A7: Fruit of the Mill

This delightful little shop offers wine and ale for sale, together with a variety of pastries salty, sweet, or meaty. It caters to workers especially.

The proprietor is Karin Keoffel, a petite woman who has originated most of her own recipes. She hires several young women as barmaids and cooking help. The eatery is open from dawn until an hour after dark. Meals are good and filling, with a variety of pastry for every taste. Specialties include cheese and tomato pastries, all manner of fruit pies, beef and lamb wrapped in crusty rolls, and many others.

Karin employs no bouncer, nor any brawny help, but she and her maidens are favorites of the workers hereabouts. Any rude comments from customers are greeted with stern rebukes from these regulars. Those who persist in the disturbance find themselves facing 1d6 + 6 large, angry men (1st-level fighters).

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A7: Fruit of the Mill. The first building that anyone sees upon entering the city through the Druids’ Gate is the Fruit of the Mill, a shop selling locally made wines, ales, pastries, cheeses, and dried meats. The shop is attached to the house of the owner, 44-year-old Karin Keoffel [NG hf zero-level; hp 2; Int 16, Cha 15; see below], a cheerful and petite woman who is a well-known personality in this quarter. A half-dozen young neighborhood women work here in rotating shifts. Karin has been long known to have a boyfriend who is an adventurer and comes to the city several times a year. She repeats many of his fabulous and dramatic stories to her customers if she discovers they are adventurers, too, though she confesses that most of these stories must be fanciful. She calls her boyfriend "Yr" (pronounced like “ear’’). Interestingly, the shop has never been broken into by thieves, though some foreign customers cause trouble with the working women. Men in the neighborhood keep an eye on the place and help throw out bad customers.

DM's Notes: Karin’s boyfriend is indeed an adventurer. He 1s also an extremely powerful one, and his stories — however wild they are — are completely true. His name is well known to the Circle of Eight, as he was once a member of the Citadel of Eight, the group from which the Circle was founded. He is Yrag [N hm F13; hp 93; Str 18 / 46, Int 15, Dex 16, Con 16, Cha 17; many magical items], a lord of Greyhawk and a friend of Mordenkainen, Bigby, and other luminaries. It is not commonly known that Yrag is much older than he looks, much of his aging delayed by magical means. He believes he is about 208 years old. He was a friend of the (in)famous Zagig Yragerne, a homeless child who was secretly raised by the archmage. Yrag took his name from his adoptive father, and now holds his patron deity to be Zagyg himself. Yrag’s abilities have fluctuated over the years, thanks to magical curses, undead attacks, injuries, and so forth, but he has always been a warrior.

Tall, muscular, and vigilant, Yrag now travels about in the guise of a mercenary and adventurer named Yr (not an uncommon name in this region because of its Suloise roots). He is very fond of Karin; lately, she is the only person in the city he sees besides Nerof Gasgal and Captain-General Tigran Gellner. Yrag left the Citadel of Eight several years ago, after the Greyhawk Wars, following a falling-out with Mordenkainen over long-term strategic policy. He ts the secret lord in charge of the shell keep of Fordkeep, west of Greyhawk, where the Western Road crosses the Selintan from River Road and heads for Dyvers.

Yrag has one major liability: He made a number of great enemies among a cabal of spellcasters and demons in his past adventures. The cabal is not native to Oerth; its original stronghold was destroyed by Yrag and his associates on a demiplane, and the survivors moved elsewhere. The group is quietly searching for Yrag and would stop at nothing to destroy him and all his friends, family, and allies. Yrag stays on the move, knowing he is being hunted but doing some demons hunting of his own as well. He has exceptional magical protection, but it is not infallible. Karin is his only love and his weakest spot. To defend her while he’s gone, he has given her jewelry that is magical (amulet of mind shielding, ring of protection +3, and more), though it looks merely well-made. Nerof has informed the Thieves’ Guild that the Fruit of the Mill is off-limits, without explaining why.