After spending the night at a rural inn, the innkeeper informs me that through a precise series of actions that I couldn’t have seen as anything other than mundane, she has transferred her curse to me, making me the new innkeeper. Now if I ever travel more than a mile from the inn I will fade away and reappear back in the inn.
I am angry at her and make it known. It is less the curse itself that is the problem so much as the feeling of betrayal. The fact that she felt the need to be underhanded about it. If she had simply asked I would have taken on the burden willingly.
The former innkeeper agrees to stick around for a time to help me get the hang of things. It is more than her predecessor did for her. She also retrieves my things from my home for me so I can properly move in here.
Fortunately, there is a local small-town grocer within a mile’s walk from the inn, so I am unlikely to go hungry. I can see the ocean from the grocer's but cannot go to it. The internet also means that I’ll be less cut off from the world than prior innkeepers. I spend a good deal of time in the early days pcing markers just under a mile away from the inn so that I do not accidentally stray too far. I am told that disappearing while driving can be especially disastrous.
Another aspect of the innkeeper’s curse is the ability to see and physically interact with the inhuman beings that make up the vast majority of the inn’s lodgers. The prior innkeeper seems to have kept this ability even after passing the curse on to me. This is the rger part of the reason she sticks around, I think. The lodgers, especially those that pass this way regurly, are more used to her presence than mine. A number of the lodgers can be dangerous when agitated, and some would-be lodgers I am strongly advised to turn away at the door. I almost make that mistake once before the former innkeeper steps in. Afterwards she tells me that the mushroom-like traveler I almost opened the door for would have killed me and everyone else inside, but it is otherwise powerless unless invited in.
