The Crossroad Tavern

Author Note: Thanks to the efforts of aVeryHotApplePie, I have a layout map of the Crossroad Tavern! I strongly recommend that people check out his branch here. It has a literal dessert fairy, need I say more?

Three drinks in, John’s earlier guess was proven correct, and he found himself facing the situation with frustrating sobriety. He had to accept the reality of the literal bear that was sitting on the other side of the bar. It was… absurd, but what wasn’t in this crazy world? Compared to a mythological monster or magic wielding hero, Bearnard wasn’t even that ridiculous! Sill...

John had the sense the Developer was laughing at his expense.

Bearnard poured him out a fourth drink, but this time he didn’t take it. Instead, John pushed back from the bar and slid off his stool, “Thanks, but I’m gonna have a look around.” His bearkeep responded with an accepting snort and settled back to polishing glasses.

John started with the door on the ground floor, which opened onto a hallway leading deeper into the building. He walked down it, passing two small rooms on the right, and exited on the other side into an enclosed courtyard behind the bar. The space wasn’t very large, but it was big enough to hold a decorative fountain that depicted a cat holding a fish in its jaws. Water spurted upwards from the fish’s mouth and cascaded back down, refracting the light from the twin suns into a glittering ring of rainbow colors around the fountain’s edge. It was simply beautiful.

He admired the sight for a minute or so before heading back inside, this time checking both the rooms he’d passed on the way back to the bar. They were bathrooms with unexpectedly modern toilets and small showers. It was a relief; if he was going to spend any significant amount of time in Ulthar then the last thing he wanted to do was use a disgusting outhouse. Though… the bathrooms would have to be cleaned, and John knew that Bearnard was definitely not equipped for the job. Maybe they were self-cleaning?

Waving at the bear behind the bar as he passed by to turn down a proffered drink, John headed up the stairs to the second floor. The handles of the previously locked doors turned easily and opened to reveal a pair of bedrooms and another hallway. Both bedrooms were well furnished, with each containing a small closet, table with a pair of chairs and queen-sized bed. Slightly flickering candles lit the rooms from wall-mounted lanterns. John had to admit, they looked cozy… but he didn’t really need two bedrooms.

Rental Mode: Private
Would you like to open this room for paying guests?
Yes / No

A popup resolved his quandary before it had even fully coalesced.

Well, it is a tavern after all. Why not?

John switched one to public but decided to leave the other on private. He’d need somewhere to sleep. Though… wait, did he?

What even happens if someone goes to sleep in the Dreamlands? Do they go another level deeper or something?

Setting the thought aside for the time being, John continued his investigation with the last unexplored location on the second floor. At the end of the hallway was a room that would’ve filled him with jealousy if he didn’t own the entire building.

It was the master bedroom, and it was easily twice the size of his own back home. The wall to his right was taken up entirely by a massive window that looked out onto the courtyard below, complete with a ledge lined with comfortable cushions and wide enough for a person to lie down. On his left was a private bathroom separated by glass walls from the rest of the room. He had his own toilet and bathtub that looked big enough for at least two people, with a curtain hanging just inside the walls in case he ever needed privacy. Past the bathroom, an oak desk with too many drawers and a brown leather chair gave him some space to do… financials or whatever a bar owner did.

Above all else, however, John’s attention was drawn to the other side of the room where a colossal bed had been placed against the far wall. It was absolutely decadent; black curtains framed a gigantic mattress, and silver filigree spiraled over the visible parts of the reddish-brown frame. Light grey sheets were neatly tucked in, and no less than ten pillows had been stacked up against the headboard.

Well… ok then.

It wasn’t what he’d expected, the deed had said ‘workshop’ not ‘tavern’, but thus far there hadn’t been anything overtly magical. Sure, he could probably clear out everything in the master bedroom and replace it with more suitable equipment… but there were a few problems with that plan. What sort of things would he need to set up his workshop, how would he get them to the tavern, etc.

John really wished he could remember how he’d acquired the bar, if only to speak to the former owner. There had to be a reason he’d picked this place. He searched his brain for anything he’d missed, any detail that might fill in the missing pieces of his memory but came up with nothing new.

Alright. So, I have a bar now. Maybe I can make some money with it or invite people over. Adorabelle would probably love all the ****.

For better or worse, the tavern was his responsibility. Well, his and Bearnard’s. John wasn’t sure if that part made him feel more or less comfortable. The bear seemed totally at home in his role and knew his way around... but he was still a bear...

Is that racist? I feel kinda racist for thinking that.

Setting aside the species angle, the simple fact was that John had never really been in a position of real authority before. He’d always been the plus one in a group project or the last pick for a sports team. But… that wasn’t to say he had no experience to draw on. He was the Gamer after all, and one didn’t acquire that title by only playing shooters and strategy games. Managing a real business would be different from simulations, but John had a basic understanding of supply, demand and upkeep costs to draw on.

The prompt to hire Bearnard hadn’t specified a salary, but it had mentioned maintenance and expenses, so presumably there wasn’t an attached distillery and **** didn’t magically spring into existence. Hopefully, his bearkeep could handle that aspect, John had no idea where he’d find a distributor. There was also the matter of advertising and serving, plus customers… Did cats drink ****?

