A town within Moon Valley
Moon Hill has at least ten taverns, a book-bindery, scribal service and book-store, 3 smithies, 14 barbers, a guild of jewelers, a guild of carpenters, and many other services besides.
The Lucky Grape sits near the west 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.
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."
The name is something os a misnomer; the stable has no particular affiliation with any civic arm of Santa Cora.
What it does have is a location on the main road, comfortable arrangements with most of the cities hostelers, and a name that instantly springs to mind when someone thinks "I need to arrange travel to Santa Cora." Coaches leave three times a day; special runs and charters available. It also hires, boards, buys, sells, shoes, and grooms horses. If it has four legs and reasonably claim to be a horse, SCSC will take care of it for you, even providing veterinary and breeding services.
The coaching part of the business is comfortably appointed enough that people can gather there without being completely overwhelmed by horse fug, and many do either while waiting to conduct business with the stable and coaching service itself, or doing business with others gathered there. A number of small-time peddlers frequent the place, as do news criers, couriers, scribes, even a few remittance men. It is theoretically possible to walk into the SCSC, purchase a letter of credit from a local moneylender, a courier to carry it, a guard to protect him, a pair of fast horses for them to ride, and have the money in the big city (or any point within the stables servicing area) all in one place and in under an hour.
This version of the page was edited by Merc at 2020-06-04 04:55:48. View the most recent version.