F is for the Friendly Rat

The Friendly Rat is a tavern in a small village at the edge of the Empire. The village's name is not recorded in the journal of Luther Wuppert.

The journal was found tossed in a ditch along an Empire road, detritus of a robbery or murder. Most bandits won't find value in such a thing: they can't read. It had not rained in some time and the leather bound journal was recovered by Odmar Ruhgsdorf, a priest of Verena, in a fortuitous need to relive himself on the side of the road. Verenan's are scholars, lawyers, notaries, and scribes. The journal was soon be lost in a temple's basement stacks when Odmar got to town sufficiently large enough to have a temple to Verena.

Odmar copied the following entry in his own diary, recounting Herr Wuppert's description of the Friendly Rat:

“The date was illegible. If there was a place, Herr Wuppert never stated it. He wrote:

“The Friendly Rat was a indeed living up to its name. A raucous crowd of travelers had already taken up a drinking game at a small table. Surrounding the two men, the crowd cheered as each man downed large goblets of wine.

“Myself and my coach companions would soon find that these huge goblets of wine were a feature of the tavern. Over the pounding fists, cheers, hollers, and woops at the drinking game, I was able to secure the one remaining private room. I was asked if I desired a bath to wash away the day's dust of travel by the tavernkeep. A bath! In this small tavern? Of course, it had been almost a week and my physician recommended them from time to time.

“I paid the extra and was told water would be poured while I settled into the room. The hospitality of the Friendly Rat can not be understated. And in the room, I was quite surprised by the peculiar bath!

“It must have cost the tavernkeep a fortune! I'm certain it was carved from a single piece of marble, polished smooth, and adorned with intricate runes and lines of clear Dwarven influence. To get the bath in the room and on a second floor is a fortune itself. As I settled into the room, four maids relayed large buckets of hot water to the bath. They assured me I would not be scalded by the water. And indeed I was not, and it is my one compliant in hindsight.

“The stone simply pulled the heat from the water. While relaxing and finding needed refreshment, I'm fairly certain the water was chilled in a quarter of an hour, all the heat in the stone.

“I did not see the tavernkeep or any of the maids the next morning. Alas I forgot to ask the coachman the name of the village as well. But a most curious night and more curious bath. The Friendly Rat. Must find it again."

Odmar editorialized no more in cataloging this journal.

Editor's Notes

Sometime in the early 2000s I was a user and contributor to the Yahoo User Interface JavaScript library. It would have been sometime after 2005 and the release of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e that I wrote the “Inns of the Empire" generator. The generator was hosted on my website Another Caffeinated Day for almost 20 years. I had to retire the domain and website, but the generator and the code live on as a Docker Container. 

This post was written by generating a tavern and the details using the container. The technically inclined can follow the instructions in the code repository above to generate an endless number of taverns.

The “huge wines," “peculiar Dwarven baths," and “raucous crowd playing a drinking game" were all aspects generated by the program.






Comments

  1. Samantha BryantApril 7, 2025 at 6:08 PM

    Hmmmm…not sure what to make of that heat-absorbing bath. I'd start to wonder what it absorbed from me! @samanthabwriter from
    Balancing Act

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Timothy StoneApril 8, 2025 at 4:51 PM

      Exactly! Did the tub take something from the guest?

      Historically, marble baths had this problem. At The Breakers, a historical mansion on "Mansion Row" in Rhode Island had such a bath. It weighed more than a ton and needed multiple fillings with hot water before it could be used for a hot bath!

      While I "rolled" the "peculiar Dwarven tubs" in my Inns of the Empire generator, I used this bit of history to make just a little spooky.

      Delete
  2. Liz A.April 7, 2025 at 7:04 PM

    That sounds like such a fun world. I don't know if I'd want to visit it, though.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Timothy StoneApril 8, 2025 at 5:05 PM

      This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    2. Timothy StoneApril 8, 2025 at 5:07 PM

      The Old World is the setting of the table-top roleplaying game Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. As old as D&D, IMHO a richer, and darker, world. "Grim and Perilous" officially, and "Mud and Blood" unofficially. It is loosely based on the 15th century Holy Roman Empire, but with magic and miracles.

      Delete

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