Monday 20 August 2018

The Great Rester


Through the space between realities it lurks/crawls/drifts/languishes/stretches/soars, a great beast of cosmic proportions made up of the liminal spaces. It is an entity made of the civilised races dreams of rest, perhaps- or perhaps it is the thing which seeps into the dreams of tavern landlords, suggesting they should stick a bed in an upstairs room and let it out by the night to weary travellers...

The Great Rester is a Build-by-Roll adventure designed for use with Troika!, which is currently partway through a Kickstarter campaign which I am super stoked for. The first link is to the free-to-use rules, and it's super easy to pick up and play. 

To build the Great Rester for your playgroup, I have devised a couple of tables below. First, you want to roll on the Area Table, which determines what kind of hotel this particular section of the Rester is. Then, you roll on the room/encounter table, coming back to change Area every 2d6 rooms or whenever told to on a rooms entry (or even when you just feel like you need a different atmosphere). The area just determines the general vibe of the particular section you're in and may sometimes be overruled by a description- since it will change from time to time, don't worry if something seems out of place. It is all one big hotel, after all!

Your players may stumble into the Rester through the service doors of another, more mundane hotel. They may wake up there after a particularly brutal night on the town. Perhaps they have been sent into the Rester by a patron, to fetch or deliver a message to one of the cosmic hotel-beast's distinguished guests. Either way, they should have their wits about them lest they themselves become the room service! The outside areas, if any enterprising player really wants to explore them, seem to be featureless repetitions of what was visible to them from the hotel. I imagine they occasionally dump travellers onto random spheres of existence, with little way back.

The monster table is there to be played with. Since so many of the rooms have weirdnesses or encounters in them you needn't roll a monster for every room. That said, if the players have hit a lull you can always press the ol' random encounter button.

Areas
1.Ye Olde-Time Tavern & Inn- you know, straw floors and flimsy wattle and daub walls. The toilets are buckets and the rooms are like lavatories. The windows all look out onto featureless muddy scrubland. This probably the flimsiest and most flammable section of the Great Rester, and lit exclusively by guttering, oily torches in braziers. Guests are irritable and possibly ill, here. Staff are always in a hurry to leave.
2. Classically Luxurious- real luxury is timeless, and so is this area. Shiny, polished marble carved into grand pillars and statues. The light sources are artfully placed glowing orbs, all moulded into the marble for a tasteful and dramatic effect. Rooms are grand and comfortable, if a little dispassionate-feeling when one is alone, and the windows look out from a height onto pristine gardens. The guests here can be aloof and obnoxious, and the staff are bewilderingly deferrant- unless they suspect you belong in the more "economically amenable" quarters.
3. Modern Motel- the walls are thin, much like the carpet and the sheets. The bedrooms are cramped and smell stale, and there is always a 1 in 6 chance that when you enter a standard bedroom there is a recently deceased guest, a 1 in 6 chance there’s a cache of illegal drugs stashed in a suitcase, and a 1 in 6 chance some other entrepreneurial soul has come by before you and stolen literally everything that wasn't nailed down. Bedrooms have a television, two lamps and a rickety writing desk in them, but the television can pick up only static and weird reruns of little-loved and rarely remembered sitcoms. Using electrical outlets or equipment has a 1 in 6 chance of electrocuting the user, and in all rooms the lights flicker and or buzz as appropriate. The windows all look out onto litter-strewn concrete expanses. Guests here are seedy and trashy, staff are exhausted and irritable.
4. Faded Glory of the Golden Age- jazzy suites with luxury fittings, all faded into a delightful shade of familiarity. The bedrooms range from fairly modest digs to real upmarket rooms, on a scale of 1 up to 6, with any windows looking out from a height over empty streets and an array of other buildings like this one. The lights in this area are ostentatious blown-glass affairs, similar in working to the magical spheres of the Classical Luxury area albeit dustier and less securely fitted- these spheres could be pried loose. The guests here are all quite dramatic, be that melancholic flapper-girls or brooding gangster-types. The staff are all polite and charming, and occasionally sassy. Most of them wear bellboy uniforms.
5. Sleek Modern Living- this area is all chrome and glass. The lights are belt fluorescent in a wide array of neon-bright colours, and the floors are soft, discreetly springy linoleum. The rooms are minimalist in design, with any useful room features tucked away in flat panels that require a search check to find and activate. Each room has a rather rigid bed and a wall-to-wall desk that a flat-screen T.V. you have no hope of ever working out how to use is hidden in. The guests seem vacant but are in reality keenly-aware edge-lords. The staff are all cool, collected and almost robotic. Some of them are actual robots.
6. Fairytale Castle - this area is similar perhaps to Ye Olde Time Tavern & Inn, but where that area was flea-ridden and gross this one is fancy and delightful. The lights are all magical torches which flare into life as you approach, and the floors are smooth granite covered in plush throws. There is, quite out of place, plumbing in the bathrooms. The guests here are jolly and gregarious, or courtly and possibly scheming. The staff are earnest and noble, helpful to a fault.

