Night Wolf

The Night Wolf, first known as the North Wind, is an inn near the palace of White City, the imperial capital Marble City, in the Raphael Efsanesi ("The Legend of Raphael") campaign. It is the inn that the assassin Raphael chose as the front for his planned guild, and which he took from the assassins of Kalel.¹²

The North Wind

When Raphael came back to the city, the North Wind, a fine and costly house, had been bought by the representative of Kalel. Picolo of the Thieves' Guild offered to make up the price if Raphael killed Dimes, called Shadowblade; the envoys of Kalel offered it to him, with a thousand gold coins, for Picolo's head.¹³

Beneath it lies a hidden complex reached from a dry well in a nearby square: a door trapped with a crossbow, a mage's study, a corridor and a sleeping room whose upper hatch opens by a stair into the inn's cellar. In the study Raphael found coloured robes, books, a plain staff and a heavy chest with no keyhole that he could neither lift nor force; one of his knives broke on it. He killed the mage at his notes, which he could not read, and Dimes in a long duel in the room beyond, then left by the cellar and through the common room.⁴⁵⁶⁷

Among the mage's books Raphael later sorted out a volume whose script confused the eye, a book thought to be in dwarvish, notes of experiments and a book on the plants of the south; the last he traded for healing potions.⁸⁹

The raid

After Kalel's betrayal Raphael was held for two days in a cell he recognised, by the stairs and the smell of the sewers, as part of the hidden rooms of the North Wind. Behind a secret door lay the master's study, with bookshelves and a purple fireplace.¹⁰¹¹

The alliance Raphael gathered against Kalel attacked the inn at night. Twenty Night Rats went in through the front door while the customers fled; a distant fire drew off the watch; the main force came through the sewers into the storeroom. Raphael and Fazon, invisible, went through the old bedroom to the mage's study and found the secret door beside the bookcase.¹²¹³

When the fighting was over, a Zolan officer told Raphael the inn was his. It held about a month's food and drink and a thousand gold coins in its strongbox, from which the agreed costs of the six dead and three wounded among the hired fighters were paid.²¹⁴

The Night Wolf

Raphael renamed the inn the Night Wolf, after first thinking of the Den of the Night Wolves. The great smith Pablo, who said he had served in the Third Legion until a wound to the knee, made and hung the new sign: black wood edged with iron, with a wolf and a dagger.¹⁵¹⁶¹⁷

The common room holds forty or fifty people on an ordinary night and around two hundred for a special occasion. Upstairs there are six guest rooms, one of which Raphael turned into an office; the cellar holds a hundred barrels; and below it are two rooms and a very well hidden one, where Raphael and Karas lodged. The well and the sewers remained separate ways in, and Raphael paid a mason to wall up the passage from the well.¹⁸¹⁹¹⁷

Ros, whom the state had set to look after the inn while its owners were gone, was hired to run it; Ros is a half-elf. Three guards from the Followers of Zolan watched the door, the well and the hall, a drow spy kept watch on the underworld, and a serving woman was hired. The Followers of Zolan mended the damage of the battle themselves, and the high judge exempted the inn from its monthly tax for four months as a reward for clearing out Kalel.^20212223

The garrison commander Fin came one evening with a dozen legionaries, cleared out the customers, striking one who lingered, and began a search. When Raphael accepted the secret task Fin had brought, the cellars were left unsearched and soldiers guarded the house until morning.²⁴²⁵

Taman, a halfling pickpocket of the neighbourhood, stole two cups from the inn and a ring that Ros had inherited from a grandmother; Raphael caught him in a crowd and took the ring back, though Taman claimed another thief had dropped it.²⁶²⁷

When Zolan's questioning was expected, about thirty of his followers emptied the inn, pushed back the tables and drew a protective circle on the floor.²⁸

Under Derek Sunshield

Derek Sunshield forbade Raphael to return to the inn during his tests, saying it would be in his hands until the work was done. The old name lingered: people in the city still called it the North Wind out of habit. Once Raphael accepted the main task, he was allowed back.²⁹³⁰³¹

Raphael brought back four mercenaries who had escorted him on that task: their leader, a seasoned fighter of forty or so; Vakoş, a young half-orc who had never lived among orcs; Tuma, an archer and scout; and Le Pen, a young islander who builds traps and mends wheels. They took lodgings below and shared the guarding of the inn.^32333435

Spoiler: A later searchRevealSpoils: Raphael Efsanesi #8 · Say what you have read

On the morning the emperor was assassinated, legionaries came to search the inn. A customer with a magical object in his pocket was bound and taken away; when the soldiers balked at the half-orc below, Raphael told them his staff were known to Derek Sunshield. A sign was nailed to the door to show that the house had been searched. Six months later Raphael was still its owner, now living as an ordinary innkeeper.³⁶³⁷³⁸

In Mürekkep ve Çelik

In the Mürekkep ve Çelik ("Ink and Steel") campaign, an inn in White City known both as the Night Wolf and the North Wind lodges Castor, Glanfall and Leonard. There, the North Wind is said to be its old name and the Night Wolf the one in use, and the city knows it by both. It was crowded on the night after an explosion at the palace, before any curfew was declared.³⁹⁴⁰⁴¹