The Mare Inebrium Starter Kit

3841 AD. In City of Lights, Planet Bethdish, near the Spaceport. This link shows a large-scale scan of one of my old maps. Its very brown and old-looking- kind of neat in a rustic sort of way, but not a bad rendition of the city map.

The Bar's Location:

My other Mare stories have been in local years 6737 [3750 AD] -- 6828 [3841 AD]. I have set the date for offical first contact with the Terran Federation to coincide with our calendar on Earth in the year 3140, so as to give us time to invent an FTL drive. I have used the arbitrary date of 3140 AD = 6127 for first contact between Earth and Bethdish, but this was for reasons of sentiment and is not set in stone. In one story, Max mentions that the Mare had been open for 200 years at that point. So the Mare dating is flexible. Drastic dating differences can be assumed that the narrator is living on an alternate timeline where events proceeded at a different pace than our own timeline.

Over 11,000 years of history of the planet Bethdish. This link gives my basic timeline for the whole planet. Each entry is either a story idea or historical reference for a story. There are no links to the stories from the timeline, but there are spoilers, so beware.

• Altiplaino Spaceport construction begun = Year 1 [2986 BC]
• Attack of the Scourge = 1840 [1147 BC]
• Night the Stars Changed = 6055 [3068 AD] The Reever also braves the Caalar Jungle to enter Castle of the Winds later this same year.
• "Abducted!" = 6080 [3093 AD] -- Section on Earth takes place circa 1979 AD, time travel is implied. Section on Bethdish is not dated but seems from context to be shortly before contact with the Terran Federation.}
• First contact with the Terran Federation = 6127 [3140 AD]... Some reports list this as 2029 AD or 2342 AD. Some chroniclers may be living on other timelines, it is suspected.
• City of Lights Spaceport opens = 6129 [3142 AD]
• 6695 [3708 AD] .............Construction begins on the Mare Inebrium Tower. Clark Savage Jr. (MD, PHD, OBE, OOO) is a silent partner in the design and construction of the Mare Tower. He duplicates his New York Headquarters on the Mare's 86^th floor. The Collector is also a silent partner in the design and construction.

• 6698 [3711 AD] .............The Mare Inebrium opens for business.

• 6735 [3748 AD] .............Max begins working at the Mare Inebrium. He is slightly over 2 million years old at this time.

• 6799 [3812 AD] .............Blanche born on the planet Hardcase, 1.438 ES Gravity.

• 6800 [3813 AD] .............Trixie is born on Earth at this time.

• 6822 [3835 AD] ............. Trixie is hired at the Mare Inebrium. Blanche is hired at the Mare Inebrium half a year later.

• 6822 [3835 AD] ............."The Mare Inebrium" ** Spaceport Bar encounter wherein a D'rrish gives a history lesson and a nervous time-traveler flees.

  
  The D'rrish telling stories:
  

  A) Kazsh-ak meets the Reever & Guiles Thornby. 6740 [3753 AD]
  
  B) Kazsh-ak fights at the Battle of Urky Pass. 6820 [3833 AD]
  
  C) Kazsh-ak takes a wife and then goes offworld to fight the K'tchomblies.
  
  D) Kazsh-ak defends the T'chmarron River Bridge and the small town of Neulat, alone against the nomadic Valwoulf Raiders of the Plain of Intile.
  
  F) Kazsh-ak defeats the asteroid pirates.
  
  G) Kazsh-ak fights the Ohmany Horseriders when they attempt to invade the Kingdom of Eana- and learns that Eana has a far more potent guardian than he.
  
  H) Kazsh-ak breaks the Seige of the offworld D'rrish colony of R'lynath in a single-D'rrish fightercraft, leading to the Rescue of R'lynath Colony. The alien Nye-koll-tuurn-aye invader's blockade fleet is repulsed after several fierce space battles. Their ground forces linger in hiding on the planet for many years before the last are captured and deported to their homeworld.
  
  I) Kazsh-ak saves his cousin, the D'rrish Princess J'harrana, from offworld kidnappers.
  
  J) Kazsh-ak defeats the Overlord of Naatung in single combat, freeing the slaves of planet Naatung.
  
  
  No dating on many of Kazsh-ak's stories are ready for this update.
  
  
  

• 6823 [3836 AD]] .............The Absent-minded Shall Inherit..." ** The Mare Inebrium recieves a mysterious addition to their "Lost & Found" when an absent-minded inventor forgets one of his devices as he leaves.

