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2. World Almanac/Regions of Baltun'ia/Falduhir/Brefield/Locations/The Splintered Snake.md

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+### Name:
+
+The Splintered Snake
+
+### Type:
+
+Inn & Lodging House (with a ground-floor taproom)
+
+### Location:
+
+[[Brefield]], [[Falduhir]] — off the lower end of **Smelters' Row**, where the tavern district thins into miners' boarding.
+
+---
+
+### Description:
+
+- A tall, narrow timber lodging house wedged against the rock, its soot-darkened front leaning over the switchback street. Three floors of let rooms above a low, smoke-stained taproom.
+- The sign is a coiled snake split lengthwise down a wood grain that never took paint right — locals say the carver's hand slipped and he left it, and the name stuck.
+- Warm and close inside: the 26-hour shift rotation means there's always someone asleep upstairs and someone drinking downstairs. Bells from the **9-Bell Town** mark the hours through the walls. Smells of coal-smoke, wet wool, and barley.
+
+---
+
+### Lore & Role in Brefield:
+
+- A working travelers' house — cheap beds for transient labor, drummers, and the occasional inspector or "assessor" passing through on Benton business. Anonymous by design; nobody asks a guest's trade.
+- That anonymity is exactly why a [[House of Suits Overview|Suits]] agent chose it. The party lodges here — and so did [[Hierophant Vezra Gearbloom - Obsidian Archives|Vezra]], **two doors down the same hall**, watching them the whole time.
+- (Session 10) On returning to Brefield, the party checked in here with the rescued dragon [[Tir'nael]] in tow — [[Wren Maddox - Brefield|Wren]] took a twenty-gold deposit and five gold a night, and [[Odatina]] signed a waiver for any damage. Realizing the reducing magic on Tir'nael would soon fail, they moved him to the stables out back.
+
+---
+
+### Ownership & Management:
+
+- Run day-to-day by [[Wren Maddox - Brefield|Wren Maddox]], a harried keeper who values quiet custom and asks no questions — or so it seems. She didn't fail to notice the man in the room down the hall. She **rented him the room and watched the party for him.** The keeper is the [[House of Suits Overview|Suits']] eyes in this house.
+
+---
+
+### Notable Features & Rooms:
+
+- **[[Vezra's Room]]** — the let room Vezra took two doors down from the party's. Abandoned mid-cover, never tossed, still holding his disguise kit, field map, letter, and coded ledger. *(The scene the party is about to search — see the room note for clue tiers and the desk trap.)*
+
+---
+
+### Plot Hooks & Adventure Seeds:
+
+- The dread beat: the party's surveillant wasn't watching from across the city — he was **down the hall the whole stay.** And the answer to *"who else here was paid to look the other way?"* is the keeper herself — [[Wren Maddox - Brefield|Wren Maddox]] wasn't paid to look away; she was paid to look.
+- The guest ledger and Wren's key-ring tie her to [[Vezra's Room]] — and to [[Magistrate Corvin Hale - Brefield|Hale]]'s door, whom she also watches. Catch her in either and both threads open.
+
+---
+
+### Notable NPCs:
+
+- **[[Wren Maddox - Brefield|Wren Maddox]]**, Innkeeper *(Human, ~30)*
+    → The keeper who let [[Hierophant Vezra Gearbloom - Obsidian Archives|Vezra]] his room and watched the party for him. Secretly the [[House of Suits Overview|Suits']] in-town courier and the watcher on [[Magistrate Corvin Hale - Brefield|Hale]]. The safe house was never safe.