D&D Travelogue: The Tipsy Mermaid

Welcome back to Dungeons & Dragons Travelogue.  

I’ve said before that I’ve always felt that the biggest challenge of running an adventure in D&D is managing the travel and intermittent locations.  Good storytellers show their players fantastic worlds, letting them experience that sense of wonder for themselves. What they don’t do is explain, “This is wonderful and weird.” Alas, that’s not an easy thing to do on the fly.

Breakwater Bay is modeled on the real world town Bar Harbor, Maine.
This shot is of the actual town.

My goal here is not grandiose.  I simply want to note a few unique locations ahead of time for use in travel or downtime scenes. Today’s location is an upscale tavern in Breakwater Bay called The Tipsy Mermaid.

Location Overview

The seaside town of Breakwater Bay offers the last civilized port in the Kingdom of the Western Isles. North of this point, one reaches the true hinterlands of the Northern Frontier. Located along the northeast corner of L’Isle de Mont Deserette, Breakwater Bay provides an excellent safe water port due to its location at the northern end of the Charlesford Gulf. Alongside its native barrier islands and its large natural rock jetty, the Breakwater, Breakwater Bay’s location ensures that there are always calm waters in and around town, even in the very worst of storms.

Though Breakwater Bay is full-time home to a mere thousand souls, its primacy in the northern timber trade and its collective merchant factors guild make it an important waypoint for merchantmen working the northern trade routes between the Kingdom and the continental mainland.  The Tipsy Mermaid exists to serve these itinerant merchantmen and the dwarves of the Ironhide Clan who work as the town’s shipwrights.

Modern Bar Harbor

Aldrick & Daernelia Fitz-Ironhide

Retired dwarf warleader Aldrick Fitz-Ironhide owns and operates The Tipsy Mermaid. Aldrick is the son-in-law of dwarf clanleader Cassius Ironhide, having married the clanleader’s favorite daughter a few years ago. For this reason and because Aldrick served valiantly during his time as warleader, he is a generally well-known, well-respected figure around town. Notably, Aldrick took his wife’s surname when they married. This was a markedly non-traditional move for an otherwise respectably traditional dwarf, but given the primacy of Clan Ironhide -- and especially of the clan’s patriarch, Cassius -- most longtime townsfolk surely understood Aldrick’s reasons for doing so.

Aldrick and his young wife Daernelia live in The Tipsy Mermaid’s largest suite. Their constant presence ensures that the inn is always clean and in good working order. Though the inn’s taproom and common areas are open to midnight most evenings, Aldrick and especially Daernelia dislike allowing riffraff to “stink up” their home. As a result, the food and ale are excellent, but the accommodations are not cheap.

The Tipsy Mermaid favors Breakwater Bay’s merchant class. Dwarf tradesmen, bourgeois mercantile factors, local land holders, and merchant ships’ officers are always welcome. However, the typical drunkenness of common sailors is never tolerated. Those looking for cheaper, more raucous accommodations would be better served at One Eyed Jack’s, a decidedly lowbrow tavern on the south side of the wharf.

Layout & Appearance

The Tipsy Mermaid is a large stone and wood structure built on a foundation of massive pink granite blocks quarried from the deposits common to the local area. Located along Main Street on the north side of the wharf, the inn sits atop a low-lying hill above the wharf. Its front porch and common room offer breathtaking views of Ironhide Island and the rugged beauty of the surrounding seascape.

Stone steps rise from the cobblestones of Main Street to a massive front porch made from great mortared slabs of pink granite. A stout wooden railing runs along the edge of the porch while a small collection of wooden rocking chairs sit out on the porch itself during the spring and summer months. These in turn sit in front of the taproom’s large glass-screened windows, which are usually open during the summer but which can be closed and locked tight behind heavy wooden shutters once the weather turns cold. The taproom is a large square open space fronted by both a heavy wooden door for the winter months and a swinging saloon-style door for times when it’s warmer.

This shot of an Acadia mansion gives a sense of how The Tipsy Mermaid should look.

A large circular fireplace dominates the center of the taproom. The base of this structure is made from more cut pink granite, but the chimney is a masterpiece of forged dwarven steel. In summer, this monstrosity is just an interesting curiosity, but during Breakwater Bay’s many colder months, the chimney’s metal superstructure heats warm enough to keep the entire taproom comfortably toasty while warming the inn’s upstairs rooms as well. Any character with training in basic smithing techniques will marvel at the ingenuity of this design.

The taproom has a long wooden bar against its far wall along with a handful of long, family-style festhall tables spread evenly throughout the rest of the space. Like the front, the lateral walls of the inn have great glass windows, though these too can be covered by heavy wooden shutters when it’s cold.