• 6824 [3837 AD] .............Sins of the Fathers ** Max is revealed as an undercover agent- Very undercover! {also contains the first foreshadowing of the events of Immortality Factor} Andrew is 70 years old at this time, but appears to be 40. He lives another 150 years. Max is Andrew's great grandfather, but neither of them know this.

• 6825 [3838 AD] ............. Larrye (age 23?) is hired at the Mare Inebrium.

• 6825 [3838 AD] .............Frightening Little Planet ** The Mare sections of this story take place in this year. Some type of time travel is implied by the sections on Earth.

• 6825 [3838 AD] ............. Sidestep ** John Stewart Sebastian initiates the rescue of the Linda Rae and later helps the lost shuttle crew escape back through the wormhole into their own time.

• 6825 [3838 AD] .............Brother, Can You Spare A Crime? ** Later that same year, the Reever is called in to solve the crime when a body just keeps turning up at the Mare.

• 6826 [3839 AD] .............A Study in Alizarin Crimson ** Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson assist the Collector in stopping an alien criminal from plundering London's museums of their own era, 1923 AD. They are almost 2000 years into their future, but Guiles Thornby tells them that they are only 420 years ahead of their time. It is unknown why he does this. Perhaps he is simply confused, or perhaps he is conforming to some unknown orders from the Collector. Holmes & Watson are later returned to their correct time.

• 6827 [3840 AD] ............. Trixie takes four months maternity leave. She gives birth to a boy, whom she names Siger Vernet.

• 6827 [3840 AD] .............Came the Dawn ** The Shebeja awake from Sleepfreeze. The Black Snake attacks them using terrorists, pirates, and stolen tugs from the system's asteroid belt. {Max says that the date is "about a month and a half from being 6828"}

• 6828 [3841 AD] .............Redshift Sue Sings the Blues ** Time seems to stand still while Redshift Sue sings her long-lost husband's song.

• 6830 [3843 AD] .............Immortality Factor ** A rich old man has several Immortals kidnapped and dissected to try and find out how to live forever. The old man is confined to a wheelchair-like life support system. He has the required great wealth, political connections, and ruthless mercenaries to possibly get away with it. However, when the Reever becomes one of the missing, the Collector gets involved and starts a search for him.

• 6974 [3987 AD] ............. Andrew Huntington-Smythe dies, leaving behind 22 children and 85 grandchildren.

The Mare consists of several rooms on the main floor, as well as an indeterminate number of floors above the bar itself. So far, 5 floors and 2 basements have been mentioned. The main room is 100 x 100 feet, specialty rooms with different themes adjoin the main room along the east and west walls. Each speciality room has its own particular theme, I.E.; the Mars room has walls painted with scenes from Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom books, the Known Space Room is decorated with starscapes derived from Larry Niven's fiction (paintings of Black holes, Neutron stars, the Ringworld, etc.), the Game Room has gaming equipment from every major sci-fi series that you can think of... You get the idea. There are 10 specialty rooms on the main floor, five on both the E. and W. walls, averaging 20 x 40 feet. Others will have to be located on an upper floor. Each has its own bar, bartender, and waiter(esses) of various species. Be creative.

...include the ones mentioned above as well as;

The Boardroom... -- Business Theme, with lots of Executive types as patrons.

 Arabian Nights Room... -- You figure out what this one looks like.

The Red Dog Saloon -- Military Room... The seedy Space Ranger/Starship Trooper section.

Frontier Room... -- Done up like a western (for those fans of cross-genre space-opera.)

The Morgue... -- Even the undead need a place to drink.

The Small Ballroom... -- For music, dancing, and whatnot.

The Pantheon -- Deities Room... Reserved for Gods, Goddesses... and Writers. The only bartender named in this room so far is Elvis.

Piper's -- the Gentleman's Club... Done up in the style of a British club in it's prime. Hardwoods, wainscoating, massive bookshelves, etc. The only staff member named in this room so far is the waiter, Henry, a tall fellow with blue skin. The staff in this room dress like butlers.

And so forth. I will add others as I feel the need to invent them, but feel free to invent your own so that you can use your own Bartender, Wait-staff, and patrons. All are reached through short hallways so that various restrooms and small hazardous environment chambers can be spaced between the doorways leading from the main room.