Corridors
Roll 1d3 and 1d6 to generate…
11… A corridor with 12 rooms on it, six on each side. The left hand doors are all pocked and unloved, and the right hand doors are pristine. This corridor ends in a right turn. 
12… A corridor with the lights all broken. The last two doors on this stretch are open (generate them now), but all the others are sealed shut. As the players pass these sealed doors there are a number of disturbing sounds. Hissing, murmuring and  scratching at first, but by the final doors indistinct pleading is almost audible. If the players force one of these doors open, they find behind them is only a large, crude dumbwaiter shaft. Once the shaft is open an ungodly skittering is heard from above and below- interstellar spider parasites come skittering down in waves after the players.
13...  A corridor of 6 rooms undergoing their cleaning. The staff cleaning them have all been mutated by the dangerous substances they are exposed to daily, and now more resemble some sort of fleshy ogre-thing. Stats as trolls- they don't like to be disturbed as they work, and will attack players on sight.
14… A corridor that seems to stretch on forever, with crossroads after every four doors intersecting with another corridor. After every crossroads roll 1d6-
On a 1, a member of staff exits the nearest room and suspiciously questions the players about the whereabouts of a guest in that room.
On a 2, a family of nobles from somewhere in Irifice exit a room and offer the players money to escort them to the nearest lobby.
On a 3, a door lies open to show a bizarre scene involving leather-clad old men and women and man-sized animated stuffed toys.
On a 4, one of the Knight Hoteliers, sworn protectors of travellers, stumbles out of a room and demands to know if the players are here to kill the Great Rester. If they can't convince him they are not, he will fight them.
On a 5 or 6, reroll the area d6.
15... A corridor with six rooms and a flight of stairs, lurking just beyond a set of double doors. These stairs lead up and down to corridors of a different area (reroll the area for new corridors). For each flight of stairs after the first, roll 1d6. On a 6, the players have stumbled out onto the roof of the Great Rester. They must test their luck to avoid being overcome by the celestial scale of the hotels exterior, and must also beware of the Space Rocs, giant bird-like apparitions that will try to sweep the players away to their nests.
16... A corridor with 10 doors on each side of it and a curiously abrupt dead end, with the wall half covering a door. If the players really put their backs into it, they can heave the wall back, pushing it into what is a different area. For each five feet they move the wall, roll a d6. On an odd number a member of staff happens across the scene and demands the players stop messing around with the architecture. The inhabitants of the half blocked room are three very grateful Imperial Elves.
21... A corridor with only one door, leading down a service stairway into a kitchen. The chef manning this kitchen is a monstrous octopus, basking in a cauldron at the rooms centre while his lengthy arms fiddle with food in other pots and pans. Roll d6- on a 1 or 2 he assumes the players are his newest shipment of white meat for the sausages.
22... A corridor with twelve rooms and a grand archway built halfway down it- reroll the area for the corridors second half. There are guests typical of the new area standing under the arch and assessing the area that the players are wandering over from.
23... A corridor with 8 rooms, all of which are double their size. Not as in larger- as in built for huge people. In each room roll 1d6- on a 1 the giant guest staying there arrives and is furious at the invasion of their privacy. The players have a chance of finding a golden egg and or goose somewhere in a room with a giant.
24… A corridor that is a courtyard, with other corridors all overlooking it accessible from a set of stairs. There are six rooms on each side of the courtyard, three on the ground floor and one set up. Each corridor above has a corridor branching off from the centre. The branching corridors roll as normal, but lead back to the courtyard on the opposite side that the players entered, just as the player left- so much so that they can see themselves from behind as they walk in.
25... A corridor with various unsavoury types lurking outside open rooms. Ladies of the night, thugs and ruffians- this corridor is a kind of black market for the area, where all kinds of unsavoury things and services can be procured for someone with the cash and street cred.
26… A corridor in which all the doors are open and unruly children run with messy faces from room to room.
31-36… A corridor with 2d6 doors on it.


Rooms & Encounters
Roll 1d2 and 2d6…
111... A lobby, with 1d3 staff smiling and eager to help. The corridors and doors from the lobby do not behave as space ought to- there are 2d6 on first count, but each time a character interacts with them there are 1d6 more or less: even numbers are more, odd are less. This makes it nigh impossible to navigate back here after leaving, and also makes it hard to follow or be followed from this room. If you want to be cruel the players could get separated here, in which case roll up the next 10 rooms and place players 1d3 rooms apart on that progression.
112... A lobby with a total absence of staff. Any staff that were with the party mysteriously abscond. There is a solitary crone of a woman lurking by the counter, drumming talon-like fingernails impatiently. She will bark commands at the players, and if they entertain her requests they must test their luck or slowly transform into staff members, growing their uniforms like a second layer of skin beneath their clothes. There are stairs up from and two doors away from this lobby.
113... A lobby with a long queue of weird patrons, and one harassed member of staff. There's a gallery above, and a very messy bar area. If any bags are left unattended a never-seen assistant quickly disappears it.
