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DISNEY'S HAUNTED MANSION
Who: Stephen Strange ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rehandle & EVERYONE
What: A cursed mansion starts pulling people into a House of Leaves style sub-dimension and trapping them. Others come to provide rescue.
When: March 9-12
Where: Sunset Falls
Content Warnings: Altered mental state (paranoia, fear), claustrophobia, loss of autonomy, shadow monsters, potential for violence, to be updated.
DISNEY’S HAUNTED MANSION
WHO YOU GONNA CALL?
THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE
GET OUT
THE EXORCIST
RECOVERY
rehandle & EVERYONEWhat: A cursed mansion starts pulling people into a House of Leaves style sub-dimension and trapping them. Others come to provide rescue.
When: March 9-12
Where: Sunset Falls
Content Warnings: Altered mental state (paranoia, fear), claustrophobia, loss of autonomy, shadow monsters, potential for violence, to be updated.
DISNEY’S HAUNTED MANSION
In Sunset Falls, up a winding residential street on the outskirts of town, sits an old Victorian manor: four stories if you count the central tower, wood-paneled with arched windows and a stone staircase leading up to the porch. The whole place looks worse for wear, roof tiles slipping and window shutters hanging on by loose hinges, rotting wood on the porch railings.
The house has long been a haunt for the local youth, used as a place to test their magic away from prying eyes, and with that comes chaotic, concentrated magical energy melded into the very bones of the building. It’s in the basement of this cursed house that a group of teenaged metas come together to cast a spell from a mysterious spellbook and unwittingly open a door to another dimension.
In early March, whether by opening a door elsewhere in town and getting trapped inside, or approaching the exterior to answer the call for help made over the Guild network, characters arrive at an old Victorian manor in Sunset Falls, supervised by Stephen Strange.
The house has long been a haunt for the local youth, used as a place to test their magic away from prying eyes, and with that comes chaotic, concentrated magical energy melded into the very bones of the building. It’s in the basement of this cursed house that a group of teenaged metas come together to cast a spell from a mysterious spellbook and unwittingly open a door to another dimension.
In early March, whether by opening a door elsewhere in town and getting trapped inside, or approaching the exterior to answer the call for help made over the Guild network, characters arrive at an old Victorian manor in Sunset Falls, supervised by Stephen Strange.
WHO YOU GONNA CALL?
People approaching the house on Will-o’-the-Wisp Walk will pass through the property’s wrought iron gate and up the winding drive to find Dr. Stephen Strange standing in the driveway, flanked by tall grasses and scraggly shrubs in the large, overgrown front yard. His feet are planted and hands raised, burning orange mandalas of shifting runes and geometric patterns wrapped around his wrists as he maintains a spell that coats the building ahead of him in a shifting amber glow.
He’ll call you over for a debrief as you arrive – there’s a group of teenagers trapped in a parasite dimension that he’s currently containing as best he can to the manor: it’s made of powerful magic, it’s leaking through his spell, and you need to get everyone out before he can lock it down for good. Before letting you go, he covers the basics of everything you’ll need to know ahead of the operation to rescue those who’ve become trapped inside.
He’ll call you over for a debrief as you arrive – there’s a group of teenagers trapped in a parasite dimension that he’s currently containing as best he can to the manor: it’s made of powerful magic, it’s leaking through his spell, and you need to get everyone out before he can lock it down for good. Before letting you go, he covers the basics of everything you’ll need to know ahead of the operation to rescue those who’ve become trapped inside.
- The entrance to the spellscape is in the basement.
- Take a light.
- If you can, mark your route as you go. Check the house for supplies — there’s bound to be something in there that can help.
- When you find someone, you’ll need to tether them to this reality in order to bring them back. Grab them, talk to them, attach them to yourself somehow, do whatever you have to do. And then don’t let them go.
THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE
The house is a trap, and all over town its mouths yawn open. For as long as the spell remains active, any door opened anywhere in Sunset Falls might lead here. And once someone crosses that threshold, there’s no getting out without help. This is true not just for metas: anyone opening a door in Sunset Falls has the opportunity to befall that same fate - including natives to this universe, meta or otherwise.
Once inside, you’re met with complete darkness. There are no bulbs, no candles, no torches tucked onto window ledges. There are windows, but they look out on more pitch darkness.
If you have your own light or you feel around, you’ll find the place is dilapidated, paint peeling and floorboards bare. No furniture, no possessions, no fixtures or fittings, just discolored patches on the walls and floor where they might have been. This isn’t a place abandoned in a hurry: this is a place withdrawn from completely.
The fathomless interior seems to defy natural physics as well as any impression of the house’s size or layout that you might have gleaned from looking at the outside. Closets open into grand reception rooms, hallways don’t seem to end, and staircases can take you to floor after floor after floor. Worse, it doesn’t stay still. Walking out through the same door you just entered can land you in a completely different room.