Street entrance is in the middle of the North wall. There are 3 steps down from the doorway to the floor. There is an anteroom and hat/spacesuit check sort of cloakroom, but I doubt that they will ever be used and can safely be ignored. Booths line the interior of the room in an inverted version of this ASCII art:  ][__  __][ with the front door being in the gap of the underline and the main bar running between the inward facing brackets. Remember, the ASCII art is upside down 'cause that's the easiest way to draw it with typewriter keys.

The walls are paneled in a dark hardwood or a silvery-grey mother-of-pearl, there are mirrors alternating with paintings of various sci-fi themes on all the walls. (these mirrors do not always reflect what you would expect them to, they can also function as windows into different sci-fi/fantasy scenes so that patrons sometimes see themselves drinking with Tolkein's Dwarves, Star Trek's 10 Forward happy-hour crowd, or the customers in one of the specialty rooms.

The Bar itself is +/- 75 feet long, 3' wide, and normal bar height. The bar stools can move (within a narrow range) to accommodate different species, as well as change height for them. They cannot be pulled loose from the floor, however.  In the floor area surrounded by booths there are tables, some of which have no legs and simply float in place. Chairs adjust to a wide range of species.

The Bartender in the Main room is named Max. He's human in appearance, very average-looking, short, dark hair, no glasses or mustache, likes to dress in medium brown colors, wears a white-ish colored apron. Very friendly sort of fellow. Little known to most patrons, Max is a native of Bethdish, an Immortal, and about two million years old. Almost no one at the Mare suspects or comments upon Max's origin, although it is a matter of public record that he's been tending bar there for two hundred years. No one seems to notice. Females of most humanoid species find him very attractive and his relationship with Trixie is unusally open. (Max is very loosely based on an almalgam of myself and three of my closest friends, although my mental image of him looks more like a 30-something Mel Gibson. I on the other hand, look more like Lewis Grizzard.)

The two main Waitresses are Max's girlfriend Trixie, a tall, slim long-legged dish with long, light-brown hair and short skirts. Trixie looks like an elf-queen; about 5'10", blue-eyed, small breasted, wide-hipped, quick-witted. Although born on Earth, she can trace a large part of her ancestry back to the Irish Sidhe. She speaks alien languages without need of a translator, she just hears an alien language and within minutes can speak it fluently. She also carries a needle-slim dagger strapped to her left-inner thigh, underneath her miniskirt. If she pulls the dagger, you better behave... or be prepared to lose a body-part! She can't be ruffled by much, she's seen it all. She is also a great cook. The patrons love her. Her voice has been compared with that of Kathleen Turner.

Her partner, Blanche, is about 5'2", heavy-set, earth-mother/fertility goddess type. Her figure could best be described as "ample" or "Rubenesque", but part of that is because she is from a heavy gravity planet called Hardcase. She dresses in long skirts, has short, curly black hair, and looks like a giggling cherub who could tear linebackers in half and fling the pieces over her shoulders without breaking stride or losing her grin. Blanche wears vaguely gipsy-looking dresses, no jewelry to speak of, and carries herself like an Empress. She is a gourmet cook, has blue-green eyes that could melt icicles, and seldom can be made to lose her temper. If Blanche ever needed a weapon, I've never seen it. (Both girls are loosely based on women that I have lived with; Trixie, on a former girlfriend; and Blanche, on her roommate. Both are girls you'd like to take home to meet Mother... after you've locked Dad in the basement! Goddesses, both of them!)

1. Some Disenchanted Evening
2. Of Mace and Mien
3. If This Rolls On...
4. Dieing, What Comes Naturally
5. This Guy's the Limit
6. Encounter at Some Point
7. Rewrite Reduxe
8. In A Little Bethdish Town ('Twas On A Night Like This...)
9. Garbage In, Garbage Out
10. The Natural Way to Drink
11. There's Safety in Bumblers
12. Leap of Faith
13. Magic is Loose
14. The Man from B.A.D.
15. Nosferatu on my Mind
16. Will it Go 'Round in Circles?
17. Make Sure You're in the Restroom for Your Species
18. Murphy's Bar and Girl
19. Baskin's Robots: Something for Everyone
20. The Black Mirror
21. Burning Airlines Give You So Much More
22. Taxi Flyer
23. "You guys put wax in your ears- and then tie me up..." said Odysseus.
24. Enter the Dragon
25. The Haunted Library
26. The Wild Brunch
27. Master(s) of Disaster
28. Lessons of History
29. Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know
30. The Statement of Randolph Eleven
31. The Darkness and the Dawn
32. A Farce of a Different Color
33. Smoke and Mirrors

The Current Canon: