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

open | the terrace

[downswing]

( Hours of silence string along, ruinous. Pink smear of empty skies flushes feverishly above, vast, unending. Thorns glisten and threaten like petty, wildling teeth, looking to graze his passing limbs. The stillness of the grounds haunts him more than the wet, tight knot of the maze he has wandered for either seconds, or for half of an eternity.

He does not question the sudden mound of remains, the numerous, empty or shallowly carved tablets within. He kneels, silks an agony of white beside him, and palms each tablet he finds, new and old, reading out names, inscriptions, dedications —

Until the long shadow of his travel companion withdraws, and the words of warning present themselves. He studies every piece with absent-minded, academic interest, barely murmuring: )

These tablets seek to seed discord. ( A pause, then idly: ) Name you treacherous and false.

( And unspoken, but inevitable between then, Are you? )

[traaaaaash]

Yeah? What're they saying?

[ Eda steps close again, leaning in a little, in the hopes of making out some of the text herself. ]

[downswing]

( He thinks, for a moment, that to show her the evidence of the accusation is an unkindness, a blemish upon her character yet unearned. There is ugliness in words, even those devoid of purpose.

Yet this concerns her. Her honour. And the thick, cold slip of stone eases its way from his palm, presented under licks of pinked, flush light.

never turn your back to her

Wretched thing, folly. All the same. )

[somebadnews]

[ Five certainly hadn't been searching for Wangji when he stumbles on him deep in the maze. If not for the scattered tablets, he might have walked on without a word. He's still weighing how important they are when he's already getting accused of something the moment he's within earshot. ]

Is that all? [ He takes the time to scoff before he comes forward to see for himself. ] Do you remember what you're looking for?

[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. )

[somebadnews]

[ Five eyes Lan Wangji, then the tablets he's rifling through, and picks up the first that lands near him. Words on stone. Nothing mystical about it that would have him believe that he's fallen out of favor with whatever governs their little time-prison. ]

And why— [ He tosses the one in hand and picks up another unremarkable token. ] —do you assume it's about me? Who knows how long those things have been piled here.

[ 'She smiled ever bright'... What is this? ]

Grave markers? [ It doesn't take much to make him paranoid, but all he sees are tributes without names. Not a waypoint to be had. ] What, are they trying out epitaphs?

[downswing]

Words of commemoration.

( Perhaps fitting of graves, though the rites do not correspond with Lan Wangji's private understanding of burial. Easing on stone, his hand feels drifting, warmth snagging on its edge.

Why does he assume this concerns Five? He cannot speak the other side of a blade that shows truth on one edge; on the other: pale insult. He knows the stones speak of Five, as he knows the feverish, flushed petals of the sky that grins down is false, as he knows the air they breathe is fetid.

There is a physical, overwhelming quality to his surety. He does not look up. )

Who died here? ( Someone must have. In swathes. ) Earlier, screams.

( This labyrinth is a house for curses. )

[somebadnews]

[ As usual, he avoids answering the obvious question. It doesn't really matter. The tension in the air, the way Wangji pointedly doesn't look up, tells Five exactly how much credence he puts into what he read. As if anyone needs to encourage them not to trust each other. Which makes him wonder more about the pile of tablets. He doubts what they're searching for is among them, but he's almost certain that every one relates to people long dead.

Then there's one that catches his eye. Looking like he wrote it himself. He examines it quietly, and only belatedly responds. ]

Well, none of these have names, so the best we can get is a rough estimate. [ Judging by the pile, quite a few. ] This is supposed to be a prison for people who couldn't be trusted to exist in the same timeline. If they don't know about the waypoints, death may have seemed like a reasonable alternative to being stuck here.

[downswing]

Suicide through violence.

( He graces the hypothesis to its natural conclusion. It cannot be a death of attrition: since arrival, he has born neither hunger nor thirst, perfectly sated, body content. Starvation was not the enemy.

