The Table Map at the Stumbling Celestial
As told by Althor Parhurst, owner of the Stumbling Celestial Lodge:
Years ago, we had some damn crazy fools around here that tried their luck exploring this here Cauldron. Thought they’d find the ol’ warlock’s horde or maybe Laloal’s prison, they did. Idiots. Anyway, they’d come in here, away from the eyes of the Lord Mayor’s Ribbons, and compare notes. Drink is what started it, it is. That damn moron, Garard Grayaxe, rest his soul, was trying to describe some area of the wilds he’d been loping about in to the rest of those idiots. Rather than ask for quill and parchment or chalk and slate, we’ve got both. Always have. He scratches out his damn map on the top of my table with his damn knife. Who does that? Oh, the man was an idiot and his map was just an X here, a line there, and some sort of squiggly bit that I still don’t understand. But over time they kept coming back to that same table. Sitting around and scratching at it, again and again. They paid for it, I made ‘em. Damn sure, I did. But over time them others started adding bits to their ‘map’. One fella, Monte, I think it was, real artsy-fartsy type, spent a good bit of time prettying it up, their map. So before too long, that table went from something Grayaxe had uglied up with his scratches to a pretty damn good map carved into that whole table top. Didn’t look to bad neither. They’d gone and carved in forests and creeks, some caves, there were even a few ‘ominous’ warnings put in there, all sorts of shit they claimed to have seen. It was pretty impressive. After they all disappeared, it was just a ruined table. A bit of a curiosity, sure, but the thing was too scratched up to even rest a drink flatly. So I had Arne’s son flip the top over and now I got a good table again. You don’t believe me, take a look underneath that table there in the corner.
Althor Parhurst, propriotor of the Stumbling Celestial Lodge
