Crawling Spider

The Crawling Spider

Tavern & Festhall

Southern Street of the Sword, Castle Ward

Rankings

Provender

• Meal: (meat, soup, bread, greens) 1sp • Ale: 2cp/tankard • Stout: 4cp/tankard • Zzar or Wine: 5cp/tallglass • Whiskey: 1sp/flagon

Services

• Dance: 1sp (free with Companionship) • Companionship: 5sp to 2gp/hour

Staff

• Welvreene Thalmit, proprietress (hf) • Dark Lords & Ladies, drow-masquerading waitstaff and companions • Teshura and Dainar, waitlasses & companions (df) • Durn One-Eye(dm) and Dagg Tuskson (hom), bouncers

Map

Layout

Street Level

• Viewing Gallery: The entrance off of the Street of the Sword, it is paneled in dark woods with bronze fixtures. This entry is a full eight or so feet above the rest of the tavern, with a railed balcony that looks down on the main taproom. A favorite area for customers who want to enjoy the decor without actually getting "down in it."
• Taproom: Featuring a massive "dwarven-sized" hearth (some fifteen feet wide by ten feet high) and a circular bar built around a faux stone column (as formations where stalactites and stalagmites grow together are called), the taproom is all done up in a cavern motif, using liberally applied plaster with stone dust mixed into it.
  • Rock rubble makes the floor uneven, and slightly luminous mosses and lichens hang from ceilings and walls. Netted glowing globes help illuminate particularly dark corners, and decorative stuffed spiders are everywhere. Where most are the size of a hand or so, the tavern takes great pride in Old Wooly, a massive stuffed spider the literal size of a man, clinging to the ceiling at the top of the bar-column.
  • The Tunnels: There are two cavern-style tunnels that lead off of the taproom, yawning portals some ten-foot wide in the walls beneath the edge of the viewing gallery. The northernmost descends into the tavern's jakes, while the southernmost tunnel curves down into the cellars below.
• Kitchens: A set of kitchens, with plenty of cooking hearth-space and a set of stairs down to ample cellars.

Cellars

• Dancing Cellars: Welvreene pays minstrels and musicians most nights of the week to provide fine dancing music of the sort preferred by dwarves: plenty of percussion and brass, reminding most folk of drinking shanties and the like. The celebration here can get raucous. While folk do show up here to dance with one another, at least half of those present are there to dance with the staff, a small expenditure of a single shiny coin.
• The Hearth Room: This place is the unofficial dwarven gathering place at the Crawling Spider, with a number of stone-wrought chairs facing the roaring hearth. The walls are decorated with decorations in the style preferred by the shield dwarves of the North, and it is a fine place for the stout folk to sit and listen to the music, chatting amiably, without the franticness of the dancing cellar.
• Private Caverns: Scattered throughout the cellars are these small "caverns" whose primary allure is that they are dark and private, for those who find the company of their dancing partners to be too much for public viewing. Of course, as such things go, these caverns have been used for everything from outright passionate assignations to a meeting place for infidelitous people to scheming places for assassins, thieves and adventurers. Each room has a single glow globe and a door that can be barred from the inside.
• Kitchen Cellars: These cellars hold the immense amounts of alcohol - usually in large tuns or tapped barrels - that the tavern is known for. It is also a place where kitchen staff sometimes escape to in order to get away from the customers for a short break.

Upper Floor

• Storage: x
• Welvreene's Private Chambers: A significant chunk of the second floor serves as Welvreene's personal quarters. It is known to be divided into several rooms, though generally speaking neither staff nor customers have seen the interior. Only those few adventurers Welvreene has taken to her bed can claim to have seen it.
• Lounge: Intended for the use of staff who aren't on duty, for Welvreene herself and for any customers who've paid custom for use of one of the upstairs rooms. It's a quieter place that one of the waitstaff visits twice an hour or so to provide drinks and the like.
• Staff Quarters: There are ten staff rooms. These rooms have a main purpose, allowing the staff to take paying customers to a comfortable, private place. But Welvreene also permits her staff to stay in these rooms if they have nowhere else to stay or simply prefer to live on-site. The rooms must be vacated and available for use by customers by the time the tavern opens, however, and remain so during business hours.

Staff

• Welvreene Thalmit: Proprietress. Alluringly dark-eyed and dusky-skinned, with a smoky voice, Welvreene owns the Crawling Spider and is quite enamored of dungeon- and Underdark-delving and those who do it. She can listen endlessly to stories of such, and has been known to sit with adventurers and buy their drinks through the night in exchange for their stories. She is also well-known for taking mostly such adventurers for her occasional lovers.
• The Dark Lords and Ladies: The majority of the Crawling Spider's waitstaff are slender men and women (human and half-elf, mostly) who dress in black stocking bodysuits and leather, with veiled masks that are meant to make them look like drow; frequently, the women also bear coiled leather whips at their hips. They are all sensuous and can be hired for an hour's or an evening's companionship. Dwarves who come here chortle at the idea of being served by drow, and many humans show up here to ogle or outright hire the athletic, slim "dark ones" of the Crawling Spider. They do not use their real names, but instead dabble in playful and sometimes silly versions of real drown names, such as Xilicha and Vaenia for women, and Parnael and Wilithis for men.
• Teshura & Dainar: Two dwarven women on the waitstaff, these dwarf-ladies are both robust and very curvy. Teshura bears a light beard of red hue, trimmed neatly in dwarf-maid fashion, while Dainar is smooth-cheeked and tall enough that she might almost be mistaken for a very short human.
• The Bouncers: There are two bouncers who work the evenings here. Durn One-Eye is a short, gruff gold dwarf in an eyepatch who splits his work time between the harbor and the tavern. Dagg Tuskson is a half-orc who usually works the nights that Durn does not. The two pretend to a fierce rivalry, but in truth they are good friends.

Clientele

The Crawling Spider draws a variety of clientele. Very nearly the only thing that draws them together is their nearly-fanatical devotion to the Spider. Most of the customers are in most nights of the week, and will traverse the entire city's length, ignoring other establishments, to stop in at the Spider.

• Dwarves: The Crawling Spider is a favorite place for many of Waterdeep's dwarves, who find the playfully themed decor hilarious rather than tacky. They are also said to be frequently drawn here by the charms of Teshura and Dainar.
• Half-orcs: One of the few places that doesn't cast a jaundiced eye on half-orcs, the Crawling Spider has more than a few loyal half-orc customers. They can be rowdy and are very fond of strong drink, but they are no more responsible for the frequent bar fights than the dwarves who frequently egg them on.
• Priests: Humorously, there are many priests of Waterdhavian temples that make the Crawling Spider their preferred evening. Many of them tend to take tables in the Viewing Gallery, where it's not uncommon to see priests of many different creeds sitting together and laughing uproarously over their pints. They also tend to be willing to wade in and help break up bar fights and heal those in need of it after.
• Adventurers: Welvreene's affection for adventurers stands her tavern in good stead, and there are a good handful of adventurers - both current and retired - who frequent her establishment.
• Sightseers: Lastly - and in a minority - are those who've heard of the exciting rumors about the Crawling Spider, and come to see for themselves.