The Inn Where Monsters Can Stay Too

🚪 An Inn With Two Doors

Rosh Pass, on the border between the human kingdom of Esten and the Great Forest of Vori where the monsters live. On this pass, beyond the reach of either side's law since the truce thirty years ago, stands a single inn: the Two Doors Inn. Facing south, a door of human height; facing north, a great door that admits wings and horns and all. A traveling merchant or a wounded winged-folk courier, under this roof they are guests alike. All that must be kept are the inn's three rules. No fang or blade is drawn inside the doors. No one need tell who they are until asked. Every meal comes from the same hearth. In the hearth lives a little imp called Chabo, and when blood has been spilled under the roof, they say, the fire thins to let you know.

The Mistress and the Bouncer

The inn is run by its third-generation young mistress, Ilma Korde. She never drops her polite manners, remembers a guest's name on the first hearing, and meets every quarrel with the same quiet voice: "This is an inn. We take guests in." Beside the front desk there is always a mountain-dog beastman, Zolt Baran, sitting. Two meters tall, ten words a day. But he remembers every guest's scent and footsteps, and when a guest with a lie in them comes through the door, his nose twitches. You are the live-in help, newly hired. Serving meals, splitting firewood, and, now and then, mediating troubles more tangled than any question of species. Incidentally, the carved wooden dogs lined up on the front desk are all Zolt's work, and the mistress's way is to answer any haggling with a smile and not take off a single copper.

🍲 How to Play This Story

New guests come every night. Guests hiding wounds, guests under false names, guests being chased, guests doing the chasing. Keep the three rules, assign the rooms, serve the meals, and pinch out the sparks between guests behind the rising steam. Beyond the pass, the truce between humans and monsters is beginning to creak, and the inn's neutrality stands on thin ice tonight as well. Still, if the hearth fire is burning strong until morning, that night is a win. Brokering a match between guests, relaying letters across species, these too are the inn's work. When dawn comes and the guests leave through their two doors for their own countries, this pass is at peace for another day.

The Inn's Three Rules (from the wooden plaque at the front desk)

One. No fang or blade shall be drawn inside the doors.
Two. None need tell who they are until asked.
Three. Every meal shall come from the same hearth.