Port Cerise is a seedy waterfront town on Voritti island that draws sailors in with legal (but not really safe) prostitution and gambling. The town's legal affairs and tax collection is overseen by Baroness Sarsha, who has a castle on the island, across some hills from Fourhorns'. It's easy to turn a profit in the port, but the theft, drinking, and violence makes living there horrible. Voritti residents mostly live on the opposite side of the island, in Wuvi. This document is a brief description of the port's features and personalities.
Most meals are a combination of pickled onions and dried whole sardines, served on skewers or in hot pouches. The "junk food" is a dense pancake with a filling made of beet syrup and mashed beans. The more luxurious meals have "pressed goose", an oily waterfowl carcass crushed together in a screw press. Rats are pressed in some of the same devices, for the Troubadour Casino's poison roulette game.
Tobacco use is ubiquitous. The air inside taverns, offices, and candy shops is sooty and smelly from pipes, cigars, and roughly-rolled joints. Tools sold here frequently have a tobacco pipe integrated into them.
The booze most ordered by tourists is kirschwasser. Other popular drinks are "infused vodkas", which all taste like molten tin.
Port Cerise has four major waterfront casinos: The Goldeneye, The Fat Sack, The Troubadour, and The Filigree. The games autocrat, hog, blackjack, and roulette can be played at all of them. Each casino also has its own unique game.
The actual in-game game of autocrat involves chips, dice, and cards. Its specific structure varies from gaming group to gaming group.
Blackjack is represented with an opposed gambling check against a dealer NPC. The default gambling skill for a blackjack dealer is 55. So the GM rolls d100+55 vs a player's d100+(character's gambling skill). If the player wins, they earn twice what they betted. A winning blackjack player may "let it ride" for "double or nothing" the next round. Also, the GM may swap out dealers, for ones of higher or lower skill.
Players bet on a GM's d100 roll. They can bet "even" or "odd" for a 2:1 payout. They can also bet on a specific number (100:1) or quartile (4:1).
The Goldeneye (named after the waterfowl) is a somewhat tidy venue that holds The Pain Arena, a cagefight ring that hosts up to three fights a night. Most matches are one-on-one grappling exhibitions with several barred holds. Illegal moves include "the backbreaker", rabbit punches, and the gnome titan "groin stomp". There are also occasional matches featuring "hobgoblin pain sticks", which are clubs. The Goldeneye profits from bets on the fights; odds are based on the fighters' records.
Player characters can participate in fights via arrangement with ringleader Hussup. Illegal moves result in a dock to the prize purse and a hit to the character's honor.
Player characters can also bet on NPC vs NPC fights. The NPC fighters can be controlled by player characters so there is more going on.
The Goldeneye is owned by a large mercenary organization The Unflinching Brigade. The brigade sees money as its own end, and commands considerable wealth and tactical knowhow. They have not moved against deserting farmers who've become bandits. They have done nothing to reclaim the road west of Ramu. They have taken no action against foreign slavers or violent mercantile tycoons. They likely have these kinds of people as clients.
A cramped card-playing hall where gamblers play a game with a hanafuda deck called "The Water Schemers". Matches are monitored by undercover plants and pit-bosses. Each round lasts 20 (in-game) minutes.
To know the result of a round of Water Schemers, roll d12 for the character's final named-combination ("yaku"), and d100p + (gambling skill - 55) for the winnings in tc.
| Die Roll | Hand |
| 01 | Three Forest Gentlemen |
| 02 | The Lost Frog Poet |
| 03 | Cat Drinking the River |
| 04 | Weeds |
| 05 | Feast of Wild Garlic |
| 06 | Nighttime Sun |
| 07 | Dwarf's Hens |
| 08 | Lightning's Island |
| 09 | Five Fabled Animals |
| 10 | Heron's Swamp |
| 11 | Pickling Leaves |
| 12 | Festival of Rotund Sages |
The Fat Sack is run by a rotund Reanaarian named Biavoo who comes from Nissen. Biavoo is a worshipper of the Riftmaster, though has no spellcasting ability and holds no church rank.
The Troubadour is tiled with polished blue stone, decorated with statues of winged snails and huge vases of strong-scented flowers.
The center of the gambling floor is a stage with a giant wooden wheel, which is split into caged compartments. Each compartment holds a flask of poison, which is dispensed at random after a spin of the wheel. The poisons are made of pressed rats.
The Troubadour hosts a "poison roulette" game on Saturday ("godday") nights, where two paid participants spin the wheel, drink a poison, and stay on the stage for up to an hour. The casino takes bets on whether both will get ill, neither will get ill, one will get ill, or if a specific participant gets ill. Poison-roulette players are paid 1GP and given a week of room and board.
The random poison has a virulence factor of d10p, and its effect is rolled on the chart in the GMG p291, with a small modification: the "death in minutes" result is replaced with a wererat-lycanthropy infection.
The Troubadour is owned by Yaggrik, a master ratcatcher who discovered poisonous rat squeezings when trying new ways to dispose of rats.
The Filigree has a racetrack pitted out of its center. Each day, there is a race between 8 rat-sized spiders. Patrons can bet on the races at a reinforced booth.
