“But why think about that when all the golden land's ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?”
This is not an adventure. It’s more of a framework for adventure. This is a journey to the crossroads: the road from the edge of reality (Highland) to the center of it (the Eternal City). If they’ve been chasing somebody, such as Joe Lakono (see Resources), that person may be racing to the city ahead of them. If there is a villain involved, it should be a villain who has some ties to mythological origin stories, such as Tawhiri, Tiamat, or Satan.
Read through the whole thing, and plan ahead. For example, if they’re going to encounter the Coriandrome, make sure they see some faded handbills along the road. There should be lots of thirteens and sevens on the way to the crossroads, as well as 61s and 49s. Other themes should be floods, getting things out of stone, crossroads, and trees.
While the journey can be its own reward in real life, we expect more from our fictional narratives. Even if the players think that their only goal is the Emerald City, it will still be a letdown if they arrive and the wizard cures all of their ills effortlessly. By the end of the road, they should either learn something, find something, or fix something that helps them succeed at a difficult task.
- About the Road
- About the Road in Finding the Road
- The Pyramids
- In Highland, the Red Road may be found amidst the pyramids of ruined Egypt in the Dark Forest, beside the great human-headed cat (sphinx). The path is marked by yellow trumpets, and leads into the southern mountains, but never reaches South Bend. The road is difficult to follow at first, but as they near the mountains becomes easier. When standing directly on the path between the trees, a pass is visible through the mountains. It exists only for…
- The Paradice Island Lounge
- If you don’t want the characters to need to head through the forest for several adventures, you can also put some doors in the basement of the Paradice Island Lounge in the adventure Helter Skelter. These doors are one-way. The door to High Road 49 appears in a cave on a snow- and wind-swept mountain, and on the mountain side of the door it is a brittle and beautiful door of ice; after they come through, a gust of wind will blow and it will…
- The Mountain
- Many paths to the King’s Highway 49 lead into the mountains. The start of the road is always marked by flower-bearing trees: apple trees in bloom, or cherry trees, or yellow trumpets. The road is a hard red clay, cracked at the edges, twining through the worlds from the crossroads and the Eternal City. Long ago carriages plied the Road but today it is covered with sand. The road is difficult to follow at first, but as they near the mountains…
- Urbana Mystica
- Song of the Road, stolen from Oscar Wilde’s Rosa Mystica. See http://www.hoboes.com/FireBlade/Fiction/Wilde/Rosa/#rosa-rome for the original.
