Glauber’s Inn

At a Glance

From the outside, Glauber’s doesn’t really stand out. Clustered among other buildings – mostly other inns – Glauber’s is a modest two-story construction, made out of simple brick and mortar. There is no adjacent stable for horses and other such animals – if somebody wants their mount taken care of, they have to leave it at one of their nearby stables. Built facing east, it gets a lot of sun during the mornings, a boon to the various plants decorating all of its windowsills.

Yet if one enters Glauber’s, they will quickly notice something strange about it. Although it is quite busy during the evenings and nights like most establishments of its kind, it gets its heaviest traffic during the mornings and afternoons. This is on account of the myriad of card players that gather during those hours – people who consider themselves professionals.

Interior

Glauber’s has three floors – the ground floor, the first floor, and the basement. The ground floor is where most of the guests remain throughout their stay. There, one can find a dozen long tables, neatly organized. While other inns inevitably end up featuring a wide array of tables and chairs of different kinds, replacing the ones who break with whichever ones they can find, Glauber’s presents an image of uniformity.

In the middle of the ground floor, there stands the bar. Featuring an open-air design, nothing separates the bar – and the kitchen – from the common room. One can see their meals and drinks being made, and smell them being prepared.

Glauber’s uniformity continues onto the first floor, where one can find ten rooms. The largest one belongs to the inn’s owner and his wife, while the other nine are available for guests to rent. All nine rooms are furnished exactly the same, with a double bed, a small desk, a single chair and a drawer right next to the bed. The sole break in this uniformity is the different kinds of flowers one can find on the windowsills of each room.

Half of the basement houses the inn’s supplies – drinks, food, and the like, as well as cleaning materials. The other half has two uses: Occasionally, it is also used to store items, but most of the time there are yet more tables and chairs there, for when the ground floor overflows – meaning, whenever there is a large card tournament.

Owner

In theory, Thomas Glauber is the inn’s owner. In practice, however, it is his wife Sylvia that runs things. An industrious sort of person, Sylvia manages the inn’s economics – as well as its flowers. She also occasionally cooks, cleans, and prepares drinks, although the inn’s employees are usually responsible for those tasks.

As for Thomas, while he does help around with whatever is urgent – from cleaning to cooking to serving – he is mostly responsible for ensuring the various card games run smoothly. After all, it was him that cultivated the inn’s image as the premier destination of card players, being a great lover of such games himself. In fact, before establishing the inn, he wanted to open some kind of casino – it was his wife who persuaded him otherwise.

Staff

Most of Glauber’s staff doesn’t really stay for more than a couple of years. However, there are a few members who have been around for longer, and are quite indispensable.

First up, there’s Clara. Clara is a half-elf who has spent the past thirty years of her life cooking in various establishments, honing her craft throughout that time. For the past few years, she’s been working at Glauber’s.

Clara is perhaps the inn’s best-kept secret. A handful of locals know of her and her amazing cooking, and frequent Glauber’s solely because of her. Everybody else is pleasantly shocked to discover such good food in a random, small inn.

Then there’s Michel, a human. Apart from being a fast server, he also possesses a fantastic memory. Although it helps in recalling large orders, Michel uses his memory mainly to remember the rules to the various card games being played in Glauber’s, assisting Thomas in helping new players learn the games or helping resolve disputes between players.

Services

As mentioned, Glauber’s main service is not the food or rooms, but the assortment of card games always being played.

Such games include all the well-known games of chance – those being played in kitchen tables across Ptolus, those being played in the various casinos, and many being played around the world.

On top of this, Thomas has been developing a new game for a while now. Contrary to most others, it doesn’t really require on luck, but rather skill. Thomas has created about two hundred cards, using a printing press to replicate them and having people build decks out of them, with each card having a different effect. So far, the game has been proving quite popular.

Guests

Most guests come to Glauber’s simply to play, not to spend the night – they are locals. Indeed, the inn’s rooms are only ever really full when a large tournament is organized and non-locals come to play in it. Otherwise, the inn is home to various travelers who usually stumble upon it by chance when looking for a place to stay in Ptolus. More often than not, these travelers leave the inn having learnt at least a couple of card games.

Secrets & Rumors

With so much card-playing going on at Glauber’s, those in the know are firmly convinced that some crime boss is using the establishment as a front, either laundering money through the inn or simply seeking to expand their business. After all, most card playing is viewed as quite shady in general.

There’s also a wilder rumor, spread mostly by concerned citizens leaving near Glauber’s. Such people say that they’ve seen Thomas and his wife leave the inn quite late at night, returning before the sun has risen. They say that they’re enacting some strange magical ritual, with some claiming they’ve heard chanting or seen strange lights. The same people claim that the target of the ritual is Thomas’ new card game, whose cards he’s enchanting to do some infernal ritual, affecting the minds of those playing it.

Type

Inn

Parent Location

South Market