The Tale of Captain Longbottom
I was a mere youth — my knees still knocking at the sight of a breaking swell — when I first heard tell of the woman they call Captain Temperance Longbottom. It’s a name that tastes of salt and iron — a name for a mariner who feared neither the gale nor the gallows.
She commanded a tall ship of no small renown, the Avallana, a vessel that seemed to take wing upon the whitecaps. Legend has it that while plying the foam in uncharted waters, she stumbled upon a pirate's lair — a secret cavernous hole at the world’s edge, stuffed to the gunwales with the spoils of myth and fairytale. There were statues of forgotten kings, arcane paraphernalia that would make a scholar’s head spin, and gold enough to sink a galleon.
Now, a common rogue would have kept the lot and died rich and miserable. But Longbottom was of a different cast. She set her course to return these ill-gotten gains to tNorth Starheir rightful homes across the map. She was a soul possessed by a singular, restless purpose, and she sailed until the Avallana became a ghost upon the sea.
She never returned from those final voyages. All that remains of her wanderings is her ramshackle property, known now as the North Star Suite at the Hazelnut Inn. If you step within, you’ll find yourself in the very Captain’s quarters where she once charted her course by the stars. The room is filled with reminders of her travels — strange curiosities that she, in her haste or her wisdom, left behind.
It is a place for those who hear the calling of the tide, where you may sleep under a glowing ceiling that mirrors the heavens and imagine the Captain still out there, chasing the horizon.
The North Star — and your own great adventure — are waiting for you.