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.

Image source.

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

thor | mcu | tourist

[subecho]

i. the terrace | the old man

( Honour the ancestors, guard sympathy for elders. Spare them the choicest cuts of feasting meats and lend them the great breadth of your back when their frail limbs wither, and they need carrying across a cold, cruel world.

These are the guidelines. Less set in every stone Thor that would now wish to take in his two hands and summarily crumble is this: this old knot of bones and gristle who keeps springing up from hard ground to prick Thor's calves with his needle-stick is a pest. A nuisance. Worthy of stumping, swatting, and other such hardships that, on close scrutiny, Thor suspects have already been visited on the man's dentures.

Bad enough, to be summoned to a strange new world like an awkward second-grade meteor bereft a convenient waiting gallery of overgrown lizards, lined up for extermination. Now, trotting merrily and wine-free down every winding path, he is forced to breathe in the fresh air, take in the roses, bask in the brilliance of the idyllic apocalyptic pinked sun —

And not crush the old man who suddenly blitzes out of a bush to thwap his knees — again. How is the old man this fast? Worse still, how does he retreat, shivered and cackling, behind a wall of vines and think he goes unseen?

Thor's fists fingers roll and, knuckles snowed, curl into tight fists. Release. Pulse closed again. And he mutters, to whoever's been stranded cruising the maze beside him: )

He... tests me. Like rot tested his teeth, and shiny things test the friend Hulk.

ii. kitchens

( The cauldron soup recipe du jour, such as a rug-apron Thor has been obediently observing under the careful watch of thirteen specters, each more particular about about his julienne, paysanne, baton and chiffonade than the last: pinch of salt, pile of despair, sprinkling of three-headed snake's scales, gleaming leather of a thrice boiled boot, and now —

No. No, he searches their faces, stern. The ceiling, unresponsive. The floor, crackling and sympathetically wetted, but unhelpfully not opening up to consume him whole. Then, finally landing on his assistant in this matter: )

A children's knock-knock jest. ( A beat. ) For seasoning. ( Here, the specters all nod in perfect harmony that Thor grudgingly falls in line with, the giant ladle in his hand waved like a conductor's baton. ) Go ahead.

( They're getting out of this kitchen, dignity be damned. )

iii. dungeons | the prisoner

( Here is the trouble with angst-ridden, arrogant, likely overly skilled and questionably moral agents of imprisoned chaos: they're always neatly deposited behind bars for a reason.

Not that Thor has experienced precedent (Loki), that he knows precisely the kind of creature of trickery who takes ultimate advantage of a gentle stranger's rescue (Loki), or that Thor looks at this prisoner's gaunt, disheveled and haughty manner and suffers a flicker of familiarity (Lo... ki). No, no. He has crossed the dungeons' level whole, shrugged off a meteor's weight of dust off his shoulders, then politely dived back into it to retrieve a pitifully meek slate of token stone — and now he gets to enjoy the privilege of taking standing orders from a watered-down version of his brother.

This is a farce. Worse, it's family dinner.

And so, being the most experienced man in this world and the next (ten), he gently intercedes with an oily grimace and a hand held up high, when his companion seems, however minutely, to consider collecting up the hound's keys. No, no. )

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii do not think it wise.

iv. network | username: strongest avenger

Henceforth, one and all, your bear privileges are removed.

It is not the way of my people to take that which we did not give. You have your birthright. I honour it.

...unless it is a bear, mad, raving and snuggle-prone. The bear is banned. No more bear for you, or you, or you.

iv. @taken for granite

[rumorate]

[Allison doesn't recognize the username but ... she does recognize the bear.]

White bear, somehow always knows how to find you no matter where you go?

[Just hazarding a guess. At least he's not stalking Wei Wuxian for a change.

... Sorry Thor.]

[subecho]

It has habits. That you know. And encourage?

iii

[bravelyrunsaway]

( Licyn has no intentions for the man in the cell, sorry but not at all sorry, though he does have a grimace on his face as the canine skeleton guard... nuzzles. Into his chest. And whines.

Licyn pushes at the bones of its muzzle away, grimace transforming into a scowl. When one hand slips near the keys, unintended, the hound growls, only to be met with Licyn curling his lips back from his teeth and growling in turn. The hound subsides, largely because Licyn doesn't reach toward the keys. )

What, you don't trust the one locked up in a cage, or you don't trust old bones to pick up new tricks?

[subecho]

The fleas might —

( Ah, but he winces, first at the thought of clustered, clumsy, swarming insects — then at the pained reminder that rotted flesh and lingered bones can't... precisely... carry them.

And then there's the enthusiasm with which the hound nestles, there's the man affording him the time of night-day, there's Thor's increasing woe and despair that this spectacle of man-and-best-pet-friend includes not one glimpse of a snake
—

And so he resigns himself to grudging participation. )

...good boy. ( One hand atop the well-shined bones, another on... Licyn's head. Both, generously patted. ) Good boy.

( One of them should be able and willing to wag their tails. )

kitchens

[pacificator]

[ Despite the specters, despite the intense weirdness of this place and everything (everyone?) in it, she's almost drifted off to sleep when Thor's voice comes. Wynonna cracks an eye from where she's in a chair, leaning back on two legs, the heel of one boot crossed over the other on the tabletop in front of her. It's a second before she can parse his request – having long ago stopped paying attention – but once she does, she sits up, dropping her feet to the cold stone floor. ]

Oh, hey, I got this.

