Scaly Dog Inn

Welcome to Windglum. When are you leaving?

- Wilfin Strabile, ruler of Windglum

On the third layer of Pandemonium — called Phlegethon by most — there's a little town called Windglum, which serves as a common meeting ground and outfitting place for travelers. That's despite the fact that its citizens are, by and large, some of the most suspicious and unfriendly souls on all the Outer Planes. See, they have a real chip on their shoulders toward outsiders — they're all here because they were banished to the plane by one enemy or another.    The meeting place most frequented by travelers in this paranoid little town is a hostel known as the Scaly Dog Inn. It's the one place in town where a plane-walking cutter can sit down and feel at home among like souls.    The Scaly Dog has been around for a long time, and it's always been a place the locals sent visitors to for lodging. Until recently, it's had a pretty unsavory reputation. Just a little over a year ago, however, a new fellow named Hagus Gimcrack was banished to the plane, found his way to the town of Windglum, applied for citizenship, and bought the Scaly Dog with jewelry he was carrying on him at the time. He set about expanding the place (by buying neighboring bits of real estate) and repairing its reputation (by cracking the heads of troublemakers who came to visit). Before long, word got out that the Scaly Dog was under new management, and the number of customers began to increase. As a result, the inn continues to expand.    Hagus Gimcrack is an outgoing cutter, friendly as long as it's business, but not much interested in anything else. Like most everyone else on Pandemonium, he's a bit touched with madness, but he doesn't let it show as often as most. Maybe that's why he's so devoted to the inn, because it gives him a concrete center to focus on, keeping the madness at bay.   Because most of Windglum's citizens don't want to have a lot to do with out-siders. Gimcrack has to staff the inn with people who are just passing through. That precludes a listing of staff members in this account.    The Scaly Dog is a pretty unusually laid out place, due to the strange way in which it has grown. It occupies parts of three buildings located at the intersection of Barker Street and Bent Axle Road, plus a set of rooms upstairs, built over the inter-section itself.    Originally, the inn only occupied the area now known as the Common Room. What's now the private dining room served as a kitchen, and customers slept on pallets along the walls. Right after buying the place. Gimcrack picked up an upstairs apartment across the street (the right half of what's now the second floor), and had a stairway built in the alley just beyond the downstairs privies, to give access to that set of rooms.    Putting the guest rooms upstairs meant that the common room could stay open to serve food and drink later hours, which certainly didn't hurt business at all. In fact, just three months later. Gimcrack was able to pick up the other half of the upstairs. plus the store-room downstairs behind the bar. Only problem was, the little kitchen couldn't keep up with the increased business, so he turned it into a private dining room and bought the corner storefront across the street to make a bigger kitchen. The paired stairs were built at that time, so that food could be carried up, across, and down rather than through the street itself.    Acquisition of the building that now serves as owner's quarters, servants' quarters, and secondary storeroom happened just months ago; Gimcrack plans another set of stairs leading from those quarters to the upstairs hallway in order to completely connect the inn.    Services found here are the usual for an inn. In addition, a lot of travelers find the place handy as a sort of hiring hall for adventurers. If nothing else, its a relatively safe haven against the constant winds.