114... A lobby that has a small family camped in the corner, their children venturing out in parties to collect change so they can once again afford the luxury of a room. For the next three rooms, roll 1d6. On an even number there is a sneaky child thief in that room that will pilfer anything shiny they can get hold of.
115... A lobby with a moderate queue at both the counter and the Bureau de Change, which is staffed by a monolithic thinking machine. The party can change money and treasure into any conceivable currency here. The thinking machine will also barter in abstract concepts, exchanging feelings for other feelings and memories for memories. New memories aren't just illusions- they happened. Figure that one out. By this method players can swap skills, but at a cost of 3 old skill ranks for 1 new.
116... A lobby that is eerily quiet. There are stairs down and up, both leading to identical lobbies- or, in reality, the same lobby. Every four iterations of the lobby that a player passes through, roll 1d6. On a six, the player has something about themselves change, subtly. Perhaps their socks change colour. Perhaps their family took them to Tenerife on holiday instead of Majorca. The rooms accessible from the lobby change with each iteration, requiring a reroll.
121… A room with the furniture smashed up and in disarray. There are some drumsticks hidden in there, and if the players search the cupboards thoroughly they will find a solitary, deranged man- the roadie of a rock-and-roll band who have recently vacated.
122… A room with a nervous looking man who will, regardless of what the players look like, assume they are from the escort service he called only moments earlier.
123… A room with a secret door behind the bedhead, which leads into another room with a secret door behind the bedhead, which leads into… ad infinitum. Curiously, leaving the door of any room will land the characters back on the corridor they started on.
124… A room with way too many doors- roll 1d6 for each of the four walls, and that’s how many mismatched doors there are, each leading out onto a new corridor. The furniture is all piled into the middle of the room, and proper investigation may reveal 1d6 goblins hiding in there as if pretending it’s a fort.
125… A room with a weird smell. The smell is actually a sentient being from a very weird sphere, and will try to communicate with the players in fart-like guffs. There’s also a loose collection of coins from several different cities, which the Smell is trying to work out how to pick up and transport to the nearest bar for a drink.
126… A room with a door leading into an adjoining room. The first room is tidy-ish, with two adult Stonefolk sat exhausted in two armchairs. In the room next door their three children are hyperactive after being let allowed a snack of copper after their dinner of boulders. The stonefolk will give the players a number of very precious gemstones in return for them getting the little brats to bed.
131… A lobby with a bellboy resting at the counter and a wall full of postal-shelves behind him. There’s a massive bank of letters and parcels here, so many that no soul could possibly sort them into the correct rooms’ shelf. The bellboy has been saving parcels that look interesting, intending to take them home at the end of his shift.
132… A room that serves as one of the Rester’s many multi-faith chapels. This one is currently being used as a ritual ground for the Seventy-Eight-Day-Feast of the Fumbling-Leg-Lord, a weird and undeniably dark rite that involves bringing a “voluntary” sacrifice up to the room each day for all seventy-eight days and saving all the legs up for the final ritual which will animate them into a freaky, scrambling Leg-Monster. Roll 2d6- on a double six the cultists have just animated a leg monster, otherwise the die roll total is how many limbs they still need. The cultists will cajole, enchant and otherwise threaten the players into donating as many limbs as they can.
133… A room with all furniture covered in white decorators’ blankets except for a huge and glorious golden chest, studded with gems. The chest is actually a casket, containing one of the Rester’s most prestigious guests: Alcz’Eth Mu, an ancient mummified god-king of the Old Worlds. If woken, roll 1d6. On an odd number, Alcz’Eth Mu will expect the players’ worship and intend on reclaiming his long-lost throne- the higher the number the more unpleasant he will be. On an even number he will be grateful to the players for waking him and be generally quite chill, the higher the number the friendlier he will be.  
134… A lobby with a grand front door, leading out of the Rester… into the Void, the Unreal, the Formless. Players with sufficient knowledge of such things can test their luck from the front door to summon almost anything from that formlessness, but anyone even seeing it must also test their luck to avoid it sending them insane.
135… A room with a great balcony, and two rich lords lounging out there smoking cigars. One of them is happy and gregarious, the other nasty and sly.
136... A lobby that is something of a nexus between long corridors. Instead of the usual staff the lobby is manned by a resplendent delegation of 1d6 of the noble Knights Hotelier. These knights are part of the chapter sworn to defend the Great Rester, and will fight any threats to it to the death. 
141... A lobby that is something of a nexus between long corridors. Instead of the usual staff the lobby has been commandeered by a ragtag delegation of the Knights Hotelier. These knights are part of the splinter group who have, rather heretically, decided that the Great Rester is a predator on the weary travellers of the cosmos. As such they want to see it rendered inert, dead, gone.
142... A great swimming pool, above which is a glass ceiling. The pool has been left unattended for too long and is now cold and coated in a layer of algae. In its depths lurk 2d6 Thralligators, weird fungal-reptile hybrids. They have Skill 7 and Stamina 10, Init 1 and Armour 2. Elsewhere in the pool room players might discover a stash of towels and an unusual assortment of inflatable monsters.
