Alice's Roadhouse is a location in Australia.
Overview[]
Alice Gothrough is a mage, a native of Australia, who has established for herself a roadhouse on the long and dusty road between Coober Pedy and Alice Springs. ("Nah relayshun," Alice tells everyone, even before they ask). This roadhouse is not on any map, nor is it in any of the guidebooks. No tourist buses will be stopping here. In fact, as the tourists roar past, the place seems positively deserted and abandoned. Most of the windows are broken; doors hang open, banging in the wind. The walls reverberate with shrill drones as the wind whistles through them. The old, dead roadhouse looks abandoned and possibly dangerous. This is by design, Alice doesn't like uninvited guests.
Every so often someone gets stranded or a camper van breaks down near the Roadhouse, and Alice holds a contest to see who can successfully resolve the situation so that the Roadhouse's true identity is protected and the hapless tourist dealt with. The winner gets their pick of any of the knick-knacks on the wall, or a free beer, their choice. They usually choose the beer.
Most of the time the winner takes Spot, the ancient rusting Range Rover (kept half-buried by sandstorms around the back of the building), which is resurrected and driven by an Aborigine in the house, and the tourist is transported back to the relative safety and comfort of Coober Pedy (Alice Springs being a bit too far to drive in a car that is only held together by absolute, radical faith and a few iron atoms that haven't oxidized yet), where the tourist is set loose on his own. It's thought that some even make it back to civilization, although several have later become opal prospectors.
The actual Roadhouse is underground, and is quite comfortable for a hole in the ground in the middle of one of the harshest deserts in the world. The true value of Alice's is not in its food (which is, actually, quite excellent, if strange: a blend of bush tucker, American fast food, British pub food, and Japanese), its beer (brewed onsite with Alice's personal inspection) or its décor (which is a mishmash of hundreds of years of European civilization plus thousands of years of the People's rock painting). The true value of Alice's is simply this: it is a gateway of sorts, a plave where the European mystics and the People's willworkers can meet, chat, and have a drink.
Disciples favor this place because there is a Hermes Portal that still functions, connecting a forgotten storehouse at Sydney University and a back room at Alice's. This is also how Alice avoids the notice of any road trains: if she needs supplies, she simply orders food to be delivered to her warehouse and pushes a pallet mule back and forth through the Portal.
No one is quite sure to which Tradition Alice belongs. Many just automatically peg her as a Dreamspeaker, and the Dreamspeakers just nod and smile when anyone asks. Some believe she's a Verbena or perhaps an Ecstatic: after all, she definitely enjoys a good party and doesn't spare the generosity when she throws them. But her intensity, practicality, and skill with business seem to point to some other Tradition. There have even been whispers that she was a Syndicate mage who got turned by a Koori Clever Man and struck out on her own, an Orphan.
Alice has clean, comfortable, if small rooms available for the night for cheap, and there are usually one or two doctor or healer-types available staying at the Roadhouse or nearby. She sells basic supplies: cloth, water, water skins, tents and dried food, for those people who want to head off into the Outback from there. Alternate entrance to the Roadhouse is attained by dropping down a shaft in the rotting old roadhouse above, or by finding a cave opening in the side of a hill and watched: nobody has been able to sneak in undetected yet; even those with high Arcane scores seem to be detected rather quickly. Alice doesn't like to take chances.
Because of the sheer concentration of willworkers and the kinds of conversations that take place around tables in the Roadhouse, the Technocratic Union would love to get a mole into her operation, but she tests all employees thoroughly before sharing with them the secrets of the place, such as where it is located. Most short-time employees and many patrons just believe she's somehow dug a secret hole in the basement of a warehouse in Sydney - they have no idea that the actual Roadhouse is hundreds of klicks away, out in the bush. Regulars all know the truth, however, because of the tremendous numbers of People who pass through on a regular basis, People who would never make it dressed (or perhaps its better to say "undressed") as they are waling though Sydney.
References[]
- MTAs: Dead Magic II: Secrets and Survivors, p. 71-73