Post by Malri 'Taffeta' Thistletop on Jun 13, 2024 15:58:20 GMT
View northwards across Tabrud’s Yard in Daring Heights, with Iron Street in the lower left and Daffles Street on the right
Tabrud’s Yard? Aye, it’s just off Iron Street, south of where the street takes a turn. Don’t you know it? It’s what it sounds like, just an open place behind some houses there, but it’s become a sort of gathering-place these last few years. All sorts go there – well, ordinary folks anyway, not so many of the high and mighty sort.
Some just go to meet each other and talk, some bring food and drink to share, sometimes there’s music and dancing or stories. If your hens’ve laid more than you know what to do with, you can bring the eggs along, maybe someone else can use them. Your shirt’s torn and you can’t fix it yourself, there’s probably someone at the Yard who can mend it for you or spare you a new one or even teach you how to mend your own clothes. You’re worried about bandits on the road, maybe someone’ll help you get confident handling a bow or a sword. If you’re having trouble with a neighbour or the nobleman who owns your fields, you can get advice from people who’ve had the same troubles, maybe they can even help you sort it out.
It was Taffeta started it all – you know, her whose husband has the pie shop on Lilia Lane. If you’ve ever seen a sail-boat flying over town, well, that’s Taffeta’s. Anyway, this was before she had the boat. Summer, it was, and she asked a bunch of us to take a meal with her and her family in the Yard one day. Her house backs onto it, you see, sort of the north-east angle of the Yard, so they’d spend warm evenings out there, her and Nerry and their girls, and sometimes friends and neighbours would visit too, like me.
Well, she invited a lot of us that day and as we were eating she was talking about the place she grew up, back in Faerûn. And how they didn’t have a council there, or watchmen or soldiers, or adventurers. Just plain ordinary folks, and they all worked together and helped each other, she said. Some hunted and some grew veg and some made things and so on, and the older ones taught the younger ones how to fight so that if gnolls came or some such, they’d scare them off or fight them if need be, to protect everyone. And they all decided together what to do.
She wanted things to be like that here, she said. She didn’t like how the Council and the Watch decide what’s best for the town but don’t always help people when it counts, and she didn’t like how adventurers go around doing the same kind of thing – deciding who’s a threat to us and who isn’t, making deals on our behalf with other countries or fey or fiends, helping this god and fighting that one. Told us about the times she’d had troubles and the Council and Watch had refused to help, and times when she’d got caught up in ‘adventuring’ and ended up doing things she felt shouldn’t have been down to just a few people, or seen or heard other adventurers acting as if ordinary townsfolk were helpless children. And plenty of us had our own stories, too – some folks talked about times adventurers or the Watch had helped them, but others had tales like Taffeta’s.
Some of us asked, what can we do? She didn’t know, and neither did we. We were just a handful of people, we couldn’t change how the Council behaved or what adventurers did. But in the talking about all the big problems we couldn’t fix, some small ones came up that we could. One woman there said her neighbour was healing a broken leg and couldn’t leave his house, she’d been bringing him food but she couldn’t spare much herself, so a few of us offered to bring what we could too. Another fellow’s landlord was threatening to put his rent up, so a couple of well-spoken folks offered to come with him to plead his case, try to get the landlord to back down. A few people wanted Taffeta to teach them to shoot a bow so they could protect themselves or hunt game for the table.
Well Tabrud’s Yard was the obvious place to keep meeting when we needed to. The group that went to see the landlord met there first to make a plan. Taffeta set up a couple of archery targets there for the shooting. And we’d have more talk when we were there: more problems folks wanted help with, more ideas how to help each other and our neighbours, more meals shared. People got to know each other that hadn’t before. Some’d bring friends, and then they’d bring friends. After the dragon-riders came, there was lots of folks in hard times – houses or fields or shops burned, livestock lost – everyone at the Yard did what they could to help each other get back on their feet. Even managed to get a crew and materials together to rebuild a few whole houses that were destroyed!
So that’s how the Yard got to be how it is now. We haven’t solved all Daring’s problems yet, nor replaced the Council or the Watch or the adventurers, but we look after each other and we do what we can. And if that seems like something you want to be part of, you’ll be right welcome!
Section of Daring Heights map showing location of Tabrud’s Yard, the reddish shaded area of ground inside the yellow square. The yellow square approximately corresponds to the area depicted in the illustration at the top of this post.