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

---

Image source.

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…

Image source.

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 —

Image source.

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

bathing quarters

[reparo]

[ There must be something here, she has decided, stepping into the bathing quarters once more. They look different now, so maybe the talismans will be easier to spot on this turn?

Alternatively, the bathing quarters are already busy but this time it's not just the ghosts. Ghosts which are not quite ghosts. ]

Mine, actually. [ Her parents lead a very calm lifestyle, thank you. No stabbings. ]

[wifedup]

Not that you know of.

( He says it with a smile, like this is a pleasant conversation had anywhere, certainly a place without a wailing backdrop. The ghost, for that is what she must be, starts babbling about a birth, Wen Kexing looks away from her to the young woman beside him and shrugs. )

She's mentioned that too. I've tried figuring out if it's some kind of code, but --.

( Notoriously bad with codes. Zhou Zishu would have cracked it. )

[reparo]

Some Christmas turkeys may have suffered, but they were dead when we got them. [ This is also said with a smile, because she is going to stubbornly insist that the Granger clan is non-violent.

Hermione might be the exception, so she should not be taken into account for the data counting.

Thankfully (??) the ghost moves onto the next story, this one of a patron of the bath giving birth here. And this young man calling it a code, which prompts A Look. ]

N...o? She's talking about someone having a baby in here. At some point.

[ To the ghost. ] What happened to the baby? Did they grow up in this...place?

[wifedup]

( See, this is why he isn't good with codes. They could be codes, they could not be codes. But Wen Kexing doesn't say anything to that, choosing instead to listen to the young woman question the ghost. He still hasn't stepped further into the room, though the blood stain is long dry. Instead he hovers just inside the door, examaning the strangeness of the room at large. It isn't anything like the baths he has back home. He tells himself that is the reason for his reticence. )

Nothing good will have happened to it, if it had.

( Because the blood, and the ghost.

With a sigh, Wen Kexing finally steps further into the room, into the reach of the bloodstain, in favour of searching through the nearest cabinet. )

Either way, she's stuck here. We can't help her.

[reparo]

[ A truth, if ever she's heard it. It still feels rude to ignore the ghost, but what is she meant to do? Take a seat and listen to her stories? With the bathroom looking this ghastly?

She's meant to be looking for those waypoints that Karsa wants, to get out of this pocket dimension. No good comes of delaying.] Right - you are correct.

[ So her attentions turn towards the living person in the room, a face she does not recognise. Oh dear, one of those times. ]

I take it you are new. If you have any questions, you can ask them - while we look for a stone. It's meant to be marked with an eye, and a sun for a pupil.

[wifedup]

( Wen Kexing watches her carefully, something unreadable behind the pleasantness of his smile. The sorceress who sent him in search of the tokens did not say whether teamwork was prohibited or not. If it comes down to it, and there is only one way home, what would he do then? His gaze flickers, taking Hermoine in. He isn't adverse to killing, but he's trying to be better. Only the deserving this time around. Ah, the conundrum.

In the end he merely clasps his hands neatly together at his front, bowing shallowly at the waist. )

As the young mistress commands. This one is called Wen. Wen Kexing. If we are to work together then names might be proper.

[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.

[wifedup]

( His smile widens just a fraction at her bow. It's passable. He's maybe a little charmed. But then he's returning to the search, cupboard above the sink abandoned to survey the small room, the mournful chatter of their ghostly companion the only backdrop for a second before he speaks again. )

This token, it is for Karsa, yes? That is how we are to leave this place?

( He'd listened, at first, and then as the day had turned more terrible his thoughts had become more disordered. It helps to refocus them now. ) Though you mentioned my being new. Are you an inhabitant of this house?

[reparo]

[ She pulls a face at that suggestion. ] No, no. I'm another one of the travellers stuck in this place. [ She gestures here to her pendant, the one that connects her to the network of others just like her, or rather like them. ]

And to answer your other question, yes, I'm looking for waypoints for Karsa.

[wifedup]

( He hasn't actually met anyone from this place, ghosts aside. But he knows they're out there. She can't blame him for wondering. )

Have you found any of them before now? The tokens, I mean.