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The Strange and Wonderful House, often referred to as simply the House, and also called the Infinite House or the Mansion, was a living house of mysterious origins whose interior encompassed an infinite number of rooms, many of them strange or supernatural. Jenny Everywhere was friends with the Architect of the House, and had an unusually good understanding of the nature of the House, which she visited in many incarnations, up to and including the day of the House's eventual destruction.
Description
Nature
The House was infinite (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: Welcome!) and home to many portals to and from other dimensions than the one where its original exterior happened to be located. In many cases, transit from one room to another was achieved through portals internal to the house, rather than more conventionally making one's way through the building. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House)
Its internal organisation was paradoxical, including such rooms as a “3rd floor basement”. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: Every House Needs One) Some rooms were incalculably larger on the inside than normal, (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Coat Room) sometimes containing entire biomes, (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Catamaran Loos of Oceania) and some changed appearance based on the observer. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Coat Room, The Dining Room) Time was also malleable within the House, with it being possible to move back and forth in time when one moved between rooms; for example, when nipping out of a party in the aforementioned 3rd floor basement to go to the men's rooms, Rennik described the party as being held “last Thursday”. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: Every House Needs One)
Inhabitants
Some parts of the House were home to supernatural entities, including:
- Will-o'-wisps; (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Courtyard)
- Fairies; (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Anteroom)
- Dwarves; (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Coat Room)
- Titans; (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Coat Room)
- Imps. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: View From a Jungle)
There were also miscellaneous human, or seemingly human, residents, such as Federico Ruiz and the other decadent socialites of his Pleasure Pad. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Pleasure Pad of Federico Ruiz)
The House, or specific rooms within the House, also had human staff. These included the guards keeping watch over the door to the Conservatory from the Guardroom. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Guardroom)
Contents
The Courtyard
The Courtyard was an area in front of the wrought gates that properly led into the estate, but which was still part of the House in some sense. It was “fragrant”, and the air was filled with “softly surrsurring willows and languid will-o'-wisps”. It was always night inside the Courtyard, the sky filled with “alien stars”. There were chimes, always ringing softly in the playful wind.
The gates themselves, although they appeared at first glance to be made of glowing golden metal, were actually made of clear tubing within which luminous insects milled about for an indiscernible purpose. The gates could open of their own accord to let in a visitor. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Courtyard)
The Anteroom
The Anteroom appeared to be carved inside the trunk of an impossibly huge tree trunk, the wood of the walls smooth and unbroken. Its floor was tiled in a spiral fractal pattern in black and white, and it was furnished with comfortable sitting chairs, sofas and coffee tables, arranged across the pillar of cold white fire in the centre, into which guests could step to get to other parts of the House. This fire was fueled by fairy dust which fell from the floating chandelier above, whose light did not come from electricity or fire but from a number of small fairies sitting on the chandelier. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Anteroom)
The Pleasure Pad of Federico Ruiz
The Pleasure Pad of Federico Ruiz was a “shimmering” domed community offering every decadent luxury known to man, and then some, to its select group of socialites. The central few domes offered cocktails laced with “a bewildering variety of intoxicants”, sofas with couches embroidered with the silk of mutated spiders, and golden bathing fountains swimming with “minuscule fish”. The furthermost domes were “small jungles of primal lust” housing more lustful forms of entertainment. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Pleasure Pad of Federico Ruiz)
The Illegal Underground Greenhouse
There existed an illegal underground greenhouse. It was because of its existence that the Pleasure Pad was not the best contender for the title of “seedy underbelly of the House”. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Pleasure Pad of Federico Ruiz)
The Catamaran Loos of Oceania
One of the House's bathrooms, the Catamaran Loos of Oceania took the form of an oceanic landscape with waves frozen beneath a shining moon, the waters populated by many calamari. The actual bathroom equipment was located on a boat in the middle of this landscape. The Catamaran Loos could be entered through a portal which felt like “a song on your skin”. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Catamaran Loos of Oceania)
The Library
The Library was extremely dusty, and its floors creaked in a frightening fashion. It was connected by a portal to the Library of Hawk Manor in one universe. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Library) The Library had a bespoke bathroom, which was, surprisingly enough, completely spotless, but for the forgotten book. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Bathroom (of the Library))
The Theater Room
Like many Victorian manors, the House was home to a theater room. Its players were inhuman beings wearing human faces like masks, however, and getting drawn into the performance was hazardous. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Theater Room)
The Coat Room
The House's Coat Room catered to visitors who wished to leave their coats in storage for the duration of their visits. It changed according to the needs of individual visitors, from “warm and cloying” to tall and drafty, with the valets being anything from Dwarves to Titans to match. The area covered by the Coat Room was apparently immense, such that many visitors who insisted on getting their coats back themselves instead of trusting the supernatural valets tended to get lost and wander for weeks or more; “on many occasions bleached bones of owners [were] found mere yards from their coats”. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Coat Room)
The Closet in the Sitting Room
