Cothon-Under-Star

Of the four so-called Great Taverns, Cothon-Under-Star has so far proved the most attractive to new wave of foreign adventurers come to make their fortune in the underworld of the Tel al Safina, not the least of which include the new adventuring company the Survivors of the Tel. As such, it will be the first to receive a little more in-depth description, pursuant to a recent productive discussion as to the way magic-users learn spells between the referee and certain players. So:

The Tavern

Easily the most distinctive of the four taverns, the common room of Cothon-Under-Star stands beneath the immense shell of a "Mother Whelk", a kind of titanic sea-beast rarely seen even in the days of the epic heroes of old. The points of this shell rise above the roofs all around it, and the whole structure stands overlooking the harbor, beckoning to sailors of every vessel called to port amidst the quays.

Situated in the west of the city, the tavern Under-Star is thus near to the Verdant Towers, a section of the city walls "manned" by the bacta-growing clan of the Xholda Klackons, and covered with the hanging gardens of their mysterious flowers and fungi. A strong mutual interest binds these Klackon bacta-growers with the Guild of Alchemists and Bacta-Makers which owns the tavern Under-Star, and the fruitful gardens are but a part of the supply of herbs, fungi, and essential oils that aid the alchemists in their mysterious works.

Such a close connection between the Guild of Alchemists and the Verdant Towers means that a portion of the tavern at Cothon-Under-Star is sectioned off for the use of Klackon clientele, serving them their own predilections in cuisine--sour and mold-topped beers, fungal salads poisonous to man, slime molds slurped up alongside jellied offals, and much else unsettling to human stomachs is served there, in the dim blue light of bioluminescing conks.

It is rumored that a tunnel connects the Verdant Towers to the workshops of the alchemists, to facilitate more direct communication and exchange between them--but who outside the Guild would know?

The bartenders of the tavern are one Althalos, a freedman who nevertheless stayed on to keep the inn after receiving manumission, and Tki'it, a Klackon from the Verdant Towers who attends to the needs of her own people.

The Workshops

Run as it is by the Guild of Alchemists, Cothon-Under-Star is adjoined to a court of structures of a more mundane sort than the Mother Whelk, which together constitute its alchemical workshops, apartments for resident-apprentices, slaves, and servants, and a library of accumulated formulae and other wisdom.

The workshops and laboratories are stocked with the various equipment of alchemists, i.e. alembics, calcinators, retorts, etc., as well as goodly supplies of common ingredients for the most popular of poultices and elixirs. At least one apprentice is always on hand for the production of bacta-poultices, a kind of healing salve sold widely to the public. Nobler and less common ingredients are kept in smaller amounts and in more secure vaults--as are the various formulae that give direction to their use.

Tavern-members are allowed some limited use of these workshops and supplies for their own purposes; meanwhile, journeymen of the Guild are allowed extensive purview of the facilities for their various experiments, wide-ranging pursuits, or entrepreneurial projects.

An alchemist using these facilities over the course of a week (Downtime: Alchemical Pursuits) would have ample resources for the testing of potions, elixirs, poisons, philters, etc. etc. This extends beyond the merely aqueous: the apparatus includes means of testing the hardness and properties of metals and alloys, and it is to the Guild of Alchemists that the Drovers' Guild sell the chitinous hides of their chlen-beasts (not to be confused with the chnelh ape men!) to be alchemically treated and formed into armor plate.

And too, for the ambitious, arrangements could certainly be made with Master Alchemist Aljadd for the use of a workshop for the development of one's own experimental elixirs, or other such projects.

The Library

Though predominantly a cache of immense alchemical knowledge, a repository of innumerable formulae--some thoroughly useful, some foolhardy, others foolish--nevertheless, the library Under-Star has accumulated knowledge beyond that simple purview over the years. Attached to one of the Great Taverns, it has been frequented by adventurers of old, no few of which were masters of arcane arts as well, who bequeathed some of their researches to the stacks; and too, the long association with the Klackons of the Verdant Towers has furnished opportunity for the gathering of information relating to their people.

As such those who use the library Under-Star for the purposes of non-magical research are especially able to delve into these topics:

• alchemy, obviously
• attendant to the above, information regarding certain beasts with glands, oils, or other alchemically useful parts
• (local) Klackon language, culture, history, etc., some of in the form of Klackon "script" of elaborately knotted strands of silk (esp. the Xholda, but there is some information regarding the Attines)
• architecture and the construction of defensive works (courtesy of the Klackons' interest in same)

But to those attuned to the sorcerous powers, perhaps more interesting is the collection of spellbooks left behind by their predecessors, sequestered away in a smaller cozier (more secure) chamber. Dues-paying tavern-members are allowed to peruse these works (though not to remove them!), to learn the spells therein for themselves as they will. All the books listed here are copies, and so convey no bonus as would the splendid original.

