A town within Moon Valley
Moon Hill has at least ten taverns.
The Lucky Grape sits near the east gate of Moon Hill, near the wide lazy river. If the sun is up, various cooking smells waft from the Lucky Grape’s kitchen. Outside the tavern are the archery butts—straw men lined up against the tavern’s side wall, most of them peppered with arrows. The building itself is an old rambling stone structure, the remains of a fortified mill. The water wheel no longer turns, and the massive grindstone sits in the middle of the tavern floor as its central table. The locals say the mill exploded and caught fire long ago (grain dust is explosively flammable under the right conditions) and the owner, Old Mother Appleford, took to selling scrumpy (a type of very hard cider) to make ends meet. When Appleford earned enough to rebuild the mill, she chose instead to open a new mill downstream and turned the old mill into the Lucky Grape.
People of Moon Hill#jolly-appleford owns the tavern.
Jolly Appleford is a short florid man in his 50s, now owns the tavern. Though stern looking, his face splits into a wide grin whenever he sees adventurers. He knows adventurers have more gold than sense and is keen to make them happy.
Dagfried Appleford is the adult daughter of Jolly and the second-in-command since the death of her mother (run over by an out of control cart while getting supplies). She is blonde and unmarried; plagued by suitors, she seems very irritated by anyone who hits on her. While her father takes care of customers, she runs around town, ensuring the supplies will flow. She inherited her grandmother's cider recipe and oversees the scrumpy production as well and is said to have nearly magical senses of when cider will go bad, before it happens. She also has some secret recipe that Dwarves go crazy for. Everyone will assume she will inherit and worries why she isn't married.
Donny Appleford is a year younger than Dagfried and acts as the cook; he is married with two daughters already; his wife Mary runs the family apple orchard east of the city. He is a master of mutton pie and mutton in general, though he makes a lot of apple-related treats. Donny seems totally content with this life and defers to his sister.
Jenny Hobson is the main waitress; she has worked here since she was eight; she's an orphan but no one is sure what happened. She's now nineteen and is known to spend her spare money on books. She had a boyfriend until recently but there was a fight, something about metal, and they broke up. Ralph is a journeyman blacksmith. (Moon Hill has three Smithies; all three can make weapons and armor and sometimes do for the Baron, but none specialize in it.) He keeps coming around, begging her to come back.
Worrt's Infinite Power Shop will not give anyone infinite power, but Beman Wortt is a wizard of some skill who mostly does small magical services for people, but also sells runes and potions to adventurers. The shop's name comes from the 'Wand of Infinite Power', which allegedly allows him to cast the same spell over and over and over forever, without needing to rememorize. You've never actually seen him pull off more than three in a row, though. Beman is middle aged with short black hair and bright purple clothing with yellow lightning bolts.
Kandt's Sidar Orchard and the House of Blue Lights are located on the eastern side of town. Wald Kandt is a local farmer and landholder whose family used to run a curious cider mill, which was built in the early 13th age incorporating a cog and axel assembly jutting from the foundations, a relic of some ancient mechanism of the Age of Cogs. It was never very successful and they stopped using it as a mill when the Applefords established theirs. Now the shambolic mill stands at one edge of the thriving apple orchard, its weathered signboard bearing the single misspelled word 'SIDAR', and is used to store apples by Wald. Much of the produce of the orchard winds up in the Lucky Grape.
Buried under the roots of the trees and accessed by a small storefront on the road is the House of Blue Lights, a restaurant and festhall serving dark elven cuisine. The main dining room is underground in a vault formed by the orchard roots, lit by the strange blue flames that give the establishment its name. It is run by the dark elf Madame Zavra and her 'daughters', some of whom are also drow, some other races, and almost certainly none of whom are actually her daughters. The food is famously good, claimed to be the best dark elven fare in the entire Santa Cora region. More quietly celebrated are the daughters, who keep rooms in the tunnels under the dining chambers and are available for private entertainment. Some folk say that deeper still are tunnels to the underdark, a notion Madame Zavra laughs off.
Rikiki's General Store is a bit of a mishmash - magic charms too piddling for Worrt to handle, handmade decorations that no one local would bother buying, travel food that's mostly snacks, cheap rain ponchos that look like they'd last through about one good storm, faded "Welcome to Moon Valley" guidebooks, and more. In among all the junk is the occasional really good value - its stock of work boots is second to none, for example, and once in a while you'll see a very nice weapon lurking back in a corner. No one is quite sure how they manage to stay open; the storefront's on the main through street and there's a fairly steady stream of travellers, but not enough to sustain a business, and the bits of good stuff doesn't drive a lot of local business. There's apparently a large basement devoted to inventory... maybe the proprietor got a really good deal on a recovered lot of items from Glitterhagen? When asked, Rikiki just shakes her head, smiles, and says "That's for later."
This version of the page was edited by Dan at 2020-06-02 01:22:36. View the most recent version.