143... A great, dry swimming pool. As above, except rather absent of Thralligators and water. There is, amongst the dried dirt in the pools base, a ruby-set ring.
144... A great swimming pool, above which is a glass ceiling. There are three families of guests frolicking, as well as several young men and women reclining on loungers. There's one particular couple of lounging-folk who are almost looking for trouble- two holidaying lizardfolk, the husband quite certain that all around him are trying to get a glimpse of his wife's nether-scales.
145... A flight of stairs, ornate and carved, leading up and away. The top is a dead end, with a beautifully decorative stained glass window depicting a great dragon made of suitcases and bags.
146... A long corridor with only one room leading from it. Inside is a batty old woman who is furious at being disturbed and insistent her check out is not until four. She'll attack players who don't immediately apologise and back out. She's got Skill 6, Stamina 8, and Initiative 2. Also she's a Gorgon, of Medusa fame. Unless players make a notice check to clock the wriggling of her shawl and take appropriate gaze-evasive measures, it’s a Luck check to ensure they're not petrified.
151... A corridor with no rooms, only portraits of the employee of the month. There are some very disturbed pictures at the oldest end of the hallway, of entities which are unthinkable and unknowable. These oldest pictures require a test of Luck to more-than- glance at, but also may contain some clues as to the fate of several divine and damned beings of the most ancient mythologies. 
152... A small sitting room with just one door on the far side. A lady who calls herself the proprietor is sat knitting, but will bustle to fetch players a cup of tea, or extra blankets for their bed. She seems convinced this is her small coastal-town bed and breakfast, and will not be dissuaded from that view even in light of her sitting room having bricked up windows and a hotel just outside. Barmy guest, or smaller hotel absorbed into the Rester? You decide!
153... A doorway leading to grimy stairs down- there are smoky stains all over. At the foot of the stairs is a dimly lit room full of raging furnaces. In one corner skulks a hunched man, while a procession of little creatures stalk across the floor to drag fuel to the furnaces. The man is not overly friendly but if pressed will give directions to wherever the players need to go, all for the sake of some peace and quiet. If attacked he has Skill 14, Stamina 20 Init 4. He won't pursue past the stairs. There are corridors leading away into a vast field of furnaces, the hot and sweaty guts of the Rester, but little way to navigate out there- all roads eventually lead back to the sooty room and stairs.
154... A dining room with a continental buffet table, only with plastic food instead of the real thing. There are huge open windows that fill one whole wall, with a ground floor 'garden' tailored to the area outside. Every few in-game minutes that the players spend rooting around the room or the garden, roll 1d6. On an odd number, the players begin to hear a buzzing and droning outside, coming from the weirdly dense bushes that seem to go on and on beyond the trimmed garden area. The drone is the sound of the real diners in this room: several giant flies! Huge bluebottles the size of horses swarm the window, 2d6 of them in total. They each have Skill 7, Stamina 10 and Init 2, and are mindlessly hungry, disgorging thick acidic slime that players must test their luck or receive 1d3 Skill damage from contact.
155... A set of four lifts, all a dull grey metal with sliding doors. Three of the four don't work, but one will slowly and noisily descend. Inside is an obviously undead man in a bellboy outfit, managing a bizarre, Frankenstein-style board of controls. The lift, when entered, will be taken 2d6 floors away- up on an odd, down on an even. For each floor, the player nearest the zombie must test their luck or have their lift operator suddenly lose his self-control, lunging at the player. Assume each floor of travel is a round of combat- if the bellboy is defeated before they reach their destination, the journey goes awry and the characters are deposited in the Penthouse or Service Tunnels (roll 1d6, even Penthouse, odd Service Tunnels.)
156... A dining room with all the tables piled high with food. The players can restore Stamina with this food as normal, but each time they take a mouthful they must test their luck or be transformed into pigs. The pig-players will obediently follow their comrades around until the magic wears off in 1d6 rooms.
161... A storage room, made up of many narrow corridors between shelves piled high with pillows, bedding, cleaning products and furnishings. The shelves are floor to ceiling and precarious. The various items stored here are area-dependent, so bales of floor-hay in the olde-time area, clean silken sheets for the classical area, etc. If the players want to take some of the stuff in here (like the potentially powerful cleaning chemicals, which a witty alchemist could always do with) they must test their luck or dislodge some supporting part of the piled-high shelves. If they fail, there is a cascade of tribble and junk to crash down on them.
162... A bar, messy and apparently just recovering from a recently-departed crowd of revelers. There are glasses and nuts scattered everywhere, and two stressed-looking members of staff work behind the bar cleaning glasses, looking panicked when they see the players enter. There are 1d6-1 bar patrons still in here, blind-drunk. Roll their moods individually on a d6, 1-2 being belligerent, 3-4 being neutrally and vague, and 5-6 being friendly. Friendly drunks will give you helpful advice, if they can provide it.
163... A bar, busy with 6d6 patrons. The atmosphere is charged, and the players are looked on suspiciously. roll 1d6- on a 1-2, the patrons are here for a wedding and the players are crashing, 3-4 the patrons are part of a business convention for a small town guild, and have accidentally stumbled into the Rester, 5-6 they are Professional Revelers from the City of Japes, who are reveling in the Rester for the fame and acclaim.
