It didn't look like much from the outside. Just some cheerless old planks, stone, and a wooden door built into a recessed portion of the side of a large hill, some ways off the road. It'd be easy to miss even in the light of day, let alone in the darkness of the cloudy dusk it was now. Still, the entrance, as it were, had some amount of character to it.
"Reminds me of home," A halfling muttered to herself, pulling out a small leather-bound book and hunching her body over to protect the pages from the steady downpour of rain as she consulted her notes. Satisfied, she wrapped and pocketed the book, then made her way to the door in the hill.
"Hope this is the right place..."
Pushing the heavy door open, she was met by the jingle of a bell, and a few odd stares and whispers by the patrons inside. The bartender was rubbing a glass, though it was getting no cleaner, and made little effort to acknowledge the new arrival.
The inside was nearly as homely as the outside, though far larger feeling. Wooden beams support the ceiling above, each with large half-melted candles attached to them. The walls were decorated with a smattering of low-quality paintings, all in about the same style, as though they were created by the same person. Accompanying the paintings were scratched and scribbled messages just about everywhere, most of them old, worn, dusty, and unreadable.
The tavern entrance itself only had a few of people, a couple sitting at the bar, a few others at tables, quietly conversing or sitting alone in eerie silence. There was a much larger, and louder crowd deeper into the tavern, past the bar, circled around what the halfling guessed was an animal fighting pit.
Undaunted by any of this, or the muscular half-orc bouncer standing near the door, the halfling made her way to the bar and climbed up onto a stool.