[ She's not, like, a connoisseur of knock knock jokes, or anything, but she maybe had pocketed a few, for later, months ago. Back when she thought she might have a small child to entertain and Dolls to annoy. ]

Knock-knock.

[ An expectant silence, and she clears her throat, slides a glance at Thor. ]

And now you say...

[subecho]

( ...no. No, for he has played himself, and lo, the game is come to bitter, mindless end. He must intercede. Save himself. The hour is nigh, extermination certain. Only shame and agony await.

He must rise above the brazen knock-knock joke and emerge a man of wisdom, of strength, of dignity. Of triumph.

Glory belongs to Asgard. The knock-knock jest will not vanquish him. All hail Odin. In his name, battle be won.

He squints, alight with purpose. )

...who... is it? ( A warrior has spoken. )

iv. @man's greatest treasure

[reparo]

On what authority?

[subecho]

Which one will see the deed done?

That one. Thrice over. And again, for sport.

un: yiling laozu

[weifinder]

Question: are you fond of avenging?

The bear is, supposedly, harmless, but it's a wild terror and nuisance. Not knowing how it ended up here leaves me questioning what in the world its master is tending to, or if the bear has been here and us leaving is why it leaves at all to ponderously pursue us in the future!

[subecho]

Have you. Considered. Asking the bear?

4.

[asofwar]

If we track it, we may secure a worthy pelt for the journey ahead.

[subecho]

...but no helm. Agreed?

un: slothbaby

[cosplayqueen]

Yeah............ okay? As long as you don't try to take sloths away from us. Or dogs. It would be so cool to have a dog!

I like your username btw! Are you a Captain Marvel fan too or are you from one of the Avenger-free worlds???

[subecho]

Perhaps... you have misread. I grant you, this may happen. Being, the word 'strongest' resembles so many others, such as...







...strawberry. You think of the most strawberry of avengers, Captain Marvel.

ii. kitchens

[starlingroad]

( Maybe it's hearing the word seasoning, the fact the food isn't the most filling and she's accustomed to far more, or the wait, but America's stomach lets out a light grumble. )

( Her eyes widen. ) Sorry.

How much longer?

[subecho]

( How much lo —

...no. No, no. Thor, once prince and forever steward of Asgard, might be waving around the abominable weight of the world's most hole-ragged ladle, but he is not condemning them to this fate, no matter how vocally ghosts swarm around him.

Over the past ten minutes, the man who should not be trusted to brew a war, let alone a stew, has politely taken instruction to add into his cauldron: a boot's heel, three grasshoppers, a broth of overly fermented ale, and powders of creatures he does not wish to consider.

Now, he shudders and stirs under careful scrutiny. )

This... is not for. ( A glance to the side, from where a spirit stares expectantly, as if daring him to criticize the recipe. ) Our... unworthy... bellies.

( Yes. They are the trouble here. )

iv | ( un: jbb )

[traumatology]

strongest avenger?

pretty bold words.

[subecho]

Truth has a way.

iv. un: strange

[rehandle]

[ It does not take a huge amount of mental arithmetic to ask the following question while pointedly ignoring the entire of everything actually said. ]

Thor?

[subecho]

Friend wizard!

dungeons, but also a wildcard?

[redhourglass]

( she's not alone here. other than the man in shackles, but her eyes only flick to him for a moment before natasha slinks deeper into the doorway, careful to keep herself to the shadows. she'd heard the sound of footsteps, heavy on the stone — a man, most likely, or a very tall or heavy woman.

the man, because she can see him now and it is a man, seems to be surveying the prisoner with a set to his shoulders that says 'suspicion'. it isn't until he speaks, something she doesn't catch, that a thrum of recognition rockets through her — she'd recognize that voice, even if she didn't hear the words, anywhere. the last time she'd seen thor, he'd been sitting in the conference room they'd taken over with the master timeline.

she'd been pretty sure he was passed out behind his sunglasses.

now, though, he looks .. different. the way she remembers him being, when she'd first met him. this could be a trick though. something about this place, the time loop they've been thrown into, showing her a memory. )

I'd say this was the last place I'd expect to see you, but I've decided to stop expecting anything. ( she can't hide forever — and maybe she still has the element of surprise. stepping into the room, natasha hangs back warily, stance primed for a fight in case it comes to that. )

iv also bc i do what i want

[redhourglass]

pretty sure we overwrote 'strongest avenger' with something else

iv | un: wooden sword

[vdovy]

Just like an Avenger to show up and assume you are in charge...
Which one are you? Thor?

ii

[comfortably]

[ Aziraphale is not sure what is happening, but finds himself in the kitchens suddenly, whereupon he finds one very non-human but corporeal man-shaped being, and several incorporeal ghosts. Well, today is just not his day, is it? ]

Pardon?

[ As he stumbles in, the door shuts and seems to lock behind him - bother, really - and as he fiddles with it and tries to open it with a magic that unnervingly appears slightly broken, he nevertheless gives a nervous smile to the strangers. ]

Ah, a knock-knock - yes. Of course. Knock-knock!

[ He sounds very cheery, and brushes off his hands on his jacket, smoothly, as if he hadn't just been trying to get the door back open. ]