164... A bar, empty and weirdly pristine. The bartender is overly smiley and will gushingly offer anything the players ask for or mention for free, making up flimsy and flattering excuses as to why ("you're the prettiest demihuman I've had in here all day, you'll bring the customers in," etc). If the players drink anything he gives they'll find it's spiked with lotus-petal, a highly addictive motivation-sedative. Players afflicted by the lotus must test their luck to do anything of consequence until they have successfully done so three times in a row. By then they're back in the habit of Doing. Failed tests result in them lounging in the same soulless hotel bar, perhaps eternally. How else do all those business-looking-men end up haunting these places?
165... A stairwell, with doors leading to corridors on each of its 2d6 floors. On each floor, reroll the area of the Rester. For corridors roll 2d6, subtract one, then add 121. At the very bottom of the stairs is a boarded-up passage, a wall of mismatched planks and nails. If the players try to dismantle it they find themselves in a hotel or inn on some other world, with the gaping portal to the Rester open behind them.
166... A circular room with a very pretty glass ceiling and eight doors leading from it. In the center of the room is a small balding man with pale hair and tar-black eyes. He will offer to pay the players in a currency most useful to them if they can lead him to either the service tunnels or the penthouse (or the lifts of 155), claiming that he is looking for his friend who works there. He is in reality a Wanderer from the cosmic-entity of Roadsides, sent on a mission of assassination. Second Sight checks will give players a mild headache as they see only endless footsteps in the man. Players with a spell in any way related to travel may test their luck to see if they recognise what type of entity he is- if they do, they will likely know not to trust the capricious imp.
211... A long and bare hall, with a huge table and two doors at the far side of the room. All around it sit skeletons which appear at first to be sitting still, but with a notice check (or any close interaction) they are actually seen to be moving incredibly slowly. The players' interruption to this conference of the dead will go unchallenged, unless they attempt to remove anything from the table- at this point the skeletons will moan loudly and in a dull drone. Security guards will enter from one of the other doors, and attempt to apprehend and remove the players. If the players go with the security, they will be taken through the Service Tunnels as a shortcut to the security office (212)
212... A small security office, which ostensibly serves the whole Rester. There are no other doors from this room. Inside are 1d3 tired guards, and a selection of electronical and magical CCTV screens. When the players enter the guards will try to hurry them back out the way they came, but if they manage to convince them to let them stay they can use their view of multiple rooms to map out where they might find their next destination (roll 1d6 new rooms as a route, with their destination room coming after that.) There's also a weird lost and found cupboard in here- it looks like a tinny filing cupboard with a poorly-stickered label, but opens into a room actually larger than the office itself. Inside is all manner of goodies which, if the characters can lie convincingly enough about having lost, the guards will let them take away. More than one or two items each will probably clue the guards in that you're fibbing, though.
213... A small wardrobe whose other door is sealed shut. The players can force it and gain entry into a dusty, dusty room in a regency style decoration, with the skeletal remains of a man in a groom’s marital suit.
214... A room with a fine dining table set up and four delegates from the Guild of Grand Synaesthetes sat around it. They are here to meet with an ambassador from the Temple of the Actual Metaphor, to discuss some kind of partnership. Unfortunately the ambassador hasn’t turned up because his Temple’s council had a disagreement at the last moment over whether the Actual Metaphor named in their holy scripture is simply a Metaphor for Metaphor itself, making it no more Actual than any other. The delegates from the Guild will happily treat the players as Ambassadors, though they know they are not.

215... A room with eight armed and unattended children in it. The horror. Stats as goblins.
216… A room so long and narrow it could be mistaken for a corridor. At the far end is a rickety staircase leading up into a draughty attic whose windows look out onto a gas-lit and rainy street.
221… A grand dining room, with all the tables set aside to the walls and empty buffet platters set upon them. Regardless of the current style-area the players are in this room looks like a regency ballroom, decadent and elegant. There is only one person in this room, a ghostly bride who is still waiting for her groom. If the players have found the groom’s corpse in 213 they can give her rough directions and end her dreadful curse in return for their pick of her toppling heap of wedding presents.
222… A hostel-style room full of beds, with 1d6 students on a field trip from the Tower Academies lounging around and 1d3 hungover revelers from Jape trying to sleep on the bunks. There is another door at the far end of the long hall, but that only leads into a filthy toilet whose floor is flooded. If the water in the bathroom is disturbed the players may notice a shape stirring beneath- it is a Vomit Elemental, accidentally imbibed by a reveler and thrown up in here- it has Skill 8, Stamina 12, Initiative 2 and Armour 1, and will attack in an attempt to crawl into a players stomach and rest awhile there. 
