Tavern Thursday: The Bridge House (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.

The Bridge House 

Appearance: The Bridge House is an apparently small, windowless 2-story building built on and controlling passage across a 4-horse wide brick and stone bridge over a small river. Though the river normally appears to be no more than 25 feet across, the bridge spans a much wider area at least 100 feet across.

(Art by Algol) 

The interior of the Bridge House is whitewash over brick and timber framing and walls, with heaven wooden posts and simple, sturdy chairs and tables. There is a weapon rack by the door, several monster skull trophies and round shields decorating the walls, and numerous slow-burning candles, lanterns, and a fire pit fighting to illuminate the windowless room.

(Art by IG Digital Arts) 

The entire first floor is a single common room, with stairs up to the innkeeper's quarters and stairs down to the kitchen, storerooms, and staff and guest quarters, all of which are contained in chambers within the span of the bridge itself. Throughout the building smoke spirals and drives upward, as cunningly concealed vents draw in fresh air from beneath the bridge, and old, warm air exists out the top of the Bridge House's second story.

Origin: The Bridge House was originally a major guard post for what was projected to be a military installation on the river border between two warring nobles. Then politics changed, the nobles both lost their lands, and the new lord that held the lands on both sides of the river saw no need to build the walls and barracks that were supposed to support the guard post. However, the bridge itself proved popular with travelers and merchants. Though the river is spans is far from the widest or the deepest, it is difficult to traverse safely or easily for much of the year. In the winter, it freezes, but not thickly enough to bear weight. In the spring, it floods, and in the summer it turns to deep churned mud. While it is possible to cross the river at any of those times, it is so much easier to use the bridge that most folks are willing to go miles out of their way to do so.

Without maintenance, the bridge wouldn't remain such a convenience for long, however, and the new lord had no interest in spending money on it. The Bénézet family of bridge-building engineers decided to set up in the guard post, and charge a copper penny for each creature crossing on foot and a silver stater for each wheeled conveyance. Some travelers lacked cash, and traded goods or labor for crossing, while others had an excess of coin but not enough supplies, and sought to buy excess from the Bénézet.

Within a generation, the Bridge House was known to be the best crossing point of the river, and an excellent and safe way-stop for travelers and merchants, but also a trading post dealing in furs, dry goods, herbs, and wilderness supplies. While the region around it has grown increasingly wild, the Bridge House has becom increasingly popular and successful, and is in many ways seen as the tiny capital of a backwater province. It now serves as a small, fortified outpost in the rough area, and is well-regarded by trappers, hunters, furriers, travelers, traders, and even the local lord and his wardens.

Owner: The Bridge House has remained in the hands of the Bénézet family, and their ownership is now acknowledged by a writ from the local lord (which also specific that the lord and his agents receive free lodging and passage across the bridge). The current head of the family, Malamòrt Bénézet, controls the writ of ownership and operates all business the Bridge House is involved with. Malamòrt was a hunter in his youth, and several of the trophy skulls within the building are monsters he hunted down when they began attacking others in the area.

Malamòrt seems torn between acting as a good businessman and innkeeper, and filling the role of local protector and leader. When he was younger and his aunt ran the Bridge House, Malamòrt vocally campaigned for their family to be acknowledged as baronets and given noble title and authority. Now that he is older and running the business, Malamòrt no longer speaks of becoming a noble of any kind, but does still take the safety of anyone near the bridge very seriously.

Under his leadership the Bridge House has become less profitable, but more beloved by those who visit it regularly. Malamòrt still charges the same rates, but accepts most goods in lieu of coin for payment and often weighs the value he gives such goods for travelers who are clearly struggling. He also applies the value of any payment to the bill of anyone who buys supplies, food, or drink at the tavern. He also pays a penny or three for any new bit of information about local events,. has a bounty on certain dangerous monsters, and keeps a good variety of medical supplies and herbal remedies in stock, and generally doesn't charge those who show up injured or sick needing such care.