Then, the culling must have come of brutal hands, their own — )

Or slaughter. ( They cannot yet overrule the possibility of murder, not with a sea of debris wildly scattered at Lan Wangji's feet, begging scrutiny. He glances down, recovering sketched shapes and ashes, possibilities of a lead. No more clear indication than they commenced with. )

Perhaps the exiled encountered natives. ( And he not speak the honest hurt: and exterminated them. )

[somebadnews]

[ Five doesn't know what to make of the pile. The phrases are mostly generic, not enough to give so much as a clue of who they're about, except for the odd tablet that seems to be planted to strategically stand out whenever Lan Wangji speaks. ]

Maybe all of the above. [ All he can do is theorize from the perspective of someone who was trapped in time for most of his life. He can't say what might have changed if he hadn't been trapped there alone.

Aside from Dolores. ]

Are you guessing, or can you really sense something from the dead?

[downswing]

Conjuncture. ( Quick, whipping. It does not harm him to admit his limitations, to disclose where his thoughts wander the path of guesswork and avoid discrediting Five with his baseless accusations.

Lan Wangji, too, has sleuthed long enough to understand how tainted evidence and drawn-out speculation poison the well of an investigation.

This, and he returns to cast his hand over the murder of petty stones at his feet, is not truth irrevocable. )

What do you conclude? ( For all his numerous other faults, may blood-thirsting, there is a natural inclination that Five alone possesses for truth, whole truth, and nothing but it. For flaying away layers of falsehood and uncertainty, like a tyrant might ask skins stripped off flesh, then these bearings off bone. )

[somebadnews]

[ All this time, and Five still hasn't pinned down exactly what Lan Wangji's powers entail. He knows it's something. He remembers, very distinctly, when he was able to transfer some of his energy after being poisoned in Taravast. He's certainly seen him fight enough to know his skills, but his power over the dead has always been questionable. Or at the very least, impractical.

Say what he might about Klaus, but for all his lack of discipline, his brother might have been able to summon one spirit they could get answers from. He'd even leave out the moral bellyaching. ]

The obvious. These were stacked here either as a warning, or to mislead us. Considering the maze, it could be part of how they intend to torture people who get stuck here looking for a way out.

[downswing]

Not malicious.

( This, instantaneous and visceral, a truth by any other name. He does not gift it another. Feels it beneath itched skin and within marrow of bone, how the dead here unite in a sea of homogenous, rare but perfected synchronicity.

If malice were at play, if the spirits were remotely indignant, they would have battered and bloodied and torn them apart already, thrice over. Yet they breathe. Walk, sate their curiosity aplenty. Chase the silhouette of meaning amid a downed mountain of stone.

Lan Wangji's fingertips kiss the edge of another tablet. )

They are melancholy, sooner than wrathful. ( He does not require the depths of communion to say so, for all he has the lesser talent, compared with Wei Ying. )

[somebadnews]

[ Five squints at him as he keeps playing with the tablets like he's reading something more than what's written on them. His conclusion could very well be another guess, but he always speaks with the certainty of someone who has already passed judgment. It's a wonder why he bothers asking for an opinion. ]

So you're betting on suicide, but that doesn't explain this. [ He knows Lan Wangji is listening to him and pointedly refuses to turn around. It grates on him for another minute, then he blinks in front of him in a brief flash of light and shows him the tablet in his hand. Don't turn your back on him. ]

That's my handwriting. They're instigating.

[downswing]

Not necessarily suicide.

( Too early, somehow, to confirm that conclusion. The spirits feel — unsettled, nostalgic, divided. A force coalesced but lacking substance, unable to sustain itself. Shadows. He turns each stone piece, as if it might stimulate his memory, help him link it to a spirit's face, seen.

Then, Five reveals the latest signal of treachery. He does not look up. )

...perhaps they do not speak of us. ( Him. And he wavers, mouth cold, slow. Remembers: ) Where rests the elder?

( Encountered once, as Lan Wangji set upon the labyrinth's road. Withered, conniving, callous. )

[somebadnews]

[ The heat around them starts to climb as again he refuses to look up, even when Five teleports directly in front of him. He clenches his jaw and swallows the implication that the spirits are singling him out. They simply targeted someone easily swayed by what he already thinks.

He should leave and continue looking for his own answers, but Lan Wangji is still busy proving that he knows more than he says. ]

What elder?

[downswing]

( Here, close, a deep shadow looming. Hardly log burns his tongue, but then, they not swing their daggers at one another on this day. After all, being the smaller, Five has the better odds of being missed.

