westwhere | the house of manouk

the house of manouk | test drive meme

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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There is a moment when the prisoner feels, with utmost certainty, this situation cannot possibly evolve further into absurdity, but, ah.

Look at this man. Look at this dog. Look at their union of fool's luck, the prisoner's unblinking stare and the hound, considering its options.

Says the prisoner, blithely, "If that works, I'll give you your weight in wine."

The hound doesn't drop the key. Outwardly, Nacho appears calm and unflappable; inwardly, his heart is thudding wildly. His hand stays outstretched, although it becomes obvious the more seconds tick by that the hound isn't going to drop the key.

Nacho forces himself to hold his ground. He's heard that running will make a dog chase you; that it activates their prey drive. He doesn't know if that's true of skeletal hellhounds but instinct tells him that showing fear will not improve the situation.

That doesn't mean he's given up on getting the key. But getting the key doesn't mean freeing the prisoner. They need to talk more.

But that will go better, Nacho thinks, if he has leverage. If he has the key - if he was the power to walk away with the key, to not just leave the prisoner to languish but to make sure nobody can release him either - then he'll have all the power in this situation.

He can't remember the last time that's been true, here or in life.

But first he needs to figure out a way to get the key. He finally glances over at the man in the shackles. "Okay. Got any other ideas?" he asks.

"Does he like fetch?" Nacho glances around. He's aware of the insanity of the question, but treating it like a normal dog is the only thing Nacho can think to do. Not like he has another point of reference. There are no such things as hellhounds made of bones in Albuquerque.

The dog... does not concede. It seems, in fact, resolutely determined to glare the visitor down into submission, with a fortitude of spirit and overall resilience that the prisoner finds privately commendable. All hail his bony tormentor.

As for ideas —

The prisoner fleetingly considers, mouth lightly agape as he ruminates, before acquiescing with a tired nod, "Sometimes, the old man comes down. He whistles a little song to call it."

A pause, then, "Sing it something?"

"What? No, man. I'm not singing to the dog." He's not singing at all, if he can help it.

Dogs can be stubborn sometimes. If it were a regular dog, he might try putting one hand gently on its snout and then prying the key away from it. It might come to that yet, but he's a little worried about doing that to this nightmare bone monstrosity.

Nacho keeps staring at the hound as the hound stares back at him. "Drop it," he says again, a little more commandingly this time. He flexes the fingers on his hand inward, and then back out. His eyebrows arch slightly.

"If it didn't work a first time, it certainly won't a second," the prisoner mutters with sufficient disdain to convince any possible listeners — all of none, in a place deserted — that this man here is the greatest fool to have graced the grounds, this life and the next.

He even turns around to be spared the indignity of watching this sight of failure (again) —

...only to flinch at the sound of metal hitting stone, when the dog unexpectedly... yields, shoving its great, bony head into the visitor's arm and seeking... pets.

Well, then. No time to calculate the odds of that ever occurring. Victory is won, however bizarrely.

"Bring that here. Let me out."

What is the saying? Something, something, definition of insanity. Doing the same thing twice and expecting different results.

Nacho is great at not learning his lesson.

If he were a more expressive person, Nacho might yelp with delight or clap his hands at the metallic clang of the key hitting the floor. He isn't, though, so he just reaches out with one (shaking) hand to gently pet the dog's head. The absurdity of the situation hits him for the first time as he feels his hand coast over dry bone. "Good boy," he tells the... dog? At least, he assumes it's a boy. "Good puppy!" He scratches under its chin, even.

Once he feels like the bone dog has gotten its fill of praise and affection, he finally turns his attention to the prisoner. His eyes are intent. Gaze steady.

"Not so fast," he says. "Just because I have this, that doesn't mean I'm going to let you out."

Edited 2023-08-02 23:56 (UTC)

"Good puppy," the prisoner repeats, already embittered even before his enterprising guest deigns to... go against the bargain they never quite struck. Good dog, as if this weren't the very same mutt that tormented the prisoner for weeks of silent stewardship, keeping the key at bay.

Now, the visitor has found a new way to prolong agony. The prisoner's beady gaze follows his every movement like a whip, threatening to come down.

"I thought we'd already gone over this. I told you what I can give you. A way out."

"And you said I couldn't know for sure that you'd actually do it," Nacho counters. Something fierce, something a little mean lights up inside of him.

It makes him hate himself, more than just slightly. It makes him feel a little sick.

He presses on ahead.

"So, start talking. Who are you, and why are you here?" Nacho says. "Nobody gets trapped in a situation like this without doing something." Nacho understands what it's like to be trapped, and he understands how people get here.

If he is insulted to defend his dignity, he does not show it, eyes bright and wild and unblinking, staring resolutely the way of this stranger, as if the prisoner must explain the obvious and the plain. As if he's done this, countless times over.

And he has no qualms to do it again.

