Tavern Thursday: The Thunderbolt & Morris Club Car (Patreon)

The Thunderbolt & Morris Club Car is a dimension-hopping potential base of operations for any adventurers.

Each Thursday I do a quick sketch of a new fantasy tavern as a paying-members-exclusive post. Each post includes an illustration and just enough tavern details for a GM to drop it in their game wherever they need a place for adventures to gather and quest to start. I've begun exploring different fantasy genres beyond feudal fantasy, so let me know how you enjoy them.

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The Thunderbolt and Morris Club Car

Appearance: The Thunderbolt & Morris Club Car is a high-end, art deco club car for a 1919-1939 era passenger train. It is a rare double-decker train car, theoretically limiting what routes it can take (as some tunnels and bridges are too low for it to pass through or under), but this doesn't actually seem to limit where the Club Car can be found.

(Public domain image)

The lower section of the club car has private meetings rooms (one forward left, two in the middle, and one to the right rear), two stairways up (one at each end), and the rest of the space is storage and cooking facilities for the car. The upper deck is set up as a lounge at one end, and for causal dining at the other.

(Public domain images)

Origin: The Thunderbolt & Morris Club Car was created by a wealthy adventuring ley line wizard in an alternate reality where steam, sorcery, and mentalism are all blended, powerful forces. She designed it to ride ley lines, forming it's own tracks and moving without need for an engine or crew. It's unknown if she died, or moved to a higher plane, or just lost track of her creation, but the Club Car now roams the multiverse, looking for train lines where it can serve usefully for a time.

The Club Car bolts itself to any transport -- usually trains in realities with ley line energy follows train tracks (though this isn't always known) -- and acts as a gathering place for the adventurous, lost, powerful, and at-risk. More rarely, it may plant itself in the cargo hold of a ship, on the flatbed of a truck, as an extra gondola of a dirigible, or as a second half of a bus. Once attached, everyone who owns or operates on the transport simply accepts the Club Car as normal and expected, without having any explanation as to where it came from. Usually the transport's normal staff will take over operating the Club Car, but if that's not possible (such as if it attached to a cross-country bus with a single driver) it either brings staff with it from its last reality, or events conspire to make staff available (such as the bus stopping at a road house where enough people quit and hop on to staff the Club Car).

The Thunderbolt & Morris Club Car generally stays in a single reality, attached to the same transport, until it no longer usefully serves in that situation (often a matter of years). Less often, it picks up useful passengers and hops them from reality to reality, often in pursuit of some multiverse-jumping threat that could damage the Club Car itself, either directly or by shutting down interdimensional travel or ley line energy.

Owner: If the creator, Morris, still exists then she is the Club Car's absentee owner. If she doesn't, the Club Car is theoretically available to be claimed, though no one can suggest how such a claim of ownership might occur.

Food: The Club Car has appetizers, snacks, and light lunches on its menu at all times, and its stores never run out. However, its menu of offerings constantly shift, and are a mix of foods from many different eras and regions. It's not unusual for it to have Korean street food, Italian crudités, Mexican desserts, bananas, and boxed caramel popcorn with a prize inside available one day, and exclusively foods from the 1904 World's Fair (in the original wrapping) the next.

Drink: The drink options on the Club Car is stunning, inexpensive, of the highest quality, and almost as varied as its food options. The two exceptions are that it always has available ice-cold bottles of the carbonated sweet drink Kho-Kha Kho-La (which helps heal psychic damage and can speed the restoration of magic or psychic energy in the imbiber), and mugs of hot Xocolatl (a variation of a bitter, spicy Aztec drink made with cocoa and peppers). If anyone asks why these are always available, the staff simply knows "They are Miss Morris' personal favorites."

Lodging: The Club Car's private meeting rooms can serve as bedrooms, with beds folding out of the walls. Anyone can nap in the club area, but not in the dining area.

Stabling: The Club Car can't accommodate animals or vehicles itself, but sometimes it brings a garage or stable car along, especially if someone who most needs the Club Car's advantages commonly travels with a horse or car.

Clientele: Roughly three-quarters of the passengers found in the Club Car on any given day are normal members of the vehicle it is currently attached to, just enjoying the view and a snack before going back to the traditional vehicle. These people don't really notice that there's anything off about the double-decker Club Car.

Among the remaining 25% are a mix of people of note from the native reality -- monster hunters, paranormal investigators, heroes, villains, and lost souls with a great destiny about to unfold in front of them -- similar people with a bit more experience from other realities (intentionally riding the Club Car to reach some distant destination in yet some third reality), and a small number of often wide-eyed travelers from other realities who didn't get off the Club Car before it shifted to a new plane of existence. These last, often called "Long Haulers," are generally split between those desperate to go home, those who are thrilled to be traveling between realities, and very, VERY lost souls with a great destiny about to unfold in front of them.

Rumors: The pantries and storerooms of the Club Car are restocked, but it's done by tiny 'rail gnomes' who move through the air ducts, and refuse to talk about what they know or where they good supplies from unless you bribe them with a food or drink NOT currently on the menu -- in which case they can get you nearly anything, from any reality, that you have the money for.

Adventure Seed: It's a interdimensional train robbery.

...

That's it. That's the whole adventure seed.

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