Three Old Kegs
One of the most cozy, welcoming, and tolerant establishments in Baldur’s Gate, Three Old Kegs is named for its sign, featuring three lashed-together barrels hanging from a pole. The place is immensely popular, so much so that regular wayfarers’ donations have rebuilt the business after fire gutted it on three separate occasions.
The current Three Old Kegs features a large, central feasting hall whose entrance faces the bar and opens directly into the main common room. The Kegs serves hearty, simple food and good brews and wine. The establishment also rents out two private dining rooms, which are flanked by the kitchen and the pantries.Three of the Kegs’ floors are open to patrons, and its small, spartan guest rooms boast individual chimneys. The Kegs is known for the welcome it gives to travelers, and it offers mending, laundering, and weapon and tool repair and sharpening services to guests. The building’s two levels of cellars and its attic serve as housing for the staff and as storage and work areas.
The first of the fires toasted the Kegs’ original thick rugs and wall hangings, which have for the most part not been replaced, but the beloved inn and tavern offers just as many crowded bookshelves as its predecessors did. The Kegs remains a quiet establishment that patrons seek out as a refuge from revelry and the bustle of the streets. A popular spot for reading, napping, and idle gambling, the Kegs prohibits rowdiness. Patrons may wear weapons only in their rooms and in the arming lobby adjacent to the structure’s entrance.
Roisterers are warned that Three Old Kegs has a resident population of more than a dozen full-season renters who are retired from the Flaming Fist. These “weather eyes” won’t set foot outside the Kegs on anything called an adventure, but they do defend the inn staff, keep order, and dispense advice and useful contact information to guests who seem in need of it. They make their coin as recruiters and watchers for the Flaming Fist, message holders, and occasional armed escorts for merchants who are transporting goods.
Alstan, Brunkhurn, and Klalbrot Wintersides, known collectively as “the Old Toads,” own the Kegs. Kindly but gruff, the three wart-covered brothers work tirelessly and watch over the two-score world-wise widows and middle-aged females who work for the Kegs as maids, cooks, and servers.
Unknown to most patrons, the Old Toads are not wholly strait-laced. Deep inside one of their locked keg cellars is the Big Hollow, a huge empty barrel that sports a concealed door and vent holes. The Wintersides rent it as a hidey-hole for brief periods. Anyone who uses the Big Hollow to imprison or mistreat someone is reported to the authorities.
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