223… A massive bathroom, with 2d6 times ten bathroom cubicles and 1d6 times ten showers. Easily big enough to get lost in, and also home to the gross and bulbous Bog-Beast. The Bog-Beast is a smaller and much more disgusting cousin to the Kraken. It’s a stinking tentacle abomination that will be centred in one toilet cubicle with its tentacles spread out through the plumbing and able to attack from each sink and toilet respectively. Each tentacle has Skill 10, Stamina 4 and Initiative 1, and does damage as a small beast. For extra fun, make the players test luck or realise they desperately need to pee when they enter this room.
224… A tiny toilet cubicle that stinks to high heaven, in which there is a very hungover junior member of staff that will disgorge secrets of the hotel in much the same way he is disgorging most of his stomach-content- the players just need to look after him for a bit to warm him up.
225… A room with guests that have been turned to stone. Secretly roll 2d6 to determine how many rooms ahead the Gorgon who did this has travelled. On a double 6 she is long gone and the party need not worry.
226… A room that has been converted into a shrine to St Joseph. His body is preserved and laid out on the bed, and 2d6 Knights Hotelier guard him. His sword is a powerful magical weapon, and could be given to a player who can convince the guards he acts to protect the Rester.
231… A huge, very flash and modern-looking kitchen. Staffed by a hulking beast of a chef with Skill 10, Stamina 12, Initiative 2 and Damage as Cleaver (axe), and his 2d6 Monstrous Staff Kitchen assistants. Naturally, no guests are allowed in the kitchen. So naturally, the chef will assume you are the latest delivery of produce for him to transform into his exotic and delicious menu. Run.
232… A rather sub-standard kitchen in which a hulking beast of a chef with Skill 10, Stamina 12, Initiative 2 and Damage as Cleaver (axe), and his rather unimpressive 1d6 assistants. All are lazy and feckless, and will give mostly accurate directions to other parts of the hotel if you will take some room service with you and drop it off on the way.
233… A room inhabitant by man-sized sentient slugs, which will attempt to cuddle the players so they can communicate using their pheromone slime. How the players will interpret this totally innocent action is anyone’s guess.
234… A room in which a metal death-golem is in stasis. It has Skill 15, Stamina 20 and Initiative 3, and does damage as a Large Beast or Pistolet. It will not wake while the players are present, but will activate when they have moved 1d6 rooms away and sluggishly follow them, catching up if they dawdle for too long.
235… A room covered in maddened scrawlings, with a disturbed investigative journalist curled in a ball beneath the bed. She has seen the outside of the Rester and is convinced it is capable of eating whole a Sphere, suggesting even that it has done already.
236… A hotel lobby for the more abstract guests, i.e. other similar beings to the Rester itself but for different concepts. The players must test their Luck or be sent a little loopy by the sight of these impossible things. Roll 2d6 for the number of concept-guests and populate them as you like from the following- Spirit of … 11. Basins, 12. Strange Noises out on the Hallway, 13. Small Mammals, 14. Letterboxes, 15. Daggers, 16. Tastefully Painted Nudes, 21. Credit Cards (still working for a foothold on many Spheres), 22. Steam Engines, 23. Clocks and Similar Round Timepieces, 24. Sundials (still annoyed at Clocks for stepping in on their turf), 25. Cigarette Ashes, 26. Faux-Wooden Flooring, 31. Pamphlets, 32. Belts, 33. Bingo Halls, 34. Tiny Models of Houses, 35. Nasty Next-Door Neighbours, 36. Pocket Lint
241… A room which is slowly shrinking. Players may get trapped in here if they’re not careful, once the door gets too small. Testing their Luck means they shrink with the room, but of course then when they do leave they are tiny, tiny people.
242… A room filled with lush vegetation and the sounds of exotic birds. The wallpaper is styled after vines and fern leaves, and there are some dangerous venomous snakes lurking about the place. Somewhere in here is Professor Bertrand Ceilier, notable expert on indoor botany.
243… A small corridor, badly furnished, leads the players out to the stables. There are 3d6 horses stabled out here, and one glorious hellmount made of shining chrome and gushing green gas from its nostrils.
244… A lobby with glass doors that lead onto a large, domed veranda that acts as a hangar for Golden Barges, Silver Yachts and everything in between. There’s a valet present.
245… A set of stairs leading down to a concrete multi-storey car-park underground with 6d6 floors. There aren’t that many cars down here, but the few left are now feral: Skill 14, Stamina 24, Initiative 5, Damage as Modest Beast, or Gigantic Beast if they have a run-up. These cars’ bonnets open up to reveal ghastly engine-teeth, and one or two have even evolved enough to spit flaming petrol at their prey.
246… A run-down little storage area with a dumbwaiter on one wall. The players can request almost anything via a little old-timey telephone mouthpiece near the door and it will promptly be roped up. If they use it to go down, they will find themselves in a bizarre hell-dimension like an insanely-exaggerated and grotesque kitchen.
251… A room with a glass wall just past the door. Beyond that wall a family of four humans enjoys a traditional stay in the hotel room as suitable for the Area the players are in. When the players go to leave, roll 1d3- on a 3, the players are held up by a group of 1d3 strange, insectoid aliens who are here to observe the human hotel-behaviours so they do not commit any faux-pas while here. If the players try to get the actors in the room to pay attention to them, the actors will tut and try to carry on despite the distraction.
