Urban Locale: Boarding House
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Normally places for the poor or the penny-wise, boarding houses offer lodgings and food; most such places offer only the barest of essentials to their guests.
1: The Boarding House
The Welcome Rest: Set just outside town in a small wood, the Welcome Rest stands amid a large vegetable garden. The Welcome Rest offers a quiet, private place to rest for those who do not like the urban bustle.
Sunset House: Gloom hoovers over this rundown, badly named boarding house. Here, the offering is sparse, and the food is bad. Its owner is a miserable, penny-pinching old man who has no friends. No one voluntarily returns to Sunset House.
The Lodge: Building work and improvements are always going on at the Lodge; the owner offers cheap or free stays to those who will work in return for board and lodgings. Currently, the owner is excavating further cellar space (for no apparent reason).
Beech Tree Barn: A farm once stood on this spot; this large wooden barn is the only surviving remnant; inside, the barn has been crudely segmented into many small rooms—although all are open to the double-height roof. It is noisy herein, as a result.
2: Major Locale Features
An overgrown and unruly garden of tangled bushes and choked vegetable beds surrounds the boarding house.
The boarding house was once a warehouse, but it has been subdivided into a dizzying array of small rooms.
Optimistically, the boarding house has attached stables, but it mostly stands empty and unused; the almost penniless can sleep within for a copper a night.
A low-class tavern stands next to the boarding house; fights and brawls are commonplace.
3: Minor Locale Features
Those who are truly impoverished can stay in the boarding house’s large, communal, draughty attic.
The boarding house is dark and dingy; many of the rooms suffer with damp.
A deep cellar lies below the boarding house; the confiscated possessions of countless lodgers who failed to pay their bills fill the subterranean chambers.
Little more than a dilapidated ruin, this boarding house caters to those with nowhere but the streets to go.
4: What’s Going On?
A couple of urchins are hanging around outside the boarding house in hopes of begging a coin from those coming and going.
Smoke drifts from one of the house’s chimneys, and the smell of baking bread fills the air.
Three unwashed men wearing traveller’s clothes sit outside the boarding house, sharing a jack of wine.
The owner is in the process of bodily ejecting a tenant who has fallen into arrears.
5: Other Folk
Mikki Ano (young male human) does odd jobs for anyone who’ll pay him. As an orphan, he is desperate to find a permanent job and to get some security. He could easily latch onto a kind-hearted adventurer.
Inka Hopea (old female human) lives here because she is lonely; her husband is dead, and her children are lost to her. She is talkative—overly so—but knows much of what goes on in the locality.
Paanu Ehtaro (male human) loiters here because he is lazy and can’t be bothered to better himself. He works just hard enough to get by but talks a good game; the same person rarely employs him twice.
Samu Kare (male human) stays here because he is new in town and does not want to draw attention to himself. This swarthy, muscular man is an assassin hunting his next victim.
6: What’s For Sale?
Alibis (var. gp): Several of the tenants are somewhat unscrupulous and can be paid to provide an alibi for someone in trouble with the watch.
Local Guide (5 sp): Several of the unemployed locals living here will happily guide wealthy adventurers about the town for a day.
Unskilled Labour (2 sp/day): If the characters need unskilled labour, this is the place to get it; however, some of the folk living here are less than honest.
Short Stay (1 sp): This boarding house rents some of its rooms by the hour for “meetings” and the like.
Credit
This is a short system-neutral extract from Urban Locale #33: Boarding House by Robert Manson. The book is available from DriveThruRPG and ragingswanpress.com.
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