Why should the characters go on this adventure? The usual answers: knowledge and/or power. Or they might be tracking someone down who is using the doors for unfair advantage in the worlds, or to escape the characters.
In many ways this adventure is more a guideline that a full series of rooms and events. It was designed specifically for characters looking for the crossroads. It may still be fun for characters that aren’t looking for the crossroads (or the silver city), but there won’t be the urgent need to choose the right doors in the right order.
Before they can go on either of the adventures, they need to enter Red Jack’s. Some sage or oracle may give them the gambling house riddle, telling them that if anyone knows the answer (or can put them on the road to finding it), it will be Red Jack.
“Before Druid and Christian there were other tribes, and before these tribes dimly remembered are the elder races. In Sin City there is a gambling house that was when the world began. In a lost alley there is a door behind a door and within it a deck of cards and fortune’s wheel. Upon the deck are forgotten gods; upon the wheel the world rests. The door is guarded by a riddle, and the riddle is this:”
Come, Master Red-Jack, where are you creeping?
“To the halls of the ivory pillars I’m leaping.”
Oh, shall you return, noble red-cloak, again?
“My bones may return, yet my flesh shall remain.”
You may use a vision:
The sun sets in the East, and the forest thins. You are dropped inside the walls of a cramped and bustling city. The river runs beneath a bridge filled with carriages and carts; barges load and unload their wares in the port.
Inside the city you find yourself in a cramped alley, a mist covering your vision, but you count the doors to your left: One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. You do not knock at the seventh door; you open it and walk inside. A roulette wheel spins, and you pray that it continues spinning. A deck of cards lies on the table, face down, dedicated to gods you do not know.
Or they might happen upon it as part of a murder mystery. Red Jack is a serial killer.
The door to San Francisco is marked with a crude crossroads. Introduce crossroads symbolism (perhaps in the Celtic lands, or using ankhs in some abandoned castle). You may also use the same oracle that brought them to Red Jack’s:
“Can you not feel it in the seasons? Have you no tales of ancient times? The world is a wheel, and the wheel is winding down.”
“The eternal crossroads. Where, or whether, it stands today I know not. It may lie beneath the ocean, or hidden deep in the cavernous earth. Or it may lie across the world. You have seen echoes of it, I think. The eternal crossroads is the pivot of the world. Its echoes ripple through the roots of the world. Cartoril was the first and strongest echo. The Brilliarch’s Rainbow City was dimmer but an echo all the same. Tialnambe walked in its shadows; her husband knew the crossroads itself.”
You might include this with the vision that brings them to Red Jack’s:
A wave of orange, yellow, and brown rolls over you, like an autumn at the edge of a clearing. Then there is the silence as between thunder and lightning. The ground cracks open in a tumult of noise. You tumble into an endless abyss; below you a dull fire sucks in sound and feeling. Ancient gears of a giant mill turn slowly in the unearthly orange glow, grinding the world into dust.
A rust-red path leads out of the gears and into a coruscating mist. The mist rolls back as you fall and reveals a great city upon a green lily-covered plain. Two wide ochre roadways wind through the plain and intersect at the center of the city. Crystal spires rise from the city; they project all of the colors of the rainbow and then some onto the thin mist. Great silver towers, lined with green and gold, reflect the stars--unless the stars are a reflection of the great silver city.
As the world crumbles into the city, vines rise from the crossroads, twirl around the pieces of the world, and roll them together. A woody vine twines itself around you and lifts you from your descent. You are passed from vine to vine, root to root, branch to branch, soaring now high above a great green forest. Mighty roots thread across the two sides of the world, sealing them together like a jagged unmatched puzzle. Far in the crevasse of the world, insects of rust and worm climb from the burning gears, eating at the vines. One of the vines snaps. The world teeters, and the great forest bends around you at the horizon.
The San Francisco adventure shows a world in its death throes. All the foundations of society are crumbling, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Only a small group called “The Summit” is even bothering to try.
