The Merry Mug

The Merry Mug started off as a seedy little run-down inn in a small village that only just happened to be in a very good location.  Originally called the Rusty Dagger, it had become a place the locals avoided and the stories tell that it was the type of shady place that housed even shadier deals and often became the starting search location for many disappearings.  All this to say that when Lilly Genrill came around… it was a cheap buy.  

It had good bones.  That's what she kept telling herself during the rebuild.  And in the end it would be worth it.  And it was.  Took a lot of work to turn the mountain of a trash heap into a place worth serving good food and beer but she did it.  Did as much of the work to the building herself as she could, but let's be realistic… a two-foot-nuthin halfling is not meant for big construction.  There is still a lot that small folk can do.  So she swept, washed, scraped, wiped, dried, polished and every other manner of cleaning imaginable.  Sun up to sun down… for days and days.  And when they hung the sign over the door with the copper tavern mug and the protection runes it was one of the best days of her life.

The new building barely resembled the old Rusty Dagger.  In its place stands a building made from the bones of the surrounding lands; hard stone foundation, sturdy timber beams, earthen walls, floors of polished stone and decorative woods.  At first glance it probably looks a little haphazard. Three full floors and the fourth being only a half with the remaining third floor roof sprouting a garden and a small dovecote. A few of the rooms have small balconies with chairs to enjoy the weather on nice days and others have double windows that open to let in fresh air.  Vines trail over the edges from the rooftop garden and down the building in some places, and up from the ground to the roof in others.  In the summer the entire building blooms. 

The inside is now home to a cozy tavern that takes up the entire first floor, with a large open common room and a roaring fireplace that is of a size to to roast a pig large enough to feed the whole village (although let's be real, thats a lot of work and really only happens for a few special occasions every year).  There are a few smaller nooks that allow for some intimate conversations but the overall space is what you’d expect for a village gathering spot; a large enough bar, sturdy tables (that may have seen some tabletop dancing on rowdier nights), and a some overstuffed cozy chairs right by the fireplace. There is a wall beside the large entry doors full of pegs at all different heights for coats and other outerwear and bags that always seems to have a few forgotten items.  The second and third floors are still rooms for rent, with many welcome repairs and polish.  Lilly moved into the half floor on the top before construction was completed and the top floor apartment now serves as the main business office in addition to her home.

But like all truly good taverns, it's not really about the building.  You have to serve good drink and food.   You can’t afford to let folk get bored.  Bored customers go in search of other things.. So a tavern wench’s job is never done.  Any time Lilly is not behind the bar or in the kitchen working, is spent behind the bar or in the kitchen working… creating new ales, new twists on comfort foods and introducing new more exotic dishes to a normally sheltered community.  Ensuring enough variety to keep the bills paid, but keeping it homey enough to still provide the warm happy feelings that ensure repeat customers.  The entertainment is another story altogether.  A good musician can make a crowd (or break! She’ll regret hiring that orc lute player for years).  Especially in the colder months, having more than just a good meal to entice the locals to visit when the weather turns sour helps keep the bills paid.  

Overall, the tavern’s fare aims to embody comfort.   The goal is to maintain a strong relationship to the local environment and seasons while still bringing in new and exotic flavors.  Time is spent foraging through the local woods and building relationships with the farmers close to the tavern to ensure fresh seasonal ingredients.  Throughout the year Lilly also spends time traveling and building relationships with merchants far and wide to enable her to enhance what is served and broaden her knowledge (and the availability) of the ingredients that can be added to make her tavern stand out as the one place people want to be.  These relationships not only allow her to bring in the new flavors, but also allow her to trade some of her creations to other villages helping everyone thrive. 

What a lot of folks don’t consider about a tavern/inn of this size is the work space and storage needed to keep everything running smoothly.  The old Rusty Dagger was not actually the original building though it was there long enough that no one alive in the small village remembers it as being anything else, it having been closed and abandoned long before them.   From what Lilly can tell, the original site was a temple to some of the old gods, in a time when temples embodied secrecy, accumulation of wealth and privacy.  Which meant, much to Lilly’s delight, that beneath the full storage cellar, was another cellar, and then another, and then a rather surprisingly large network of tunnels.  All the locals know there is a storage “room” below the tavern, and of course she’s had enough helpers bringing goods down to be stored for later use that hiding it would have been a silly idea. Half of the room is filled with dried herbs, jars of fruits and vegetables preserved after the harvests, baskets, barrels and crates of cold stored items like apples, potatoes, carrots and other root vegetables as well as foods like nuts and winter squashes. The other half is actually where the magic of making ale happens.  There are barrels of ale and wine ready to be drawn up to the kitchen for serving to happy patrons. The second cellar was used as her longer term storage supplies like aging wine so few had needed to set foot on those floors.   The third cellar.  Well it’s still a bit too dark and damp to be used for storage for most things… but certainly good for hiding some things.  But we don’t need to get into that here.  The tunnels are a maze of mystery as most are.  Lilly hasn’t had much time for mapping them out.  Out of an abundance of caution, she had a wandering mage ensure the main doors leading to them were enchanted in such a manner that they keep out what needs to be kept out… on both sides of the doors.  She maintains the only key and understanding of the other hmm, shall we say process needed to open them.  No one wants unexpected surprises from the depths.  And she certainly doesn’t want the fact that there even ARE tunnels and depths to be wide-spread knowledge lest tenacious teens (or too curious patrons) decide exploring sounded like fun.