It was a pretty normal night at the Yellow Pig Tavern. There was a card game going on at one table, and five of the Hawkblood boys were ensconced in the “Hunter’s Corner”, telling each other increasingly unlikely tales of their hunting prowess, overlooked by the heads of several stuffed game. Thane, the long serving bartender there, was less than impressed by the stories, because he knew for a fact that not one of the lads telling tales had ever been outside of the city, much less gone hunting for beasts of that sort. All in all, it was shaping up to be another pleasantly boring night - it had been steady, but not busy, all day, and Wednesday nights tended toward the boring at the Yellow Pig Tavern. Thane was wiping down the bar when the door opened up and someone came in from the street. He looked up, and snorted in derision as the young man came in.
“Great, another tourist”, he thought, returning to his cleaning. Truth be told, the bar was spotless, but Thane had a firm belief that things could always be cleaner. The young man came up to the bar, and caught Thane’s attention.
“Can I ask you a question?”, he asked. Thane took note of his Bostian accent and figured between that and the young man’s slim build, it was pretty likely that he’d end up in an alleyway, liberated from his purse. The boys playing cards looked over to the bar, noting the newcomer.
“You can ask,”, responded Thane. “But I don’t guarantee an answer” He rinsed the rag that he’d been using to clean the bar, and waited for the question. The young man seemed a little taken aback by Thane’s attempt at humor. While he was deciding what to do, the door to the street opened again, and two more folk came in - a half-orc carrying a lyre on his back, and a dragonborn. They made a bee-line to the corner of the bar, and Thane held up a finger to the young Bostian, and went to take the newcomers’ orders.
“How much is your cheapest beer?”, asked the half-orc.
“Two coppers a mug”, replied Thane. When the half-orc nodded, he started pulling a pint of Weasel Piss from the bargain barrel at the end of the bar. It wasn’t much of a beer - it had the appearance of very watery urine, from which it got it’s name - but it was somewhat thirst quenching and definitely cheap. Thane noted that it was getting low, and that he’d have to get another barrel soon. The dragonborn merely shook his head when Thane looked over to him to see what he wanted, so after serving the half-orc, he returned to the youth.
“I’ve recently been robbed, and I’m looking for the thief. I was told that he spends time here occasionally.”, he started. Thane sighed.
“Great, another ignorant yokel looking to chase after shit that he’d be better off replacing”, he thought. Out loud, he said “Well, a lot of people come here regularly. We’re a popular place to be, here in Nighthorn. I don’t know most of them by name, and I don’t know of any ‘thieves’ that spend time here.”
“His name is Gianno Twothumbs”, replied the youth. “Do you know where to find him?”
Thane noticed the card players putting down their cards, and paying attention. The door opened again, and this time, three folks came in from the street. One of them, a dwarf, joined the dragonborn and the half-orc at the bar, and the other two - a tiefling and a warforged - went to the opposite end of the bar, near the Hunter’s Corner. Thane looked back at the youth.
“Sorry, I couldn’t tell you where he was. I don’t know anyone by that name. You sure that you want to find him?”, he replied, and walked over to the dwarf. If there was anyone in the group of customers that wanted a drink, Thane thought that the dwarf was the one most likely. He had that look about him - someone that had been sober for too long. The dwarf asked what Thane had on tap, and Thane started to answer.
“Yes, I’m sure. Do you know where I would be likely to find him?”, the Bostian asked again. Thane, annoyed now, shook his head and focused on the dwarf.
Suddenly, without warning, the warforged jumped up on the bar. Everyone in the bar turned to look, including Thane.
“ALL RIGHT GIANNO TWOTHUMBS! SHOW YOURSELF AND GIVE US BACK WHAT YOU STOLE FROM US!!!”, he yelled, his mechanical voice booming over all the noise both inside and outside the bar. Thane noticed that the Bostian youth’s hand went to his face, and the half-orc nodded to himself at this pronouncement.
“Ah, they’re together then,”, Thane thought to himself, as he backed away from the bar. There was a breathless pause as the customers all waited to see what would happen next. It stretched… and stretched… and then, just as it looked like the warforged had given up, and was ready to jump down from the bar, it happened.
Thane didn’t see who threw the knife, but there was suddenly a knife sticking out of the chest of the warforged. It didn’t seem like something that they had been expecting to happen - which just confirmed Thane’s supposition earlier - tourists. You don’t say something like that in Nighthorn without expecting violence, after all. Everyone around here knew this - and they tended to be more … circumspect.
Suddenly, everything was chaos. The cardplayers, and and the story tellers all stood up. The tiefling pulled a sword to face one of the Hawkblood boys that had run up to him, scimitar in hand, and the half orc turned to the other customers. The youth turned around to face the bar, and the warforged tried to jump down from the bar, only to end up missing his landing and ending up on his butt - although he stood up quickly.
