The Maul

Torches flare murkily on the revels in the Maul, where the thieves of the east are holding carnival by night. In the Maul they can carouse and roar as they like, for honest people shun the quarters, and watchmen, well paid with stained coins, do not interfere with their sport. Along the crooked, unpaved streets with their heaps of refuse and sloppy puddles, drunken roisterers stagger, roaring. Steel glints in the shadows where wolf preyed on wolf, and from the darkness rises the shrill laughter of women, and the sounds of scufflings and strugglings. Torchlight licks luridly from broken windows and wide-thrown doors, and out of those doors, stale smells of wine and rank sweaty bodies, clamor of drinking-jacks and fists hammers on rough tables, snatches of obscene songs, rushed like a blow in the face.

In one of these dens merriment thunders to the low smoke-stained roof, where rascals gathered in every stage of rags and tatters— furtive cut-purses, leering kidnappers, quick-fingered thieves, swaggering bravoes. Native rogues are the dominant element—dark-skinned, dark-eyed Vetheran (Cormyrite for FR), with daggers at their girdles and guile in their hearts. But there are wolves of half a dozen outland nations there as well. There is what looks like a giant Koren (Amn for FR) renegade, taciturn, dangerous, with a broadsword strapped to his great gaunt frame—for men wear steel openly in the Maul. There is a Half-Elf counterfeiter, with his hook nose and curled blue-black beard.

The Maul is known to be dangerous, and is a place of ill respite. Rooms are free, and of low quality, and beer is absolute shit/garbage and 1 copper each.

The bartender, Murka, a suspicious woman with a posh British accent. She knows every best shop in town by heart.