Overview

Tucked between the leaning walls of two broken cathedrals, stands a crooked tavern with a jagged red sun painted on its doors. The paint peels like scabs. Above the lintel, scorched wood bears the name:

The Bleeding Horizon.

The Bleeding Horizon isn’t built so much as leaned together, with stone blocks scavenged from sunken temples and stained wood beams blackened by heatstorms. The ceiling sags in the middle. Faint soot-streaks creep across the walls like fossilized smoke.

A mural spans the back wall, barely visible behind layers of ash and grime: a red sun bleeding over a broken horizon, rays curling like grasping fingers. Beneath it, someone has scrawled in cracked charcoal:
“We drink where the gods cannot see.”

Inside, the tavern glows low, not from firelight, but from votive bottles: glass reliquaries filled with sun-oil and wickbone, each lit in memory of the dead. The bottles line the shelves behind the bar, and each one bears a name etched in salt. Most have no family left to remember them.

The barkeep, a woman with one arm and too many burn scars, wipes down the cracked stone counter with a rag blackened beyond rescue. She doesn’t smile when you enter — but she watches. Everyone here watches.

Notable NPCs

• Jorra, Barkeep and Owner
• Salahair, the blind minstrel

Points of Interest

The Penitent's Table

A common sight inside Bastion's, the Penitents table is a place of fear and silent respect, set aside for those poor souls who walk the razor's edge of ruin and radiance to fight back against the dying of the world. The Penitent's table is easy to pick out, surrounded by a scorched ash circle of bone-dust and bitter resin, an ancient ward against evil to contain the corruption that fester's in a penitent's soul.

Background

Formed shortly after Drath's End, the Bleeding Horizon was the first tavern established in the husk of the once holy city, as a resting place for penitents and settlers alike. The lineage of barkeeps can be traced back to the original group of penitent's who came to Drath's End, supposedly having been built by one of the surviving Penitent's from the climactic battle that saw the city freed from the nascent god that slumbered underneath it.

Today, the tavern is manned by Jorra, a former Penitent herself that found the power burned out of her after an unfortunate surge break.

Additional Details

Rumors

• A series of weathered stone columns that bleed crimson minerals during the night. Recently, locals sleeping nearby to harvest them report having vivid dreams of walking into raging fires while smiling, and awake to find burns but no signs that they moved during the night.
• A massive shrine of bronze and ivory that is slowly sinking into the landscape has garnered attention recently. Any who stand near the shrine at the peak of the sun claim to hear a chorus playing softly, but each hears their own song. Recently, all who travel near the Altar claim to hear the same song, a funeral dirge that chills to the bone.
• The Votive March has recently returned from their year long pilgrimage to re-light ancient braziers that mark a path across the desert. Ancient Scriptures say these braziers were meant to ward off aggression and prevent violence underneath them, and represent the safest path through the crucible itself. Upon returning, the members of the march tell tales that one of the braziers was still lit, but burns with a twisted green flame that seems to attract Lightburnt horrors towards it.
  • Jorra stated that there is a merchant seeking protection traveling to The Thousand Steps of Orun-Khad across The Votive March, if the penitents happen to be traveling that way and wish to earn extra coin.

Menu

Drinks

Food

Offerings