The tavern opened tonight with the debut of our new Pub Quiz, a semi-regular comedy panel game hosted by the gaffer himself. Ruby Red and Aron Schur will be weekly team captains.
After the quiz, attention shifted back to the more pressing matter: the rescue of Gideon Moss. The wizard Ebbo the Boar, with help from the Mayor of Shady Pines, planned on using dark magic to change Gideon’s mind somehow.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aliquam ac augue in ligula porta pulvinar vitae vitae erat. Ut a augue eu orci tempor porta. Integer id velit a ipsum malesuada blandit a quis eros. Maecenas diam lectus, blandit id lobortis quis, sollicitudin a turpis. Duis condimentum nunc non erat convallis tempus.
-Passage from the dark scripts, do not recite.
When the cage proved unbreakable, Garrick suggested they look under the floorboards. Cutting down they found an old and abandoned club of some kind – polished wood, covered booths, giant spiders, the works. Boxes stacked directly beneath Gideon’s cage made the plan precarious, but the crew pressed on.
Before a full rescue could be prepared, the Mayor and Ebbo arrived. Gideon in chains was with them. Little Maggs immediately confronted the Mayor, invoking the terrifying political might of the Village Green Preservation Society. With her threat to “make elections difficult for him,” the Mayor abandoned the procedure and stormed out. Ebbo, however, did not.
Instead, the old wizard stepped inside the cage with Gideon.
There he revealed his true plan: not to “fix” Gideon at all, but to remake everyone else in Gideon’s image. That is, lonely, unbound, answerable to no one. All so that Ebbo could finally be left to his own devices. His bitterness toward wizarding academies and government oversight gave rise to a scheme to reshape all of Shady Pines in his own twisted vision of freedom.
This was enough for the tavern.
As Ebbo began chanting from his deep magic, Moonmoth and Karakis launched into a frantic sawing operation beneath the cage while Zat counter-chanted whatever fragments he could remember. The floor finally gave way, and Gideon dropped through, breaking the ritual.
What followed was a chaotic rescue through the lower tavern corridors. Ebbo gave chase, transforming into a monstrous boar, goring Inés and hurling Moonmoth about like a rag doll. They battled him room by room as he shifted between man and beast.
When Ebbo realized he had lost, he dissolved once more into a cloud of sand and tried to escape through the tavern door. But Moonmoth caught him in a bucket, slammed a coat over it, sat down, and asked for crochet supplies.
With Ebbo contained, Inés patched up, and Gideon freed from his chains, the tavern finally breathed again. A round was poured for all.
The secrets of the tavern below are for another night.