The GM decides which spiders are lively and which are languid. Characters who pass a monster lore, forestry, or spider husbandry roll may know which is which.
To represent the performance of the spiders, the GM rolls d8p for each lively spider and d8 for each languid spiders. The spider who rolls highest is first.
Characters who bet on the winning spider win 7x their money back.
The Filigree was built by the elf Quilmak, who caught and trained the first spiders. Quilmak eventually disappeared after selling the casino to a local brewer named Shrokker.
There are four mansion-like inns that accomodate half the travellers passing through Port Cerise. They are basically hotels but have extra rooms that guests wander through. All four large inns have a spiral staircase, an oversized harp somewhere, and a flower garden. They all have live-in servants and administrative staff, and each of mansion-inn gets its servants from a different sort of source.
Besides guest rooms, servant rooms, and offices, the hotels have these rooms:
| Taproom |
| Parlor |
| Water closet |
| Stateroom |
| Library |
| Solarium |
| Ballroom |
| Dining room |
| Drawing room |
| Kitchen |
Below is a table of npcs the characters may randomly find in any given mansion room. Foreigners have a 12-in-20 chance of speaking Fhokki. Any of these may be disguises or illusions.
| Staff | |
| 01 | Ratcatcher |
| 02 | Factotum |
| 03 | Owner's nephew |
| 04 | Roofer |
| 05 | 1d6 porters |
| 06 | Maid |
| 07 | Chamberlain |
| 08 | Stablehand |
| 09 | Butler |
| 10 | Cook |
| Guests | |
| 11 | Old guest |
| 12 | Manservant |
| 13 | 2d4 gnomes |
| 14 | Gladiator |
| 15 | Unassuming stealthy person |
| 16 | Gardener |
| 17 | Dwarf |
| 18 | Lost drunk |
| 19 | Calculating drunk |
| 20 | Berserker-priest |
| 21 | Hated peddler |
| 22 | Seasoned sailor |
| 23 | Pixie-fairy |
| 24 | Green sailor |
| 25 | Sagacity-priest |
| 26 | Elf |
| 27 | Half-orc |
| 28 | Entitled guest |
| 29 | Linen merchant |
| 30 | Hobgoblin |
Next to a thicket. Servants are old borderline-invalid people and their grandkids.
The Burnsnags, a clan of warrior-nobles whose castle was converted to Fort Blaze, were granted this mansion on Voritti for their loyalty. The family rarely visits, and trusts their townhouse affairs to the chamberlain Lamring.
Has an immense abandoned basement. Servants are gambling debtors.
Gimbal Mansion is owned by the Lochloess clan. They are a family famous for, historically, staffing crab boats with slaves.
Off on an outer island accessible by boat only. Servants are wounded or off-season seal hunters / whalers.
Seafoam is run by distantly-related families who have been hunting in the Voritti region since before there were Fhokki around.
In the middle of town and not that big. Servants are hired by the season and don't live in the building.
Flagstone is the lived-in home of a Dejy stoneworker family called The Angelic Mirrors. The house is run by Kath and Yennar, who have 14 grandchildren.
The Electrum Emporium will loan money at 8% yearly interest, and will keep a valuable, low-maintenance item for collateral in case of defaults. They sell defaulted collateral on a shop floor to the general public. Nearly all items for sale are worth over 20sp.
The Emporium was opened by retired whalers Mugi, Vokknor, Skodi, and Rosh. Decades ago, their captain was struck down by a Tetzelwyrm and they had to become shopkeepers.
The only sanctioned moneychanger on the island. A squat stone building inside a miniature barbican, locked after hours by portcullis.
Fhokki currency can be bought by foreign currency for a 5% fee. Foreign currencies can be bought for a 10% fee.
The head clerk is Dazo, a mulish old man with a weakness for pies and candy. Dazo retains bodyguards and a personal carriage driver named Igok.
The Golden Alliance, and various thieves, will sometimes establish an illegal moneychanging office, then disappear.
Has a second taproom.
The pearl is owned by a Fhokki grandmother named Ranarkk. She talks a lot and doesn't keep any secrets.
Has weed. Has the cannabis marijuana doobie devil's bong drug.
The pub is run by a slight Kalamaran man named Narm. When sober he has deep fears of committing faux pas, and also hypervigilantly checks for danger in casual situations.
Has cage-dancing strippers.
The cellar's owner is a Fhokki woman named Sothie. She is confident in her decisions, though she rarely makes good ones.
Has darts.
The proprietor is a Draskan dwarf named Dakt. His dismissal of the importance of non-Draskan cultures regularly costs him patrons.
Sells liquor in red clay jugs.
The Tout is run by Rokas, a middle-aged, gluttonous Fhokki.
Sells liquor in dried gourds.
The shopkeeper is a Fhokki woman named Dhabra. She is a dweeb who thinks she is much funnier than she is.
Sells dried tobacco, flavored tobacco, rolling papers, and pipes made of wood and clay.
The clerk in charge is a young Fhokki man named Othdak. He leaves a lot of half-unpacked crates around the place, and is generally a shirker.