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

[mashiara]

( While he's explaining, and forcing himself to deal with scrubbing himself... into a different state of disgusting, Nynaeve still has the bucket in place. She's never heard of throwing evidence in drains, there's few enough sinks who even have something of the kind in the Two Rivers, though she's seen them elsewhere. )

Haven't heard of anything that ridiculous, but if people are going around murdering, I should probably expect they're not that bright.

( Or more bloodthirsty than sensible. She's distracted as the water quality... shifts? Growing less viscous, more... now it looks like blood. But in all of that, so also comes a cloth, plopping down with a wet little snuck sound. Nynaeve finds her eyebrows raising even as Marty says it made sense to him, reaching into the bucket to carefully pluck the cloth out with two fingers, thumb and index. She holds it up toward Marty after, keeping it at a length so it doesn't simply drip back down on her. )

Gross, yes. Not entirely senseless, somehow. Here, your treasure.

( A small, but present, smile. It's no treasure, but it did come out of his busted pipe venture. )

[pepsifree]

My wha--

[ Turning to face Nynaeve rewards him with the bizarre sight of rolled up cloth. And what comes out of him isn't joy nor pride, but a miserable little: ] Aw, man, I shouldn't have tossed that towel...

[ Nevertheless, once he's retrieved the crumpled up thing from the floor, Marty takes the rolled cloth carefully in his towelled hands. What mess of bloodsludge hasn't been absorbed by the material rolls off the cloth in rivulets, and he's doing his best to resist the urge to sniff it. ]

So the scary Tub Lady was right about treasure, I guess. [ He does his best to unfurl the cloth, revealing some ruined parchment. Heavy freakin' duty. ] If this is even treasure...

[ No matter how carefully Marty does it, he can't unstick all the paper from the cloth. Half of it's absorbed the bloodsludge and has been rendered brutally unusable. The other half, however (which he peels as daintily as his hands can manage), contains actual, legible words.

Words and-- ] Do you know what this is, Nynaeve? [ Marty holds the parchment up, showing the wax seal on top of it. ]

This might be what that chained guy said we should look out for!

[mashiara]

( She resists an urge to help him with the grotesque mess of the scroll, knowing help was a step away from taking over. Instead she makes herself look at the pipe, at how the trickling of blood... not sensible, this has to be haunted too, slows too a drip.

The man in the tub, ghost that he is, watches all of this. He even soundlessly applauds Marty in his successful half retention of a really gross scroll.

A useful, gross scroll, as it turns out: standing she can see what's written, and frown at the familiar shape of that wax seal. )

By the look of it, yes, I believe you're right. This symbol? It's for the Dawn's Reach Trading Company, which is apparently far older than I ever heard. What are they competing towards against the man funding our travels?

( She almost tugs at the end of her braids, catching herself and instead curling her hands into fists. )

What's this piece down here?

( Leaning in to read the smaller attached, still legible enough paper, her frown grows. )

A court summons. For that Manouk, for dark things. Light help us and spare is from the arrogance of men!

( It's not personal, Marty, it's reading about how the house owner death experimented on people, probably even on his Doxe's orders, and thinks he did nothing, nothing wrong. )

[pepsifree]

[ There're a lot of names Nynaeve's said just now-- the Dawn's Reach Trading Company, Manouk-- and Marty doesn't recognise either of them. (Evidently he hasn't got the best information retention, but he'd also kind of just brushed the old guy muttering about this house aside-- you try to ignore the crazy drunk old folks in Hill Valley, after all.) ]

Wait a minute, [ he almost rubs chin, catches the crap under his fingernails, and then opts not to ] dark things? What, like whatever's got these people callin' us from beyond?

[ Looking at Tub Guy, he seems to have started muttering to himself again. Marty's expression softens in sympathy. ]

...you think he's why that one guy upstairs had those shackles on?

[mashiara]

( It's all information she's sorting out and keeping in mind, her months here gaining a sort of resonance in her understandings, just as it leaves gaping holes in what she does and doesn't know. There's more history here than her scant handful of months. Yet not vast numbers who've been here for what... is the longest over two years? She thinks that's what she's heard. )

Yes, very like what has them asking anything from us. And if I'm not mistaken... I think that man upstairs is his own reason for having those shackles. Manouk, Lisanther, and the one in the dungeon.

( She grimaces, finally scooting away from by the bucket under the sink as the trickle of substances surely still not water slows to the slow, inevitably drip, drip, drop of an ending flow. )

What you found tells me more about why. Manouk claimed he was sent here because the followers of the Doxe were jealous. The Doxe who was asking him to find a means of making him immortal.

( Feeling sick to her stomach, she rises, busying herself with looking for another towel to wipe her hands clean. Glancing through the ghost in the tub to see if the water has yet turned clean. Closer again now than moments ago. )

I believe we're learning what some of that cost was in human lives. Why he was condemned.

thinking once the water's gone clean, marty gets busywork? also fails 2 get tub guy 2 answer him?

[pepsifree]

[ These are all new terms Marty doesn't understand, terms that he tries to file away with a level of care he hadn't afforded to the magic lady he spoke to first upon waking. But Nynaeve's gained his respect in a way the other lady didn't, and bias works wonders on him.

He eyes the wax seal again-- Dawn's Reach, Nynaeve had said, and that sounded significant too-- and then frowns. ]

So you're telling me that this place, whatever it is, has loonies trying to live forever and sacrificing other people for it? [ Softly, and more under his breath than anything, he mutters, ] Jesus.

[ And just when he began to accept this place was real and not at all an elaborate dreamscape. ]

...there's gotta be a way we can set these ghosts free.

sounds good to me!

[mashiara]

There are. As for setting any of them free... I don't know.

( Her teeth grit with the admitting, but there's no point claiming she can understand how ghosts work when the knowledge simply isn't there for her. There's no intuitive way to help them; there's no singular approach for the dead. Not all the ghosts she's heard of here can even wish themselves onward, even want to leave. That these ones are trapped, the only slight kindness might be their limited awareness of the world around them. )

There are others here who work with spirits and ghosts and the dead in ways I've never heard of before this world. They might have answers. In the meantime...

( She glances toward the tub, and the ghost sitting in it: )

We need another bucket.

can end here maybe? :D i loved this thread thank you ;_;

[pepsifree]

[ Though there's some disappointment in his face, it's less because Nynaeve's failed to supply an answer and more for his own helplessness. Marty's brows furrow, but he understands what she means, in the end-- Tub Guy and Tub Lady's fates are sealed for now, and there's nothing either of them can do about it. ]

I... [ Best not to dwell on what he can't do, and to focus on what he can do instead. ] I'm pretty sure I saw a bucket in the other bathroom. The lady in there can't hurt me either, right?

[ These poor bathroom spirits. Marty understands experiments and the joy of them, but to do them at such a cost is beyond his comprehension.

So he stops comprehending it. Marty gets back to his feet, carefully rolls the parchment into its original shape, and then slips it into his relatively roomy vest pocket. ]

I'll be back in a jiffy.

[ And with that, he's off. This time, there isn't any panicking or screaming, but if he lingers a moment longer to give the muttering lady in the tub a sad look, that's his business alone. ]