The crossroads are almost always near a pyramid, and a field of lilies. In Highland, there are ruined pyramids at the far south of the Dark Forest, and a ruined road that leads into the mountains but never arrives there. There is also a painting in the castle of the Stigmas di Cristo that depicts the crossroads.
A serial killer in Fork can bring them to Red Jack’s. Brutal murders, and strange words written in blood on the walls: “Ebeorie” at first, and then strange symbols. The first word doesn’t translate magically (as is common with place names or personal names) but the second two mean “master of unrest” or “master of chaos” or “lord of discord” or “conflagration king”. Something like that.
Place three or four murders in the general vicinity of the door, spaced maybe two to three weeks apart. Model them after the Jack the Ripper murders: surgical removal of organs, lots of blood, etc. Then, one more after the player characters become aware of the murders, with the strange runes written in blood on a nearby wall.
There are occasionally cherry blossoms at the scene of the crime. The authorities won’t notice them, but the player characters, being attuned to the strange, will.
The victims are prostitutes. The murders are committed by a ride-along of the demon Ebeorie. In his madness, the murderer sometimes writes the voice he hears on the walls: the words of power that summon Ebeorie.
If the player characters would chase Joe Lakono or his alter ego Orlando Fontaine, he’s a great way to get them through the doors. If they’ve come to really hate Joe, he might summon a waxen assassin to take his form, and send it against one of them, so that they end up chasing his twin through the doors.
Waxen Assassin: (Demon: 6; Chaotic Evil; Survival: 43; Move: 12; Attacks: 1; Damage: d6; Defense: +8; Special attack: 6-yard illusions; Special defenses: immune to weapons, cold; resistant to elements)
The adventure pretty much assumes a waxen assassin or someone with illusory magic, so you’ll want to bring something like that into the adventures before this adventure starts.
The door to Las Vegas is marked with the symbol of the Bird of Paradise, which is the symbol of the Paradice Island Lounge in Vegas. If they will encounter Joe Lakono in their world before entering Red Jack’s, they might find one of Joe’s matchbook’s with that symbol on it.
As if altering the fabric of time and space is not enough of a moral dilemma, you can add more to suit your game group. In our game group we have one player who can only make it to about a third of the get-togethers. We play little enough as it is, so we can’t cancel the games when he can’t make it.
Since he started playing a little more regularly just a few sessions before I realized the characters were going to enter the Butterfly Halls, I concocted (with the help of Joe Lakono) this little scheme. It helped that the player’s character had been involved in a crime that resulted in a murder.
One way to snap the vines that hold the world together is to force the world to confront two different versions of itself. Joe has set the world shimmering between two realities. In one version of the world, Arun has been executed for murder in the commission of a burglary. In the other version of the world, Arun escaped the authorities.
Joe Lakono (as Orlando Fontaine) used his Watch of the Red Ants to engineer Arun’s double life. Later, he gave the timepiece to the military leaders of Black Stag as they went to war against the (what they thought was a token) army of Illustrious Castle. They need merely twist the red ants backwards to gain a second chance if things go wrong.
If this dissonance continues, the vine will snap, and the world tree will retreat. This world will crumble into the abyss, much like the Dead Rome that the characters saw at the Crossroads.
If the characters ask either Joe or Jack why they keep having these strangely realistic dreams about Arun existing/not existing, he’ll tell them. And he’ll tell them how to solve the problem. If Arun dies when the world isn’t looking, that will solve the paradox. That is, if they let Arun die (or kill him themselves) while on the other side of the doors, they’ll save the world for a little longer. Joe will be satisfied with either outcome.
This rusted iron watch is surrounded by a circle of red ants twined among themselves. The watch flips open to reveal rusted gears covered in dust.
When the ants are twisted, they burn red and time flips back a number of rounds equal to the bearer’s charisma. The person in control of the watch can attempt to forge a new path in time. However, both paths still exist, and different people will remember different paths at different times.
Any person can use the watch but once.