Fount of all knowledge

Buy a man a pint and he'll drink your health. Buy pints in a bar often enough and you become that creature beloved of all barkeepers: the regular. To become a regular in the Wounded Gryphon you'll have to earn the trust of Jacques Noir ("Blackjack") and then he'll tell you all the gossip you need, he might even tell you what he really thinks. More likely, though, he'll tell you what you want to hear or what he thinks Baron de Corbin wants to hear. Now, it's your round.

The Baron? Big admirer of Baron Gilbert, me. Not actually ever met him, o’ course but his taxes don’t leave us starving, he doesn’t ‘invite’ our wives and daughters to keep him warm at nights, and his seneschal and soldiers keep the King’s Highway and the towns free of anything major that creeps out of the wilderness. Must have been here twenty winters by my reckoning, round about the harvest time when my eldest was born. I heard he upset the wrong person at court, lost all his holdings but this one and has been exiled here ever since. A proper Marcher now like the rest of us. Mind you, I wouldn’t cross him – might end up having to ‘explain things’ to his nephew, Sir Reynaud, the seneschal. He’s as hard and cold as iron, that one. Maybe you have to become a bit of a monster to be so successful at crushing them?