252… A sitting area full of comfortable sofas and chairs which has a Wanderer of the Roadside being bound in silver chains by a group of Knights Hotelier.
253… A corridor of administration offices, 2d6 doors leading into rooms in which 1d3 bored and lazy humanoids lounge about pretending to do paperwork. There are stacks and stacks of keys hanging on many of the walls, and at the end of the corridor is a lift that only goes down to the service tunnels or up to the penthouse.
254… A narrow wrought-iron stairway that veers after a while away from the walls, until the players are clunking up steps over the void itself. At the very top, which could take a while to reach, is a small wooden door leading into the Old Rooms. These rooms are all decorated weirdly, and the corridor smells of something familiar yet impossible to place. Inside the rooms are guests who are fragments of very old gods and myth-figures, who were written into stories about taverns and inns millennia ago and so must exist here in some form. Since they are unfamiliar with concepts like currency, they are kept up here away from the supposedly-paying guests. Most of the guests up here should be difficult to really communicate with, but for each one roll 2d6. On a double six, one of the characters recognises the figure as a lost character from myth on their world, with stats as a dragon and a temper to match…
255… A room which is being prepared for new guests by the staff. They gently shoo away the players, but will share a few directions to hurry you along out of there.
256… A room that looks run down and dirty, with maggots and other grossnesses in evidence. If the players tarry here for too long, they must test their luck or have the cleaners turn up and blame them for the mess (1d6 Monstrous Staff and 1d6 regular staff)
261… A room currently being inspected by one of the Managers. S/he will quiz the players about their stay, and how they are enjoying it, and then shoo them away.
262… A  small cafĂ© which serves strange hot beverages that all taste vaguely of chicken soup. The staff loudly complain that they are from a third-party company and didn’t realise this job would take them outside of standard space-time. If any players look knowledgeable on such matters they will be quizzed about how their timesheets will work without an actual Reality for reference to.
263… A vast, slightly sweaty-smelling conference room playing host to a wizarding convention. 3d6 times ten attendees, roughly half are wizards and half are cosplayers. An excellent place to get information on the Rester from people who came here on purpose, though most of the fake wizards are prone to just making stuff up to sound clever and stay in character.
264… A room with a female troll dolling herself up for a night in the many hotel bars. If the players linger to ask her questions, there’s a 1-in-6 chance her boyfriend will show up. Players test their luck, and on a fail he turns out to be the jealous type.
265… A miserable room whose bathroom has flooded and accidentally seeped into another Sphere, one that is a single massive fog-wreathed ocean. 1-in-6 chance of a seamonster beaching itself in the bathroom to eat the players.
266… The Honeymoon Suite, a really great set of rooms that are safe and comfortable. There is a key for the door hidden somewhere in the sumptuous quarters, and once the players find it they can always find their way back here.


Special Rooms
Penthouse: The "brain" of the Rester, the penthouse is a hotel room designed for something distinctly inhuman. From the windows one can see the hotel stretch out below and the hump-backed sky bustle overhead. The pristine white column at the centre of the room, formed from some crystalline marble material, is the heart of the Great Rester. Through a small door in its side, hidden by gentle magic spells of misdirection and illusion, one may access the hotel's origin. The door is a hole through the many layered walls that are built over one another and arranged like sedimentary rock: from polished steel, to shiny marble, to ornate plaster... all the way back to mud-hut clay, this door-cum-tunnel eventually leads to the inside of a lonely little hut that is little more than a stable. The creature sleeping at its centre is a cosmic intelligence's concept of a mortal, weak and soft and fallible. It is still dreaming the dream that eventually grew into the Great Rester, and if killed (or just woken, perhaps) that dream will abruptly and rather disastrously end.
Service Tunnels: These tunnels require a Luck Test at every junction to avoid getting thoroughly lost, since they are vast, do not play fairly with the concept of regular space, and identical. Each stretch of tunnel is the same gross pre-fab concrete, right down the drip and grain marks in the floor and walls. The ceiling is lit by strips of a strange glowing material, and on every stretch of tunnel is a ladder which leads up into a different room. Players can get anywhere from here, if they don't get terrifically lost. Once a ladder is used to exit the tunnels, the hatch back down into them vanishes unless someone stays below to reopen it. Random encounters down here are a little more dangerous, since the players are very much not meant to be here- the staff that are too monstrous to be left working in sight of guests are left here, and they all know they can treat interlopers with extreme prejudice. 

