The Bowels of the Earth

The Bowels is an old stone building that leans noticeably to the north into Simples Street. The windows are covered with stout wooden shutters, barred from within, because they long ago lost all their glass and screens. The tavern fronts on Snail Street, where its hanging signboard vividly depicts a pile of manure transfixed by a spade. Local children and drovers alike play an old, old game by flinging spadefuls and handfuls of dung at the sign, trying to make it stick to where the pile is painted.

Inside, the Bowels of the Earth is chiefly memorable for being dark. Hooded candlelamps at each table provide the only illumination. It’s easy to imagine a blade being drawn in stealthy silence and sliding in and out of a man’s ribs without warning until he crashes forward onto his table—and The place is a haunt of the Shadow Thieves, it’s said, the place where the thief Moriath of the Company of Crazed Venturers met his end at their hands.

There are several private, rentable rooms off the taproom. They are Spartan cubicles furnished only with lamps hanging on chains above built-in benches and tables. Behind the bar are the kitchens, and beside it is a door leading to the alley behind the tavern. Stairs lead up to a cesspit/jakes at the back of the place, a set of former bedrooms crammed with stores, and a dustfilled attic. Stairs behind the bar lead down to a low-ceilinged cellar crowded with kegs as tall as a man and about as fat around as any four men. Even before you find the trapdoor behind them, you can smell that this place is connected to the sewers.

So why do adventurers, who can often afford better, come to this dump? Well, the prices are low, well-banked fires keep it warm in winter, and in the close darkness there are always tales being told back and forth-—tales of taming and flying dragons, of hewing liches and baatezu limb from limb, and withstanding the hurled magic of archmages or beholders. The listener can visit far, exotic corners of Toril—-from fabled Evermeet to the chill ice of the Great Glacier, and from the depths of the Deep Realm of the dwarves to the unrelenting heat of Zakhara, the Land of Fate— without ever leaving the safety of his or her chair.

But more importantly than that, listening quietly and perhaps smoking in the darkness are usually one or more who have come to hire adventurers or simply mercenary swords for a task. They sit, and listen, take their measure of the speaker, and may lay down a coin for a hiresword to take up and so enter their service.

Food in the Bowels is simple fare: coarse, rich dark rye bread in circular loaves, served to accompany slabs of cheese, sausage, and fowl pate. There’'s also soup— usually a thick concoction of peas and lentils simmered with all the meat scraps, fat, and bones that have come within reach of the place.

To wash all that down, there’'s lots to drink—in quantity. The selection isn'’t great. All that burns going down and isn’t well thought of can be had, but if you want fancy wines, walk elsewhere.

Regular patrons are hard to recognize in the darkness— which is just as well for the city guard undercover agent who’'s usually listening here or for Mirt the Moneylender, the colorful and stout ex-mercenary.

The bald-headed proprietor wears a gold earring and is almost as wide as he is tall (in other words, about five feet in each direction). His biceps are as large around as a fat man’s thigh! This gentle giant is capable of snatching an unruly guest off his feet one-handed and hurling him across the taproom to strike the door so hard that it flies open and he sails out a good 10 feet into the street-—and bounces. This bartender, Ongamar Talthloon, is (thankfully!) slow to anger.

Drink goes by the tankard: 1 copper for rough ale, 3 coppers for good ale, 7 cp for zzar, and 10 cp to 60 cp for wine and spirits, depending on quality. A plate of food is 1 cp. A bowl of soup is 1 cp, but free with a plate of food.

The Bowels of the Earth has so many tales connected to it that I could fill another book this size, but there’s one that every traveler finds interesting: The tavern has been owned by more than one wizard in the past—-and it’s said in the city that there’s still magical treasure hidden in the place somewhere. Many folk have stealthily cast detection spells— - only to find that the entire

place radiates strong magical auras—layer upon layer, so that a dispel magic doesn’t clear things. So far, only one magical ring has been found—-in the bottom of one of the wine kegs, when it rotted through.