The Ever-Dim, A Stage-Door Staple in the City of Omens
Heavy black curtains brush over your shoulders as you enter the crumbling theatre house. Thick clouds of mugwort smoke and lamp oil fumes slow you in your tracks. The walls are alive with the fluttering of old handbills, advertisements for plays that once took place in this very room. Bottles of foreign imports glint in the low light, perched behind the bar that now stands on the stage. An aging Agyar woman smiles at you with dry lips set into her elven face. The beveled ears of the half-elven steppe dwellers peak out from under an heirloom head wrap. Only a few of the city’s natives can be seen nursing green brews of fine liqueur; every other patron is only passing through. You and your party find a table beside the winch of some stage effect long dismantled. Curiosity takes hold, or perhaps it’s just the flame elixir imbibed at the last watering hole. You flip over the rusting mechanism on the wall. A black mark has been burned on its back… the mark of killing magic.
A rocky and thin road might lead any given traveler from the edge of the steppes into a perfect oval of low hills. The Agyar people know this detour as a final warning to outsiders. To continue their travels into this graveyard country could offer nothing but death. Foul things wait just beyond the hills of the city, far fouler than that which the bright streets of Gloamen hide. The lights of traditional Agyar lanterns shine on cobblestone streets and ebony inns. Oftentimes, the hospitality of the market street and Tavern Row lull travelers into a sense of safety and security. It may surprise them to learn that very few steppe-folk ever set foot in the kind city. The City of Gloamen is the illustration on the fortune teller’s card, the one that makes the troubles ahead seem almost bearable.
Gloamen has been home to the finest craftsmen in the steppes for countless generations. Cordwainers, tinsmiths, masons, joiners, and tailors have made their homes in the northwestern district since after the Fallow Festival Fall some 350 years ago. Their shops flourish in Craft Corner, the neighborhood in the southeast branch of the city. While these aging masters take the bulk of their commissions in their workshops, their apprentices can always be found on market street selling extra wares. Once every month, someone from the city goes missing from the tavern beds, the alleys of Narrowtown, or even the fog-laden streets. That’s a story for another time, I’m afraid.
Tavern Row is famous throughout the Caravansary and even parts of Campara as a cradle of craft liquor mixology. Such legendary brew houses as The Wilt Wine and The Odd Dog stand among its streets, but none can boast the renown enjoyed by The Ever-Dim.
Filling the gutted belly of an old playhouse, The Ever-Dim was once home to the Nytwater Players acting troupe. Although their fame was minimal during their active years, the legend of their rise and fall remains a favorite of Mytyrran folklorists. The sprawling theatre comes to life every night with the hushed voices of patrons, trampling one another to get at the proprietress’ concoctions. Amylea Nytwater, an Agyar woman born in Gloamen, carries the pride of having turned the crumbling theater into a bar without equal.
Should you buy Amylea one of her own drinks, she’ll happily tell you the obvious: her father, Myleus Nytwater, was the troupe-master of the Nytwater Players back when the theater was in its hay day. Members of the Caskers’ Guild and other tavern afficionados will know that this is only the beginning of her story. Should you bring Amylea an ingredient from far off places such as Pieth moss from Glasswater, Xivonian sugar cane, or even a Yukazan snow berry, she’ll tell you a story you haven’t heard.
Amylea was abandoned as an infant by her father, left to the care of an aunt living in Gloamen’s tenement row. Myleus was run out of town, along with the few of his original troupe that remained, by a pitchfork mob in the dead of night. Why? The plays put on by the Nytwater Players in the Ever-Dim Theatre, from which attendees often went missing, were said to have summoned something.
One of the classic plays put on by the troupe, The Tragedy of Alukrad Khan, tells the story of the former master of Castle Alukrad during the time before the Fallow Festival Fall. This story is well known to anyone who grew up in the steppes, walking the line between fairy tale and history lesson. Alukrad Khan, a bloodthirsty and power-hungry dread lord, ends the play by confronting the aberrant monster that gave him his power. “The Benefactor,” as the monster is known, devours the actor playing Alukrad in a work of stage effects. By this act of the play, one of his knights has been made a blood sacrifice on the first of every month for the past nine years. Naturally, the bloody effects put on by the Nytwater Players were said to be the most gruesomely real audiences had ever seen. Suspicions arose when the actors playing Alukrad were seldom seen after their performances and often replaced from an ever-renewing pool of understudies. Audience disappearances became far more common, and Gloamen’s town hall was running out of blind eyes to turn. While the torchlit mob drove the troupe from the theatre on that night some sixty years ago, some say Myleus never left, living in the eaves with whatever it was that came of all that blood.
Job Bulletin
Get an old painting out of The Ever-Dim’s sub-basement. 90 GP
Tend the candle in the theatre, the one that must never go out, for a whole night. 150 GP
Find the missing daughter of Gloamen’s master cordwainer, last seen in Narrowtown. 300 GP
Patrons
Ezekiel Bagans, Human Warlock: A famed collector of anything even remotely haunted. He’s been trying to buy The Ever-Dim for three years now.
Mydge of Myreni, Camparan Elf Alchemist: A former tavern proprietress herself, turned agent of the Caskers’ Guild. Seeking to recruit Amylea to her guild of gastro-magical sentinels.
Una Dogsbite, Agyar Wizard: The geriatric two-bit seeress who raised Amylea. Watches over the bar every night while telling fortunes for 10 GP each.
Menu
Smoking Room: Whisky, Ayrag, Ticksbane Bitters, Sweet Syrup, Cinnamon, Egg, 8 GP
Flickwick: Pepper Whisky, Succulent Liquor, Sweet Syrup, Pepper Mud, Flame Wax, 8 GP
Horizonless: Succulent Liquor, Tart Fruit Juice, Shroom Blood, Woe Cherry, 8 GP
Ayrag – 3 GP
Snow Ale – 2 GP
Fire Ale – 1 GP
Blood Wine – 10 GP
Ivy Wine – 15 GP
Winter Wine – 10 GP
Black Wine – 15 GP
Potatoes, any way – 5 GP
Bread – 2 GP
Shepherd’s Salad – 3 GP
Mutton & Grain Meal – 3 GP
Porridge – 2 GP
Boar Board – 6 GP
But what is the secret of the old playhouse, and what do its fires distract from elsewhere in the city of Gloamen? More on this and so many other story threads in my RPG worldbuilding and storytelling to come! Stay tuned below to make sure you don’t miss a thing.
