Tavern Thursday: Prof. Warlok's Mobile Saloon (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.

As a teaser of the kind of material paying members get exclusively, I'm making this post open to all members as a special preview. I'm hoping this will encourage some more folks to sign up for the $3/month membership. Every paying member is a huge help to me, and greatly appreciated. Plus, paying members get to make requests about content they'd like to see!

In fact it's due to member requests that I've begun exploring different fantasy genres beyond feudal fantasy for Tavern Thursday, so let me know how you enjoy them. This week, we're looking at a Weird West tavern with magic and steampunk elements (very much in keeping with my Really Wild West setting).

And, HEY PAID MEMBERS! Still enjoying Tavern Thursday? Would you rather see something else just for you once per week? A new monster for various game systems? Microfiction? Something else? Drop a comment!

Prof. Warlok's Mobile Saloon 

Appearance: A 4-wheeled, steam-powered combination vehicle and building, the Mobile Saloon is 8 meters long, 6 meters high, and 5 meters wide (a huge fan of the metric system established by the 1875 Metre Convention, Prof. Warlok refuses to acknowledge any other units when measuring her devices). It has a single-level Pilot's Deck, and split-level quarters behind that, one smokestack for its steam-driven Nemo Engine, two small balconies, a cowcatcher, two dorade box vents that double as bullhorns, a periscope, and a single tower brewing kettle.

The back has both a set of double doors that allow access to just the lower of the split levels, and a hinge so the entire back wall can be lowered like a drawbridge, opening up the back rooms of both levels and becoming a deck from which small tables can fold up, forming a cozy but comfortable standing room for drinking and conversation.

When moving it makes a distinctive (but not overly load) "chugga-chugge-ting-TANG" noise, and smells of ozone.

(Art by Obsidian Fantasy)

Origin: During the War of the Worlds, Professor Nephthys Warlok was instrumental in the success of the War Departments 'Bureau of Extraordinary Research and Knowledge' (BERK), in particular efforts to take reverse-engineered Martian technology and enchantments to create the first successful Terran-built walker, the 'Ruggles Artillery Crab' (named to honor Theodor Ruggles Wimby, designer of the turret for the US ironclad the Monitor).

(Art by lobard)

After the war, Prof Warlok watched as the technologies she developed to save the Earth from alien invaders was quickly re-tasked to establish military supremacy against other human nations. In disgust she resigned from BERK, and decided to travel across North America to connect with common folk. Since she found people were most likely to accept a stranger over a mug of beer, and since she liked to travel in comfort, Warlok built the Mobile Saloon to both take her wherever she wanted to go, and to ensure she could gather a crowd around some drinks whenever she arrived.

Owner: Professor Nephthys Warlok is still the owner of the Mobile Saloon, though she sometimes asks a friend to look after it is she finds herself taking extended side-trips using her Airborne Dirigible Laboratory, or Submersible Observation Conveyance (each of which she built when her Mobile Saloon turned out not to be up to a specific expedition).

(Prof. Warlok, art by lobard)

Though her original intention in building the Mobile Saloon was simply to enjoy an early meandering retirement, she soon found there were many injustices left in North America, some of them made worse by uses of technologies she helped create as part of BERK. This lead to her wearing a skull pin on her hat or jacket at all times, a reminder of the deaths on her conscious anytime she looks in a mirror. She felt a heavy debt to humanity for the weapons of war being developed from her ideas, and decided she had to try to solve as many problems as she created.

Early on, she generally took direct action to oppose the evil forces she encountered, but soon discovered the same regions she aided would often be in danger again from new threats within months, or even weeks. Recently, she has taken to trying to encourage, aid, and if necessary even train local troubleshooters to be better able to research, analyze, and neutralize threats to their communities after she's gone. She often sets up the Mobile Saloon in places where she thinks recruiting such troubleshooters is most likely to be fruitful, and uses the Mobile Saloon as a base of operations for them until they are ready to set out on her own.

Food: The Mobile Saloon has a small (amazingly efficient) kitchen, and Prof Warlok is a deft hand at griddle cakes, biscuits, and grits, generally made with local ingredients she buys each time she sets up shop. She also is a wiz with gravy recipes, and has been known to simply make and sell gravy outside a restaurant she feels lacks good gravy options.

Drink: The three main drinks of the Mobile Saloon are Sparkling Ionized Water, Nephtys' Ale, and Professor Warlok's Wonder-Tonic.

