(using your best judgment, choose to overhear what you think your character would notice in the room.  It may be loud and a bit crowded, smokey and lit by oil lamps, but it's not terribly difficult to notice things if you're paying attention)<br/><br/>From along the wall near the musician, a dancer beats a barefoot solo across the wooden floor around him.  Scarves of white trail from her bare arms and her corset-clad torso, and she matches the tune's insistent optimism with her own vibrant intensity.  She strikes the dancing postures that some would recognize as native to the lands of the southeast desert by a few seasoned travelers, for few in this region have seen the nomadic tribes that have sometimes been said to travel this far into the deciduous lands of the north.<br/><br/>If she's one of those tribes, she might be a Phe'tzor, or a Rothki.  The rumors of these people are numerous, and range from tales of stolen children and livestock to rumors of demonic pacts, including that they can see the future, impart curses, etc.  The general notion, however, is that most of this... most... is sheer bunk.  Regardless, she's a hell of a dancer.<br/><br/>The manner of dress she wears is rather revealing, with an open stomach and arms and skirts slit high, a leather sheath beneath over her modesty.  Despite her ability and obvious beauty, she seems careful, to the trained eye, not to attempt to upstage the bard; it's his show, and she's participating.  That's the feeling, anyway... Azhouri is poised on arched, bare feet as she crosses the floor among the crowd, then returns along the wall nearest the fireplace, sending the firelight's warm flicker to a bursting of sparks and glow when she passes between.  She's stirring the crowd, working them, not letting them get settled to quiet contemplation and urging them instead to revel and clap.<br/><br/>Toward the far right corner in respect to the tavern door, there is a pocket of stocky men among the crowd of otherwise boisterous, but genial, common folk.  This small group seems to be reveling a bit more drunkenly than the rest.  The first, a bald-headed, tan-skinned bear of a man with a beard like a knotted rag from his chin, is shouting over the music to his cohorts-- a lean, but broad, one-eyed man whose leather and scale armor is adorned with leopard skin, and a leathery-faced white-beard who looks like he could eat a man half his age with a pitcher of hard cider.<br/><br/>Well, no one's being eaten yet, but there's plenty of the cider.  A tavern-woman of middle years scurries from their table when the bald one interrupts his diatribe to smack her ass, then launches back in.  "--and the Rothki would know, cause they know every fucking thing else.  They just keep it to themselves."  The leopard-wearer says something to him in a clipped, ragged tone common to the barbarians out west, "And so what if there's a road?  It's just stories.  Stories don't make men rich."<br/><br/>The bald one levels a thick finger at him, spitting as he roars.  "Oh, but that they do. The nomads won't let anyone know about that road because it's the road to..."  a crowd's laughter drowns him out to the casual listener.<br/><br/>The dancer whirls past Cael, the whirl of her step causing the steam to disappear in the rush of air.  She winks and moves on.<br/><br/>A tray-bearing tavern girl of late teen years skirts the crowd and passes the slender, soaked man entering.  "Hullo again, Mister Oz..." she adds a knowing wink to the memorable customer.  "Your usual spot at the bar's taken, but there's a few chairs over there--"  she tips her head and skates away, nearly crashing into Katarzyna's table in her distraction.<br/><br/>"Oh, I-- ah-- I beg your pardon--" and she hurries away with a renewed insistence that borders on terror.<br/><br/>A nodding, half-jigging old man lurches his way past the musician mirthfully, pausing to add a couple pieces of copper and a couple of glass beads to the clay pot that held his monetary earnings.  The urn was half-full... silver glinted in there among rose petals, beads, copper, steel arrowheads and even a few brass buttons.  This was a step-up from the rural towns, where tipping was lucky to earn you a handful of seed corn.<br/><br/>A pipe-smoking young woman hops onto the lap of a moderately-well-dressed man whose flat, velvet hat marks him as a trader.  She starts nuzzling his ear and reaching for his belt before the tavern-master, a stout, black-skinned man whose laugh is the only thing bigger than his shoulders, lifts her up like one snatching a kitten's scruff.  "AT!  None of that in my tavern, this is a decent place."  He plopped her soundly onto her feet and pointed toward the door.  "Go hook at Fortune's Fork, Winnie--"<br/><br/>"Ah, gods, I was only trying to CLOSE the DEAL!" she screeches back.  She hasn't spilled her pipe and puffs from it once.  Her hair's reddish-blond, and her freckles are apparent in the amber lamplight.  She looks more petulant than angry.  "Fine then, Mister--" She snags the tradesman's belt "--buy me a drink and I'll show you a trick..."<br/><br/>"Just be buyin' that drink at the Fork, Winnie."  He clucks his tongue.  He knows her, he feels sorry for her.  But he can't tolerate what she's become.  "Go."  He heads for the bar where his wife is pouring ale and filling a tray.