The Strange and Wonderful House: Difference between revisions

==== Inner structure ====

Its internal organisation was paradoxical, including such rooms as a “[[#3rd floor basement|3rd floor basement]]”. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Chapter 11: Every House Needs One|Every House Needs One]]'') Most rooms' actual relative positions within the House were “fluid”, with the exception of [[the Stationery Room]] which was always located at the exact halfway point between [[the Master Bedroom]] and [[the Gatehouse]]. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Chapter 20: The Stationery Room|The Stationery Room]]'') Some rooms were incalculably larger on the inside than normal, ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Chapter 7: The Coat Room|The Coat Room]]'') sometimes containing entire biomes, ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Chapter 4: The Catamaran Loos of Oceania|The Catamaran Loos of Oceania]]'') and some changed appearance based on the observer ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Chapter 7: The Coat Room|The Coat Room]]'', ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Chapter 12: The Dining Room|The Dining Room]]'') or the circumstance. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Chapter 41: The ‘Rock Room’|The ‘Rock Room’]]'')

==== Sentience ====

The House was sentient, with a definite personality of its own. It enjoyed having its residents upgrade its interior, and had the ability to manipulate its own interior to a degree to facilitate their work. For example, when the [[lawn gnome]]s began work to graft [[the Great Glass Elevator]] into the House to supplement [[#The Stairwell|the Stairwell]], it began to make various doorways throughout the House open into as-yet-empty elevator shafts. “Buzzing with excitement and creaking with worry, lurching, stretching, and then settling”, the House's active mood was noticed by the residents, who were forced to hold a “continuous seance” on [[#The 7th floor|the 7th floor]] in order to “keep [[spirit]]s and [[demon]]s out of closets and cupboards”. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Chapter 21: Elevator|Elevator]]'') The House sometimes made specific requests of its inhabitants, but it quickly learned that asking the [[Artifector]]s anything was pointless: “requests were fastidiously ignored and trying to guide the artifectors was akin to shearing a flock of cats”. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Appendix 27-IV: The Lab: The Perpetual Motion Machine (Part 1)|The Lab: The Perpetual Motion Machine (Part 1)]]'') The [[Maid]]s viewed themselves as being directly under the authority of the House rather than “those who claim[ed] to rule Her”, and apparently had ways of communicating with her directly. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Chapter 46: The Maids|The Maids]]'')

=== Inhabitants ===

* [[the Cheshire]]; ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Chapter 40: The Cheshire (Part 1)|The Cheshire (Part 1)]]'', etc.)

* the [[personification of February]]; ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Chapter 43: The Vault|The Vault]]'')

* [[the Lady in Mourning]], speculated to be a former goddess. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Chapter 19: The Ruined Chapel|The Ruined Chapel]]'')

=== Staff ===

==== The Cathedral ====

The Cathedral was huge and quiet, lit by sunlight streaming in through stained glass windows. On its floor, “old words” were inscribed, making up a foreboding prophecy: “''Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,/Your old men shall dream dreams,/Your young men shall see visions.''” On the altar, writers who wanted to ritually swear off writing forever could come and lay down a symbolic writing implement of their choice. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Chapter 45: The Cathedral|The Cathedral]]'')

== History ==

A century before the “coming of the elevator”, the [[Master of the House]] “at that time” kept [[Master of the House's mistress|a mistress]]. After a parlour maid discovered the true nature of [[#the Airing Cupboard|the Airing Cupboard]], he installed a life-sized portrait of her over the door. This outraged the [[Master of the House's wife]], and it was later said that she instantly moved back to the continent, where she died of jealously soon after. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Chapter 26: The Airing Cupboard|The Airing Cupboard]]'')

The [[Artifector]]s of [[#The Laboratory|the Laboratory]] once tasked themselves with creating a [[Perpetual Motion Machine]] as a dare. The first prototype seemed functional, but exploded in the face of lead Artifector [[Agrontus]] when he tried to solemnly switch it on, leading to the appointment of [[Gravitcher]], whose first duty as a new leader was to preside over the cremation of what few remains of Agrontus could be gathered. However, now being confident that the idea could work in theory, the Artifectors continued studying various ways to implement it without blowing themselves up like Agrontus, such as running a network of wires around the House, “the first time in many years that any of them had seen any part of the House except for their own exclusive corner of it”, and creating a number of devices intended to siphon power from the House's network, one of which was later repurposed into a tea kettle. Eventually, they made it work at the cost of having to create a whole new tower and a permanent lightning storm. The machine had no other function than to go “''ping-whoomp''” every eight minutes, but was wisely left alone. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Appendix 27-IV: The Lab: The Perpetual Motion Machine (Part 1)|The Lab: The Perpetual Motion Machine (Part 1)]]'', ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Appendix 27-V: The Lab: The Perpetual Motion Machine (Part 2)|The Lab: The Perpetual Motion Machine (Part 2)]]'')

=== Visitors ===

[[Elshanor|Lady Elshanor]] was the librarian of [[Hawk Manor]] in [[Universe B (Our Strange and Wonderful House)|one universe]]. After an extended absence from Hawk Manor when she found herself staying at [[the Institution]], she returned to find the Manor dusty and abandoned. Making her way to the Manor's Library, she found a portal ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Chapter 5: The Library|The Library]]'') into [[#the Library|the Library]] of the Strange and Wonderful House|House. There, she observed that it was as dusty as her own Library, but that the bathroom collected to the Library was, absurdly, completely clean by contrast. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Appendix 5-II: The Bathroom (of the Library)|The Bathroom (of the Library)]]'') An “elegant and studious woman” strolling “with melancholy” through “a tattered library” was one of the scenes from across the House glimpsed by another visitor through one of the glass panes in [[#The Conservatory|the Conservatory]]. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our_Strange_and_Wonderful_House_(novel)#Appendix_13-II:_View_From_a_Jungle|View From a Jungle]]'')  

Making her way through multiple portals, Elshanor eventually ended up in [[#The Throne Room|the Throne Room]], where she was drawn to one of the fifty thrones, a silver-set throne padded with royal-blue velvet. When she sat down, a disembodied voice called on her to act as judge on a criminal of the House, a [[Man (Our Strange and Wonderful House)|man]] accused of stealing from the [[Fountain of Youth]]. After looking into his eyes, she judged him guilty, pressing the red button on her arm-rest instead of the white. This caused a trapdoor to open under the man, casting him into [[Pandemonium]]. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)|Our Strange and Wonderful House]]'': ''[[Our Strange and Wonderful House (novel)#Chapter 16: The Throne Room|The Throne Room]]'')