Docks - Talagaad

There is never a time when the docks of Talagaad are not busy, for while honest trade ends with sunset, the smugglers take over not long after night falls. Every morning sees the docks awash with would-be labourers searching for work, honest or otherwise, and fights are common if a given day’s opportunities prove to be scarce. There are docks and quays on both sides of the river, but their character is distinctly different, for while Talabheim controls the south docks, astute legal manoeuvring by Duke Ludwig established that the northern bank is his.

The southern bank’s docks offer the best access to the city; however, they are a shambles of poor construction and rotting wood, in constant need of repair and the city’s Excise officers vary wildly in their attentions from meticulous to utterly corrupt. The northern bank’s docks are far sturdier and well-maintained. The Duke’s tax agents are proficient, infamously unbribable, and charge fairly reasonable assessments. Docking on the north bank, though, means negotiating with Talagaad’s crooked ferrymen or dealing with the latest taxes for passing over the Wizard’s Crossing to get your goods to Talagaad’s Market Square or on to Talabheim. The present outrage is the Leg Tax which, though exorbitant for most, is set just low enough to avoid discouraging crossings entirely.

A short distance from the southern end of the Wizard's Crossing, at the edge of the docks, rises a bulky twostoried tavern widely famed in song, the Roaring Badger. The tavern is run by the wily rogue Vartolis Skint, a man who claims to hail from nowhere in particular, but who is well known for being able to flawlessly change his accent at will. Much of the ground floor is given over to a wide stage, surrounded by clever Dwarf-made lighting. The Roaring Badger is famed for its entertainment, which changes from night to night, with no one ever knowing what they might get: macabre skeletal marionettes, sonorous Dwarfen war ballads, or scandalous limericks from the Moot.

The stage and part of the bar beside it still bear scorch marks from a particularly spectacular evening and a somewhat drunk Elementalist. If a patron is willing to attempt entertaining the tavern, they will immediately be pushed up on stage and their efforts judged by the crowd. Those that succeed have their ale covered for the rest of the evening and may even see some coin out of it. Those that fail are tossed into the Talabec.