Dag Stiffpint

Dag Stiffpint owns The Foaming Head, the dockside tavern set into a cut of stone below the cliffs where the Crownhold harbour meets the dwarf quarter. He is a broad, heavy dwarf with one eye behind a patch and a great mineral-crusted beard left unpolished for years — the kind of dwarf who could still put a man through a wall if the evening called for it. The furniture has survived every fight it has seen, the ale is cheap and strong, and Dag himself is loud, blunt, and unbothered by anything short of structural damage. The name over the door is invented, and he knows exactly what it sounds like; point it out and he grins with his one good eye. He is best understood through his own words, and he is generous with them.

The second rule was added after the first. Dag has never felt the need for a third. Beneath this thin and deliberately permissive code, sailors, dockhands, dwarf craftsmen, mark-wearers, and Concordate guardsmen all drink under the same roof. Customers self-police because they value the space, and Dag commands enough respect to hold it that way.

Dag refuses to identify any of his drinkers to any other. What he hears, he keeps. What customers say plainly, he passes along just as plainly — that, he says, is why people come. He is no dealer in secrets, but he knows the docks: which crews are in, which faces are new, when the traffic shifts and when something is simply not normal. That kind of knowing costs a drink and the sense not to ask twice.

Orsday · 23rd of Octen, 412 Concordis

Two of the heroes came down to the Foaming Head at a guardsman's quiet steer — the ranger Darian and his hooded companion Alara. Dag gave them his rules and his ale in the same breath, and was as good as his word: the dead boarman Krojek was already known to him by name, for such news runs the docks faster than any rider. He would name no mark-wearer beneath his roof, yet did not pretend they kept away. Pressed for a thread to pull, he gave one — Karzhal Ashborn, an orc of the Ashlands who keeps company with the Wode folk and stands near the raiders without being of them — and promised to send word.