No matter where it is in the world, all the Hôtel d’Raccourci have the same look. They structure is battered, the writing is faded and the architecture is unfashionable. Inside, they are even worse. The staff are unpleasant, poorly trained and there is never a barman. If you persevere with the queues, you’ll not be rewarded with the rooms. What isn’t broken is dirty and housekeeping make only a token effort to service the room. All the rooms are dank and dark, with a view out onto something at best dull. If you find the remote to turn the tv on you’ll find that none of the channels are in a language you understand. Not that you can hear it due to all the noise coming from outside. Even the clocks are wrong.
How is the chain still in business? Magic. If you stay overnight in a Hôtel d’Raccourci you wake up a different city. If you pay the premium price, you’ll actually get a say in which city it is. Every city has one, making them a very convenient way to cross continents without all the trouble of actually travelling. In addition to the downside of the horrendous nature of the hotel, the downside is that you always change location when you sleep. Staying in the same city isn’t allowed.
A hotel chain blessed with such a gift should be wealthy enough to make each building a palace for its guests. That they are the awful places they are is down to the spell which powers the transportation. It’s powered by dissatisfaction. The hotel managers go to great lengths to create an experience just the right side of unendurable.
Plot Hooks:
- A manager of one of the hotels hasn’t been doing their job properly. The hotel has become too pleasant a place to stay in and it has thus dropped off the network. As regular users of the service, the players have an interest in returning the hotel to working order.
- There are actually people who stay as permanent residents, taking advantage of the regular shifts in location to travel the world. One of these misguided people is a person of interest. The players have been tasked with tracking them down and setting up continuous surveillance.
- One of the hotels has gone missing. It’s not just that it’s no longer attached to the network; where it was in the city there’s just an empty plot of land. Worse still, a VIP was staying at that hotel and their presence is needed at an important negotiation. The players are sent to find out what’s going on and to attempt a rescue.
Image Credit – Demand by Paul Townsend – CC-BY-NC-2.0