Simon’s Inn (Patreon)

A pleasant inn offering decent ales and beers, clean guest rooms, and of course a hidden secret in the basement, Simon’s Inn is the classic environment to start an adventure in. The ground floor features not one, but TWO privies outside (near some pleasant-smelling bushes), a full-service kitchen, and enough seating for most occasions and even a few adventuring parties with retainers. Upstairs we have nine guest rooms, one of which has two chambers (one for a servant or man-at-arms, with the master sleeping in the one further from the door). And in the basement…

Someone had the bright idea to store the many kegs of beer down in the basement – loaded in through the outer door with planks set over the stairs and ropes used to lower them down. Getting them upstairs is a chore though, requiring a few strong-backed guests, ropes and pulleys in the kitchen, and some serious hauling.

And now that the back wall of the basement has been opened up to expose the cavern behind it, Simon has become quite cagey about who goes into the basement to move the barrels around. In the cavern beyond are four stone basins overlooked by a statue of a godling or demon of some kind. The vats are used to harvest something of value… magical slime mould that grants minor ESP, armies of snails with high-value shells, unholy water touched by the power of the dark idol… whatever works for your campaign.

If the contents of the vats are innocuous but valuable, then Simon might ask bold and honest guests for help with the ale shipments and also explain why he keeps the cellars off-limits now while showing them the vats. If they are less savoury (a blue mould that secretes a potent toxin that he sells to the assassin’s guild in Trustport?) then he’ll get more and more paranoid trying to keep the secret, especially when a competing group to his primary client comes looking for the source…

Simon’s Inn was drawn at 1200dpi with 4 squares per inch with an assumed scale of 5′ per square. It is 5700 pixels wide which equals 19 squares when converting to a VTT. Assuming a VTT with a 70 pixel grid size, you would want to resize the map to 1330 pixels wide.

1200dpi versions of Simon's Inn, with and without grid, are on the Dodecahedron.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2020/09/17/simons-inn/