(Malamòrt Bénézet, Art by Igor)

Food: The Bridge House offers staples of wild game, legumes, and delicious breads, often flavored with a range of spices, fruits, nuts, and vegetables. Small tarts, both sweet and savory, are common, with most sweets coming from wild honey. Dished made with river fish are also extremely common, especially bass, muskie, perch, pike, and sturgeon. Fresh fish are often available baked, crusted in pies and pastries, or chunked and fried. Salted and dried fish can be bought as travel foods, and when stores of fresh food are low, are made into soups, stews, and a thick paste called passala.

Drink: Distilled water is available in the Bridge House, and iced drinks can be had year-round (with the Bridge House cutting up ice in the winter and storing huge sabs of it in their deepest cellar). Chai, sometimes sweetened with honey or mulled fruit, is also popular. Wines are the most common alternatives to chair or water, with a lightly scented, refreshing and gently aromatic dry white wine known as Foxmantle being the most popular. Most wines at the Bridge House arrive by river (early in the flooding season, when the river is deeper but not significantly more wild).

Lodging: The Bridge House has only a few rooms in the main section of the building, and these are all reserved for members of the Bénézet family (though if someone has an injury or ailment that requires cleaner, fresher air a minor member of the family may be temporarily displaced to accommodate them). However, the entirety of the bridge is hollow, and crafted well enough for its arches and vaults to support it strongly despite its empty interior volume. The interior space is broken up into numerous vaults and chambers, many of which are used for storage, and which include a few heavily-fortified trapdoors from the bottom of the bridge directly into the river (or onto its surface if it's frozen over), each of which has several rafters stored nearby in case the Bénézet family needs to flee, but which are most often used to get cargo off river rafts and to allow easy access to the river for members of the family who are finishing.

However, the remaining spaces are available for use as lodgings. One, the 'common vault' is available for free for one night to anyone who has paid the toll, bought food or drink, done business with the Bénézet family recently, or seems like they could use a safe place to stay. There's always at least one family member present when anyone is using the room, it's got a call-tube to the main building of the Bridge House, and every family member not tied down somewhere checks in on it at irregular but frequent intervals.

Roughly another dozen chambers are set up as fairly large if plain rooms for rent. Most folks coming through who want a private room won't choose to stay for more than a night, and the rooms represent that. They have beds, tables, chairs, blankets, rugs, chamber pots, water ewers... and not much else.

Stabling: In a pinch, the stairs down into the vaults within the bridge are broad and wide enough to get horses or similar creatures down into the interior of the Bridge House's long halls and chambers... but this is only done in extreme circumstances/ Normally, stabling is provided in the form of sturdy leather tent stalls pitched on the bridge itself (using iron rings set into the bridge's stonework for particularly secure anchoring), with a sturdy highline, folding troughs for fodder and water, and braziers for heat hooked into alcoves in the bridge's stonework. This system can be taken in to avoid wear and tear during slow seasons, or set up and expanded to handle scores of horses as needed.

Clientele: The Bridge House has three classes of clients -- locals, travelers, and traders. While locals are the smallest group by number, and include hunters, trappers, furriers, local wardens, some hermits and a few independent. Travelers are normally people making a trip they make rarely or are taking only once. Most are taken a rout they have planned in advance, and stop at the Bridge House as a major waystation on their journey. The final common category is merchants, including both those moving along the river, and those taking land routes. Merchants are normally small-time traders with at most one or two wagons or a few rafts r barges, but the existence of Bridge House has been slowly increasing the number of merchants who ply the area, most coming by once a year on annual trade circuits.

Rumors: Though both sides of the river are controlled by one lord now, that was not always the case. Local have begun to hear that an inheritance issue may cause different, contesting nobles to take possession of the adjacent domains. Royal surveyors have come through recently, and may assess the area for taxes, or new lords, or a foreign invasion, or...

Adventure Seed: Every year, small-time wine merchants float down the river with casks of wine, and the Bénézet family replenishes their stock. But when the first wine merchants arrival at the Bridge House is weeks late, and then the wreckage of wine casks and bits of a barge float by, Malamòrt Bénézet becomes very concerns, and looks to hire somene to search upstream to see if there are survivors of whatever destroyed the barge, and find out of there is some brigand or monstrous threat cutting off the wine trade.

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