Both the basement and the rooms upstairs are accessed via a circular stone staircase through a door behind the bar. The Tipsy Mermaid has six guest rooms, including two suites, one of which is permanently occupied by Aldrick and his wife. Single rooms have two beds each and are available for 2 gp per night. The empty suite has two bedrooms and a sitting room for 4 gp. Aldrick and his wife are loath to move, but for 10 gp, one can rent their room as the inn’s “honeymoon” suite. In such cases, Aldrick takes one of the singles while his wife decamps to her father’s island citadel for the evening.

A Notable Brew

Aldrick's brew is loosely based on the Atlantic Brewing
Company's Thunder Hole Brown Ale. The real brew is notably
less hoppy than my description might make it seem.

The Tipsy Mermaid offers a variety of wines and spirits but is best-known for its locally brewed stout dwarven ale. Aldrick’s is a heavy brown brew, smooth and slightly hoppy with a thick off-white head and a decidedly smooth malt finish. It is truly like liquid bread, though if asked, Aldrick notes with some distaste that Baron Pavel and some of the elves from Mirror House prefer it with a slice of lemon.

Both the inn’s house wine and its proprietary brown ale run 5 sp for a pitcher. This is more than double the price one might expect to pay back in Wanderhaven, and it is triple the price of most ales. However, the pitchers are generous, and the brown ale in particular is of substantially higher quality than anything one might find back in the capital. Single glasses of wine and ale can both be had for 1 sp. This includes a 16 ounce pour for the ale. Meals can be had for anywhere between 5 sp (black bread and cheese) to 3 gp (roast mutton, a full loaf of bread, fresh greens, etc.) depending on what’s ordered.

Optional. PCs questioning the value of Aldrick’s ale must make a DC 20 Wisdom saving throw. Dwarves make this save with disadvantage. On a failure, Aldrick’s is by far the best ale they’ve ever tasted.

Personalities

On any given night, one might meet any of the following in addition to the various ship’s captains and mercantile factors who make their homes in Breakwater Bay.

Aldrick Ironhide

Race: Dwarf

Profession: Proprietor of the Tipsy Mermaid; husband of Daernelia

Description: A tall, serious dwarf in the late prime of his life. Adrick has greying hair but a stout physique and a voice to match.  

Notable Fact #1: Baron Pavel Pavelovitch owes Aldrick money for his son Antiss’ bar tab. It’s a considerable sum, and it’s made Aldrick’s wife resentful.

Notable Fact #2: No one knows the secret recipe for Aldrick’s ale. He’s never told it to a soul, not even his wife.

Sounds Like: A successful businessman with a thick southern accent.  When he says, “I’m just a poor country dwarf from a podunk fishing village,” he means, “I’m one of the most successful businessmen in this town, and you’d best not forget it.”

Daernelia Ironhide

Race: Dwarf

Profession: Barkeep at the Tipsy Mermaid; wife of Adrick

Description: A beautiful female dwarf, notably younger than her husband.  Habitually wears an apron over a tight-fitting wool sweater and swishing skirts.

Notable Facts: Hates humans, especially the baron, because she thinks they’re cheap and uniformly untrustworthy. Resents the fact that she’s actually got to work to make her living.

Sounds Like: A rural dwarven version of Elle from Clueless.

Mara Melai

Race: Human*

Profession: Itinerant bard & occasional taproom singer at The Tipsy Mermaid

Description: A red-haired musician in a traveler’s skirt; usually plays the lute and sings, but occasionally plays a small drum set and a recorder, especially when telling sea stories.

Notable Facts: Is actually a mermaid spy from the nearby village of Sunbar Reef, though not even the Ironhides know it.

Sounds Like: A high-fantasy version of Idina Menzel.

Safnys Yindell

Race: Wood elf

Profession: Commissioned ranger for Duke Pavelovitch; elf ambassador for Mirror House

Description: A stoic elf woman in hunting leathers, habitually alone in a crowd of human merchant factors and dwarf craftsmen.

Notable Facts: Cares mostly about keeping the peace between the elves, dwarves, and humans of L’Isle de Mont Deserette.

Sounds Like: Spock from the starship Enterprise.

Rumors (d8)

If the party asks around for information, they hear one or more of the following rumors:

1-3. Orc raiders have been spotted recently near the old Aderson farm just outside of town.

4. There’s a wyvern living on top of Titan’s Tor.

5-6. The baron is broke.  He owes back-taxes to the king and will be lucky if he’s able to pay his guards this season.

7. The baron owes money to Aldrick Ironhide.  His son Antiss used to run up quite a tab here before he went missing a few months ago.

8. Antiss disappeared. They say he was captured by pirates.

Note: The rumors of Antiss’s disappearance lead to The Mystery of Malvern Manor.