The Sparking Ionized Water is made by drawing water out of the air with a miraculously efficient condenser of the professor's own design, then putting it through an ionizer and a carbonator. It is light, fizzy, refreshing, and most importantly free of harmful toxins or microorganisms. Nephtys' Ale is brewed in the tower brewing kettle using water acquired with the condenser and a recipe the professor found in Egypt during adventures in her youth. It uses mint and pepper as gruit, rather than hops, and is more fresh than bitter compared to typical beer.

Professor Warlok's Wonder-Tonic is a magic healing potion that can boost the drinker's resistance to disease, poison, toxins, and even curses. The professor must brew each dose personally, using her knowledge of alchemy and sympathetic magics. Unlike most healing potions it doesn't restore wounds, but it does change the color of the drinker's urine to make it easy to identify any ailment the potion doesn't cure.

Lodging: The Mobile Saloon has a single bedroom in the second story of the split level, used by Professor Warlok herself, and a second person could sleep in a hammock in that room. Two more people can sleep on the Driving Deck (which has roll-out cots), and one more on the lower level of the split-level (on a rubber pad). Normally only friends and allies are offered these bunks.

There are three tents stored in the Mobile Saloon -- a 6 meter x 6 meter, 12 meter x 12 meter, and 18 meter by 18 meter. All of these have automatic stake-drivers and winching systems allowing a single person to set them up, and they can be anchored to the Mobile Saloon for additional stability. There is enough rolled wire fencing on the Mobile Saloon to reinforce both of the two smaller tents, or just the one larger one.

Stabling: The Mobile Saloon has no stabling, though either its tents or wire fencing can be used to create a paddock area for mounts. It does have a reactive pack train line, allowing mounts to be tied to a line attached to the back of the vehicle. The line automatically allows slack to ensure the animals attached to it aren't jerked around, and will tear free rather than pull animals at an unsafe speed.

Clientele: Whenever the Mobile Saloon stops and sets up shop, it draws a crowd of patrons from all walks of the local population. If the area has one or more saloons, the professor works to cut a deal with them, getting permission to set up next to a saloon in return for a daily rent or a cut of all her sales. Prof. Warlok doesn't really care if she turns a profit (her income from patents and her BERK pension more than cover her operating costs), and such partnerships both put her in the eyeline of anyone interested in a saloon's services, and helps avoid angering existing saloons' owners.

However, as she has spent years solving problems and training troubleshooters throughout North America, the professor also has friends and allies (and even the occasional respectful enemy) who come visit her wherever the Mobile Saloon is. They usually arrive unannounced and buy drinks at the Mobile Saloon until Prof. Warlok notices them, then either take up chatting or explain they have some issue they want her advice on (or more rarely, direct help with).

These "Principles" as the professor calls them, tend to stick out compared to common locals in most places, and beyond being competent rarely have many commonalties. There are scores of Principles ranging from the tyrannical Barron the Immortal (a villain who has divided his brain into 12 pieces, each driving a different automaton, but who at least doesn't want the world destroyed and has worked with the professor in the past to save it), to Vickie Pine (a pistoleer and one of the 'Silver Bullets of Annie Oakley,' trained by the famous sharpshooter to hunt monsters and protect the public), to Johnny Bones (a dead skeletal warrior cowboy who was murdered by US Deputy Marshals and as a result kills any law-enforcement he believes committed any crime, and who the professor doesn't trust but has worked with to hunt down truly rotten officers of the court), to Benjamin Franklin Pigeon (a super-smart naval homing pigeon veteran of the Civil War and spymaster, who uses prosthetics the professor built for him).

(Art by Tana Svaboda)

Rumors: In a town with two saloons, the one Professor Warlok hasn't made a deal with is telling people the drinks at the Mobile Saloon rot your guts, and turn your pee weird colors. There's a kernel of truth in this (a local drank some of Warlok's Wonder Tonic, and still has a cold, so he had weirdly bright pink pee), but the rumor is getting some folks riled and making them want to burn the Mobile Saloon to the ground.

Adventure Seeds: Professor Warlok is urgently called away to deal with an issue, and her Airborne Dirigible Laboratory comes and picks her up. Needing someone to watch over her Mobile Saloon, she asks the PCs to keep an eye on it for a few days. While she is gone, numerous old allies and enemies show up, and the PCs have to deal with them, preferably without damaging the Mobile Saloon, or the town it's parked in.

(Johnny Bones would like a word. Art by Daniel Eskridge)

I BEAT CANCER. NOW I HAVE TO BEAT CANCER BILLS

Without the cancer bills piled up from my 18 month fight with cancer (currently in remission), I'd be in a pretty god place.

Sadly, I still need help, thanks to the American medical system.

If you are willing and able, you can pitch in here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-owen-kc-stephens-fight-cancer