Editing World Serpent Inn (section)

==The Inn Proper==
The World Serpent Inn can be divided into two segments; the Common Room and the Backrooms (no, not those [[The Backrooms|Backrooms]]). Whilst the Backrooms are particularly unstable, even the Common Room experiences fluctations of reality, which explains the discrepancy between the web enhancement and Dragon descriptions of it. This article will focus on the Dragon version, because it's more fantastical and you can read the web enhancement's version for yourself. 

One enters the World Serpent Inn through a set of massive double doors, leading past a pair of coatrooms into a chamber that resembles an ancient tavern's common room, with plank floors underfoot and venerable wooden beams overhead. The common room is illuminated by both scattered fluted pillars that possess their own inherent glow, and a large shaft of light in its center over the bar proper. This bar, obviously, dominates the common room, and itself centers around a massive pillar lined with shelves, which are stacked with the most exotic beverages one can imagine - and more than a few that one can't. Behind the bar, a concealed door in the floor leads to the Inn's booze cellar, which some have suggested may actually pilfer from one or more bacchanalian gods. An eerie, sweet-smelling blue mist - like a non-toxic smoke - fills the air of the common room and obscures vision, making it impossible to see the entirety of the room at one time and ensuring a nice, obscuring haziness fills the place. This is believed to help keep things... "hospitable" amongst the diverse clientele or inexperienced visitors. The bar is surrounded by tables and chairs of all shapes and sizes, whilst booths and long tables line the walls. To serve as a place to help resolve disputes, the common room also features a massive (10ft wide, 30ft long, 20ft deep) brawling pit, ringed by a low wall so patrons can rest their drinks whilst they watch people kick the tar out of each other.

Half a dozen passages lead from the common room to the backrooms; uniformly dark and gloomy, although their construction varies from plaster to wood to stone blocks, and sometimes other things as well. This is the most mutable part of the demiplane, with corridors that can stretch out for infinity and an ever-shifting array of chambers. Some doors are portals, others lead to simple chambers, from bedrooms to libraries to studies to storage rooms. Needless to say, trying to keep track of the backrooms is a never-ending nightmare; the corridors randomly shift their configurations, and doors irregularly vanish and appear, sometimes disappearing entirely for a time, other times merely moving throughout the corridors. Fortunately, only the configuration of the backrooms changes; the doors themselves are unique, so even if your chosen bedroom vanished whilst you were having dinner in the common room, you can at least tell that it's not where it should be when you head back. As annoying as this is, there is a silver lining to it; less-reputable visitors to the Inn have been known to try and stake out "turf" in the backrooms, and the shifting works to prevent these individuals from claiming any significant territory, and thus rendering the place truly inhospitable.

Because hospitality is the watchword of the World Serpent Inn. Beyond the friendly, welcoming attitudes of the staff themselves, the Inn is actually interwoven with multiple protective charms, which in 3e is partially explained by a minor alignment to the [[Elemental Planes|Positive Energy Plane]]. For starters, the World Serpent Inn is timeless; nobody ages there, although they still hunger and thirst (it is a ''tavern'', first and foremost), and some customers have even chosen to stay because there are worse ways to become immortal. For another, people heal much faster whilst in the World Serpent Inn, and can even regenerate missing limbs and organs if they hang around long enough. This effect is particularly concentrated in the common room, where rapid healing and other defensive wards makes combat all but useless (Damage Reduction 10/-, by 3e rules).

Another magical effect endemic to the Inn is that it's hard to tap magical energy there, making spells and even spell-like abilities difficult to use. Whether this is born out of the same desire to keep the peace as the healing and protective wards, or is intended to keep the Inn safe from plane shifting reprobates, or even both, is unknown.

The final magical trait of the Inn is that people within it have the innate ability to see the invisible. Again, nobody knows just why this is.

The World Serpent Inn's name stems from the World Serpent - a primeval "ur-deity" of the [[scalykind]] races in original D&D lore, not the [[Primal Spirits|Primal Spirit]] from 4th edition - and apparently its construction was precipitated by that deity's fragmentation. Nobody knows anything more than that; some have theorized the Inn may actually be a somnolent fragment of the World Serpent, but many think of these claims as lunacy. But then, folks can't even agree on who made the place; most assert that it was created by an alliance between the mercane trader Ilyndele of the Arcane, the illithid High One Sharth, and a third creator whose name varies depending on the tale and his origin is almost '''always''' asserted as being the homeworld of whoever you talk to.

What is known is that the World Serpent Inn has been around for centuries, maybe millennia.

===The Rules of the World Serpent Inn===
Whilst  pretty anarchic place, the World Serpent Inn does have a few rules that visitors are informed to remember and abide by during their stay:
* Food's on the house. Drinks are not.
* Leave when you're ready.
* Do not attack the waitstaff.
* If you must fight with another patron, do it in the brawling pit.
* Management is not responsible for the loss of property or life in the backrooms.