The Goose and Gander is a clean and quaint tavern which sits on the north side of town. The Gander seems to attract a more highborn clientele. Visiting nobility, well-to-do merchants, and other respectable people take their lodgings here when they are guesting in Roque. It is a peaceful place, well patrolled by guards. The rooms each contain a lockable chest, a table and two chairs, a comfortable bed, and a solid, locking door.
The Inn's large common room is cheerful and usually smells of food and lye soap. The darker wood tones of its original décor can still be seen in the long oaken bar and round tables, but the walls are now covered by dark red tapestries embroidered in gold thread. Servers thread there way past the tables as they bring customers their orders. To the back is a large bath area and steam room where travelers can wash and steam the dirt of the road from their tired bodies. A small stage is tucked into the corner for entertainers, the bar and its tender lie directly opposite the doorway. A staircase leading to the rooms upstairs sits next to the doorway. Its mahogany banister has been painted white and gold cording threads around it in a spiral.
However, anywhere where the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol is, at least technically, possible, even if frowned upon, there is always the ever present potential for unconstrained jocularity and rampant mirth. Which is, in the capacity of the inflicting thereof, a hobby of the young man seated at the bar.
Though, to dissect the wording ‘young man seated at the bar’ could lead to some reinterpretation. ‘Man’ is a word some might limit to only the human, which this particular man is not. And ‘seated at the bar’ would normally implying sitting, and facing the bar, which again, this particular man is not.
Dez views, and has always viewed people in their capacity as a puzzle. Always feeling compelled to find the motives and secrets behind every man, he has made it his business to slowly chip away at these various mysteries. While some might think that getting the rich and generally well-to-do patrons of the Goose and Gander blind drunk and robbing them stupid might not be the correct manner of achieving this goal, with an explanation, some others might in fact brought around to Dez’s way of thinking. And Dez would certainly concede that robbing them did not give him any particular insight, but economy is a reality. And he had not been doing the robbing, as of yet. The previous few nights he had, in fact, been going into his own pocket to provide the intoxicating catalyst of his research. But he was running a little short, and money was money.
Though the results had been, indeed, been quite informative. He had assumed, perhaps naively, (though those with a personal connection would rather use the word mistakenly; naïve just didn’t seem willing to stick to the Adhiel) that the upper crust, a group he had little to do with till his recent excursion into the real world, would be less prone to drunken revelry, lecherousness, promiscuity, and general debauchery. But he was quickly finding that, after one pushed past the façade of manner and self-righteousness of the wealthy, they tended to sink rather spectacularly. To be completely frank, would be considered disgusting, and it was fascinating Dez.
Which is how he comes to be, yet again, sitting, facing away from the bar, taking in the room, waiting for nothing in particular but the whim to begin his investigation anew. Though numbers in the inn have not shrunk, they had seemed to refill; his audience was a completely new sample. With the expensive, expansive and to be blunt, gaudy taste all around him, he readies his performance.