Most of the entertainment in Fork is in the Southside triangle between the High Road, Meadow Road, and the Southside wall. Meril will consider it his duty to show his friends around the Southside at night. He’ll take them to his favorite gambling houses, clubs, and bars. Alcohol is wine, port wine, and beer. Wine and port wine are preferred.
Bars and Shows
There are many theaters and show-houses in the Southside, with concerts, plays, and musical plays. Bars and taverns will often have musical entertainment, and there are even a few places where people can go for nightly public dancing.
Entertainment: The Arena
The Fork Arena regularly hosts jousts and highball games. There are occasionally circuses, melees, and many other form of mass entertainment.
Merchants—especially gambling houses—sponsor jousters and highball teams. There is also a Civic Highball League, where each town can provide a team. Fork and Black Stag tend to dominate the league.
Highball is vaguely similar to soccer, but uses a “sword” (a sort of blunt, flat-headed bat) instead of body parts to move the ball. At any time a player may force an opposing team member to a spar, in which they beat each other with their swords until one falls. The first player to lose their footing in a spar must leave the field (or be carried off of the field) and is not replaced or returned until a score is made by one of the teams. The game itself continues around spars, but the sparring area itself is off-limits to any player (though not to the ball, which can be used as a third-party weapon by non-sparring players).
Jousting is also a spectator sport, and there’s a lot of showmanship to the tournaments. Shields are designed to shatter spectacularly when hit. Some lances are designed to break. Armor is designed foremost to block a blunt lance and protect against falls. Jousting is a very difficult strength contest. Jousting lances can cause d6 damage.
“It’s a total bastardization of the sport. They don’t use real shields, real lances, or even real armor.”
Still, it’s a dangerous sport. Rarely will a month pass without serious injury, and you can pretty much count on one or two deaths every couple of years.
Jousting is semi-team-oriented. There are two or more teams, but jousters themselves pair off individually. Only rarely will a joust become a melee in which teams fight a general fight against the other team(s).
On game nights, the area around the arena will be filled with food stands and memorabilia stands.
Saint Raphael Cathedral
The spire of Saint Raphael rises high above Fork, overshadowing every other building within the town. Smaller spires rise from the cathedral’s wings, and the saints of old peer down from niches in the tower walls. Great wooden doors stand open atop a flight of stone stairs, revealing the arched interior of the church.
The Saint Raphael Cathedral stands at the center of Fork where the High Road meets Meadow Road. The Pastors of Black Stag appoint the priest of Saint Raphael directly, and it is a prestigious post. The opportunities for saving souls is unlimited! Those who win in the gambling houses make donations in thanks; those who lose promise to make donations in hope for later wins.
The current priest at Saint Raphael, Leonard Ormele, began his tenure twelve years ago. A few years later he started the tradition of “casting the first die” on New Year’s Eve at one of the houses. Whichever house he chooses sees expanded business for several months, an important benefit in the cold winter months.
Father Leo is a highly charismatic back-room dealer. Think of him as George Carlin in Dogma, but with poker instead of golf. He is one of the people behind the Black Stag alliance.
If the characters have built up a reputation and the Black Stag-Fork alliance wants to draw them in, it will be Father Leo who opens up talks with them in Fork. He’ll send one of the other priests to ask them over for a typical Fork gathering at the rectory, where they’ll be able to hobnob with the elite of Fork and the river towns. Or he might invite them to the best seats in the arena to discuss their assistance.
They might be asked, for example, to help keep Hightown open all winter. The alliance thinks that this would help trade, he’ll say, and it would certainly help morale, so close to the dark forest, to have someone with their reputation along. What the alliance really wants is to extend their military influence across the leather road.
Gambling Houses
Dice hit softly against padded tables. Smoke seeps around the doors of back rooms, and marbles clatter through the numbers as fortune’s wheel turns for good and ill. Well-dressed patrons drink red wine from crystal goblets and talk as one of their number throws a pair of dice. Others lay clay markers down on the squares before the wheel of fortune. A loud conversational drone fills the room. Arguments break out—and are quickly quieted. Men are welcomed, and men are escorted out. And through it all, everyone waits on the turn of a friendly card.
Fork is known best for its gambling, and for the ways the natives fleece the unsuspecting. There are reputable and disreputable gambling houses in Fork, but they all want your money.
Gambling Houses: Gambling
If you want to lay your money down on a sure thing that’s sure not to pay off, Fork is your place. You can play games yourself, you can be on other people playing games, and you can bet on sports in the arena. If you’re inclined to ignore the law, you can bet on street fights, both human and animal.
Gambling houses have dice games, card games, and fortune’s wheel. Dice is very much like craps. Cards are a lot like poker. And the wheel of fortune is similar to our own.
There are no rules specific to gambling in Gods & Monsters. If you want to gamble, it’s a simple charisma contest. Gambling houses will generally be rated with a charisma of 12 to 15. The odds add themselves to the house’s charisma as well. So, a game that pays 3 to 1 in a house with a charisma of 14 has a charisma of 17. The player will roll an opposed contest against that to win their three to one pot. Dealers will have a skill of 0 to 3.
If players want their characters to bet on specific events, whether they win or lose will depend on the outcome of those events.
Gambling Houses: Magic
Obviously, the casinos don’t like magic. Since magic is rare, they don’t have to worry about it much, but some will keep a first level sorceror on hand to detect magic. Others will simply suspect magic when a patron is too successful, and ban that patron. A banned patron will not usually be allowed to keep their winnings. Some establishments will let the patron keep their winnings, and then hire thugs to take it from them later, along with a good beating.
Meril’s preferred Houses
Meril has three gambling houses that he prefers, and is on friendly terms with the owners and workers there. If the players show any interest in a night on the town, Meril is likely to bring them to one or more of these places: The Gypsy Room, Excalibur House, and The Red Wheel.
Sparkling Danny’s Houses
One of the most powerful guildmasters is “Sparkling” Danny Chaverson, head of the Two Horses Gaming Guild. The Two Horses includes in its ranks nearly half of all gambling houses in Fork, and controls quite a bit of underground trade and other unsavory activities.
Eldred went just about anywhere he could lose money, but spent a lot of time trying to gain back his debt at Sparkling Danny’s houses.
Danny’s own houses are the Horseshoe Room and the White Stallion.
