Jedes Keep Ground Floor

The ground floor of the keep contains the kitchen, larder, barracks, and main entrance chamber, known to residents as “the small hall”.
Small Hall
At least one guard is always on duty in the small hall, which is used as a waiting area for visitors. Any commoner trying to enter the keep without an appointment will be held here by the guards. If they have a good reason for their visit Sir Shernâth will, eventually, have them escorted upstairs into the main hall.
Barracks
The barracks are sleeping quarters for the two mani of medium footmen.
Kitchen
The kitchen is a busy place and by far the warmest room in the keep. Warm in winter, it can be unbearable in the summer. The cook, Hedric of Aven, once served in the kitchens of Earl Cûro in Gardîren. He was dismissed because, while a good cook, his menus were too conservative for Earl Cûro. He is thick-set, grey-haired, and in his early forties. His wife, Margryth, is the head kitchen maid and the sister of Sergeant Straken of Ornelt. The couple share a bed in the curtained-off area. There are nine other kitchen maids, all local girls, mostly from Jédes. Seven of them sleep in the kitchen; the other two, daughters of Elarit of Veris, live in a cottage in the village. Haeri of Halam is the castle baker. He is tall, dark-haired, and in his mid thirties, with a jutting chin and long straight nose. He is unmarried, and many of the serving girls avoid him. Haeri sleeps in the great hall and is the first at work every morning. He uses the southern oven for his baking.
Cellar
The cellar is the keep’s general storeroom. Meat, grain, and other foodstuffs are kept in the large vaulted chamber, which is fairly dry and always cold. Barrels at the bottom of the postern stairs contain ale and imported wine. The keep’s only well is also here. A small section of the cellar is walled off and is used as the keep’s brewery and buttery.
Oubliette
As part of Egbert’s reconstruction work, an oubliette was created beneath the cellar. Cold, dank, and fetid, it has never been cleaned. Prisoners are stripped naked and lowered into the chamber on the end of a rope, unless they struggle, in which case they are simply thrown down twenty feet onto solid bedrock. Prisoners are fed and watered at the discretion of the guards, that is, infrequently. Over the years a few recalcitrant prisoners have been left to die. The presence of decaying human remains only adds to the evil atmosphere in the pit. The constable and his men usually find that a night or two in this pitch dark and forbidding room, where the only exit is through a trapdoor in the centre of the ceiling, brings most minor miscreants to their senses.
Ármólarin (sergeant-at-Arms) Straken of Ornelt
The Ármólarin of the keep is Straken of Ornelt, who has been at the keep for five years. He joined the garrison at the same time that his former master, Sir Jassyff, became herald. Within the year Straken had been promoted and had married the keep’s alewife and brewer, Karissa, a buxom, earthy woman with a coarse sense of humour.
Straken, the brother of the yeoman Tornyn [41], is clever and capable. Unusually for a common-born career soldier, he is literate, having been taught to read and write by Jassyff. If Straken has a weakness it is his pride in this achievement; he loves to display his skill by reading publicly.
The sergeant and his wife share a bed in the cellar.