Sometimes, you just need a very specific pair of things. You need a drink, and need to get from Ireland to Poland without having to deal with travel times.
Publin
Ublin House
Teach Ublin
Dom Ublina
Nx-061
The Brewery's Backdoor
Conspectus
Sometimes, you just need a very specific pair of things. You need a drink, and need to get from Ireland to Poland without having to deal with travel times. If you ever find yourself in such a situation, there's a place that awaits you which can fill both of those needs: Ublin House, the best Library-adjacent pub in the local pocket-dimensional multiverse.2, 3, 4
Illustration
A picture from inside Publin, taken during a rare moment where any of the bars is empty.5 There isn't an outside, so nobody knows where the sunlight is coming from.
Knowledge
Traits: Publin is technically one massive bar. Technically, because it's ten different sub-establishments in a ring around the edges of a small vineyard6 with two doors on a raised dais at the center.7 Each of these bars is modelled in the style of one you'd find in either of the access cities, alternating between these styles. Depending on which kind you find yourself in, you'll be treated to the finest Irish or Polish booze.8 Or, should you ever be a bit tight on cash, the staff body could always do with a new Publin bar-being.
Nature: For all intents and purposes, Publin can be treated like any other bar in the multiverse: you stop by to have a drink, chat with strangers or friends, get extremely drunk and, if need be, rabble-rouse. While it's advised that you do stick to the rules of the Library, for curtesy's sake, they aren't enforced in the pocket dimension, so bar fights aplenty are to be expected.9
History & Associated Parties: Immensely unclear, at least until the Nineteenth Century.
The first references to any sort of non-spatial consistent location vaguely matching Publin comes from Ireland in the Eleventh Century CE, where a Wanderer claims to have visited a tavern in the city of Dublin which did not exist in "real space," which can be found in the Observations & Stories section. From there, it's absent from the records10 for the next eight hundred years.
Julian Ajdukiewicz was a self-proclaimed adventurer from the Congress Kingdom of Poland's Lublin Voivodeship.11 A frequent sampler of spirits along his travels,12 Ajdukiewicz would make his first (and technically last) journey to Ireland in 1852, roughly around the time that the Great Famine was coming to an end. Initially having planned to visit Malin Head in County Donegal, this trip was interrupted due to word of an ongoing feud between the locals and a small group of young Tuatha de Dedann from Hy-Brasil, which was accessible at the time, causing Ajdukiewicz to return to Dublin and spend the following three weeks wandering the city streets, attempting to find ways to entertain himself. During this time, he would a pair of young Sidhe men by the names of Shanahan Tydr and Cynrs Eioan,13 who had a reputation in the city for leaping from job to job, with a rather long list of pubs on their portfolio.
Over the coming weeks, Ajdukiewicz would become good friends with Tydr and Eioan, the trio spending much of their time walking through the Phoenix Park, and visiting several of the Fae pair's former workplaces in the later hours of the day. Shortly before he would leave Ireland return to Lublin,14 he would ask the two men if they would be interested in visiting Poland at some point in the future. The two considered the offer, and accepted as Ajdukiewicz embarked, encouraging him to purchase a property in his city when he returned, and to use it to operate a tavern out of, and that they would be in touch through letter in the coming months.
Upon his return to Poland, Ajdukiewicz would find the time and money to purchase a medium sized property, an abandoned square of land in the city's centre.15 On this plot of land, he would build the bar that would come to be known as Dom Lublina, and spend the next year slowly building a reputation within the city. Every few months, Julian would receive a letter from his friends in Ireland, themselves having bought out a pub in Dublin, detailing a small ritual he should perform during off hours, with little explanation beyond it being important. Ajdukiewicz, often cited as being somewhat naive, would perform these rituals as asked, and continue to run the bar for the next three years.
