the house of manouk | test drive meme

[groundrules]

Hello, hello! Our latest event — doubling as a test drive meme and stretching until 12 August — is a one-off incursion in an uncharted time pocket dimension — the House of Manouk.

Anyone can hit up the test drive meme, but you will need an invite from an existing player to apply on 5 August. Have fun!

THE HOUSE OF MANOUK

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THE TERRACE

Old or new, you wake up on a white-stone terrace dominated by a twisting hedge maze that houses great columns, tattered statues, ponds, rivers, gazebos and pergolas — and high looming walls of thickly bound ivy, bloomed roses or thorny vines. Walking the Terrace somehow always brings you deeper into the maze, while a flushed, sunless sky stares down, unblinking.

You experience no thirst, hunger or language barriers here. Old translation & communication pendants can nevertheless be found scattered across the Terrace and Grounds.

New arrivals encounter the sorceress Karsa, who explains you were likely summoned by one of the undead lords who seeks control of Akhuras — and reached, along with the party she leads, a pocket dimension outside of time. Karsa’s associate, the Merchant, instructed to exit the time dimension by finding Ellethian waypoints — typically stone tokens engraved with the carvings of an eye with a sun for a pupil. Karsa may activate them for you to leave this place.

Your mission is to search the House and find the waypoints of Ellethia or of the rival Dawn’s Reach Trade Company without attracting the ire of the local exiled overlord(s).

■ Some of the statues you discover on the Terrace seem crudely carved, gaining the features of your loved ones, the longer you stare at them. Some seek to throttle. Escape them by having someone else stare at them, becoming their new target, or by leading them in a crowd of other statues.

■ Beware getting pricked by thorns: covetous vines can quickly ensnare and pull you into the maze’s green walls, or bind your hand to that of your companion.

■ The maze’s weather often mimics your mood: nice and balmy for contentment, cold for fear, torrential rain for sadness and a heatwave to answer anger. Smile.

■ Every now and then, you hear screams from other parts of the maze. Run, and you might find pairs of steel manacles or rusted chain on bloodied grounds, from where fresh rose bushes quickly rise up. Investigate.

■ Go deeper in the maze, and you find a heap of small stone tablets. Most list names, ages, occupations and include loving remarks, such as the finest husband or she smiled ever bright. Alarmingly, when your companion’s back is turned, you find tablets engraved with your handwriting, saying, don’t turn your back to them, blood reeks strong on them and that’s not their name. There are no waypoint tokens here.

■ Spend enough time in the maze, and you discover an old, red-eyed, white-haired and hunchbacked man with two chainless shackles on his wrists. He ignores you, muttering to himself about how the House must keep moving, moving. The House doesn’t like you. The House is awake. The House should sleep. The old man hits or trips you with his cane, or you might wake to find him hovering very closely over you. Engage him.

■ Now and then, he seems suddenly alert, if not outright fearful, shrieking that he comes and rushing to tinker with pulleys and stone mechanisms hidden within the maze vine walls. The maze’s architecture abruptly changes, with the ground quaking, walls shifting, while old plants wilt and fresh ones rise up within heartbeats. As the House changes, you might spot a long, spiralling staircase at short distance. Go down into…

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THE GROUNDS

The ground level of the House is splintered in dozens of decaying rooms, many locked. There are no windows here, dust thick in every corner, while faint scratches and canine footprints mar the floors — the marks of dozens of great skeletal hounds that haunt the corridors.

The dogs lead, chase or drag you towards a shuttered hall room, where a middle-aged, red-eyed and white-haired man furiously searches through haphazard mounds of tousled tomes. He too wears shackles. His manner is perfunctorily polite, as he calls back his dogs.

”…not from around here, are you? Must have broken time. Hooligan. Well, you’ve travelled centuries to be disappointed. There are no mysteries here, no epiphanies. All the great wells of myth and magic? Some other pigs have drunk them dry. Blame your luck, for bringing you to the shambling hut of — …the fine House of Manouk. Taravast’s greatest necromancer, til his mind turned to slaughter.

