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Playhouses exist to entertain and sometimes educate the masses. Herein can be found jugglers, bards, singers, actors, playwrights and more. Some playhouses are magnets for those with nefarious intent, while others offer additional entertainments to favoured (or wealthy) customers.

1: The Playhouse

The Globe: Named for its wide array of performers—allegedly coming from all over the world—this playhouse is a thieves’ den. A dimly-lit Museum of Curiosities fills the labyrinthine upper floors.
The Stage: This simple playhouse caters for commoners. The entertainment is raucous and bawdy and features many acts of varying proficiencies. Long plays are a rarity here, and instead, performances feature many short acts, including singers, trained animals, jugglers and so on.
Maunu’s Emporium of Wonders: Alongside more typical fare—plays, visiting bards and so on—this playhouse features a Museum of the Bizarre and the Macabre in its tenebrous cellars.
The Roundhouse: This large building is akin to a keep in aspect, although most of its “defences” are merely for show. Gaudy banners fly from its battlements. In good weather, small performances are held on the roof.

2: Major Locale Features

The playhouse is circular, and its large circular stage stands in the centre of the building. The audience surrounds the stage on all sides.
The playhouse features several stages suitable for small groups of troubadours or solo performers.
The playhouse’s main stage is in the cellar, and the stalls surround it on the ground floor.
A minor fire broke out at the playhouse a month ago, and wooden scaffolding has just gone up to facilitate the necessary repairs.

3: Minor Locale Features

Thick, threadbare, stained rugs cover the wooden boarded floor.
Tapestries—many depicting famed bards (including Vilimzair Aralivar, the World’s Greatest Ever Bard and Legendary Pirate Captain)—decorate the walls.
Gaudy coloured paint decorates the external walls, but in places, it is old and faded. The building looks “tired”.
The playhouse’s windows feature sturdy shutters painted in gaudy colours. Vines—in places almost reaching the roof—grow up the walls of the playhouse.

4: What’s Going On?

Servants are sweeping the floor and generally tidying up after the last performance. A few performers are practising on stage.
Music and singing emanate from within the playhouse; both are of excellent quality, and several people have stopped to listen.
A wagon stands behind the playhouse, and labourers are busy unloading musical instruments, chests filled with costumes and the like.
Outside the playhouse, a professional cryer is calling out details of the upcoming performances.

5: Other Folk

Niilo Toiva (young male human) aspires to become a great entertainer and hangs around the playhouse, trying to soak in the atmosphere and get an apprenticeship with one of the performers. Niilo is keen and has a larger-than-life personality. His clothes, however, are frayed.
Pirkko Unto (female human) plots to burn the playhouse to the ground. She once performed here, but the audience took to her “brilliant” performance very badly. The shame of it still smarts. She’s wearing a voluminous cloak and conceals a small sack filled with oil flasks under it.
Osma Nousia (middle-aged male human) works at the playhouse as the night watchman. He is tired and has a rumpled, time-worn appearance. He has worked here for years and knows much about the place. He has seen many legendary performances. He is one of the few who knows how to access the deep cellars below the place.
Tiina Rauma (middle-aged female human) works at the playhouse as a jobbing actor and singer. She is ever short of money and will take on virtually any job. She is a skilled actor and a dab hand at makeup and disguises. Sometimes, she does work for the local thieves’ guild when its members require intricate disguises.

Credit

This is a short system-neutral extract from Urban Locale #28: Playhouse by Robert Manson.

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Urban Locale: Playhouse