Squirrel's Notes

Location: Cross'd Roads, a little distance from the old Twilight's Rest and Schemers' Corner.

Open, unplotted board. Everyone may join in.

Notes:

• As hinted in the first post, the as-yet-unnamed inn is built on cursed land.
• The land has the effect of drawing in any passing travellers, especially ones in difficulty or distress. It's the equivalent of the vampire's castle in any Dracula rip-off you care to name.
• Combined with its location on the Cross'd Roads (a cross-world place which is notoriously easy to get to) this means it gets more visitors than its out-of-the-way situation would imply.

The building:

Run-down and beat-up but structurally not that bad, except for the oddly warped floorboards (more a curiosity than a hazard) and a few rotten shutters.

Stone foundation, stone walls with timber framing. The walls are fairly thick, with no insulation in the middle.

The roof is a little treacherous in its current state of repair.

There's a little cubbyhole/entrance hall immediately inside the door, leading almost immediately into the main area (where there will be tables and things eventually, but now a big empty space).

A battered wooden bar, propped up by Baskerville, divides the customers' area from the bartender's realm.

A door in one corner behind the bar leads into the kitchens. The kitchens are paved, not floorboarded, and have a separate door leading outside (currently sealed). A trapdoor affords passage down into the cellar.

Oh yes. The cellar.


*Mutt and Skerv sing an old kiddy-tv themetune*
Don't you open that trap-doooor,
you're a fool if you dare.
Don't you open that trap-doooor,
'cause there's something down there...

Oh lord, I hated that kiddy TV show. =_=

By the way: out of, well, curiosity, what's Luce mean by limbo, exactly?

Suitov knows what he thinks the land is, and though the theories seem similar, I dunno how Luce and Lance's realms work.

The tables, in case anyone takes up Basky's offer, are large, sturdy, very heavy wooden things. Built to last. They're in good condition, just some surface smearing with certain substances and in general need of sanding down and revarnishing. They're stacked against one wall. You won't move one on your own, though; I don't care if you're above human strength, these are HEAVY.
There are matching chairs, a little less sturdy and a good deal more portable. Their upholstery is wrecked, though they will still function as seating surfaces.

The front door (leading into the customer area) is partially blocked across a diagonal by a really big beam, which has been there the whole time. Anyone who walked in will have squeezed past it.

In case anyone wonders about long-term plans for the place:

• There's a lot of repair-work, obviously, to be done before the place will be usable.
• It will also require a name at some point. *eg*
• Suitov's not going to run it. He hasn't the time or innclination; he hires people to do that sort of thing.
• There are grounds belonging to the building, but re-landscaping is low priority at the moment.
• And there's the little matter of an ominously quiet cursed burial site some way beneath the building, but one plot advancement at a time.

Interior of the inn
The front door is now no longer blocked by a really big beam.

The floors upstairs and down are finished with new hardwood boards that are well-cut and laid. The floorboards are flat, not warped like the last lot, which were curved into almost a ripple pattern (the builders said this was probably caused by too many notches cut in the support beams, a common problem in old houses).

The walls are done with silk-fibre 'plaster', a standard cheapish wall covering common on Weftworld. It's reasonably insulating and wipes clean, but it'll be marked if anything bashes it.

Walls are off-white (bare plaster for the moment), floors are wooden. I can't think offhand whether they're treated with resin varnish or waxed. You'd see support beams if you looked up.

The bar is dark, varnished hardwood, panelled. The area directly behind the bar (shelves, storage, glasses) has wood panelling over the whole back wall with a large mirror at one end.

Not visible to the customer, there are one or two hidden panels. There's space beneath the bar to store a peacemaker or two (because you just know your staff are going to need weapons eventually).

The tables and chairs are the same as before (or will be when they're dragged back inside): solid oak, backbreakingly heavy, rugged, dented and scratched in places. About half the tables are rectangular to seat six, and half are circular and can squeeze ten around if they're good friends.

Nobody's done anything to the gardens yet: the beds are still overgrown, the flagstones are cracked and hazardous to the ankles and the fountain remains stagnant.

(This image is out of date. Revision coming sometime. Basically - the back has changed. There's a door at the top left, where the bottom of the stairs is, and the verandah bit is out there instead of above the kitchen. The rest's as shown here, though not perfectly to scale.

The upper floor has the lavatory/bathroom and two or three bedrooms.)

INN GROUND FLOOR LAYOUT

Inn gardens and grounds

Front: a few metres of lawn before the road. Paved drive branches off road and goes up to door, splitting off towards stables.

(Stables are a separate building serving all Cross'd Roads buildings. Not yet (re)constructed.)

Sides of inn: a few metres of grass. Slabbed path around right-hand side (as seen from front) leads round to back gardens.

Back: Covered porch as shown. Central fountain (see next paragraph). Paths, lawn and some flower beds. Rose bushes (not yet planted) in a short row down one side. Outdoor tables and chairs (warm months only, not yet installed).

Fountain: The fountain consists of a sculpture (currently a streaked, weatherbeaten siren or mermaid, to be replaced) in the middle of a shallow pool. The fountaining action is not working at present.

The water is stagnant, feels slimy and looks opaque from algae. (There may be something strange about the algae, besides being cute little phytoplankton.) The wall of the pond is a little less than waist height; it's not quite full to the brim. The pond is about as big across as a jacuzzi, and when the water's more pleasant a group of people would indeed be able sit in it, if they liked being splashed with cold water.

(Baskerville and Lance, I can hear you plotting jinks involving washing-up liquid and red dye. Stop it.)

Cross'd Roads exterior

Four roads - one paved Roman style, one cobbled with squareish stones, one of wood plank (presumably leading to/from swampy, desert or jungle locations) and one little more than a dirt track covered over with gravel - meet at the middle of the Cross'd Roads and trail off to apparently nowhere.

The buildings - current inn, Promenade Hall, some disused stables and a few destroyed or abandoned plots of land - are grouped at varying distances around these.

The surrounding scenery shifts around a lot. To the back of the inn it's always woodland, but the type of tree tends to change when you're not watching it.