The Nobiskrug is an infernal inn, tavern and border post outside the walls of Jerusalem, where travelers arriving across the moor must stop and pay before reaching the city. It is described as “a place of the dead, a last corner of the world”.
| Type | Place (inn, tavern, customs post) |
| Location | Outside the walls of Jerusalem, on a hillside |
| Inhabitants | The possessed; undead authorities |
| Spanish entry | La Nobiskrug |
Description
The Nobiskrug is a wide, low tavern on the side of a hill, almost at the top, its light outlined against the dusk. Around it lie moors with fog and smoke at twilight and earthen buildings — “almost earth bunkers” — with a quality the records cannot explain: “this place has something German”. The area is nearly desert and only mildly cold, but the cold grows as one nears the tavern. Beside it stand half-blackened earthen stables, from which comes a stamping of hooves that some find familiar.
One enters through a double door and the floor drops: the interior is sunk below ground level. There are no rooms or divisions, only one enormous bar that holds everyone in a single low space. Those who live there are possessed; those who rule are undead authorities.
Role
The Nobiskrug is a compulsory stop for anyone arriving from outside. Its barrier has “a place to collect customs”, and passing requires a special fee (gastorio especial) paid in local currency. Virgil was present at that payment, where he was told “there is currency here”. The stables take the beasts the city does not admit and provide mounts to those arriving or leaving. No one passes without paying; it marks the threshold between the walled world of the living and what lies outside.
Open questions
- The amount of the fee and the currency it is paid in are not recorded.
- It is called an inn but has no rooms; where travelers sleep is unknown.
- Who collects the customs — the undead authorities, a tavern keeper or a separate collector — is not stated.
- Its distance from the walls of Jerusalem, and what can be reached from the nearby hill, are not fixed.
- The growing cold and the place’s infernal nature are both recorded, but nothing links them.
- Whether the “German” look of the architecture is a style, the builders’ origin or something else is unexplained; so is what beasts make the stamping in the stables.