Episode 2 – The Tavern Part 1
The Sleeping Dragon is a tavern nestled in the heart of Stormhaven’s docks. Even in a city renowned for its diversity the Sleeping Dragon is an uncommon profusion of the exotic, the eclectic and the enchanting. An evening at the Tavern often outmatches an evening at any theatre.
As you step inside, the air is a symphony of languages, laughter, the clinking of glasses and the clanking of mugs. The main bar looks out onto the harbour and is lined with not only human but also elvish, orcish, dwarfish and gnomic patrons. Most are in plain working clothes but a few are dressed in fashions that even those used to Stormhaven’s cosmopolitan communities are often at a loss to describe let alone identify.
The walls are adorned with artefacts from what Stormhaven residents simply call the ‘otherworlds’, each with its own story to tell. The scent of exotic spices and brews wafts through the air, promising a culinary diversity that competes with that of the tavern’s customers.
Boz, the innkeeper, is a towering figure with a (usually) jovial and weathered face. His staff, a mix of humans and halflings, move with practised ease, serving an extensive but relatively inexpensive menu. The chefs are an elvish man and an orcish woman. They are rarely seen and Boz severely discourages the salacious but perhaps inevitable gossiping about their relationship. Perhaps I shouldn’t even have mentioned it. Regardless, the meals that they cook up together is one of the features that makes the Sleeping Dragon the most popular dining establishment in the city.
In addition to the diversity of beings, T’Evers or Kai (both meaning sentient beings), native to N’Ume, the tavern is also the haunt of a group of other-dimensional or otherplanetary expats who huddle together in a corner they have made their own, engaged in deep conversation about the nature of reality, the human and the non-human experience. Sometimes called ‘the strangers’, these ex-pats, among whom I count myself, have formed our own mutually supportive little community. I have written regarding my arrival elsewhere and will write of it in further detail later. For now I will just say that we ‘strangers’, wherever we hail from, are all here without intention or permission, having been rudely plucked from one reality and dumped uncermoniously into this one.
I should mention at this juncture that the Tavern’s wine cellar holds a mysterious, glowing portal whose purpose is unclear though it is speculated that that it might be a return portal for trans-reality travellers. Boz has suggested to the Strangers that the portal may offer a chance of return to their home realities, but he admits that he is cannot guarantee this. It would be a very literal step into the unknown and one that each would-be user must weigh for themselves.
The Sleeping Dragon is, in many respects, a crossroads between worlds. More than that it is my home and but for it and the patronage of my host Boz, who employs me as a chronicler, I would not have survived long in Stormhaven even though I have now come to treasure it almost as much as my own native London.
From ‘A Londoner in Stormhaven ~ The Journal of Khalid Johnson’
