The Thirsty Sailor

This ugly, poorly built tavern began as fieldstone with wooden upper levels, but many fires and wild brawls with magic as well as axes and hurled tables have changed its face. Hasty patches have been made with more vigor than skill, and little enough enthusiasm. Of scavenged, mismatched materials, they thrust like uneven buttresses from the burn-scarred, boarded-over walls. Not a window remains at street level. Those higher up look more like trapdoors than portals to admit light or air.

The interior of the Thirsty Sailor is no better than its battered exterior. This is the sort of place all gentler folk think every sailors' drinking hole is: one filthy lawless, ongoing drunken brawl, where the only patrons who aren't fighting or roaring curses or bawdy songs are those who have already passed out.

Its so rough that none of Waterdeep's hard currency girls will venture into the place. Any woman one meets there is as hard-drinking a sailor or dock-walloper as the rest of the clientèle, with fists to match. One has a piece of my ear as a keepsake, but that's another story.

Candles are few and soon broken. Night or day the Thirsty Sailor is smoky and ill-lit. This would make it ideal for shady deals - if it weren't so noisy, and you weren't so apt to slip in spilled drink, or find a thief's fingers or a bored drinkers fist uncomfortably close. A fair bit of hushed business does go on among those wise enough to rent an upper room.

The Thirsty Sailor manages to achieve its minimal rating for one reason only: If the first cause of visiting a tavern is to drink, and another is to be entertained with a brawl or two, then this tavern meets those requirements admirably. The drink here is strong, not watered (1 cp/tankard for beer, 3 cp/whiskey, and 1 tp/firewine). And one never wants for brawls to watch, though it's often hard to remain a non-participant with the tables crowded so close together.

The proprietor is Kaeroven "Smiles" Yuluth, a tall, rotund, unpleasant-looking man with tiny deep-set eyes whose stare is as hard and cold as two dagger points. He has blond, curly hair and is clean-shaven, with razor scars to prove it. His nickname comes from the fact that no one has ever seen him smile save when he's dragging the latest corpse to the rear of the tavern for disposal into the sewers.

Smiles wears a magical ring - a ring of regeneration of the vampiric sort, I believe, from what I saw happen to wounds he suffered in a brawl he waded into the midst of - and is almost always clad in a blood-smeared apron that reeks of cheap women's perfume, and bears the stitched legend "See Neverwinter by Night/Bring a Blade and Live Longer!" Why the apron smells of perfume I dared not ask him. No one else seemed to know.

Kaeroven is known to be a contact and information gatherer for the Kraken Society and to sometimes hire thieves and bravos to steal some item or rough up a citizen. He no doubt acts for someone who pays to have the deed done, but doesn’'t want to be connected with it.

Many in Dock Ward suspect he is linked to shadowy unnamed smuggling concerns— - and even say these provide him with most of his income. I’'ve heard rumors of Calishite connections and even talk of the kidnapping of citizens to sell them into slavery in Calimshan! Those who cross Kaeroven openly do have a habit of tragically disappearing very soon.

Smiles maintains a staff of seven bouncers and six surly dwarven waiters. There are no barmaids or any women on staff and no houseboys to clean up broken glass and spills, presumably because protecting them from drunken patrons would be endless work. One bouncer is rumored to be a doppleganger who impersonates murdered patrons when the Watch calls.

Kaeroven'’s sidekick, errand runner, and spy is a furtive, rat-like man who goes by the grand name of Winestab. He habitually eavesdrops on most upper room conversations - —from the roof above, if need be. This unsavory sneak thief’'s proper name is Aldaeguth. Some older citizens remember him as Oldy-gut, but his surname (if any) and origins remain obscure. Winestab has a vicious temper and long memory Many have found him a dangerous, persistent foe. His habit of surviving traps set for him argues that he has one or more magic items down his boot when he goes out to stalk the roofs, sewers, and alleys of the City of Splendors by night.

An upper room rents for 1 sp per evening or any part of it, or 4 sp for the night. There are no beds nor sanitary facilities save the alley behind (via windows). Renters must bring their own lights. There are no locks, but doors can be barred from inside. The rooms are too dirty to tempt anyone sober enough to see or smell to put them to any romantic uses - —or any other uses, like sleep. Most who use the rooms are lowlives plotting clumsy crimes or smuggling deals.

A certain dark-cloaked, soft-spoken man is seen in the Sailor from time to time— - a man whose features are hidden by a mask and a hood, who sometimes visibly shifts form into a female body as he leaves, and who is almost certainly a mage of some power. At least once, this one met in the tavern with other shrouded folk who must have been, by what they inadvertently revealed, mind flayers. All in all, this tavern - —if not as large and noisy as, say the Bloody Fist nearby— - is a dangerous spot.