There's a lot of evidence to suggest that the Chicago Spirit were frequent dealers with the owners of Publin during the early 20th Century. After seizing control of Boston in the 1910s, signs to indicate the gang was using Ireland to import moonshine, especially Fae-brewed poitín, and were frequent visitors to Dublin City. While no records exist of explicitly stated Spirit-runners entering the establishment, the 1920s and early 1930s saw an uptick in the number of patrons with Midwestern American accents and suits the average Irishman couldn't hope to afford passing through its doors.16, 17 Around the same time, during the Irish War of Independence and Civil War, many members of the Irish Republican Army and later Anti-Treaty forces would use Publin as a meeting spot and easy route of escape in the event they needed to leave the country to avoid capture by the British Occult Service.18
In 1951, the owners were contacted by the Guinness Brewery in Dublin. Due to one of Publin's most popular entrances being locating about five minutes away from Saint James' Gate, they'd recently become aware of its existence19, 20, 21, 22 and expressed an interest in buying the space. Despite the offer being heavily considered by the then-owners, the purchase never happened. That being said, a deal was reached with the brewery to primarily supply Guinness stout on-tap through five of the ten bars present in the space, in exchange for a hefty discount on said stout's purchase by the bars.23 The other five bars would later, in 1993, would become part of a similar deal with Browary Lubelskie to supply Perła on-tap.24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29
In the modern day, Publin is one of the most popular Library-adjacent locations for Hand members to visit. Last year30 alone saw almost three thousand Wanderers pass through its doors, and that number is expected to increase as the paranormal community of Ireland continues to grow.
Approach: Treat anyone you meet inside like you would another patron of the Library; there's a good chance they're one as well. Unlike in the Library, the staff have lives outside of pouring drinks and making sure your liver doesn't fail on the property. Don't make life more difficult for them than it has to be.
Observations & Stories
ACCOUNT FROM AN UNKNOWN WANDERER:31 I was visiting Dublin, however briefly, to deliver a gift to my sister, having left the Pale myself for Albain32 five years previous. Having safely step foot back in my homeland, I was overcome with a thirst which could not be sated by the waterskin I had brought with me. Knowing that I would need indulge sooner rather than later, I hailed a passing man, rather strange with his pointed ears and rather ridiculous hairiness,33 and requested he direct me to the nearest tavern. With a raised finger, he simply gestured to a rather small nearby building, and went along his way.
Upon entering, I found myself transported to a rather more large place than I had initially thought I had entered, with windows displaying a grand, sweeping countryside, not too unlike the Dublin-Wicklow Mountains, although decidedly more abask in golden reeds than any sight of the range I would've been used to from anywhence within the bounds of Dublin. Many of the people within were much like the man who had directed me to the place, with pointed ears and hair the colours of summer seas and winter woodlands. They spoke a tongue not too dissimilar to our own Gaelic, but it was lighter, more melodic, as if it were the tongue of our mother language spoken by God's own angels in the heavens above. I was served a drink, an odd substance, an emerald green dotted with golden bubbles dragging themselves towards the air. It was heavenly. Sweet, like a wine, but closer to milk in some ways. The feeling it gave is indescribable, words escape me even now as I try to put it to them.
I left, and made my way to a nearby inn, where I write this before I lay myself to sleep. Perhaps I shall return to that place in the coming days.34, 35, 36
ACCOUNT FROM MÍCHEÁL Ó COILEÁIN:37, 38 I was recently invited out for a pint by one of the lads in the Bureau39 to a rather interesting place. "Teach Ublin," they said it was called, somewhere near the Wanderer's Library, relatively speaking. I accepted, given it was a Saturday in an Irish April, and good company makes a dull evening just a tad brighter.
We decided to spend our evening in one of the Polish bars. I'd met very few Poles in my time, so I was interested to see what they thought of us. I'd heard quite a few tales of the countrymen, and tried and failed to comprehend their language and its excess of zeds, in order to try and speak with a young man who had come from the country to write about the Rising in his own tongue. And, while the English of those I did speak to was far from perfect, they were wonderful regardless. Several of them actually spoke Gaelige, and those who didn't were quite adept with Hibernian, which is almost a sister to my mother tongue. Brasileans, Esterbergians,40, 41 one or two lads who had managed to crawl out of Avalon in one piece, one of them even said he'd dragged himself up from Australia.