Monsters
Roll 1d2 and 1d6…
11 Thralligators, weird fungal-reptile hybrids with a a tough, barky exterior and mushy gooey centre: Skill 7 and Stamina 10, Initiative 1 and Armour 2, damage as large beast Mien: 1. Lounging, 2. Hungry, 3. Curious, 4. Territorial, 5. Aggressive, 6. Churlish
12 Vomit Elemental, just what it says on the tin. Crawls, slithers and splashes aggressively: Skill 8, Stamina 12, Initiative 2 and Armour 1, damage as modest beast Mien: 1. Lurking, 2. Shy, 3. Self-concious, 4. Angry, 5. Malicious, 6. Sorrowful
13 Knight Hotelier, proud protector of hotels and travellers: Skill 7, Stamina 9, Initiative 2 and Armour 1, damage as weapon. Mien: 1. Wary, 2. Bored, 3. Eager, 4. Foul-tempered, 5. Aggressive, 6. Mean
14 Sweep'N'Cleans, strange little re-purposed gnome creatures with silky ears and nasty little sharp teeth. Employed in some strange way by the Rester to clean corridors of litter, which they eat. Skill 3, Stamina 4 Initiative 2 and Armour 0, damage as small beast. Mien: 1. Skittish, 2. Peckish, 3. Bashful, 4. Wandering, 5. Intent, 6. Hungry
15 Monstrous Staff, come in a variety of shapes and sizes, all of which are considered too frightening to be seen by the guests. Skill 9, Stamina 12, Initiative 2, and Armour 1, Damage as either Modest or Large Beast. Mien: 1. Bashful, 2. Skulking, 3. Helpful, 4. Bitter, 5. Moping, 6. Raging.
16 Scrambling Leg-Monster, constructed “god” of a bizarre cult that operates largely out of roadside motels. Looks like a very strange centipede, loves trampling people and feeling all the squishy bits between its many, many toes. Skill 14, Stamina 22, Initiative 3 and Armour 0, Damage as Large Beast. Mien: 1. Running around, 2. Running around, 3. Fascinated by something underfoot, 4. Trying to pick up something underfoot, 5. Angry, 6. Caught in the angst of its confusing body-horror existence.
21 Cultist of the Fumbling-Leg-Lord, maddened but quietly intelligent, with some extensive experience in limb removal and reattachment. Skill 8, Stamina 8, Initiative 1 and Armour 0, damage as weapon. Mien: 1. Mournful, 2. Pensive, 3. Chatty, 4. Evangelical, 5. Mid-Crisis, 6. Arrogant.
22 Feral Guest, a long-term guest in the Rester who has, through a run of very bad luck, not run into another living being in years. Now feral and hungry. Skill 8, Stamina 6, Initiative 2 and Armour 0, damage Unarmed. Mien: 1. Ravenous, 2. Sleepy, 3. Friendly, 4. Angry, 5. Suspicious, 6. Guileless.
23 Hotel-Room Bandits¸ Highwayman style robbers who specialise in jacking hotel rooms, attended or otherwise. Usually travel together, so roll 1d3 for how many of them have turned up. Skill 7, Stamina 8, Initiative 2, and Armour 1, Damage as Pistolet or sword. Mien: 1. Lecherous, 2. Avaricious, 3. Romantic, 4. Gruff, 5. Mournful, 6. Pithy
24 Wanderer of the Roadside, A malevolent spirit of the Roads and Ways, sent no doubt to do mischief in the embodiment of their enemy. Looks like an ashen and dark-eyed humanoid, charming in a no-good-rock’n’roll-drifter kind of way. Skill 13, Stamina 20, Initiative 4 and Armour 1, Damage as weapon or Modest Beast. Mien: 1. Good-humoured, 2. Restless, 3. Curious, 4. Tired-yet-wired, 5. Edgy, 6. Cruel.
25 Middle-Manager, a being whose soul and content has been fundamentally altered to make them more amenable and efficient in their service to the Great Rester. Gender is difficult to distinguish in the pant-suit, and voice is unnaturally atonal. Skill 13, Stamina 20, Initiative 2 and Armour 1, Damage as Small Beast or weapon. Mien: 1. Servile, 2. Snooty, 3. Fastidious, 4. Harassed, 5. Tired-yet-wired, 6. Irate.
26 Standard Staff-Member, worked to the bone for either minimum wage or because they stayed too long and can’t remember what an Actual Reality looks like. Skill 6, Stamina 6, Initiative 2 and Armour 0, Damage as weapon. Mien: 1. Exhausted, 2. Servile, 3. Abrupt, 4. Friendly, 5. Mindless, 6. On the edge of quitting.

Possible Plots
Attack on the Rester – 136, 141, 166, 226 & 252 are all pertinent rooms to this plot, which has the players wittingly or unwittingly drawn into an attack on the Great Rester and so, by extension, on the very concept of hotels themselves. Such an adventure would presumably end in the Penthouse, possibly via the lifts of 155 or 253.
Defending the Rester – 136, 141, 166, 226 & 252 are similarly pertinent here, since the players will be defending the Rester from the forces of Roadside and any other enemies. May similarly end in the Penthouse, via 155 or 253. Consider placing Wanderers of the Roadside as enemies with a little more frequency.
Rescue from the Rester – Your client has a vested interest in retrieving someone in the Rester, and will pay you handsomely to help. Pre-roll which room the target will be in (or choose an appropriate target after reading ahead) and then have fun trying to get there and then trying to convince the target to leave with this rag-tag bunch of misfits.
Escape from the Rester – You just woke up here. You have serious business elsewhere in the multiverse. How are you going to get out? 244 and 165 are pertinent rooms.

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