At least you’re not completely on your own. Around any corner, you might find another lost soul trapped in here — including one of a group of teenaged metas you may recognise from the Diadem. What are they doing here? Do they know what’s going on?
Characters making their way through will find this house attacks the senses. The longer you spend in here the more a sense of isolation creeps in, breeding stress and paranoia. Noises become threats, your eyes find figures in the shadows. Is it your imagination, or are they really there? Were those footsteps in the room behind you…? Did someone just say your name? Whatever’s happening, you’d better get ready to run and hide - or failing that, to defend yourself.
The house prevents rescuers from clearly contacting trapped characters, so while these mysterious figures causing paranoia may be the house playing tricks, it could just as easily be rescuers attempting to make contact. Trapped characters can see and hear other trapped characters, but their rescuers might look like a shadowy figure or sound like some cursed spirit. In the dark with shadows jumping out at you, you might just run/lash out first and ask questions later!
It doesn’t take long for it to become clear: no door in this place can be trusted, and no room offers safe harbor. Consider the prompts below for specific ways that the house might torment trapped characters.
Once inside, you’re met with complete darkness. There are no bulbs, no candles, no torches tucked onto window ledges. There are windows, but they look out on more pitch darkness.
If you have your own light or you feel around, you’ll find the place is dilapidated, paint peeling and floorboards bare. No furniture, no possessions, no fixtures or fittings, just discolored patches on the walls and floor where they might have been. This isn’t a place abandoned in a hurry: this is a place withdrawn from completely.
The fathomless interior seems to defy natural physics as well as any impression of the house’s size or layout that you might have gleaned from looking at the outside. Closets open into grand reception rooms, hallways don’t seem to end, and staircases can take you to floor after floor after floor. Worse, it doesn’t stay still. Walking out through the same door you just entered can land you in a completely different room.
At least you’re not completely on your own. Around any corner, you might find another lost soul trapped in here — including one of a group of teenaged metas you may recognise from the Diadem. What are they doing here? Do they know what’s going on?
Characters making their way through will find this house attacks the senses. The longer you spend in here the more a sense of isolation creeps in, breeding stress and paranoia. Noises become threats, your eyes find figures in the shadows. Is it your imagination, or are they really there? Were those footsteps in the room behind you…? Did someone just say your name? Whatever’s happening, you’d better get ready to run and hide - or failing that, to defend yourself.
The house prevents rescuers from clearly contacting trapped characters, so while these mysterious figures causing paranoia may be the house playing tricks, it could just as easily be rescuers attempting to make contact. Trapped characters can see and hear other trapped characters, but their rescuers might look like a shadowy figure or sound like some cursed spirit. In the dark with shadows jumping out at you, you might just run/lash out first and ask questions later!
It doesn’t take long for it to become clear: no door in this place can be trusted, and no room offers safe harbor. Consider the prompts below for specific ways that the house might torment trapped characters.
Opening one door leads to a hallway no wider than the span of your arms. It seems to get smaller as you walk down it. Was the ceiling that low before? Were your arms that close to your sides? The corridor never seems to end, just keeps getting smaller, and if you turn to leave the way you came you’ll find no door and a wall much closer than it should be. Try to go the other way and there’s an end to the corridor now, but no door. You’re trapped in a run, and with each length of it you pace it just keeps getting smaller…
If somebody else steps inside the hallway is suddenly long and tall again. You’d better get to them before the door closes, because with two of you pacing around in here it won’t be long until it’s so cramped that you’re running out of air... When the hallway is small enough that they can’t move any more, a door to another room will appear. They can also try breaking through a wall, though failed attempts could do more harm than good.
You also might find yourself in a room that’s all windows, glass panels set in frames from floor to ceiling. Introduce any light and the lock on the door will click shut. Your reflection shows in all the windows… and outside in the darkness there’s a sense that something starts to move. The horrible feeling of being watched. By who? By what? The light and your own reflection spares you from catching a glimpse of whatever’s outside looking in… but it also makes it easier for it to see you. You could turn out your light… but what if it's the only thing keeping whatever's out there at bay?
Any rescuers outside of the windows won’t be visible to the character inside, and will have to get their attention in other ways or try to find their way to the door of the window room. To get out of here, characters inside will need to turn out their light, which leaves them standing in a windowless room with an unlocked door in another part of the house altogether, or to be freed by someone else opening the door from the outside.
Turn a corner and find yourself staring into a huge mirror. It covers one wall, and it seems to exude just enough of its own strange not-quite-light that you can see the shape of yourself reflected in it. Approach and you pick up more details, though it’s shadowy in the dark. Get right up in front of your mirror image... and it smiles - you smile - as you become the reflection.
