The tavern as a building, a working fishing shack
- The tavern, rebuilt.
- In the Cursed Forest it's now a timber-framed building:
- a stone footing, and walls of daub between dark posts, rails and braces
- leaded windows lit warm from within (night-dark from inside), with shutters folded back
- a shingled roof with barge boards, gable timbers and a smoke louvre over the hearth
- a wide front door with both leaves swung open, and stone steps
- A back door by the bar's end, ajar under its own lantern, so you can get in whichever side you come on it.
- Facing: forest taverns now open toward the path from the start. They used to face whichever clearing came first and could stand with their back to you.
- Underground: the same room without the shell (the tier's walls stand in), under a timber frame and a striped awning.
- The hearth is the new campfire (logs, flames, sparks and smoke, and it warms you), set in a ring of flagstones, with a spit and a pot hanging over it.
- Inside:
- a plank floor, and a layered rug before the bar
- the bar: panelled, with a brass foot rail, a keg on a cradle, tankards, a bell and a ledger
- shelves of bottles, jugs and tankards, with a horned skull mounted above
- casks racked on their sides, crates and sacks
- four trestle tables with benches, tankards, bread, candles and dice
- an iron chandelier, and herbs, hams and sausages hung from the beams
- the innkeeper wears an apron and has a rag over his shoulder
- Outside: lantern posts by the door, a hanging sign on an iron bracket, the name painted over the door, barrels, a bench and a woodpile.
- Cost: the static pieces are merged into a few meshes (StaticMerge), so the whole building is about 20 mesh nodes.
- Forest clearing: the tavern clearing is larger, and nothing grows under its floor.
- The fishing shack, rebuilt.
- The hut: a weatherboard hut on a deck on piles, with a gabled shingle roof and a pike weathervane on the ridge.
- Nets: made of cords, with cork floats, hung to dry.
- On the walls: crossed oars, a lobster pot, a rack of rods and a great pike mounted on a plaque.
- On the counter: a crate of the day's catch on salt, scales, a slate of prices and a pail for heads and tails.
- Outside: a carved sign board, and a smoking rack over glowing embers with a thread of smoke.
- It uses the new fish everywhere. The mere's shack shows its own blood fish.
- The fishmonger cuts the catch into steaks.
- He raises the cleaver and brings it down. The first cut takes the tail, then each chop takes another steak off.
- Each steak (meat in a ring of skin, a white bone) slides onto a pile by his hand. The cut face of the fish shows its meat and spine.
- When only the head is left, it goes in the pail and a new fish comes onto the block.
- The fishmonger's look: a knitted scarf, rubber gloves to the elbow, a belt and gutting knife, wader braces, the smock's skirt, ember eyes, and the cleaver in his fist.
VAEL is a co-op dark fantasy extraction dungeon crawler for PC, in active development. Get playtest news by email, or read the wiki.