caravanserai has both extensive stables and barns, and the capacity to house steeds, working animals, and even livestock within the courtyard or a short section of dead-end mine that can serve as an auxiliary paddock if needed.

Clientele: The majority of the patrons are members of caravans traversing the Evershadow pass in one direction or another, but there are also occasional explorers, prospectors, migrants, and every rare moon even tourists. Everyone is treated equally, and even those spending large amounts of coin don't get special privileges of behavior, or access to the mines behind and under the caravanserai itself.

Rumor: Khanara is much, MUCH older than she appears, and the entire Caravanserai is simply a front for her real operation, which is digging deeper and deeper in search of an old Titan's prison, from which she plans to loot relics and artifacts of a previous epoch.

Adventure Seed: During a heavy storm, a wagon train of pilgrims headed east to the coast comes staggering through the gate, clearly distressed and injured. They claim that their hired guards turned on them and took their valuables when the storm began, and one of their wagons. They also say Perci, the son of one of the families, is missing. Perci's loyal dog Stalwart is with the pilgrims, and barking furiously and trying to rush back out into the storm. Khanara won't send out her own guards in a storm when there are rogue guards who might be planning an attack, but she will pay anyone brave enough to take Stalwart and see if the hound can lead them to Perci's location.