I was his disciple. Lisanther. Must’ve come from high on, did you? These cursed shackles… he senses everyone in his House through them. If he feels us on his scent, he works his little screws and wheels and moves the House stairs. Impressed? Don’t be. He’s a wreck, who feasts on time echoes of the anguished. That’s him. Paints a picture, doesn’t he? Stay out of his sights, or you’ll wear his chains soon too. Same as me, same as the dog he keeps in the dungeons. Dragged back every time he wanders.

If you want to make yourself useful, help me. I traded fairly with a caravan of the Dawn’s Reach Trade Company. They say they left behind scrolls in these grounds, with the words to free me. They overcharge, but they don’t lie. Help me find them. Break my chains, and I’ll break us out. I can. I swear it. ”

Deeper into the claustrophobic Grounds, you find specters of men and women, chained just like Lisanther — their skin translucent, their gazes lethargic. They feel neither dead nor alive to the magically sensitive. They are either very present in the moment or barely recall their whereabouts. If asked about tokens, they say the Dawn’s Reach Trade Company left scrolls in the Grounds main quarters:

▶ Bathing quarters

At times pristine and delightful, at others blood-marked and torn. The waters abruptly run very hot, cold or silty. The spectre of a wo/man might appear in the tub, staring unblinkingly or murmuring that people do all sorts of wickedness in this bathroom: they have even witnessed stabbings, treasures being hidden beneath tile boards, and even a birthing!

▶ Kitchens

Sprawling and soot-laden, bursting with supplies of stale wheat, eccentric cakes, exotic fruit and spice jars, these kitchens were built for long service. A heavy cauldron bubbles and boils a green broth in a cold fireplace, where ash and stone drown wood. A circle of spectres troubleshoots how to improve the meal — just as the kitchens’ doors slam shut, and they cordially invite you to do the legwork for their recipe. They instruct you to chop, clean and prepare the most unusual ingredients: hair of a dog, salt, moulded thyme, arsenic, one of your finest love stories… they’ll tire of their creation and release you within the hour. Don’t dine, dash.

▶ Sleeping chambers

There’s rest for the wicked in these deserted sleeping quarters, which boast exceptionally well-stuffed cushions and pillows, blankets and ‘reading materials’ — torn pages from books of history and magic. Some speak of the desperate attempts of the rulers of Taravast to flee death. Others talk of using spells, the elements and even mass sacrifice to achieve immortality. Enjoy your rest, only perturbed by occasional distant screams —

…or perhaps by a large, feral white bear that bursts in to briefly chase you, before disappearing. Veteran travellers may recognise him as the creature of Anurr.

Some of the chain-breaking scrolls of the Dawn’s Reach Trade Company can be found in each of the main rooms, along with some of the Company’s talismans, marked as waypoints, which should be brought to Karsa. See what your character finds.

Finish up here, or meander down a final stairwell to —

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THE DUNGEONS

Cold, deteriorating, crumbling — difficult to say if this is a tightly bound knot of underground tunnels, or a torturous weave of lost dungeons. Parts of the floor crumble to reveal abyssal depths below — or suddenly appear beneath your feet, to help your progress. Emptied, creaking bookcases abound. Here and there, you see your reflection in shattered wall-length mirrors, moving differently than you, or just slightly older or younger than you are.

■ Revived skeletons patrol the corridors, scantily armed with base blades, stones and torches. They largely ignore you, only blocking your path if you near a magically-locked stone door in the back of the Dungeons, from where you hear… human pleas.

■ Door engravings instruct to speak out the three truths of each day. Nearby, you find a mound of crumbled stone tablets, along with three golden ones raised on pedestals that read:

▶ with morning, my body is a weapon, sun-seeking, righteousness-bound

▶ by midday, my flesh has bent and battered, a shield of justice for young life to come

▶ come evening, I am blood and bone, a humble house to hope eternal

■ Tip bookcases into the narrow corridors to prevent the skeletal guards from reaching you, as you search diligently through the stone debris beneath the golden pedestals. You might even find Ellethian waypoint tokens: palm-wide, marked with a sun pupil. Take them to Karsa immediately… or open the now unlocked dungeon door as a man calls out.

