History of Port Rufus
Port Rufus started out as a tiny wood shack fishing village in an atmospheric yet ignored location along the coast between Port Popular and the Navy Shipyard, some days journey by foot from the Lumberyards of the Great Forest. It started out as an incidental way-point location during a much bigger adventure, thus requiring a name which was named after my sons shaggy dog and then it grew in the shaggy dogs telling like shaggy tales do.
During that story it prospered and attracted many Nerva pirates navy and land-based dwellers of a thriving and expanding town, stonemasons, industries, support industries, land developers looking for cheap plots to build retirement and resale mansions, you know how it goes.
It became necessary to create a 3D set from cardboard, only the very basics, to game on as a tabletop spread. Which helped to develop it also.
Wharf
Warehouses
Stone walled and squalid, the wharf front warehouses are owned by: private trader, mafia, pirates, empty.
HarbourMasters Hut
Accessible through an overhead hatch with a ladder and winch, between the stone warehouses forms a through-way to the main market. Windows on front and rear for a view of the sea, docks and the market, town. It’s attic contains confiscated goods going back generations, forgotten about.
The Sunken Flagon Inn
Painted black a generation ago, constructed entirely of wood, the Inn is suitably shabby looking haunt of pirates and sailors fresh back to shore after a long voyage and looking for the basic pleasures of rum, a hearty meal, hot hearth, a woman to bed for the night and a bed for the night.
Mingling with sailors of all types from local fishermen to navy, merchants, smugglers, one quickly learns here there is no real division line between the types inside this place. Stories and music, laughter and brawling, often.
Most of the action in the Sunken Flagon Inn takes place up the wooden on the first floor, with bedrooms in the attic space ‘in the eaves and in the rafters’ is inn-code for clients who seek a bed simply for sleeping or clients who seek a bed for quick companionship.
The ground floor is the domain of the private security guard who checks everyone in and out, when he’s not drunkenly sleeping in the job. He is an ex pit-fighter from the desert across the seas who won his freedom and ended up here.
Food is not prepared on the premises but from the soup-house across the way, Mama Bamba’s.
Mama Bamba’s Hot Soup House
The oldest eatery in the Port. Legend has it is still serving the very same questionable fish stew as in it’s opening day, never allowed to go cold and topped up with whatever ingredients the tide brought in.
Mama Bamba herself grew up in the swamplands far to the east, escaped from a slaver ship and hid in Port Rufus back when it was a tiny fishing village with barely a name. She will often remind everyone whenever opportunity arises that some people say she is a mermaid captured into the form of a woman by a love story she will never tell.
Everybody in Port Rufus loves Mama Bamba and her cauldron-of-plenty. She feeds just around everyone who comes through the Port or lives here, most days. It is said about her she is the most protected person in almost any port. If asked the secret ingredient she obviously must use to get everyone appreciating her broth so much, she says; “Passion. Ya gota love wha ya do an’ ya gotta do wha ya love.”
Watch Tower
Situated behind the warehouses the tall stone building has a roofed wooden observation post high above and the Watch HQ on the ground floor: a guard room With steps dow to damp dungeons below.
The Shaggy Dog Tavern
A hole-in-the-wall bar which serves anyone. The shaggy dog in question is Rufus the wonder hound whose kennel was on this very spot. His ghost is said to haunt the Port, guarding and guiding the friendly. Most people who live here claim to have seen his spirit at some time. Some of them actually have.
SHIPS
The Crescent Moon
Permanently moored here is a drug dealers river-barge, the Crescent Moon, a bandit/mafia hq. Mostly they smoke way-weed in the cabin and do illicit business deals. The ship brings their herbs in every crescent moon and they store it and ship out from here mostly in bulk but also in smaller deals to various pedlars.
Fisher Boats
Coastal Taxi