igh on Midnight, two men
sit at the bar, trying to exhaust the tender’s supply of dwarven ale. One a stout, ugly dwarf, the other a scarred, heavily muscled human. Both were ready for a bit of entertainment after their recent expeditions against local highwaymen.
ne moment, they appear to be oblivious to each other, the next they are shouting and fumbling at their sides for the weapons they forgot that they had checked at the door.
n incensed dwarf drawled (almost unintelligibly) “A’ll teeshhhyooo notta confushh a dwarffffera orc ya shhhhtoooped annemal!”
o which the human managed to slobber out, “Da naym esh A-NEEL-MA, you ssshhhorry ekshushhh ferra orc-droppennngg!”. He gave up on drawing his sword and busted the leg off a stool, swinging at the dwarf, but instead knocking another drunk behind him off his stool on the upswing.
alar (which was the name of said dwarf) had just detached a leg from a table —this one inhabited by two nasty looking sailors — and nearly beheaded the barmaid in his eagerness to arm himself.
he sailors, upset at the intrusion, threw their empty glasses at Talar, who tripped over his own barstool just as the glasses whistled over his head and smashed into a very large barbarian next to the man Anilma had knocked over.
he barbarian, assuming the drunk on the floor next to him had knocked the glasses over on him, picked him up and threw him across the room, onto another populated table.
andemonium erupted, in which the original instigators were too busy fighting off most of the other patrons to remember who they had originally been upset at. They were also the last two standing when the town militia arrived to break up the fight.
y the time they paid off their fines, they had become inseparable. They worked together on many excursions to rid the countryside of thieves.
ne night, as they relaxed at another tavern, a wiry elf
appeared at their table and offered to pay the bartender for their drinks. Of course his generosity was funded by the now empty pockets of the two mostly drunk men, but that is hardly relevant. He introduced himself as ’Ratclif Beansworth, Ratty for short’.
atty told them of his ambitious plan to rid the area of the bandit infestation once and for all, and make them all comfortably rich to boot. They were just drunk enough not to question his motives.
o was born the band called the Nexican Marauders. Would-be robbers knew to steer clear of the ’infamous’ mafia group, though nobody knew that it consisted of three men and a bunch of hirelings. The unlikely trio became fast friends and adventured far and wide. When Anilma decided to retire, he created the Nexican Marauder as a place for other adventurers to rest and regale each other with their tall tales.
e found and married his childhood sweetheart, who moved to the marauder to run the books.
hey had a daughter, who they tried to raise to be a ’respectable lady’, but after hanging out in the Marauder and hearing her father’s tales of his youthful adventures, she would have none of it.
innie chased off her tutors with her pranks and terrorized the courtesians’ children. Only Count Beansworth (would you believe Ratty was actually nobility?) found a soft spot in his heart for the wayward youth. She reminded him of his own youthful misadventures with her father.
eansworth taught Minnie all about locks and “pocket browsing”. How to get in and out of the kitchens undetected. They had a standing competition -- Minnie had to find the fake gem hidden among his real ones (either on his jewelry or hidden on his person) in the shortest possible time and without being caught.
fter many years, Minnie’s father passed away and left the marauder to her. She had grand ideas from her conversations with patrons. She approached Count Beansworth with these ideas and the two worked out a plan to expand the services the Marauder offered. After much work, the Marauder was finished and reopened with a huge party.
he Marauder now offers much more than food, spirits, and a bed. There is a stage that draws performers from far and wide. A gaming hall with everything from Gnome-bowling to Roulette. New games are added all the time as Minnie encounters them in her wanderings. There is a pawn shop and a bank (run by the Count). And an amazing variety of creatures and gladiators to entertain in the Pit fights. The Marauder is open all day every day and welcomes everyone, as long as they don’t track mud on the floors.
