The Dancing Bear Inn
The Dancing Bear is the last remaining inn operating in the town of Greenfield . It is located in the main street leading from the riverfront to the town square. It is a large and rather old stone building that has been providing rooms and meals to travelers for many generations. It is owned and operated by Thad Butler and his two adopted children, Berend and Bittie Butler.
Since the amount of traffic moving through the Manor has almost entirely disappeared over the last 20 years, rooms are not the primary means of generating revenue for the Butlers, but they still provide an excellent meal twice a day at a very reasonable price and can expect a solid crowd of locals at all times.
Purpose / Function
The only remaining inn in the town of Greenfield, it provides rooms, meals, baths and some very few supplies for travelers.
Design
The inn is actually occupying three separate and individual buildings. The main building holds the ale hall on the first floor and has two floors of rooms above it. There is a smaller two-story structure on the river-side of the main house that contains the kitchen and bathhouse on the main floor and several rooms on the upper floor. The third building is a small stable with the Butler family residence above it.
Sensory & Appearance
The structures that make up the Dancing Bear are quite old and in need of much improvements. High on the list of required repairs are the chimneys. None of them draw very well and all leak vast amounts of smoke into the rooms they warm. To combat this problem, Thad has made arrangements with a family of Halflings named Coaler that make a quality lump charcoal that they exchange for free meals several nights a week. This charcoal is burned in braziers for cooking and heating as it does not produce the smoke that wood does.
Denizens
Thad has his two children working with him every day, as well as a handful of other employees that include a cook, two servers who also clean in the mornings, and a single groom to manage the small stable.
Special Properties
There is a rather unique and eye-catching feature to the Dancing Bear and that is the man-sized wooden image of a short-faced bear standing on its hind legs that is mounted high on the roof overlooking the town square. In past decades, the wooden bear had been painted in pitch black but most of that has weathered off and the carved wooden image is now distinctly mottled and rather ridiculous looking. No one is quite sure of the origin of the inn's name or this carved wooden bear.
The ale hall of the Dancing Bear on a winter's day
A image of the wooden bear mounted atop the inn's roof.
