Crossroads Hills Inn & Tavern - NO CC

“You all meet in a tavern, go ahead and introduce your characters!”

OK, that’s about the most clichéd opening possible, but a roadside tavern as the starting point for an adventure is a classic for a reason, and I’ve wanted to make that kind of setting possible for your medieval Sims for a while now too! While there’s plenty of crossroads throughout the world and plenty of them have inns or taverns nearby, I imagine this one being at the junction of two major trade routes, so merchants and caravans and columns of soldiers marching north to Stormwall and Highwinter or south towards the Redstone Gate and the Adev could easily cross paths with those heading west towards the kingdoms of Westfall or east towards the Iron Circle or the Forest.

While it may not be luxurious by modern standards, for your road-weary medieval wayfarers, this inn offers all the comforts one could really hope to find, with a tavern serving plenty of meals beyond just traveler’s stew, plenty of wine and ale for those with a bit more coin, a bathhouse for shedding the layers of dust and grime that build up after days on the road, and plenty of rooms with a comfortable bed for the night (well, more comfortable than a bedroll on the ground outdoors, at least)!

I did quite a bit of testing with this lot in the course of getting all the screenshots you see with Sims going about their lives in this inn, and I think all the routing and gameplay issues I’d encountered have been corrected (if not, please let me know). All of that work was done on a clone, so the lot as uploaded has never been occupied and should be clean of any unwanted Sim references. No CC is included or required either, so as long as you’ve got all the EPs and SPs or have the UC you should be able to put this lot directly into your game and start sending your medieval peasants and gentry to the local tavern for their evening’s tankard of ale!

At 5x4 and $395,694 this isn’t by any stretch the largest lot I’ve posted, but it is still fairly good sized, and so you may see a bit slower gameplay if you’re not running a machine that can process large lots well. It shouldn’t be too taxing though, so hopefully it can be a pleasant addition to your medieval neighborhoods! And with that I think I’ve covered all the necessary technical information, so you can just go right into playing if you want, or you can read on for another worldbuilding vignette set on the edges of the kingdoms of Westfall!



The bard played his final chord with a dramatic flourish and most of the nearby patrons who’d gathered around him applauded- some enthusiastically tossing copper coins in his direction, some disinterested but polite, and more than a few obviously drunkenly. It was late enough into the evening that the inn’s tavern was full- fuller than usual in fact, since in addition to the typical local crowd of farmers and farriers who were just there for a warm meal and a pint or two of ale, two trading caravans had stopped in the Crossroads Hills for a few days, each heading in opposite directions up and down the great road. The caravan leaders needed a stop to rest their draft animals and a crossroads inn was always good for some local trade as well. A Prelate and his small group of retainers had come north from the Iron Circle to collect taxes from the local hamlets and had also stopped for the night, buying out most of the inn’s beds and making up more than their fair share of the drunken patrons around the fire that evening.

Doing her best to ignore the men at the upstairs great table who thought a retainer’s torc from the Iron Circle made them practically the equal of a Westfall King, Ishilde collected empty tankards and cups from the tables and the great wooden bar behind the fireplace and headed out down the stone steps to the inn’s basement kitchen. Tasker, the old cook glanced around the massive hearth when she entered and just as quickly disappeared, returning to his work. “When you’re heading back up, be sure to take as many bottles of the Vedren Red as you can carry- the Prelate’s already complained twice about just having ale and maybe it’ll shut him up,” he called out. Ishilde rolled her eyes, but still, once she’d left the cups with the scullion she filled a crate with a half-dozen dusty glass bottles and brought them back upstairs to the barkeeper.



The crowd surrounding the bard had apparently convinced him to sing again, and though the general noise she heard the comic refrain of “Mountain Truffles and Tea.” A few of the patrons who’d lived further north towards Stormwall at one point had even drunkenly joined in, much to the dismay of their neighbors, but the caravan that had just come across the mountains all the way from Highwinter was clearly enjoying the sounds of home for a little while, and a few of the solitary guests at the bar or in the quieter corners of the tavern were clearly tapping their feet along with the melody too. Ishilde wished she could stay and listen for a while too- she was always fonder of comic songs like this than the epic ballads that nobles usually demanded. To her disappointment though, as soon as she’d laid out the new bottles from downstairs, one of the caravaneers tugged at her sleeve and asked her to draw water for their draft horses before it got any later.