Three of the spellbooks are collaborations between Iocastus and his boon-companion Tk-etk-dsa, one of those rare Klackons possessed of arcane aptitude. The originals are all purported to have been constructed in the script of Tk-etk-dsa's people; what remain in the library Under-Star are but translations into the modern tongue:

Preparations for the Glorious Return to the Forest Eternal
This work is a collection of elegiac poems concerning the Forest of Hh-k'k-ssa, a place of final repose--or final reunion?--among certain Klackon peoples. The work is strongly melancholic in a way that might strike a human reader strangely--why should the final reunion of all Klackons in an eternal paradise be tinged with sorrow? The riddle is inexplicable; no Klackon could explain it satisfactorily. Nevertheless, the poetry, even translated, is hauntingly beautiful, and contained within its beauty are two efficacious rites of purification:
I. purify food and drink
III. cure disease

In the Mouth of Kazon, His Fastness
A meandering and narrative poem-description of the nature of Kazon the Unseen, a kind of demon-lord of certain Klackon legend-cycles. The demon's mouth is described as filled with many tongues, all in the form of a web, and the web is his fortress, and it is surrounded by the cloud of his killing-darkness, etc. When read, the dark imagery of the poem seems to writhe within one's mind, or in the back of one's sight, as if a piece of Kazon's dark sorcery were trapped within its meters ...
II. web
V. cloudkill

Changing Water: Part One
This book is a kaleidoscopic collection of metaphysical poems and meditations on the nature of self and one's place in the eternally backward-stretching chain of becoming that is one's genetic and cultural inheritance. Unlike the previous two works, it is not a piece of Klackon legendry, but an original work created by both Iocastus and Tk-etk-dsa. Unfortunately, it is only the first part of what was a multi-volume work, this introduction including the meditations necessary before attempting to "change the water" ... Further volumes were said to dive deep into abstruse philosophy that would nevertheless help the reader to pull aside the veils of time itself, or to see even unto the higher planes ...
III. water breathing
IV. neutralize poison

Binding and Loosing, Crannoc the Journeyman
What at first seems to be a workmanlike spellbook containing simple spells to bind and loose portals quickly reveals itself, even by casual perusal, to be the work of a uniquely touched intellect. The entire work is conceived as an erotic metaphor, the magic a means of seduction of a lock aloof, or of securing the faithfulness to oneself alone of an otherwise "loose" door. Whatever one feels about the aesthetic sensibility of the single-minded pursuit of these metaphors, the spells perform as advertised:
II. knock, wizard lock

Book of the Black Sleep
The original work was said to contain an additional, original spell, but unfortunately whoever copied the present volume did not see fit to include that rumored bit of arcane lore. As to its contents, the Book of the Black Sleep is almost more a book of art than anything, being a collection of phantasmagoric imagery, said to have been culled directly from the dark dreams of a victim of the black sleep. The current work is a series of woodcut copies of what were originally painted scenes; recurring motifs and symbols (as well as the copyist's notes) allow a magic-user to follow the logic of the spells within.
I. sleep, darkness
II. phantasmal force

The Act of Seeing, 
This codex is comprised mostly of incredibly detailed anatomical sketches of eyes and the muscles of the face surrounding them, their placement in the skull, and the connection of the optic nerves to the brain, all interspersed with notes as to the various functions of these organs. A careful reader will glean the development of a kind of argument, that with all of this particular knowledge one can learn to "see properly", either to see things unclouded by illusion--or by seeing things "by another guise" one is able to create in the world the reality of what one is seeing.
III. dispel magic
IV. polymorph other

The Ninety-Seven Steps, Pan al Khadaji
A kind of fechtbuch illustrating what at first seem like an impossible combination of fighting-stances and stance-changes all chained together. Perhaps geared more toward the martial or athletic type of sorcerer, nevertheless, the introduction promises that even those of less limber form will gain much from going through the exercises, learning to adapt their bodies to new possibilities, and through the "moving meditation" of the eponymous steps, learn to unlock the ability to move in ways that no mere mortal can--even seeming to be in more than one place at once!
II. mirror image, levitate
III. haste