“Mind the furniture!!!!”, Thane yelled, and sidled over to where the hawthorn club he kept behind the bar was stored.
“Barman!”, called the dwarf. Thane turned to look. “I’ll have a pint of your finest ale”, he continued, before pulling out an impressive warhammer, and charging the card players. A sudden flash of light hit one of them, coming from the dragonborn, and he was down.
“Oh great - magic too. It’s not just a brawl, but now we got magic flying around. This is not good”, he thought, as he pulled out the club. It seemed somewhat less useful now that he knew that there was a magic user involved. As Thane watched, the half-orc and one of the card players traded blows, and the dragonborn cast some sort of magic that made the half-orc glow. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted that one of the storytellers was scarpering off into the other room, closing the door behind him. The sound of breaking glass annoyed Thane, and he made a mental note to charge Gianno for the broken window.
It didn’t take long to finish, all told. Five of the Hawkblood boys lay bleeding on the floor, and not all of them were gonna get up again. Two of them had escaped, running upstairs where they could get out onto the roofs and make there way back to their boss. The strangers were clustered together once things had stopped flying around, slashing, and stabbing, and had the look of men that weren’t sure that things were done. And somehow, the Bostian seemed bigger, and hairier, than he had when he first came in. Several of the group were bloody, and at least some of it was their own.
“Well, that was exciting.”, Thane said, breaking the tension. He could seen the whole group relax as they realized that the fight was over. “I want to thank you for sparing the furniture, at least.”
“Sorry about the mess.”, the Bostian apologized. He was covered in blood - the vast majority of which was from the gang member that he’d fought. Thane had seen a lot of men after they'd fought, and when there was that much blood, they didn’t tend to get back up again. He sighed.
“Well, I guess that’s five bar tabs that I won’t be collecting.”, he told them, resignation in his voice.
“Well, there’s a fair amount of money on the card table, maybe that covers it?”, said the Bostian. Thane blinked as he looked back at him. He looked like a skinny kid again, so maybe Thane had imagined it. His expression was truly apologetic, instead of the defiant, or excited expression that most brawlers had afterwards. “If it doesn’t, I’ll cover the rest”, he finished.
Thane blinked in surprise, and handed a wet bar rag to the youth, to clean off his face.
“That’s… more than decent of you, lad.”, he replied, before coming out from behind the bar. The dwarf grunted thanks for his beer, and took a long pull on his beer, joined by the half-orc. Thane started cleaning up the tables, and the bodies, assisted by the warforged and the kid. After totalling it all up, it turned out that between the coin that he’d gotten from the purses of the unfortunate gang members, and the pot on the table, he had the bar tabs of most of them covered. He was still a gold and a half short.
“Here you go. My name’s Thistle. Are you sure that you don’t know where we can find Gianno Twothumbs?”, he said. Thane took a closer look at the group, and made a decision. He hoped he wouldn't regret it.
“Well, lad, I’m pretty sure that you can find him over on Algin’s Lane, two streets toward the river, and one north of here. He’s likely to have run there after he left here when all the ‘excitement’ began.”, he said. “What do you want with him, anyways?”
“We just found out that he stole a bunch of stuff from the six of us while we were in hospital, and we’d like to get it back from him.”, Thistle replied. “We’re trying to figure out why we were unconscious for so long there, and why we woke up after he stole the stuff from us.”
Thane whistled in surprise.
“You mean you six were Sleepers? And you don’t know what happened?”, he asked them. The group all nodded in response, and Thane shook his head.
“Listen - you don’t need to stay here and wait for the watch. You all go over to Algin’s Lane and figure out what’s going on. There’s more lads over there, though - be warned. And watch out for Big Theo - he’s the one that the rest of them follow. He’s a nasty piece of work, and he’s going to be pissed that you took out five of his guys, and embarrassed the rest.”, he told them. “Take off, and leave the cleanup here to me - I know a guy that knows a guy. Know what I mean?”
“That’s very helpful, sir”, responded the warforged. The rest of them expressed their thanks as well. Thane shook it off and shooed them out.
“Look guys, for a small... donation, I’ll keep my ears open for anything about Gianno. Where can I send a message to you if you don’t find him on Algin’s Lane?”, he said. They told him to send a messenger to the Temple of Lossounelyn and it’d get back to them, and they headed out into the darkening evening. After they left, Thane locked the door to the tavern, and started cleaning up the barroom, whistling as he did so.
“At least the evening hasn’t been boring.”, he thought to himself as he hauled the first of the gang members down the stairs to the basement.