A Grand Tour of the First City of Men: Houses of Ill Repute

Many of the neighborhoods in the Lower City and the Docks contain small alehouses meant to service slaves and freemen in the employ of the various noble houses.  These are typically stocked by the house that has the most power in that respective neighborhood, and since this is the case they usually have only beer or mead and other cheap intoxicants that are easily made in the farmland around Uz.  They are typically open-air affairs that are adjacent to a small building which stores the beer.  Carousing rolls made at one of these establishments are made on a d4.

The Wine House of Barahm-Sin is a famous haunt of drunkards and adventurers.  It is where each session of the game is assumed to start unless I am told otherwise.  It is owned by a Getherite who believes himself to be a living god and is one of the only places where men can debauch that is not owned by one of the noble houses.  Barahm-Sin typically serves the strange turquoise wine of Ilion but can provide other, more exotic intoxicants should the need arise.  Carousing rolls made here are made on a d6.

The Temple of She of the Silken Thighs possesses perhaps the most infamous brothel in all of Uz.  It is a temple celebrating an obscure aspect of Li-Lit of the Night, though some argue that it might actually be a cohort of that goddess or possibly even a deified priestess of the goddess from a long forgotten age.  Like all brothels, the Temple of She of the Silken Thighs also trades in a number of intoxicants not available elsewhere - including, it is said - strange rays that provide the user with infinite pleasure.  Carousing rolls made here are on a d8.

Some of the newer noble houses that build their squat palaces on the Acropolis posses marble bathhouses and pleasure domes designed to display the wealth of the owners as well as provide them with a place to engage in their deranged fantasies. They can provide the carouser with all manner of foreign and otherworldly pleasures.  Access to these is restricted to the nobility, and thus any adventurers wishing to join in the debauchery must either be very close associates with one of the houses - preferably the one whose pleasure dome they wish to access - or become nobility themselves through deeds performed in the underworld or abroad.  Carousing rolls made at one of these establishments are made on a d10.

The Pleasure Palace of Mari-Adab outshines all others in opulence and the turpitudes available to its clients are utterly unmentionable.  Carousing rolls made here are made on a d12.

Right now, each of these use the standard mishaps chart, but once I've done more work on the adventure sites I hope to be able to give each one its own particular set of perils.

In the next part of the tour, I'll discuss notable homes whose owners the PCs might wish to befriend or rob, including the manses of some notable sorcerers.