Nagspeake Online

Do you like luxury? Is your vacation not complete without Egyptian cotton bedding (minimum 800 thread count) and a room service menu worthy of framing? Or do you prefer the home comforts and care of a bed-and-breakfast, where the smell of coffee and homemade pastries is the perfect wake-up call? Are you all business when you travel, because it’s just one more stop on the long, endless road to what passes for gratification in what you laughingly call your career as you knock back vodka tonics and weep for the loves your “work ethic” has left battered and broken along the side of the interstate to hell?

Well, we have the perfect accommodations for you! Here they are, by district.

Bayside

Well, there are hotels in Bayside, of course, but by far the most popular places to stay are the beach houses, most of which are rented by the week. They range in size and spiffiness from old shacks to multi-story beachfront mansions with as many as ten (or more) bedrooms. There are classics like the Dowager House and WinderMeer, which have been Nagspeake landmarks for decades if not longer, and newer vacation homes like Four Sea-Sons and the Harbor Sounds Suite with more modern amenities. For rental information contact the Nagspeake Chamber of Commerce and ask for a list of realties. If, however, you are looking for the hotel experience in Bayside, there are three worth pointing out.

The Velmartre International is a highly rated hotel that’s highly recommended for events like weddings, reunions, and espionage. It’s one of those places where you should really pack a tuxedo or a spangly ball gown and know something about the vermouth/Lillet debate before booking your stay. Recently in the news due to a knifing that evidently occurred when a guest attempted to “get the party started” by affecting what was described by witnesses as a “bad Tony Sinclair accent” and asking if the crowd in the Sterling Ballroom was “ready to Tanqueray, Velmartre-style.” Evidently, the group was not.

The Mira Mar is a family-friendly, reasonably upscale hotel with indoor and outdoor pools, a continental breakfast, and a world-class tiki bar complete with miniature umbrellas. Twice monthly the hotel hosts “Tiki Torch Night” during which local singles can mix it up and hope for sparks. If you’re the above-described business traveler, this is probably a decent bet for you, as well. For a modest fee, your turn-down service can include a glass of warm milk laced with anti-depressants; just ask for the Business Glass.

Dune Dream Motel has two miniature golf courses on the grounds. The first is themed after smugglers and pirates, featuring some of the great figures of Magothy history and familiar bearded and smoking faces from the world’s Golden Age of Piracy. Children under ten get a free ice cream every Tuesday, and the Happy After Dark pass admits kids of all ages to an incandescent wonderland lit up like the second coming of Dreamland–if Dreamland was a putt-putt course themed after pirates and smugglers. The second mini-golf course is for adults only (who must present two forms of ID proving them to be over the age of twenty-five) and remains open until three a.m.

The Slope

Visitors have a number of options on the Slope, thanks to the real-estate genius of Joshua Hortus Ulenborrow, best known as the subject of the Stottleford and Pine easement extravaganza, “Oh! Those Demented Developers!” (Following the general failure of OTDD, Stottleford and Pine are said to have quarreled bitterly over the vision they had previously thought to have shared for their series of hilarious re-imaginings of Nagspeake history before re-titling their next play, planned to be released as “Oh! Those Bloodthirsty Rioters!” with the sillier and more family-oriented “Oh! Those Wacky Intellectuals!” OTWI is seldom performed, intellectuals being far less entertaining than the writers could possibly have realized–writers naturally think intellectuals can be interesting, even funny, although of course they’re not–but OTWI is nonetheless viewed as a benchmark in the history of Nagspeake dramatic literature). Ulenborrow, through a crafty interpretation of easement law that even today strikes fear and sweating fits into the hearts of even the most stalwart real estate agents of our own time, took possession of one-fifth of the Slope and converted his holdings into one single serpentine semi-detached brownstone monstrosity cutting transversely through the district, supposedly connected one to the next by a tunnel built to give “necessary access to a critical water source”–according to the Ulenborrow legal team.

Most of the houses have been converted into bed-and-breakfasts, so in fact the entire winding wall referred to locally as “Ulie’s Divide” might be said to be one single three-mile-long B&B.

No one knows what water source Ulenborrow was talking about.

Then, of course, there’s the Shutter Club Mansion, but I think we can all safely assume you aren’t getting invited to stay the night there.

The Printer’s Quarter

There are one or two guest houses in the Printer’s Quarter, but mostly what you find are apartments that rent by the week. The Quarter has always been a preferred location for assignations, visiting luminaries who prefer not to stay in hotels, and kept men and women.

Quayside Harbors

What are you, insane? Does LadyBet’s Pieces of Floor sound like a wholesome location for a young lady? If you’re not a young lady and you’re considering staying at a place called LadyBet’s, you deserve whatever attaches itself to your scalp in that place.

Shantytown

The small collection of accommodations in Shantytown that might, charitably, escape being called “flophouses” sprang up mostly in the wake of the Ilford/Mapp riots of the last century, primarily as way-points for tourists attempting to “crawl” the pubs and dives made famous by Walter Mapp or the acolytes who devoted their lives to figuring out his message after he departed Nagspeake. Probably the best option if you’re planning a pub crawl is to try and time your collapse to occur outside the Segovian, a onetime smuggling warehouse converted into reasonably clean rooms. As is common with Shantytown edifices, the exterior of the building is an incredibly detailed trompe l’oleil complete with detailed guest room windows; the Segovian, however, is unique because there are windows painted on the inside, as well, which gives this hotel the distinction of being the only place of its kind in the Shantytown district to have inside views.

Flotilla

I think there’s absolutely a market for a hotel-boat in Flotilla. Any interested investors can email me about it.

The Hilltop

Assuming that no one makes plans to book St. Whit’s Rest Home and considering Ferrous Sanctus doesn’t offer rooms without administering vows of silence and requiring residents to adhere to a rigorous schedule of ritual arsenic-eating, the only place on the Hilltop that really qualifies as a guest accommodation is Willie Cobblebridge’s mother’s guest room.  On the other hand, it’s just one door down from the bathroom, and Willie’s mother makes a mean belgian waffle when she doesn’t have her head stuck up the chimney, screaming into the soot, doing her best (she says) to communicate with the man who’s been stuck in the flue for the last forty years. Willie, on the other hand, insists the white fluff that dangles into the fireplace is the trailing bit of a nest built of decades-old Spanish moss by the rare crested mowfinch, and not, in fact, a beard.