The Last Resort

The raucous cheers grew louder as Lida entered the inn. The smells of strong ale and rich stew filled her nose. Most of the tables were filled with laborers, unwinding after a long day of work in the mines or the fields, but she could tell with a single glance that the party in the corner booth were outsiders.

The Last Resort is an inn located in the southwest quarter of Aidona. It is the largest and most reputable inn in the hub, and although there are other smaller establishments in other parts of the town, the Last Resort attracts the most business.

Architecture

When the Last Resort was first built in AV 1099, it was a squat stone building with one small room and a back kitchen. Over time, as more travellers arrived, it became necessary to expand the building and add more rooms for overnight guests. Because ownership has changed hands a few times, the inn has a mixture of different architectural styles on each of its renovations. Likewise, the age of the building meant that its stonework was constructed from whatever type of stone was being dug out from the mine at that time. After the Breaching, wood began to be imported into the Deep. This allowed more flexibility in construction, and some of the inn's upper floors are half-timbered. The newer rooms have pine floorboards, but the ground floor is paved with polished stones, mostly scrap stone from the mines.

From the outside, the Last Resort is a lopsided building with three floors all constructed with slightly different styles and different stones. The first floor is mainly plain grey stone bricks with small windows that were shuttered later by wood. The second floor, built when the owners had more income and the inn was becoming popular with outsiders, starts with reddish stone bricks that transition about halfway up the story into brownish grey stone. These bricks are more closely set and create a smooth surface, on which a line of motifs has been carved. The final story incorporates the half-timbered look from surface buildings and overhangs the street below by about five feet, giving the third floor a larger area on which to build rooms. The stone on this floor is grey like the first floor and has no carvings. The roof was once flat but has since been constructed to have a small peak and is tiled with terracotta shingles. The inn has a single door in the front and one in he back which leads to the small alley used for deliveries.

History

The Last Resort was built in AV 1099 to house temporary workers and passing travellers while the hub was still small. It was named Last Resort because many residents of Aidona at the time believed that there were no other hubs within several weeks' travel, and any folk reckless enough to leave the hub into the unknown were doomed to death by starvation, dehydration, or exhaustion. The inn, as the only place in the hub for outsiders to stay, was the last place that they would be able to have certainty of their next drink and meal. It is also believed that the inn was once named something else but gained its current name because of its, at the time, poor quality food and drink, such that anyone living in the hub would only go there for a meal as a "last resort."

The inn changed hands many times in its first several decades, due to poor management, unpopularity, or simply because the current owners had no further interest in owning the establishment. It eventually fell into the ownership of a family that kept it for generations until the last member of that line passed away without any heirs, at which point the inn's manager, whose family name was Artemie, was bequeathed the inn. It has been owned by the Artemie family for five generations and has seen a marked improvement in management and quality.

In AV 1281 a fire in the kitchens left part of the inn's first floor unusable, and the building nearly collapsed. The current owners decided to sell the building, where it was bought collectively by a group of miners and field laborers. They raised money from their peers to fix the damage and upgrade the kitchen's fireproofing. After the renovations were complete, they sold it again for a tidy profit to a new owner.

Tourism

As the largest and most well-known inn in Aidona, the Last Resort plays host to a great number of outsiders, particularly surface folk, who come to the hub for a variety of reasons. The use of wood in its upper floors and the ample light provided in most of the rooms help surface folk to feel more at home. The current owners are reported to be kind but firm and deal well with both nervous first-timers and drunken regulars.

The Last Resort serves hearty fare, its most popular dish being a rich stew made from subterranean roots and fungi grown in the fields of Aidona. The menu contains mostly traditional Aidonian foods that incorporate a variety of cave-dwelling organisms found wandering in the tunnels of Mid Deep. In recent years, with the addition of the new research circle of surface folk, the Last Resort has begun to incorporate more "surface-friendly" dishes using ingredients imported from the surface, or by cooking Deep ingredients in the style of surface foods.

It is the oldest inn of the hub and its long history as an integral part of the town makes it a popular spot for day laborers to go to unwind from a long day's work. Most nights, one can find the inn's main room filled with the cheers and singing of tipsy miners returning from their weeks-long stays in the mining camps. They are particularly fond of the drink known as Miner's Delight, which is a very strong liquor made from the excretions of one of Aidona's most common livestock breeds. It is so strong that even surface folk who are good at holding their liquor may find themselves inebriated after only a glass or two.

Founding Date

AV 1099

Type

Inn

Notable Menu Items

Miner's Delight

A very strong liquor made from Yitzel sap and fermented for a hundred days. Full-bodied and smooth with an earthy aroma.

Braviorel

A stew made from mushrooms, tubers, and aromatic herbs, served in a clay tureen.

Cuppiacan

Stir-fried cuts of cavern worms, cave lizards, and tubers served over a bed of chopped steamed fungi.

Ogonlochka

Sticky buns filled with a spicy mushroom paste and sprinkled with Ogon seeds.