■ Enter, and you discover an dimly lit dungeon alcove, with animate skeletal heads hanging on each wall. They cackle, Mind your step. Heed them and look for holes in the floor tiles — needle-thin spikes emerge from there periodically.

■ Go deeper, and you discover a large bare stone room, scantly livened by torches bearing green fire. A small hole — barely enough to fit a grown man standing and lying down — has been dug into one of the walls and secured. This inhumane prison’s bars crackle and sizzle with magical electricity. A skeletal hound waits by, with a set of keys fastened to its collar.

■ A white-haired, red-eyed twenty-something young man sprawls haphazardly in the prison: battered, swathed in rags, shackled and wild. He holds out his blood-tipped hand between the bars, but fails to lure the dog close — and calls out to you, instead:

”You must be mad to come to me. The old man sent you? Finally? Good. How wonderful. I’ll spit on you, and I’ll spit on his grave. He left me here to die. And now he’s remembered me? What does he want? …no. It doesn’t matter. Rip the keys off that mutt and get me out of here. ”

You can engage or release him, if you coax the key from the recalcitrant dog. Or leave him be and see Karsa with your waypoint token.

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NOTES:

■ There are multiple waypoint tokens to leave the time dimension: the Dawn’s Reach Trade Company talismans, hidden in the Ground rooms, and the Ellethian tokens, found in the dungeons. Bring whichever one you discover to Karsa.

■ You can optionally solve the mystery of Lisanther, the prisoner, Manouk and the spectres.

■ The House’s layout changes periodically, but characters can find the stairs to travel across the three levels every few hours.

■ Mention in your top level if you play an old timer or a test driving tourist. TDMers can make both logs and network prompts here!

■ QUESTIONS & NPC INBOX!

Comments

[weifinder]

Hah! I like you, Bear Guy.

[downswing]

Waypoints. ( Voice hollowed, husked. An empty thing is this labyrinth, house of futility. He feels his hand weightless, stripped of its skins, raw. Tender.

Five roams at the periphery of Lan Wangji's awareness, and he knows the taste of his frustration like electricity, crackling. Knows how to elude the cut of it, where the blade of his anger runs vicious and bites thin.

Knows to settle himself over the tablet pieces and peel them, one by one, cast aside. Names, occupations, inscriptions. No indications of heading home. )

All the same. Take caution. They distrust you. ( The spirits like you not. )

[topoiran]

Mm. I wonder if the successful experiments aren't the ones we have encountered out there, really. The truly successful ones.

[ Xunxian sighs, thought it's light - he's just tired - but smiles full of so much love at Moran. ]

I will, in a moment. This is very comfortable. I would say it might be very lovely to read reclined, for you as well. Once the notes have been taken care of.

[ You cannot write lying down. But reading is slightly more flexible.

After a little bit, he does unfold to go neaten up properly. Leaning in to offer a kiss when he goes past Moran. ]

Did you run into any trouble out there?

[rehandle]

Places? There's a whole world outside of here.

[downswing]

The bear recurs. Was encountered before. Other lands.

[weifinder]

( A tip of his head at the Ah-Xu, and he smiles to himself without saying anything at the moment. Getting into the details of comings and goings, returns and disappearances, how time never appears to be lost on the sides of the gateways belonging to those who'd been pulled in, that can be a conversation when out of the maze.

Especially when he's asked, in the drizzle of rain that's only softened by a summerlike breeze, if they don't work for the death lords themselves. )

The death lords used magic of some kind to pull us here. The gateways we travel toward are the means of us returning to where we came from. The death lords have a mind to take us and turn us into powerful sources of energy for their own weapons. Likely refining us into souls they bind or transform forcibly, we've seen evidence of such in their creatures.