Over the course of the evening, we all sat and told all manner of stories from our own lives. I told them about the war of independence, of the Easter Rising and the stories my mother had told me from the lives of her father. The Poles told me stories about the City of the East, and about the ones they'd lost in 1911, whose names escaped them in spite of the lives they'd lived together. The Brasileans did a few songs and dances, even managed to get me up on my feet after I'd gotten a bit of stout into me. The Australian said he was from some place called Two Blackbutts. Professional mud wrestler and mudmancer, in his own words. He, thankfully, didn't offer me a demonstration, but he could've gone on for hours about the world of mages in the land Down Under, largely out of anyone's way. Unsurprisingly, vast swathes of emptiness makes for an excellent setting for a duel. We drank, laughed and sang for hours, well into the early hours of the morning, before I bid the group farewell and left back for Dublin, although not before taking the wrong door and scaring the living daylights out of a pair of young Polish men walking past the Lublin door.
It's always a wonderful thing to see the many kinds of people who call Eiré home, and those who come within its borders to meet with them. I can only hope that these folks will not have to disguise their true nature on our soil forevermore because of the wishes of the Séiléiri.42, 43
ACCOUNT FROM MORRÍGHAN INGEN ERNMAS: This was back in… 1992, 1993. I was still active with the Provos44 at the time, and I was with a few lads in Dublin for about a week. Laying low while MI13 went hunting for us. Nice fellas. Died in a shootout with the Crownies a few months later, whatever god that can have mercy on their souls. Anyway, we'd figured we were running to the end of our required "sit tight and shut the fuck up" period, so we decided to have a little fun before we headed back up north. Having been a semi-frequent visitor to Teach Ublin in the past, I suggested we head there. No one objected.
Within about half an hour of arriving, I was two pints of Guinness deep and had kicked both the lads I'd come in with in the bollocks.45, 46 Within an hour, I'd been kicked out, and the others were out for the count; picked a fight with a Yeren fella twice both their size. All in all, a pretty par for the course trip to the place for me. Nice atmosphere. Really good bar snacks. Whatever the hell they do with the Taytos when they take them out of the bag is dark fuckin' magic, I'll tell you that much.
Doubt
⭐️⭐️
Ublin House (Dublin/Lublin)47, 48
One of the worst drinking experiences I've ever had, and I've done the full Eurtecian Underbelly Crawl.49
Firstly, getting to the actual place is a bother. While I understand the concern surrounding the Veil and such, you could at the very least serve to put the Lublin entrance somewhere that isn't in full view of an entire street!50, 51 The Dublin entrance is indoors, at the very least, in a little place that the establishment's staff operate.
Now, to actually speak on the place itself, my dearest God, it was horrid. The staff were polite, and clearly the young man who was serving the bar which I elected to drink at was new to the whole bartending affair, but the service itself was horrible.52, 53 It took a solid ten minutes of me sitting at the bar to even be noticed, and another ten before I had a drink in front of me. To add to that, this place's actual selection of drink is extremely narrow. If you aren't a fan of either of its sponserships' products, your options are Bulmers, Pilsner of some sort or some kind of alchemical concoction that tastes vaguely like vodka.54 Additionally, the snack choices were abysmal. Crisps, those tiny little bangers on toothpicks,55 next to nothing else. Not even a menu for burgers or something.
Onto the actual quality of my time there, that too was horrible. Maybe it was just the day that was in it, but the place was packed from wall to wall. This is probably a very pedantic reason to mark it down, but I do prefer being able to move when I'm at a bar, especially in the case of bathroom accessibility. Similarly, I will say, while not physically impair, the establishment's bathroom facilities are incredibly accessible, for the able-bodied and disabled, be they dry or drunk. Maybe I'll visit with my wheelchair-bound friend sometime, and see if company makes the experience better.
One more thing I did quite like was the bar's general ambience. There were several bands playing Irish and Polish music, traditional from both sides, if memory serves. Not many people were drinking out there and listening, only a few of the bars have outdoor seats and even then there aren't many for those that do. However, it was quite nice, sitting out there and singing along to the Rose of Tralee with an elderly Sidhe man.56, 57
Overall, my actual experience inside the establishment I chose to drink at during my time at Ublin House was rather poor, sadly. The sheer density of people, combined with the waiting time to get served and the noticeable lack of enough drinks from the taps was all enough to weigh my opinion of the place down. I will, however, keep my review at two stars. I feel the place was lovely, in spite of all this, and had I come by some other time I likely would have had a much better experience. Alas, for now, it remains as such.
Antoni Nowak58, 59
Wind Dew Travel Agency Food and Drink Locale Review Agent
18/03/2007