The World Serpent Inn

The Wild Goose is a run-down tavern in a boring corner of the city of Arabel. Its threshold is more than just a gateway to watered-down ales, however. Certain patrons perform a curious rite before entering, knocking on the air in front of the door then invoking the name of a deity. When they open the door, the light and sound that emerge do not match what is visible through the windows. This is the World Serpent Inn.

The door opens into an ancient tavern, with plank floors underfoot and venerable wooden beams overhead. Before you lies a large, rectangular chamber dominated by a pair of flagstone fireplaces at either end. Great tables and heavy oak chairs fill the space in between, surrounding a circular bar. A mind-boggling variety of patrons gather around these tables and the bar in groups of twos and threes.

A balcony with more tables, accessible via a spiral stair-case in one corner, forms a partial second floor for the chamber. There are no windows, either on the ground floor or along the balcony, but you can see corridors leading off from both floors into shadowy hallways.

With doors connecting to innumerable worlds, the World Serpent Inn is a renowned extradimensional establishment used by many beings to traverse the planes. Beyond its spacious, two-story common room lies an ever-shifting maze of passages offering doors to every plane or world imaginable. Navigating the hallways is impossible, but no one ever truly gets lost. You always find the door you want, or eventually arrive back in the common room.

The only fixture of the inn is its barkeep, a portly, bearded human man called Mitchifer. He greets every arrival, giving newcomers the rundown on the inn’s rules:

“Food’s on the house, leave when you’re ready, and management is not responsible for loss of property or life in the back rooms.”

Within the inn’s demesnes, spells and magic abilities do not function. If violence breaks out, Mitchifer warns the combatants to take it outside. Failure to do so leads to dramatic ejection out the front door to whatever random world it exits to at the time.