The tavern/inn called Fortune's Wheel is where the high and mighty come to engage in the kriegstanz that makes their lives interesting - and to eat and drink the very finest while they do it. The Wheel also attracts a large proportion of fakes and sharpers, so a basher with a heavy purse would do well to consider bringing along a few bloods as guards to keep his money out of the hands of the Fated or the fiends who also make their fortune — in the streets just outside the Wheel.
The common room is called the Dragon Bar, a chamber that as much resembles most homey taverns as a factol's audience chamber resembles most bashers' parlors. The size of a great hall and twice as opulent, the Dragon Bar is named after an enormous carved dragon's head that arches over the bar's mirror and descends to the corner of the bar itself, where the head entertains the Wheel's patrons with tales of its life on the Prime. Most bashers who care guess that some necromantic spell controls the thing. Rumor claims that the dragon enforces peace in the Wheel whenever guests get too boisterous. Those guests are generally invited to leave and never return; if that threat fails, they're enveloped in a cloud of blackness — the dragon's breath. Other rumors claim that the dragon is in fact the owner, and its serpent-form is an illusion; in fact, so the story goes, the entire beast perches just below the balcony, for it enjoys the company of powerful creatures. Where its hoard lies, the rumors do not say
The other, less-exclusive public chambers of the Wheel are the Dicing Cup, the Bear-Baiting Room, and Fortune's Wheel itself. The Wheel began as the iron rim of an enormous cartwheel, decorated with nails and gilded with payoffs right on the weathered iron. The whole wheel is mounted vertically and spun until a clicking strip of boiled leather brings it to a stop, indicating a square between two of the nails; bets placed on the wooden table before it are then paid off. The odds are terrible, but a unique golden square pays 1000 to 1, so there's always a bubber or a prime at the table, desperately trying for the long shot.
The Wheel made the tavern's reputation and gave it a name, and the room has a certain quaint nostalgia, but now only the Clueless and those with more money than sense try to win the golden square; the gambler's wheel takes far more than it returns to the crowd, and only the promise of a magical item payoff (set on a tiny half-space between extra clickers) keeps the regulars coming back. The prize is changed each fortnight, and a few past winners have walked off with the Mage's Prize: magical rings, wands, or potions. Despite this exception, the Wheel rarely pays off — just often enough to keep the credulous coming back for more. A minimum 10-gp bet is required to try for the Mage's Prize.
The Dicing Cup is the most dangerous of the tavern's entertainments, for some of the rich and powerful are very poor losers, and the patrons of the Dicing Cup play as much against one another as against the house. Losing huge sums gives the high-up gambler as much status as winning huge sums — perhaps even more. After all, anyone can win big, but few can afford to lose big.
The house favorite is the albino musician Estrella, a stunning, pale-skinned bard with lustrous silver hair who claims to hail from Ysgard.
The Wheel's an old building that leans on its neighbors, and its creaking floors are layered with thick carpets to muffle their creaks and groans. A secondfloor passageway connects the Wheel to the Azure Iris, a tiny inn run for those high-ups who have drunk a bit more than they should and decide to retire for the night in safety. Others use the Iris as a discreet locale for their assignations and even for business dealings; the chambers are magically warded so tightly that even an unwanted roach can't find its way in. Costs are 40 gp a night and up, when a room is available.
Shemeshka the Marauder it all watches from her private booth, as this is one of her favorite establishments, and takes audience with those cutters canny enough to warrant one.
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Estrella
The Menu