In the Sitting Room, there was a Closet. Allegedly like all closets, it was a portal to the magical land of Narnia, but it was designed to test users' faith in this fact because the real doorway was actually the back of the closet, with what appeared to be its back wall acting as the door. Hence, only if they thought to open it despite their initial disappointment, would the would-be travellers realise the Closet really was a portal to Narnia after all. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Closet in the Sitting Room)
Hallway - P13
Served by a lift – not an elevator, just a vertical shaft with a very forceful updraft – the organically-curved Hallway - P13, whose floor glows a soft blue, provided access to the Observatory through an “elegant door of dark wood”. The hallways was included in the original blueprint for the House. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: Hallway - P13)
The Observatory
The Observatory was located at the end of Hallway - P13, behind an “elegant door of dark wood” (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: Hallway - P13) locked by a complex mechanism. The room itself was circular, with a dome that looked out into the night sky. Around the room were dozens of monitors built into consoles with buttons, keyboards, levers and toggles. In the middle sat a “technologically-advanced ”recliner chair with joysticks on both armrests and a helmet on the seat, from which a user could control the House's defensive lasers. According to its A.I. guardian Ana, the purpose of the Observatory was principally to observe “both space and time”. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Observatory)
The Men's Restroom
The House had a men's restroom, where gravity was abnormal, such that one could stand upside-down on the ceiling to do one's business in urinals that were the right way around. Rennik visited it during the party in the 3rd floor basement. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: Every House Needs One)
3rd floor basement
The House had a “3rd floor basement”. Rennik once attended a large party that took placed there “last Thursday” relative to the timeframe of the men's room when he visited the latter. Another man at the restroom who asked about the party briefly got the 3rd floor basement confused for the 2nd floor attic by the tennis courts. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: Every House Needs One) A “quiet gathering”, “swaying to unheard music in a roughly finished basement” was one of the scenes from across the House glimpsed by another visitor through one of the glass panes in the Conservatory. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: View From a Jungle)
2nd floor attic
A man at the restroom whom Rennik was telling about a party he attended on the 3rd floor basement once got it confused for the 2nd floor attic, with which Rennik was also familiar. It was apparently located “by the tennis courts”. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: Every House Needs One)
Tennis courts
A man at the restroom whom Rennik was telling about a party he attended on the 3rd floor basement once got it confused for the 2nd floor attic, with which Rennik was also familiar. It was apparently located “by the tennis courts”. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: Every House Needs One)
The Dining Room
The Dining Room changed based on the observer, with even two people sitting side by side, drinking together, not necessarily perceiving the room the same way. It could appear as anything from “the viking halls of Valhalla” to something more personal like “the nightclub where you had your first kiss”. Even the food and drinks could change — “while you drink your microbrew and have your salt and vinegar crisps, your friend may quaff mead and eat suckling pig”. However, the room's magical effects seemed to also prevent people from caring about all this. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Dining Room)
The Guardroom
The Guardroom was a room staffed with a number of armed guards who kept watch over the locked door to the Conservatory. The guards were always heavily-armed, and there were “rows upon rows of additional weapons mounted upon the walls, all within easy reach”. It was apparently the only way into the Conservatory. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Guardroom)
The Conservatory
The Conservatory was one of multiple greenhouses within the House. It was large and highly dangerous, the only door being locked and watched over by the guards in the Guardroom. Visitors were permitted, but only if they outfitted themselves properly and agreed not to stray off the path, and not to touch any of the plants, or the glass within which some were held. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Conservatory)
The garden was actually a version of the Garden. It was “a beautiful place where plant life of every kind imaginable and some you had never heard of grows together, seeming somehow both wild and ordered”. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: Back to the Garden) It was entirely indoors, but strewn about with panes of glass, most of which allowed direct sunlight of unknown provenance to stream through. Other panels were windows into other parts of the Strange and Wonderful House. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: View From a Jungle) The “Gardener” of this Conservatory was an infamous mad angel who tried to kill all who entered. He appeared as a wizened old man with a machete to the naked eye, but his reflections revealed his true form as a many-winged creature wielding a flaming sword. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: Back to the Garden)
History
Origins
At some point, an individual prepared an empty blueprint marked with infinite dimensions and gathered other creative minds to help create rooms for the “strange and wonderful house” they intended to build. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: Welcome!) The blueprint was progressively filled out. Hallway - P13 was included on the blueprints as “H-P13”, and one of the people with access to the blueprints took to calling it the “Pie” hallway. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: Hallway - P13)
Visitors
A visitor whose brother had had access to the blueprints once made their way through the House. They passed through Hallway - P13 and knocked on the door to the Observatory. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: Hallway - P13) The visitor entered the Observatory and was greeted by the A.I. Ana, who explained the Observatory's function to them. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Observatory)
A party was once held in the 3rd floor basement, attended by Rennik. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: Every House Needs One)
On one occasion, an incarnation of Jenny Everywhere ran into the Strange and Wonderful House while chased by Jenny Nowhere. She tried to hide in a dark room, but was found by Nowhere; however, Everywhere picked up a lamp and clobbered Nowhere on the head with it before making her escape. (PROSE: Jenny Everywhere and the Nowhere Spiral)