"My name is Deckarius." Slowly, carefully enunciated. Does he address a fool? He will learn. "The old man threw me in here to rot like a dog. Because I wanted to ruin this House. His House. I wanted to bring his roof down and walk out. He deserves it. Arrogant fuck, calls himself a master necromancer. Ha. Couldn't teach a leopard to grow spots."

"Deckarius," Nacho says. Exacting, careful to pronounce it the same way the prisoner does. "Hey. Nice to meet you. I'm Ignacio." He listens. Thoughtful. He's unphased by his new friend's imperiousness. Nacho has become used to arrogant SOB's in whatever form they take. Getting offended about their attitude never helps anything.

"How'd you get here?" Nacho asks. "You just show up, like we did? Or did you come here on purpose? To ruin it?"

"I was born here," he hisses out, but there's a smile burning the corner of his lips, keeping his interest livened. "Ignacio."

He's careful, with names. Perhaps a mark of his profession: pronouncing names and incantations and words so very attentively, for so often they mark power.

"I was born here, same as I was in Taravast. But I'll ruin it. You have my word. What little use that does you."

The exactness with the way the man pronounces his first name makes Nacho not want to tell the man his last one, ever. A chill runs down his spine.

The way he talks about ruining things doesn't help matters, either.

"I need more than your word that you'll do anything before we can talk," he says, though. Resolute. "I need to know I can trust you. Otherwise, what's to stop me from walking off with this key in my pocket? Hmmm? Then you'd never get out."

He's stricken, for a moment. Silent. Entirely and definitively caught back.

Then, "I'm not certain what reassurance you think I can give you from here." Behind these bars, in a hole in the wall barely broad enough to allow him the movement of a few steps.

"What do you want?"

"I want to know..."

Nacho holds his gaze steady.

"...how to free everybody here. The trapped spirits. The ghosts. You're, like, some big necromancer, right? So you'd know.

How do we get to free all the spirits?

And if I do let you go, I'd need to know you weren't gonna just run off and do more fucked up shit someplace else. You feel me?"

"...the ghosts?" He needs a moment to think, eyes slanting. "You mean... the ones upstairs? I've seen them. Before they put me here."

But he eases away from the bars, softened. "They can't be freed. They're haunting their killer. It isn't me. That was long after my time. They're just faint little dregs, wanting to be remembered."

"Yeah. The guys upstairs. And him." He shrugs at the bone hound. "The dog?"

It tugs at Nacho's heartstrings, to see someone trapped. Helpless. Like he was.

He wonders if this person is like he was, bad but the victim of someone far worse. If he deserves compassion for that. Or if, perhaps, it's all a lie.

Or perhaps it's true, and it means nothing. Maybe Nacho doesn't deserve compassion, either. Bad is still bad, someone worse behind you or not.

"So there's nothing we can do?" he asks. "Look, I don't know how this 'magic' stuff works... Not like some people here. But I have to think there's gotta be a way to — " He stops. Something occurs to him.

"Wait. 'After' your time. What does that mean? When you say 'after?' All of this happened after you got locked up down here?"

Nacho swallows. "What about the other thing? When you kill the other two, and you leave, where will you go after that? How do I know I won't have just released something terrible onto the multiverse or whatever?"

He stares at the prisoner. Hands up to the bars. "But if I don't, there's no other way out for you. Is there?" Stuck in a dungeon forever. No way out. Does anyone deserve that?

Well, yeah. Maybe some people do, if the alternative is what an unhinged necromancer might do on the loose.

"There is nothing you or I or anyone can do. You can't release them. They're not here. They're not tied to people, they're bound to the house."

And the house, he need not continue disdainfully, is not going anywhere, for all he rattles his bars and bares his teeth and he tries, does so try, to inflict horror upon it and its other two occupants.

As for the rest, "There's no way to know what I'll do, after. But it'll please you to know, my first port of call will be a very warm inn, with a hot bath, and men grateful for my services. Where I'm treated as a skilled man of sorcery, and not a... a dog."

This, hissing towards the skeletal beast who watches him. "I'm better than this. And I'll make sure the world knows it."

That's all he needs to hear. Maybe it's the insult to the hound that tips him over the edge, or maybe it's just that 'make sure the world knows it' is exactly not the kind of thing that he was hoping to hear.

For a moment, Nacho stares. Dumb as hell, he thinks! Can't even lie right! Can't even pretend to be humble.

In a move that will haunt him for whatever becomes of the rest of his existence, Nacho slides the key into his pocket. He rubs his temple, before staring back at the prisoner and snorting.

"Thanks," he says. He turns, in disgust, form the man in the cellar, and turns back to comfort the dog. To pet its ears.

But he doesn't give it back the key. If he gives it back the key, someone else can take the key from it, just as he did. He swallows hard. "Good dog," he coos once more, before he's gone.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

the house of manouk | test drive meme

roll dice / rng, if outcome is even, it works C:

it was a three, woe :C

try again!!!! ...and just give it to him on the third try anyway, if the second one is a bust too!

YESSSS it's a zero this time!! C:

\o/ !!!!

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