Another Night at the Tavern
Pick Your Peril: The Hero of Mudtown
(This is part of a series of choose-your-own-adventure articles. If you want to start from the beginning, click here.)
Spending another night at the inn couldn’t be that harmful, right?
The Tavern would be the best place to listen in on the nightly gossip for clues about the missing villagers or possibly recruit a wandering adventurer to help find your family. You tell the Innkeeper that you’ve decided to stay another night.
“Good!” The Innkeeper smiles “Agatha will pretend like she doesn’t like it, but deep down I know she enjoys the company.”
You spend the day washing dishes and listening to Agatha grouse in the kitchen. The lunch crowd isn’t nearly as big as the evening rush last night, and you have a chance to step away from the sink and distribute food to the patrons waiting at the tables.
As you are delivering food later in the evening, you overhear a snatch of conversation from a group of traveling merchants.
“… the whole village gone without a trace.”
You nearly drop the platter of food you’ve been carrying and rush over to insert yourself into the discussion. You ask the group of merchants if they’re talking about Mudtown, but the speaker shakes his head.
“No, I was talking about Pinedale. I haven’t heard anything about Mudtown.” He scratches his goateed chin. “But the same thing’s happened to Hillburg and Riverton too. Seen it with my own eyes. Looks like we can add Mudtown to the list of missing villages.”
Your heart sinks. The group of merchants haven’t uncovered any clues leading to where all the missing peasants went, and their theories are the same ones you’ve heard before.
Imprisoned by the King, taken by some malevolent force into the bog, held for ransom by forest outlaws; everyone at the table has an idea, but nobody knows for sure. Your spirits are further dashed when you ask the merchants how long these villages have been missing for.
“Years.” The merchant with the goatee looks at you sadly. “My wife and daughters and the rest of Pinedale vanished over a decade ago. People have moved back in, but the original residents are still lost. I’ve been searching for them since the day they disappeared and haven’t found a single shred of evidence as to where they might have gone.”
Shrill screeching from the kitchen alerts you that Agatha needs assistance. You thank the merchants for their time and get back to work.
The rest of your evening is spent at your station by the sink, but thankfully the night passes quickly. You return to your room when the work is done, ready for sleep, but as much as you try to drift away, the news about the other missing villages keeps you tossing and turning.
The next morning, you awaken groggy and yawning. You head downstairs and find the Innkeeper greeting you with a smile.
“Hello again!” He steps out from behind the bar and approaches you.
“Listen…” He comes closer and speaks a little softer. “You’ve been such a great help to us here at the Tavern the last few nights, Agatha is even starting to like you.”
He reaches out and pats your shoulder.
“I was thinking, if you’d like…” The Innkeeper looks at you with a glowing grin. “Maybe you could work here full-time? We’ll provide a room, pay you a fair wage, and I can probably convince Agatha to teach you how to make a few of our specialties. What do you say?”
You think about your family and the rest of the villagers missing from Mudtown. If you have any desire to save the people you love, you need to get out in the world and start searching in earnest.
After what you learned last night, however, the quest for your family feels more hopeless than ever. Maybe you should abandon your expedition and settle for a simple life in the Stoneville Tavern.
What will you do?