As he tried to lay out the considerations, John walked back into the tavern main, only to have his musings interrupted. Re-opening the bar had apparently not taken long. A pair of cats sat on the ledge that overlooked the bar, and from the sounds of conversation, they had customers. Descending the stairs, John discovered a pair of humans sitting at the bar with a cat that looked a lot like Charcoal to their right. She turned to greet him, and John felt a lot less racist after she spoke, “Dreamer! We were just talking about you.”

John approached and took the open seat behind his feline friend, “Hey, Charcoal. Good things, I hope?”

“Of course,” purred the cat.

“Your… er… man certainly knows a good brew,” said the leftmost of the two humans, a Caucasian man in a suit. He took a sip from a mug of frothy beer and let out an appreciative sigh.

His companion, a Hispanic woman in a red evening dress, gave John a smile, “I never would’ve guessed a bear could be so careful or could mix up a good martini. We’ll definitely be coming back.” She turned back and shared a laugh with her date.

“Glad to hear it?” John replied and glanced over at Bearnard. The bearkeep let out a gentle harrumph and resumed his work. Watching him, John felt bad about his earlier doubts. Bearnard had no trouble grabbing anything with his claws and could reach the entire bar from where he sat on his haunches. Honestly, why couldn’t a bear run a bar? The very question seemed silly now.

“Dreamers, always so surprised by things,” said the cat sitting beside him. John looked down at Charcoal, who smiled back with an even more bemused expression than usual, but her attention was drawn away from John when a bowl of milk was set on the bar in front of her.

Behind the bar, Bearnard lifted a paw and rolled it in an obvious ‘come here’ gesture that John blinked at. He excused himself and followed the bear through a curtained off doorway behind the bar he’d missed earlier. They passed through a furnished kitchen and into a room stuffed to the ceiling with shelves and barrels of various alcohols. John was caught between wondering if his employee could cook in addition to everything else the bear seemed capable of and what Bearnard could possibly want back here when they stopped at a particular barrel. The bearkeep nudged it with one paw, and John shuffled around his bulk in the tight space to take a closer look.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary about the barrel, and the nametag wasn’t particularly odd either, ‘S’ Private Spirits’. He shrugged and looked at Bearnard, “Ok, so it’s a barrel? What’s so special about this one?” In reply, the bearkeep nudged the spout’s turn wheel.

The front of the barrel retracted, and the sides folded clockwise into each other until there was just one slat left, which curled around the rim of all that was left. John stared in disbelief as the vanishing cask revealed a hidden trapdoor underneath. He turned to look at Bearnard, who only snorted. Cautiously, John reached forward and lifted the trapdoor, half expecting something horrible to come screaming and clawing out. All that was underneath was a set of stone stairs leading down.

“I’m going to see what’s down there. Run if I start screaming or… something,” he told the bearkeep, before summoning his weapon and descending into the undercroft beneath the tavern.

There was a part of John that was disappointed. He’d been expecting a creepy, dank passageway, like all the horror games he’d ever played… but instead the secret underground lair beneath the tavern was extremely dry and well kept. There weren’t spiderwebs dangling overhead or eerie noises just around the bend. In fact, the stairwell was positively boring. What was beyond it…

After a mere single flight of stairs, John found himself in a tidy, well-lit room that could only be described as a magical laboratory. It was about as wide as the master bedroom upstairs, but square instead of rectangular. Tables with sorted, oddly-shaped glasswork stood to the side of a chained, floating cube. If that wasn’t ‘mystical enough’, one wall inexplicably had crystals growing out of it and another was covered completely in bookshelves. Even weirder was the humanoid skull nestled into a shelf made of roots that grew out of a third wall. Why was the skull there? John had no idea, but it looked like there was a garden beneath it.

Whatever madness had driven him to buy this place as somewhere he could establish a workshop… it’d been right. This was why.

John wandered around the room, trying to figure out what each object was for. The alchemy set was obvious enough and reminded him of a skill that it wouldn’t hurt to pick up. He browsed the books on the shelf with interest; the previous owner had a robust collection that covered a range of topics from botany to a small handwritten book that seemed to be about explosives. Unfortunately, the vast majority were written in languages other than English.

With a sigh, he put back the explosives manual and crossed the room to investigate the garden beneath the skull. Just over a dozen plants grew in soil that had been packed into the roots, and he recognized one. Nightshade, one of the most famously toxic plants in the world. A bit of an unusual thing to be cultivating underneath a bar... He eyed the alchemy equipment.

I really hope this place wasn’t cheap because of a mysterious string of murders or anything...

The last thing he investigated was the cube in one corner. It was chained to the floor, presumably to keep it from floating away, considering how it hovered at chest level off the ground. Either it was a very elaborate decoration or something important; John cast Observe on it.

Mana Controller (Empowered)
A leyline focus crystal bound to an array of spells, usually used by mages to regulate the distribution of magical energy and local augmentations.

Accompanying the informative blurb were a handful of separate windows that remained when he dismissed the one from Observe.

Warning: You lack sufficient base knowledge to pursue alchemical research.
Warning: You lack sufficient base knowledge to pursue elemental evocation research.
Warning: You lack sufficient base knowledge to pursue domain research.
Warning: You lack sufficient base knowledge to pursue limiter research.

[Paramedic] - Base medical project access granted!
[Forge] - Base enchantment project access granted!
[Fear Resistance] - Nightmare project access granted!
[Gamer’s Arsenal] - Combat enhancement project access granted!
[Planning] - Foresight project access granted!

Spell Domains Rationalized:
-Quantum
-Astrology
-Somnia

Leyline Tap project complete!

Begin new project?