THE CROSSROADS HOTEL
The Crossroads Hotel and its associated freehold is just north of the town
of Cumberland Gap, within a fifteen minute walk or a very brief drive of
the town. It is on a State Road right before the turnoff to the Park the
Highway 25 tunnel. Nobody is quite sure when it was built - probably
sometime in the twenties? But who can say. It makes a fair but not
extravagant income.
There are three floors: individual rooms on the first and second floor,
suites on the third, including a Presidential Suite at which President
Roosevelt was supposed to have stayed at some point in the past.
Handicapped access was built in the seventies (to avoid a lawsuit) with
the result that a big ugly concrete ramp leads up to a side door, an
eyesore that isn't quite covered by the greenery around it. (There is no
handicapped access to the upper floors.) There is a dining room and
kitchen on the first floor for guests and other visitors. By far the most
common meal served is the breakfast special: biscuits and gravy, eggs, ham
or sausage, coffee and grits
Staff consists of two housekeepers, one groundskeeper and his wife, a
part-time waitress and cook (both also work nights at a diner down in town
to make ends meet), and a couple of part-time clerks. During the height
of the tourist season, the hours of the part-time staff increase and
sometimes, another part-time clerk or housekeeper is hired. The
housekeepers have their own rooms in a back section of the house. The
groundskeepers have their own cottage about a mile away.
There are a few hiking trails through the scrubby forest that surround the
hotel, and it's fairly isolated from other buildings. There's a gazebo
out there, and an old dance hall that is still sometimes aired out and
used for a party, usually a wedding reception or spillover from the
bluegrass festival.
Price: $$
Quality: $$$
THE FREEHOLD
The Crossroads Hold appears to be a large, antebellum Southern mansion,
with the exception that instead of broad fields behind it, it is still
surrounded by forest and wild mountains. The oath the circle swore to it
was one of Guardianship.
Access
The Freehold can be accessed from outside by stepping into the garden
through the crennellated brass gates that lead to the central courtyard.
(These gates are a source of some worry because little kids and sometimes
drunken or (un?)lucky grownups can simply stumble through them without
realizing it, and not be able to get back to the mundane world.) From
inside the hotel, it can be accessed by stepping into the ancient wooden
phone booth and dialing the date-time announcement, then walking through
the wall into the Great Hall. (Every so often a trucker who is
synchronizing his logbook will experience this, but it's very rare.)
The Courtyard
Similar to the mundane courtyard of the hotel, but larger and grander,
with a wide limpid pool in the middle where the tentacle creature(s?) live
and flowering bushes of a dozen colors to all sides, growing wild, almost
ill-tended despite everyone's best efforts.
The Great Hall
As far as you know, everyone who enters through the mundane world has to
pass through the Great Hall, either directly or through the courtyard. It
has a long table for serving big groups of guests. The balefire and a
common area with seating and sleeping rolls near it is at the far end,
slightly elevated. Inscribed around the base of the balefire is the word:
"CENTRE". It is theorized that this description was put into place during
the days of the Kingdom of Western Roads and indicated that the balefire
was the center of the freehold. This is a little worrisome because even
taking into account the shifting and changing layout of the freehold, the
balefire is nowhere near the center, indicating that either the freehold
has significantly shrunk, some areas of it remain closed off and
abandoned, or there is something yet undiscovered about it.
The Great Hall is usually laid out as a combination of dining room and
ballroom with a long table at the head and a large space down beneath it.
For grand parties, more tables can be brought in or more space cleared for
more dancers, or risers can be brought in to accomodate a band. (Getting
electricity back from the real world to fuel electric guitars can be a
chore.)
Living Areas
There are living quarters within the house itself, generally adorned with
insane bric-a-brac chimera that look like a truck loaded up a swap meet
and poured all of the junk into the rooms at random. A few years ago,
several cabins were discovered just outside the keep in the chimerical
woods around the hold - investigation revealed these to be the cabins for
the Cumberland Motor Lodge, which used to be just up the road from the
hotel and which was demolished in the sixties. Their appearance has led
them to be used as preferred guest quarters for those visiting the hold
for some time, although they are not near enough to the balefire to gain
any benefit from them.
Library
Like all freehold libraries, the library of Crossroads is more interesting
than useful. With three abortive organizational systems attempted over
the last hundred years, it's difficult to find what you want: the field
manual for Chrysler salesmen for 1967 might be filed between a thick
volume about creatures of the Deep Dreaming and a notebook full of
crayon-scribble maps of a freehold destroyed in the Accordance War. Full
of quiet corners and windows that open onto impossible vistas, the library
is a place of many mysterious secrets.
Baron Alastair Davenrow, and the Oathcircle
Mr. Alastair Davenrow, Dara's grandfather, was the last (latest?) Lord of
the Crossroads. He held the title of Baron, of the House Dougal, beneath
Duke Maxwell, Eltan's predecessor. A nocker, Alastair kept the place
together
with grump and polish
rather than any kind of exercise of power. Although a traditionalist in
many ways (and definitely Seelie), he was an incessant collector and
organizer of information about the trods which he had hoped to one day
restore. He had loved a Kinain cartographer - Maria Shaughnessy, a
resident of New York City, so much that he married her. As Maria's memory
and understanding faded into senility, he had difficulty keeping her
happy. Eventually she was taken to a care center in Knoxville (she's
still there today). Nevertheless her children, wealthy people with some
urge towards imagination but no understanding of the Dreaming, were
largely successful in raising a family, and a child - Deirdre. (Deirdre's name in Changeling society is
Dara.)
Davenrow was killed approximately four years ago. In his will, written
and delivered to the Duke, he apparently named an heir - Dara - and noted
that she would take mundane possession of the building and property on her
eighteenth mortal birthday, and that on the next day she should inherit
the Baronial title after swearing upon the Brightblade of Crossroads,
which he himself had forged. Naturally, as with most Changeling plans,
these went awry when it became clear that nobody knew where the
Brightblade was and a team of adventuring knights sent from the Duke
returned without finding it. In the meantime, Alastair had named a young
sluagh Darren (last name unknown) as the keeper of the hold until Dara
could take possession. The Duke supplemented this with a sworn Reeve, a
troll named Amos Finlay. Finlay, not a sociable person by any means,
didn't get along with Darren and vice versa. He also didn't get along
with the staff or with the people of Cumberland Gap, and was, when his
tenure ended with the oathcircle's swearing, was happy to take the train
back to Memphis.
The Alwyns, (named Lois and Grant), were hired by Darren as housekeepers
during this time, chiefly to acquire the services of their pooka child,
Merry. Finlay, at his wits' end with the constantly breaking-down
plumbing, electricity, phones and...well, everything, Finlay stomped into
Cumberland Gap one day and hauled Carver back to the freehold. With
judicious intervention by the chimera Beaumont, Carver was hired for
piecemeal work, keeping the place together. Lady Sable, one of Baron
Davenrow's knights, was also sworn to stay on.
When Dara was old enough to take possession, she came down, and (at the
new Duke's long-distance insistence) swore an Oath of Guardianship with
Carver, Sable, and Merry to protect the Crossroads Hold, and a few months
after this, our story begins...
Back to the State Line Swing.