Peculiar Manor

This fortified manor-house incorporates a very fine hostelry and good stabling, with rudimentary wharfs for boatmen to tether their vessels and rest overnight during their journeys. The place derives its name from the extraordinary ale brewed by the owner, who is something of a local legend himself.

Sanjaray Mohsin is a man of Ekbir, who bought the manor ten years ago. He is in his late forties, of typical Bakluni appearance. He shaves his head (save for a long, sleek pony-tail) and oils it. He is flamboyant, and proud of his heritage and dress; he favors the hues of gold, cinnamon, and turmeric in his robes. He has only one arm (his left the other, he claims, was ripped away by a blue dragon in the Yatils just before he decapi- tated it with his gem-encrusted scimitar +4. This blade is wall-mounted above the bar (the money from the hoard bought him this manor).

Sanjaray is only too happy to bewilder travelers for hours with staggering tales of his adventures, and he knows much of the Yatils, Ekbir, Tusmit, and &if. He is a man bursting with energy despite his years; he can still lift a fair-sized pony off the ground, using one arm to grab its saddle (he is an 8th-level fighter; Str 18/82, Con 18).

Sanjaray has no desire to go home; he mutters darkly about poisoned words from a Padishah‘s wizard (and he dislikes mages), and he is happily settled here with his wife Chetna whose veiled face had better not be the subject of any male adventurer's gaze.

Sanjaray’s ale, Old Peculiar, is brewed in his cellars to a recipe he says was given to him by an ancient Clatspur dwarf clan chieftain in return for some astounding service (the details vary with each telling). Old Peculiar is jet black, and so heavy that some say it is best not drunk, but eaten with a fork. It tastes like liquid peat, and is served in half-pints (2 gp). No one alive has ever claimed to have downed more than two pints, and usually only dwarves claim that. Sanjaray boasts that the crucial test of the ale’s readiness is that if a rat won’t dissolve in a keg of it in less than five minutes, it needs more fermentation.

There are some 40 tenant farmers and workers on Sanjaray’s estate. They are half in awe of him, but all like him, and regard him as a generous lord. There is no garrison here, but usually a group of Water Rats stays overnight during their patrols each night.