The door opens upon a long hallway. The wall is covered in butterflies. A flutter shudders down the hall as wings beat in a wave flowing to your right; but the butterflies do not move from their position on the wall.
To your right, on the same wall whose door you’ve just opened, are a series of six doors, each marked with a symbol.
The butterflies are pinned living to the wall, and contain the souls of people killed by Red Jack in his travels through these doors. Light from some of the butterflies dimly illuminates the hall.
If they’re chasing somebody who is trying to lead them into an ambush, that door (the crossroads door) will have a cherry pit just off to the side in front of it.
There are seven doors, including the one they came in on. The seventh leads to Red Jack’s Gambling House. The other six lead to various places and times. Each of the doors has a hand-drawn symbol.
1. Sun in a mountain pass: Hamokera slums;
2. Top hat and cane: London, 1888
3. Discordant Celtic-style crossroads: San Francisco, 1969
4. Stylized bird of paradise: Las Vegas, 1955
5. Eagle and fasces: Dead Rome at the Crossroads, Roman Year 2279
6. Two discordant playing cards with a heart and a diamond on them: Red Jack’s
7. Eliazu’s symbol (Illustrious Castle): Fork, the present time
Which door?
Only San Francisco and Vegas are important to this adventure. The other doors may be used for your purposes, replaced with other symbols. You’ll want to somehow let the player characters know that those symbols are interesting, preferably well before they enter Red Jack’s. Also, note that the symbol on Fork’s door assumes that Eliazu (from Illustrious Castle) is either free or otherwise powerful in Highland. You’ll want to use a symbol that points toward an adventuresome source of discord in your game.
For this adventure, I recommend that they go to San Francisco first, and then Las Vegas. if Joe Lakono (or some other enemy) is their reason for going through, give them some clue that their enemy has gone through the “crossroads” door—one probably left deliberately by their enemy to lead them into the ambush.
If they’re looking for the crossroads, they’re pretty likely to choose San Francisco first, as that door has the crossroads symbol on it. You can also just tell them if they ask: “The doors with the crossroads symbol and the bird symbol are the adventure; it doesn’t really matter, but it will probably be more fun if you go through the crossroads door first.”
Time and magic
Time beyond the doors is variable. When the characters return to Highland, there is a 50% chance that however long they spent behind the doors, divide by d20 for how long has passed in Highland; otherwise, multiply by d20 for how long has passed in Highland. Time spent within Red Jack’s gambling hall can take no time or it can take years.
If the characters have the world tree on their side, the tree will try to keep time held so that they arrive at the “right” time in Vegas and San Francisco. But once time slips forward, it never returns.
Magic is difficult in San Francisco, Vegas, and London. It costs half level of effect extra verve to cast for classical sorcerors, and an extra half spell level verve to memorize for mnemonic sorcerors. Ritual works normally, as do ritually-created magic items.
The characters are unique
If you’ve read the Highland book, you’ll notice lots of people from our world show up in different, but similar, roles in Highland. This adventure takes a lot of more recent people from our world and puts them into very similar roles and re-uses them. What about the player characters? Do different versions of them exist in other worlds? I recommend that the player characters be unique throughout the worlds they visit.
The player characters are the main characters. They’re not NPCs, not even in other worlds. Shane, the man with no name, and Roland Deschain are cool partially because they are one of a kind. If there’s a Shane policeman in one world, a Shane diplomat in another, and a Shane accountant in yet another, this dilutes the coolness of that character.
This isn’t to say that it can’t be done well. Michael Moorcock supposedly did a good job (I haven’t yet read any of those books). But it’s going to be difficult, and easy to make mistakes.
Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t bring players into the game. If some of your players happen to have been in San Francisco in 1969, it might be a great bit to meet that player.
