At the Sign of the Forsaken Inn (Every Friday; 2:00 & 7:00 PM)

For the last Friday of every month, Roleplayers of Laurelin allows its members to choose a location to relocate our 'At the Sign of the Prancing Pony' event series. As this is the last Friday of the week, today's 'At the Sign of...' event series will be held at the Forsaken Inn as decided by Roleplayers of Laurelin's community! 
 

This week's (January 31, 2025) hook: 

Anlaf the Forlorn’s laziness is unmatched by any of his fellow innkeepers west of the Misty Mountains and east of the sea. Indeed, it has been several years since the thatching in the roof of the Forsaken Inn has rotted away, leaving a hole in its centre that the innkeeper has still yet to mend. It is winter at the Forsaken Inn, and snowdrifts pile upon the common room tables and a chill draft runs throughout the inn. 

Yet if it is unpleasant to visit the Forsaken Inn in winter (or at any other time of the year), it is now made doubly so by the presence of ruffianly-looking men who have been barred lodging at Bree’s Prancing Pony and now haunt Anlaf’s inn. These men pollute the atmosphere of the small, striving inn with their coarse words and rough hands, and their intolerable reek, which remains even after they’ve paid bed and board and left Anlaf’s inn well in the dust. 

Even Anlaf, hardened by the wasted moors that surround his house, is frightened by these men, and in a recent letter to Barliman Butterbur of Bree, recorded and delivered by one of the many Dwarves that lodge at the Forsaken Inn, he writes: ‘…and that’s the other thing, Barley, speaking—or, beg for my pardon, “writing of”—proud cows: when pretty little Sorel went out to the hills to do her washings & her foragings & what ever else it is a wife does away from home & hearth, she told me she saw one of those fellows what rode with them what robbed you—he came out and told it to her straight: “I robbed him,” said he, “and I would have done worse if he’d tried to stop me!” Oh, strange folk we’ve had under our roof these days, Barley—and I have no prejudice against strangers unlike you folk at Bree behind your hedge!—but I’ll be happy—very happy, indeed—not to have one of them visit my house, thank you very much.’ 

All of Bree-land is abuzz with Anlaf’s foreboding, Barliman forgetting to lock his tongue as often as he forgets to lock his front door, and travellers on the East Road now gossip about it, claiming that robbers are holding up every inn in Eriador and that the Forsaken Inn’s time is nigh. Whether, however, there is ever any truth in gossip, wizards and the Wise, have long debated….