Marna's Elbow

The Inn and Its Living Legacy

Who Was Marna?

• Marna Evenshed (no relation to the noble family, but the similarity amuses locals) was said to have run the inn around two centuries ago, during a time when the village was smaller and rougher.
• She had a reputation for waking late-sleeping guests by elbowing them in the ribs. She also was known to jab guests in their shoulders if they nodded off during one of her long fireside tales. The elbow of note was actually part of a prosthetic arm--Marna had lost the lower half of her right arm in a farming mishap as a child.
• She concocted the “elbow breakfast”—a tray of warm bread, pickled eggs, and root mash, a staple for the groggy and hung-over.
• A portrait of Marna, left elbow cocked with a knowing smirk on her face, still hangs above the hearth.

Interior of Marna’s Elbow

• Rooms: No two are alike, having different shapes, layouts, and decorating styles. Each one is named after a literary motif or local figure—“The Fox’s Nap,” “The Map Without North,” “Marna’s Other Elbow,” "Sandibar's Nook", and "The Dreamweaver".
• Common Area: Warm wood paneling, embroidered chairs, lots of candles and book nooks. One wall has an old chalkboard full of aphorisms left by past guests.
• Ambiance: Less rowdy than The Rusted Crown, but just as curious. Guests leave notes, sketches, and dreams under the loose floorboard by the hearth.

 Room Features

• Bedframes are often made of twisted cherrywood and silver pegs, but no two are alike.
• Rooms will have a writing desk with a drawer full of old quills, and half-finished guest sketches. Ink may be provided by the innkeeper upon request.
• When ink is provided, the bottles are each labeled with an emotion or concept, rather than a color (“Regret,” “Curiosity,” “On Second Thought”, "Childlike Hope").
• A shelf of books with warped spines and strange titles like Topographies of Thought and The Cartographer’s Illusion. Some books relate to the room's theme.

The Room Called The Map Without North

Located on the second floor of Marna’s Elbow, tucked behind a narrow hall where the stairs seem to lean slightly left.

What the Room Looks Like

There is a plaque by the door with a saying written in hand-carved elven script:
“Direction is a story we tell the world to make it stop spinning for a moment.”

The first thing a guest notices isn’t the size—it’s the orientation. The bed isn’t placed where it "should" be; it isn't against any wall, so there is a wide gap around the bed on all sides, nor is it parallel to any wall. The windows are mismatched in height, and none of the corners meet at a perfect right angle. The walls are paneled in dark wood with inlaid brass lines—at first glance, decorative—but if followed with the eye, they branch like wayfinding routes, some ending at nothing, others intersecting unexpectedly. On the far wall is an enormous framed map on aged vellum showing inked coastal outlines and faint cities…but no compass rose, no cardinal points. An observer wonders: how is this map oriented? Which way is up? Where's north?

One might think it’s just artistic. Until night falls.

Nighttime Ambience

At night, a single lantern on the writing desk can cast light on the map. The brass inlays in the wood paneling shimmer faintly, and guests sometimes report that routes on the wall seem to have shifted while they were sleeping. The air in the room is calm and never cold, and carries the scent of old vellum and eucalyptus.

Those who’ve stayed in the room often dream of wandering across unknown roads through unfamiliar prairies and along strange coastlines, without a feeling of being lost. Rather, they follow posted signs that show odd things such as a bridge made of ladders, a clocktower with five hands, or a lizard with wings and feathers—things that seem strange after waking, but that felt normal and even comforting during the dream. Some guests even wake with scraps of verse or sketches they don’t remember creating.

Lore and Rumor

• It’s said that the map was created by an adventurer who wrote no journal and only walked—and that this was the only artifact of hers found after she vanished.
• Some locals claim that the room itself faces a direction that doesn’t exist. One scholar from the Temple-Library stayed for three nights to study the map, then returned and built a reading nook without an exterior wall.

The Map Without North – Lore and Reality

Is the Map Real?

Psionic Connection

• Those with psionic sensitivity (like Rafin) sometimes feel a slight and varying hum in the temple’s version—as if in resonance with a song.
• A scholar once claimed that the map changes depending on who’s viewing it, showing paths relevant to their unconscious desires or unresolved memories. Groups of people together will see the same things on the map, but it may change slightly if they all look away.

Scholarly Theories (Temple-Library Hall of Hypotheses):

1. "An Echo Map": Some believe the map reflects not one world, but the memory of many—a psionic echo cast across the multiverse by a lost explorer or forgotten civilization (possibly the Ar-Garalyn).
2. "A Cartography of the Self": Oghman monks argue it’s a metaphorical tool—a map of one’s moral and intellectual journey. The idea is that by studying it over time, a pilgrim may see their path in life take form.
3. "Incomplete by Design": A controversial group believes the map was never meant to show a world, but rather that it was meant to show what the world lacks—and what must be built to complete it. The absence of north is not an omission, but rather an invitation to interpret the map's landscape.
4. "The Compass Warped": A fringe theory claims the map was part of an ancient artifact designed to reorient geography itself—a tool for reshaping the world, sabotaged before completion.

Notable Interactions

• A bard once stared at the temple’s map for two days and awoke with a complete epic in their head and no memory of writing it. The poem included place names not on any other map, some of which match ruins near the Reaching Woods.
• A young noble once demanded it be removed—claiming it showed him "something that shouldn’t be.” That noble has since taken vows of silence in Deneir’s service.
• Rafin, and other psions, may begin to notice patterns in the room’s version of the map—and may eventually realize the temple copy responds differently to him than it does to others.