( The vines on the walls by them shift without a breeze, tendrils on the ground reaching out toward them. Wei Wuxian sidesteps the clumsy, slow motions, picking his progress forward. Whatever the path they walked, there'd be some destination at the centre, he knows it likely. )

The one who calls himself Merchant aids us to keep us away from their hands. Not out of good will, ah? Men on paths of vengeance simply don't wish to allow their enemies advantages.

[downswing]

( Want. Resignation. Confusion. De —

Shame bursts like guttered flame and blights him, tarred at its edges and black at his starts, and there's miasma in him, coiling. He recoils, all at once, step stuttered, nearly wrenched free of the spirit's presence —

You dishonour yourself, dishonour this man, dishonour your marriage. And how? Not through intent or gesture, though intimacy's woven a thick and spindly web, and part of him knows, it is not beauty that attracts him, but the porcelain-pale configuration of physical harmony, the stillness of manner, the downcast, beseeching gaze, hunting protection. Here is a creature, at once ephemeral and unchanging, like the plumed many heads of a toothless beast. Myth, magic.

Allure.

And he ebbs and tides back again in the spirit's orbit, with purpose — treks the quiescent bridge of his dry, translucent lips with his fingertips, ailing, then turns, in a storm of silks, to wander the valleys and juts of Wei Ying's deathless pallor, the corner of eyes never again destined to bleed red, and the beads' string of his mouth again, plump, waiting.

The ghost's kiss transported on unworthy lips. )

Fear. Resignation. Haunting. ( All that which is Lan Wangji, man and monster, a withered ghost. All that which was Wei Ying, sixteen years tormentor. And he sees Wei Ying: tired, worn knot of ill-sketched lines, flesh brittle. More dark and his flesh already decaying, for life is but the perpetual cyclical torment of its own extermination. Feeble. Pedestrian. )

He wants justice. ( Vengeance, by so purer a name. )

[downswing]

Not us. ( Quick correction, cutting. He has... scant time to himself, his own attention ripped from the husk of his body and deposited to the shrill, spindling song that curls, blossoms and blooms, flowers greedily.

Not them, who enjoy only the fleeting, wandered, make-believe hospitality of this House that is hell, divorced from the time that might have dictated its meaning. They travel, and they have come, and they will not stay.

Such, say the ghosts, is the way. )

The other — ( A pause. He listens, pristine, immutable. ) One. ( No. ) Three. Necromancers. ( Three jailers, he suspects, but does not rile and ruin the spirits with inquiry. This much is plain, self-evident.

And his breath paralyses, limbs shackled. He listens again. )

There are waypoints in this quarter. Search the grounds. ( Lan Wangji, after all, must keep these spirits their company. )

[recklessenough]

Then it sounds as if I am correct in my assumption that attempting to fight it would be a waste of my time and energies.

I may do reckless things, Sir, but I try not to make a habit out of tilting at windmills, if I recognize a windmill on the horizon.

[subecho]

And I, you, Bearless person.

[subecho]

...it cannot match Loki. Have you met him?

[subecho]

You must be sibling to Stark, then. Always knew there were more.

[comfortably]

[ He doesn't really understand the purpose of telling a joke solemnly, but he is also a very polite person, and would gladly try it again if Thor wishes. ]

Ah.

[ He clears his throat and puts on his best impression of someone much more dour than he is, though for some reason it involves him puffing his cheeks and pursing his lips. And then, afterwards, he can't even help how his voice lilts into a question. ]

Knock-knock...?

[subecho]

A whole new world? Perhaps with a new fantastic point of view?

[weifinder]

Keep safe and sane while you're here, ah? Including with the bear.

[subecho]

You fear for me? I am touched. Somewhere. Perhaps my lower back. But touched.

[weifinder]

Ouch, I hear the lower back is one of those places that gives out with advanced age. Would you like a recommendation for a doctor?

