Shady Rest Inn



Shady Rest Inn (or simply Shady Rest) was a human-built inn near the border between Dustwallow Marsh and the Southern Barrens.

History
Some time ago it was mysteriously burned to the ground. Paval Reethe as well as possibly Lieutenant Caldwell were implicated by investigating agents, but both were killed before they could reveal the truth of who was behind the attack. James Hyal ran the inn at the time of the attack and his wife and child were killed in the blaze. Since then, James has been traumatized by the incident.

Adventurers would later learn the truth behind the burning of the Shady Rest Inn by completing a quest chain, learning that it was the Grimtotem tauren who were responsible for burning down the building.

In the RPG
This inn, located in the town of the same name, is a welcome sight for weary travelers taking the Gold Road. Though no shade can be found here, a day's travel south of Ashenvale, the inn is built next to a deep natural well and is popular for its soft beds, warm meals, cold drinks (including the famous Shady Rest ale), and standing garrison that protects against centaur and quilboar raids. Most visitors, however, do not know that the standing garrison is secretly Quarvel's Raiders, bandits who attack Horde caravans travelling on the Gold Road.

Minstrels have immortalized the Shady Rest's proprietor in the chorus of a ballad:

"He'll bring you mead, he'll bring you beer; A grinning face from ear to ear; He's served us all from year to year; We call him Smiling Jim."

In the years since the inn's construction, a small village of the same name has grown up around it. The wizard Brymidaine Zecker once resided in the inn before he vanished one day. The innkeeper sort through his belongings in search of clues to his whereabouts discovering in the process that Zecker was not a wizard at all.

Notes and trivia

 * In the RPG, Shady Rest and Shady Rest Inn are said to be one day's travel south of Ashenvale. It also is on a shore with its own harbor. In World of Warcraft, the ruins of the inn are located at the border of the Barrens and Dustwallow Marsh with no shore in sight.
 * It seems it was once thought by Blizzard that the inn would have been burned down by the centaur instead, as said in The Centaur Hoofprints.