Rules and Setting
Down an oft-overlooked alley in the heart of Marienburg's oldest district there is a doorway. Battered, it's paint peeling, it is the haunt of those who salt the arteries of the port: sailors and rivermen, pilots and longshoremen, black caps and river watch. Any who look to Manaan's favour, whether they ply the Manaanspoort Sea, the Reik, or the myriad of canals that weave through the Suiddock and other island districts.
Above the door is a sign. Locals say its more a portrait, but do so knowingly. Upon it a grey pelican, sat upon a nest of sticks: Beaky, the wing-clipped bird who calls the hostelry home. Beer thief, fish breath, as much as part of the inn as Old Ishmael or Ingrid.
For those venturing within, the Perch is bigger than the unassuming entrance suggests, its large common room never less than half-full and the curtained booths often witness to more talking than drinking. It is said you can find anything in the Perch - any beer or wine or spirit made by man, at least - and at prices that encourage the telling of tales and stories of seas and oceans and all that is Manaan's domain. Such tales are encouraged, so long as the tellers take care not to offend the overly-superstitious innkeep, Old Ishamel. With a fine temper and a blunderbuss behind the bar, this one-legged old sailor collects such tales. Some say because he remembers so little of his own, wandering wounded off the marshes of the Vlakland one foggy morning, carrying nothing but a sack containing the coin he used to purchase the Perch.
And so our tales will focus on the tales of the Pelican's Perch, and the tales of those who patronise it. An unlikely - perhaps even motley - collection of ruffians and vagabonds as you might encounter...
