The Keep Grow Inn

A one-and-a-half-story crossroads inn in the Outskirts beyond the Palisade, sitting between three war-footing settlements (Ponterford, Marmoth, and the Giffield way). The ground floor serves drink, food (crispy potatoes the house special; ale, mead, and one rationed bottle of wine), and shelter; the attic rents beds (a silver a head). Outside is cart-parking where displaced refugees and homeless workmen sleep, plus a contracts-and-bounties notice board.

Its barkeep (Radek) survives on a hostile frontier by being deliberately neutral — "a crossroads inn between three settlements that are involved in a war… he can't pick too many sides," and won't traffic in rumor or take a flag. There is no real security but a handful of Laewendas's goons; an openly displayed Reclamation signet here is a firm declaration of the wrong side of the wall. The local Laewendas presence is run by the brute Guilford, and a Herald of Laewendas tolls a bell every three waking hours praising the queen (9 AM, noon, 3, 6, 9 PM, midnight).

Session 22

• The party's overnight stop after the Mindel Cromelon bridge and the Cormoran footprint; they hide their signets, having expected the inn to be abandoned.
• Met here: the riddling philosopher outside; the orphan Barry at her mother's grave; the local trapper (who relays the Grabber and Ponterford leads); two rowdy Laewendas goons harassing the waitress; and Guilford asleep in the corner.
• Lash arranged to forge the stable master 3 copper horseshoes by the trough overnight — and at her nod the stable master killed the spy Tycho with a sledgehammer outside.
• Eldrich the Elder could not enter (a famous anti-Laewendas knight would start a fight) and waited with the parked caravan.

Session 23

• The party spends the whole evening here before the cave: Thalia works the floor as a fake waitress (sparing the real one, Mabel); Lash forges horseshoes at the trough and is taught hammer-fighting by the secretly ex-soldier stable master; the group rents one big bunk room (1 gold) and long-rests.
• Guilford's plot runs here: Silithane mind-reads him, Thalia poisons his drink, and Silithane Suggestion-bewitches him out to the cave. A dead goon is found stuffed in a bush out back.
• The inn's gentle Potato Peeler — who'd helped Thalia with her temper — is revealed to be Guilford's disowned son. A protective trapper (painting with the puppet-girl Wicker) begs Silithane not to remove Guilford ("there's worse").
• Tycho's body (killed here last session) is melted down by Lash for the horseshoes.