It'd been here since the Fourth Age of Velessos, everyone knew, standing proudly in the ramshackle streets of Chainston Draw for as long as there'd been men with throats that needed wetting. The Red Bull Saloon: An occasional inn, sometimes whorehouse, but always, always, a house of vice.

The entrance swings open before me, the comforting weight of Dwarven steel on my hip as a hand brushes the peeling paint of the half-height doors, and the cacophony blooms into life. A player piano in the corner plinks out its jaunty tune, and a bustle of elven maidens (well... maiden might not be strictly an appropriate term) sashay by with peacock-tail dresses and painted lips promising pleasures that can be had for a silver coin and a kind word. Other pleasures, probably more fun, that can be had with just the silver coin, but I digress. Probably unseemly for a sheriff to be lookin' at the whores.

In the old days, there'd been dwarves in the mountains, ferrying gold out from the deep places of the earth, and elves gracefully alighting in the trees, with roaming bands of orcs marauding along the byways of the old king's roads. The halvlings in their little homes dotting the hillside, even.

But to my eyes, those days are dead in the dust as the sun draws higher overhead, boardwalks clattering their bustle to a halt as the sweat cools at the small of my back. Dead, just like the unfortunate rustler outside already drawing in the buzzards.

The dust outside billows outside the window, but the whiskey's inside, warm and wet, and by the time my legs sling their way over the stool, I can already see the surly eyes of the bouncer, tusked lips quirking up in a grin, giving me a nod as she turns her moss-colored head to regard a group of men in fine clothes and finer ways to cheat at card. Hillstrike's always been decent with me, even when her favorite lawman's gotten an idea or two after a hard morning of heavy drinking.

There's Madam Greenfields, on her box behind the bar, slinging glasses of brandy to her patrons. Half my height and twice my grit, even despite her nervous look at seeing the sheriff inside her establishment.

Doesn't matter much to me; I've been inside a lot of things within her establishment and couldn't give a damn. My thoughts are wandering that way already... That's the beauty of Chainston Draw; with its nice little nestle in between everything, you get a good mix of people to fight, fuck, or both. Such as I'd done before I'd pinned on the badge, and such as I've done after. Such as I'll likely do tonight, really.

"What'll it be?" the madam calls, as my eyes dance across a troupe of surly-looking dwarves from the silver mine up the river a way, up in the canyons. Troublemakers, they look like, but more the brawlin' kind than the shooting sort.

What will it be, I muse, fingertips ghosting across the edge of the tin seven-pointed star pinned to the wyvern-leather of my coat. An unfortunate breakout of the usual violence in this very bordello? A ranching dispute gone sour? Maybe any moment, the bank next door will erupt in a chorus of six-shooters or the snarling crack of witchfire, and it'll be time to earn my pay.

"A whiskey for now," I grin, drinking in the sight of sin before me. Whores and bankers, gunslingers and cattlemen, seamstresses and silver miners. What a world we live in. It gets the blood pumping and the eyes wandering, even for one sworn to uphold the law and suchlike.

The old days might be gone, but who's to say that a man can't have a little adventure after all?

This is just a wild idea sprung from too much Johnny Cash, rewatching Westworld, and a lifetime love of high fantasy. All those great stories are all so medieval, with the Dark Lord in a castle instead of an armored phantom locomotive, and our plucky heroes toting swords instead of six-shooters. So smell the cactus and breathe in the dust at high noon, and head out west of the kingdoms and dragons to find a fantasy that's a little... wilder.

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What I wrote this listening to, for those inclined.