The Downward Dog

Story so far

The Downward Dog is the bar at Station 75, its front door still wearing the hand-lettered "Oi! No hobgoblins!" sign, and it is where the party learns everything that matters about this station. Growler Gary tells his story from the floor behind his own counter, too drunk to sit up: the ghouls came, the whole garrison died, and an invisible wall in his own doorway stopped him from going out to fight beside them. He can name the culprit — the Tangle itself, which turned the entire system into a Krakaren nest rather than declare bankruptcy — and he can name what the party needs, the interdiction team carts parked out in the yard. What he cannot do is leave the room. The bar has a screen over the entrance to the party's personal space but no rooms for rent and no box-opening, exactly the entrance-level format Carl recognises from the Desperado Club rather than a true saferoom.

By the end of the layover the tavern has become something worse than a bar. The party returns again and again to kill its bartender for his left hand, and Mongo learns the route so well that Princess Donut only has to say "back to the bar" for him to bound the length of the room and land on the counter. Gary retreats into the back room with his spear each time, huddling in the corner, and the floor there turns slick with blood that regeneration never cleans up — every severed body part vanishes when he reforms, but the blood stays and spreads until it is everywhere. His hidden stash beneath the bar, the one the woman who tore his throat out never found, is emptied by the party themselves, so that each resurrection returns him sober to a room with nothing left to drink.

Appearance

A dark tavern of beer-soaked sticky wood, a screen above the bar, empty bottles underfoot, and a back room whose floor is slick with blood.

Role

Station 75's bar and saferoom entrance, source of the interdiction cart lead, and the site of Growler Gary's fourteen deaths.

Relationships