And then, Lan Wangji's gaze rises, snags, catches on Five's familiar pallor, the shape of his equally known anger. Perpetual, simmering, impatient. Lan Wangji flirts, belatedly, with the plain temptation of denying him an answer, simply to be, for once, of an age.

Instead, measured: )

An elder walks these gardens. Crooked of back, malicious. Perhaps mad.

[somebadnews]

[ Five has become accustomed to reading into what's left unsaid when he finally raises his gaze. He should have expected the half-answer he gets. Why a perfectly reasonable question can be met with such distain is beyond him. ]

That's all relative, isn't it? [ There are certain people who would rather waste time on an obvious trap than work with the person in front of them. ]

What did the crazy man have to say?

[downswing]

( For a moment, his eyes shutter, tight, tighter. He breathes in, and recollection is imperfect, but he takes slow inventory of words that bruised his ears, brushed him with the brutality of the old man's... imperious outrage.

When he widens his gaze next, he remembers: )

That this is his house. That we seek to steal it. ( ...for all they are absorbed by thoughts of withdrawal and departure, one and all. For all they have no incentive, no appetite to linger. )

That a man below wishes him harm. He is certain. ( Despite the lack of engagement with the levels beneath the terrace, despite, seemingly, the elder's ongoing efforts to ensure he is never found. )

[deescalate]

[There is always something new in the galaxy to learn, or at least experience. Sometimes Cal gets lucky and he finds a place of beauty and peace.

This pocket of time is not it, though. Sure, there is some beauty to the otherworldliness here, but it's overshadowed by how wrong it feels. Cal can't quite shake the latter.

At least he's managed to find a familiar face. While Cal is perfectly comfortable adventuring on his own, there is relief in having an ally at his side. But when he watches Lan Wangji touch that pile of rubble, Cal's heart leaps in his chest. Could he be psychometric, too? The act is so familiar to Cal that he almost dares to hope that there's someone else like him -

He pushes that thought down. What would be the odds that he would all but stumble across someone with the same rare ability when he's gone his entire life never meeting anyone else with it? It has to be wishful thinking. He should know better than to do that by now. So he shakes his head and turns around, trying to find anything useful.

Almost immediately Lan Wangji speaks and Cal turns back, a soft laugh on his lips.]

Yeah? Wouldn't be the first time.

[downswing]

( Shivered across stone's pallor, his touch stays wayward, lost and thin. He searches the valleys and mountain chains of each engraving: names, occupations, inscriptions. People his gaze will never wander, but his mind's eye opens broad-wide-unblinking to perceive in diffuse, culled glory.

And then, the warnings, torn as thorns glare down overhead, and Lan Wangji feels small, belittled by the vastness of the labyrinth's greenery waiting and the flushed sky judging down.

Half-knelt, his occupations are flimsy, clumsy, irrelevant. Much of him is afterthought in a world uncaring — but for shouting out the secrets of its travelers and inscribing them in stone. )

Are they right to?

[lanclan]

They are not the most convincing of liars, but they do try.

[ Xichen inspects the tablets with a cocked head, hands behind his back and xiao held in case he needs it. ]

This one says you are devious and violent. My.

[ He slides Wangji a wide-eyed look that passes for mock-scandal in their muted language of expressions. ]

[downswing]

( Violence, a language Bichen sussurates in his ear, when wrath and practicality rip free the veil of his decorum. But... deviousness?

He lacks, in the root and stalk of his nature, the easy inclinations towards duplicity and venality, the learned appetites of a performer, to play pretend. Even here, now, half-knelt and hand scattered over the unflinching bed of stones, he blinks and blinks and blinks, owlish and unassuming, blatant in his curiosity.

His head tips in slow, studied increments, washed down by pinked skies. )

I am so accomplished? ( Truly, it should not warm him so, as if it were flattery. )

[lanclan]

[ He gives it some consideration, lips twitching. Any time Wangji has surprised him (unpleasantly, on occasion) it was not through deviousness. ]

In that arena, I cannot say so.

[downswing]

Apologies. ( Instinct, closely bred. The bow of his back is tight, practical, inevitable. ) I may struggle to improve.

( In this, absent teaching, knowledge, interest, appetite and example. Manipulation and coy politics are not the sword, right in his hand, or music, telltale heart's yearning.

His hand holds out for the stone piece, shivered. )

May I know my accuser?