FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Save Point: Hobbamock Tavern

"Stay sharp, boys. Gonna take you to visit some places you won't ever have heard of, and it's not because they have a bad reputation, which I know you'd see as a challenge. No, these places have a different sort of folks, an' I'd deeply appreciate it if you stayed cool and didn't go running about all firing guns and stuff. Which'd probably only upset them, as you'll be seeing shortly."

Terrowne doffs his hat politely and opens the door. The brothers are a mite antsy, because they can sense if not directly see that they're being watched, have been since they started to get close, but not by whom. It's just a tree after all, right? A tree with a door in it, that seems to have been swiped as if mockingly from a saloon bar, horizontal layered wooden slats and all, then cut down a little to match the opening. The hillside slopes steeply upward behind.

A board has been nailed up rakishly at an angle over the entrance, painted with determined care and precision to make it look as though the words have just been splashed on casually, in the very minimum number of slashes of red paint, and he just can't escape the feeling it's some sort of joke at the expense of anyone who doesn't get it. 'Hobbamocks' is what it openly says in King's English, although there are a range of smaller words carved around the edge just into the wood, not in any way highlighted, that seem to be in one or more other scripts be doesn't recognize.

The Indian laughs. "Huh, they funny," is his comment. "Yah, we visit Hobbamock. You gonna bring him a rabbit, maybe? Or maybe something a little bit bigger?"

"They can get their own damn rabbits. It's their land, after all."

The main doorstep stone is carved with a perfectly circular groove, as though machined, and then a cross chiselled neatly through the center, with smaller arcs and curlicues in the empty spaces as left in the corners. The rest of the steps, which slope down at a precipitous angle straight through the tree and then on into the hillside, are perfectly normal country rock though, as is the precise masonry that supports the tunnel beyond to prevent any accidental slips of earth from revealing or blocking the entrance. Only a few stray roots drape downward.

The brothers, to their credit, scarcely flinch at the Hobbamocks taproom, which is best qualified as being barbarian chic with werewolves. There are a lot of skulls, from just about everything that can be hunted within the Northern Merican continent, the bigger the better, now mostly with one or two candles on them, or rivulets of dried wax where this has happened in the past. Realistically only a very few are human, mainly because they're generally not that impressive, and any passing resemblance to an Ahrimanic ritual is purely coincidental. Bison and snow bear are favorites, but a pair of exhumed sabertooth skulls, jaws gaped wide under the geometry of their fangs, take the pride of place at either end of the bar, in cubical glass cases joined at the edges of the square with lead to prevent them being accidentally destroyed in some excess of joyful celebration.

The werewolves have once again indulged their pet obsession with underground and underhill in dwellings, like lairs or dens writ large, and Hobbamocks is no exception to the usual design layout and features. They've found a natural cave and made expert modifications, using their instinctive knowledge of masonry and engineering, to raise the roof in a neat self-supporting curve and open up ventilation spaces, hidden somewhere above in outcroppings of natural looking rocks, or when that wouldn't be natural, calculatedly artificial ones that imply mysterious but deliberate purpose.

Places like this are surprisingly common in the mid-west, always at the end of a particular sort of valley that's distinctive after you've seen a couple and know what to look for, and an obscure fork of Indian legendry ascribes to such places chilling and dire warnings, in case stray hunting parties should come across one and decide to explore. If you attack the wolves in one of their own lairs, it proves you're less of a brave and more of a stupid, because humans who do that don't come back.

In fact, in some cases they even become table decorations.

Stories about the dwellers under the mounds engaging in cannibal feasts are a bit of exaggeration in most cases, but some of the dens are more hound than wolf and have been known to get just a bit indiscriminately hungry upon occasion, especially up in the frozen north. When someone has suddenly burst in to steal your stuff, panicked when they saw you dressed up in your own natural skin in your own home, then tried to kill you rather vigorously as a poorly thought out response, suddenly having a quick snack to regain your strength seems relatively reasonable. They usually cook anything that's left once they calm down, share it out with the family.

Hobbamocks is more wolf than hound, but still perhaps a little alarming for a human being, even if the callers are sufficiently crispy of composure not to be concerned by the existence of a den of werewolves in a broader, more existential sense. The brothers have seen plenty; this is merely the self-same thing as the sort of men they hunt, only with their wolfskins honestly on the outside.

Terrowne watches for any awkward signs of panic attack, sees none, then proceeds the rest of the way down the stairs, giving them plenty of time and chance to back out of following him.

Remove the wolves and the more unusual accessories, and it's just a uisge-bar and poteen-still, as crude but well made wooden tables, barrel-heads and indifferently-glazed clay mugs attest. It has an advantage over most such places in that a slightly lowered fissure in the floor leads away to the original cave entrance, making it easier to sluice out of an evening, and providing an escape route if they should be attacked. Apart from that it's sharp gambling, casual prostitution, and vindictive home-brew, often in odd combinations where, for example, wives are wagered against debts with whores, to take their places and allow them to enjoy the evening off.

The drinks are all laced with traces of various substances extracted from local plant-life that try to make them as interestingly incapacitating for a wolf as for a human, sometimes leading to odd flavors and peculiar side-effects where the two haven't been entirely as mutually exclusive as one might hope. Terrowne sees one of the wolves pull a knife and cut its own palm, a stupid decision if not helped by several beverages already, and then clench a fist to unsteadily spill some of the thin blood into a cup before it closes. This will, of course, make the mixed drink more effective, but it's a loss leader and any gain is immediately offset by healing the cuts.

The wolf licks its hand better, then resumes drinking. It's not immediately apparent if it's a male, a female, or some werewolf-specific combination, so the specifics are really none of his business, although he does note the slouching form is dressed in rather nice buckskins that suggest gradual regression from better times to its current state of hand-licking inebriation. A little salt on the rim should really be quite enough for most people.