Ishilde shut the back door of the inn behind her and the noise of the tavern quickly was muffled- she could still hear the din of a crowded bar, but the song and the details of any one conversation were hidden. Stepping down the stone steps to the massive well in the courtyard, she saw a few patrons lingering outside the doors of the inn’s common room- usually a quieter gathering place for those that didn’t want to deal with the chaos of the tavern on a busy night. Several were seeing to their own animals or mending clothes or gear that had been damaged, and a few Adevi were gathered under a tree smoking together and playing some sort of game, and a local urchin had, as usual, made a nest in the haystack in the barn for the night, and Ishilde seldom felt bothered to chase them off, especially now that the temperatures were dropping. Somewhere off in the far distance she could hear a wolf pack singing to each other, making a few of the animals nervous, but Ishilde knew it was rare for the wolves to come this close to the road, since between trading caravans, soldiers from Westfall or the Iron Circle, or just large groups of travelers, deer and elk and any animals much larger than a rabbit tended to either end up in the cooking pot before any wolf had a chance at them.



After she’d seen to the animals picketed in the courtyard while their owners were busy drinking away their profits inside, Ishilde headed under the main gate around to the stables that lined the front of the inn. As she rounded the corner, she began to hear raised voices and saw Kedin running from his post at the fence towards the front door. As soon as she was able to see the front gate it was obvious what was going on- two of the retainers that had been traveling with the Prelate were shouting at an older farmer, whose son lay sprawled in the mud between them. Kedin and one of the caravan merchants were holding the farmer back by his arms and it was clear that if not for them, he’d have launched himself at the officials, clearly out for blood.

Ishilde recognized the farmer’s son- she didn’t know him well, but she knew he’d complained loudly on many a night about the Iron Circle’s claim of tax rights over the local farms and argued that they needed to rise up the next time a Prelate came through to collect. Her best guess was that the Prelate's soldiers had said something that pushed the youth over the line and he’d attacked them, and that even if they were drunk, the retainers were trained soldiers, and the boy was, well, a boy. And a farmer, not a trained fighter. Really, she thought, he was lucky to have escaped with his life.



A few other merchants came outside and gathered up the farmer and his son, taking them across the road to their wagon to bandage the wounds they both had earned, and the retainers shouted a few threats after them, but fairly quickly returned to the tavern, clearly not wanting to miss the opportunity for a few more mugs of ale before the night was over. Kedin returned to the fence gate, though this late in the evening it wasn’t likely that any more travelers would be coming by looking for a bed for the night. After she was sure the fight was over for the time being, Ishilde headed back inside the inn and up the stairs.

By now many of the Iron Circle men at the table upstairs were so drunk that they were slumped in their chairs. Many years’ experience with drunken tavern guests made her suspect that several of them wouldn’t actually wake until the morning’s light was blazing through the inn’s windows, but seeing that a few of the others were nearly done with their evening’s drinking, Ishilde hurried down the hallway to make sure the rooms were in a fit state for the evening. She silently whispered a prayer of thanks to the Nine that she didn’t have to handle the Prelate himself, he had squires to see to that in the most luxurious rooms there above the tavern, but his retainers were spread throughout the rest of the inn, and after a tense evening she didn’t want to give any of them an excuse to cause any more trouble.

A fortnight ago Ishilde had overheard Tasker talking to one of the inn’s stablehands about how the only reason there was any kind of peace between Westfall and the Iron Circle was that the famine was still recent enough that these lands couldn’t support an army of any real size. Before the Prelate had turned up though, she knew some of the local farmers had been celebrating another good harvest this year, and now she wondered if that blessing was actually just going to bring the tramping boots and sharpened spears of the Iron Circle back into the Crossroads Hills before long...