[starlingroad]

Well, you can't go back there. ( Because no use on wanting that. Right? Something like that. Focus on now. ) But we can finish this and get out of here.

Thanks! ( America tries to be a bit careful with her rummaging. She looks in the direction of the spirits when Thor seems to cringe from them, unaware of the pat. ) You okay over there?

Ungh. I think this sad thing is a potato? ( It's shriveled and covered in roots, the thing she pulls out, but maybe it was once a potato, sure. She starts cutting it up to toss it in, too, eyes and all. )

[downswing]

9 Too often, he suspects, he has cast upon his son the shadow of his base unkindness: throttled him with undue care and concern for a boy — a man who has proven himself manifold over.

Says Sizhui, When we learn.

And he means this: We must, and it will be now, and I shall go as you go. Together. With the sketch of a nod, Wangji pronounces his agreement, releasing his son into the wilderness of deciding their next steps, together in hunt.

But for one moment. His gaze slants, snags on ground below, where tablets sleep, only some broken. )

...Sizhui, Perhaps waypoints. ( They were told, after all, to pay mind. To search. And this mound of stone has... strange promise. ) Search, or bid spirits to.

[vdovy]

Wrong Avenger.

[ Also, Stark is dead. Back home, there are a couple of joint memorials for him and Natasha. Yelena would rather not think about that. ]

poor little woof woof

[reparo]

Two things happen all at once. First, Licyn - wolf form crouched in fear (she assumes) behind her - shoves his head against her back. If the sudden movement is a surprise and causes her to let out a squeak, given the precarious location of his nose vis-a-vis her actual ass, it all gets bottled up because -

Second, the old man moves in a burst of agility and darts right at her and this is it, a fight, it's a fight, the ground shakes and the vines wither and she has a big wolf cowering behind her at this and -

"Step back," she warns the old man, her wand out now and aimed at him, the tip of it aglow with a spell. "Or I will be forced to make you, sir."

[reparo]

[ She's distracted, or perhaps it is the dim light - that's all. How else to explain that she should be familiar with his face, but hasn't focused on it long enough for it to click in place? It's the name, however, that makes her pause.

Crouched where she is, one arm stuffed inside a large, decorative vase, she freezes in place, then her gaze snaps up at him. Wen Kexing - there was a Wen Kexing with their party once, they were forced to pretend to be family for a time, in Ke-Waihu, and looking at him now - does she recognise him? He most certainly does not recognise her. ]

Erm. Right - right. Sorry.

[ She extracts her arm from the vase, stands up to her full short height and gives him a respectful bow back. (You hang out around Lan clan long enough, you learn the manners.) ] Hermione Granger.

[reparo]

[ This, she reckons, must be what people saw when they saw her, Harry, and Ron. Gangly, war-marked teens, with far more to bite than they could chew - seemingly, at least, since they chewed it all up, didn't they? Torture and all. It's been some years since she got to Akhuras now, but she remembers she was much of a bean pole herself (shorter, however).

The bright smile is...not unsettling, just insanely quick to happen and very bright. She springs into movement herself, marching up to him and meeting his expression with a similar, more confident smile now, and her hand thrust out for the shaking. ]

Pleasure to meet you. You sound like home, so I'll forgive you for forgetting. I mean, that and also the fact that it's rather a difficult place and time-loop to be, so no harm done, right?

[traumatology]

not personally.
but i know him.

and i'm pretty sure this place might match him.

[subecho]

( ...well, then. An attempt was made. And what can Thor, who has failed every single instruction served to him, at least once, say in response to that? The man tries.

Generously, Thor retaliates in humble kind, while several of the spirits start muttering to each other, with one clapping his back the once, chilled, to signal its support. Come on, Thor, you can do this. )

Who... is it? ( No. No, hold, and his hand goes up, palm outward, a look of well-sculpted and haunting despair marring him. ) No. I know. I —

( Slowly. Surely. The most scrutinised and intensely schooled. ) Knock... knock... who?