There are few things in life more insulting to a master world-builder than being forced to dwell in a realm so poorly imagined it makes even the dankest goblin warrens seem like magical Elven palaces. I speak, of course, of the hotel I was condemned to endure during last weekend’s catastrophic convention. I hesitate to even call it a hotel—it was a structure of four crumbling walls and a pervasive mildew musk, a place where dreams go not merely to die, but to be strangled slowly by threadbare sheets and broken ice machines.
The front desk was staffed by a man whose soul had clearly escaped years ago through the crack in his name tag. He handed me a key—an actual metal key, as though this were a medieval tavern and not, allegedly, a place of modern lodging. I entered my room with the cautious trepidation of an adventurer descending into a cursed tomb. The air was thick and wet, as though someone had been boiling old gym socks in a cauldron hidden beneath the bed. The carpet was the color of regret, sticky in places I dared not examine. The curtains hung askew, half-heartedly concealing a view of the parking lot, which featured a large van that had not moved in what I believe to be several epochs.
The mattress was not a mattress. It was a warning. It groaned and sagged in the center like the back of a defeated troll. When I sat upon it, a spring ejected itself through the side in protest. The pillows were constructed entirely of disappointment and what I can only describe as compressed dryer lint. I requested another room. The front desk laughed. Not chuckled—laughed, like a bard who’d just heard a joke about kobold flatulence. I asked for a manager. I was informed, with no small amount of irony, that he was the manager.
There was no minibar. There was no bar, period. The television only received three channels, all of which were static-infused soap operas from another dimension. The Wi-Fi was less “high-speed” and more “occasional ghost signal from an ancient satellite.” I attempted to write, as is my solemn nightly ritual, but the desk was at a forty-five-degree angle and the chair groaned in a manner that echoed my own soul. The lamp flickered like a haunted torch. I began to wonder if I was, in fact, inside a cursed object.
The bathroom. Gods, the bathroom. I’ve battled moldering liches in their crypts with better plumbing. The water pressure was a gentle mist, which made me feel more like I was being wept upon by the building itself than cleansed. The towels were not towels. They were abrasive, threadbare flags of surrender. There was a cockroach in the sink. He looked at me with pity.
Worse still, the walls were so thin I could hear my neighbors clearly. One of them spent several hours arguing with someone named “Mom” about whether his wizard OC deserved to be in the Forgotten Realms. The other seemed to be practicing some kind of interpretive coughing routine at hourly intervals, possibly to summon a lung-based demon.
I am not a difficult man. I have slept beneath ancient trees while researching sylvan dialects. I have endured icy mountain huts while composing my epic pentology on the Decline of the Eighth Age. But never—never—have I felt so utterly unmoored from the dignity of my vocation. I am a Supreme Fantasy Author, not a wandering ratcatcher.
Next year, I will make my own arrangements. I shall bring a tent and pitch it in a glade if I must. Or perhaps I shall sleep suspended from a hot air balloon, above the stench and sorrow of mortal accommodations. But I will not—will not—return to that infernal lodging. May it be swallowed by the earth and forgotten by all but the cockroaches, who deserve better.
— J. Lehman-Köhler, Supreme Fantasy Author