Kingsport 1844: Hotel Poseidon

21) Hotel Poseidon
5 Circle Street, Downtown. Est. 1843

A) Spencer’s Folly
Completed last summer, the Hotel Poseidon is Kingsport’s first modern hotel. A three-story building made from Cape Ann granite, the Poseidon boasts fifty rooms, gas lighting, and indoor plumbing. Although it’s small compared to similar hotels in Boston or Providence, the Poseidon has all the amenities one might expect from a big-city operation. The ground floor holds a ballroom, a barber shop, a candy store, and an exclusive restaurant named “The Pharos,” which specializes in seafood, French pastries, and exotic desserts. As one might expect, the Poseidon is also Kingsport’s most expensive hotel: rooms range from $4/night for individual rooms to $10/night for suites equipped with harborside views and personal water closets. Even the barber shop is pricey, its floor a mosaic of copper pennies and its walls hung with gilded mirrors.

Owned by a Miskatonic Valley consortium headed by Kirby Spencer, despite the Poseidon’s tasteful elegance, many native Kingsporters consider it a pretentious display of “new money.” Locals also grouse about the name, considering Spencer’s arbitrary shift from Roman to Greek mythology as bad form. The hotel has certainly not performed as well as expected, and has acquired the unfortunate nickname of Spencer’s Folly. Still, with the Eastern Railroad connecting Kingsport to Boston next year, Spencer figures on having the last laugh.

B) Room 237: Dorothy Talbot
Summoned to Kingsport by the suicide of her nephew, Dorothy Talbot is Dr. Adrian Talbot’s closest living relative. A prim, unmarried woman who lives in Arkham, “Miss Dorothy” considers herself an upstanding Quaker, and resents this imposition on her solitude. She despises Kingsport, its people, and the sea: her brother and Adrian’s mother drowned when sailing to Venice; her grandfather was killed when the mob burned Talbot Hospital in 1774; and her great-great grandmother was “unjustly imprisoned by the zealot, Ebenezer Hall.” Talbot plans on returning to Arkham just as soon as she settles her nephew’s affairs and puts that “dreadful new house” on the market. (“Adrianopolis” is detailed in Encounter 24.) In fact, she’s planning to leave the Miskatonic Valley altogether, and has already settled on a comfortable cottage in Adams, Massachusetts—“They don’t stand for such nonsense in the Berkshires!”

If contacted at the Poseidon, Talbot agrees to meet player characters at the Pharos for tea—she’s firmly against alcohol, and isn’t going to pay for anyone’s dinner. She temporarily surrenders Adrian’s housekey if shown Lowell’s letter; otherwise it takes a Hard Persuade roll. Snapping the key on the table with a precise click, she’ll warn, “If this key is not returned in six hours, my lawyer shall alert the constables. You may leave it with the hotel concierge.”

White Leviathan > Chapter 1—Kingsport 1844
[Back to Encounter 20, Turner Hall | White Leviathan TOC | Forward to Encounter 21, South Hill Station]

Author: A. Buell Ruch
Last Modified: 26 November 2021
Email: quail (at) shipwrecklibrary (dot) com
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