For as long as they are reflected, mirror-caught characters are being controlled by the mirror, and they will become violent if anyone tries to damage the mirror or remove them from the room. Successfully completing either of these actions or lighting up the room will break the mirror’s hold. (The mirror can also reflect rescuers. Mirror-caught characters will be able to see their rescuers in the mirror even if they can’t see them otherwise.)
If somebody else steps inside the hallway is suddenly long and tall again. You’d better get to them before the door closes, because with two of you pacing around in here it won’t be long until it’s so cramped that you’re running out of air... When the hallway is small enough that they can’t move any more, a door to another room will appear. They can also try breaking through a wall, though failed attempts could do more harm than good.
You also might find yourself in a room that’s all windows, glass panels set in frames from floor to ceiling. Introduce any light and the lock on the door will click shut. Your reflection shows in all the windows… and outside in the darkness there’s a sense that something starts to move. The horrible feeling of being watched. By who? By what? The light and your own reflection spares you from catching a glimpse of whatever’s outside looking in… but it also makes it easier for it to see you. You could turn out your light… but what if it's the only thing keeping whatever's out there at bay?
Any rescuers outside of the windows won’t be visible to the character inside, and will have to get their attention in other ways or try to find their way to the door of the window room. To get out of here, characters inside will need to turn out their light, which leaves them standing in a windowless room with an unlocked door in another part of the house altogether, or to be freed by someone else opening the door from the outside.
Turn a corner and find yourself staring into a huge mirror. It covers one wall, and it seems to exude just enough of its own strange not-quite-light that you can see the shape of yourself reflected in it. Approach and you pick up more details, though it’s shadowy in the dark. Get right up in front of your mirror image... and it smiles - you smile - as you become the reflection.
For as long as they are reflected, mirror-caught characters are being controlled by the mirror, and they will become violent if anyone tries to damage the mirror or remove them from the room. Successfully completing either of these actions or lighting up the room will break the mirror’s hold. (The mirror can also reflect rescuers. Mirror-caught characters will be able to see their rescuers in the mirror even if they can’t see them otherwise.)
GET OUT
Rescuers who head inside will find that the decor matches the exterior: old paintings in gilded frames, original light fittings, mirrors spotted with age. In some rooms furniture is covered in dust sheets, in others sheetless antique couches and armchairs are scattered with old pizza boxes and half full soda bottles. There are runes scored into the wallpaper, ominously dark corners cordoned off with tacky halloween tape and hand scrawled notes warning others to steer clear.
Characters can find various tools throughout the house: drawers full of old utensils in the kitchen, closets with brooms and ladders and buckets and mops. There’s a box of basic tools in one cabinet, flashlights and candles stowed throughout the house, garden tools and lengths of rope and twine and a child’s box of chalks stashed on the back veranda. For the most part, while far from harmless, the house is what you'd expect of an old place often overrun by magical truants: dusty and a little cursed.
It's downstairs that the real fun begins. Down the rickety stairs to the basement, through a room filled with the remnants of a few light occult rituals and pages of forgotten homework, the door to a second basement room stands ajar. This room is oppressive: maybe it's the poorly rigged single bulb and the eerie quiet, maybe the stark emptiness and bare stone walls. Or maybe it's the door cracked open on the opposite wall, the darkness behind it almost tangible.
Walking into the dark takes you through to another place. Turn and you'll see the door you passed through framed with bright amber, a landing signal: this way home. Start walking away in any direction and you’ll keep walking through pitch dark until the moment you start to think it might be time to turn back, then your foot hits the bottom step of an ascending staircase, and the door at the top welcomes you out into fresh darkness.
This is where rescuers must search for the missing teens and anyone lost through a doorway. Rescuers will find that trapped people don’t register them: they don’t answer when spoken to, they don’t seem to see you. However, they may start to get agitated in the presence of rescuers, which doesn’t always end well.
The house doesn’t want its inhabitants rescued and it wants you out, and as you start to move through the rooms it finds ways to make that very clear:
Rescuers can leave at any time through the amber-framed door. The house may make it difficult to progress inside, but it’s always surprisingly easy to find your way back — unless you have a trapped character in tow.
Characters can find various tools throughout the house: drawers full of old utensils in the kitchen, closets with brooms and ladders and buckets and mops. There’s a box of basic tools in one cabinet, flashlights and candles stowed throughout the house, garden tools and lengths of rope and twine and a child’s box of chalks stashed on the back veranda. For the most part, while far from harmless, the house is what you'd expect of an old place often overrun by magical truants: dusty and a little cursed.
It's downstairs that the real fun begins. Down the rickety stairs to the basement, through a room filled with the remnants of a few light occult rituals and pages of forgotten homework, the door to a second basement room stands ajar. This room is oppressive: maybe it's the poorly rigged single bulb and the eerie quiet, maybe the stark emptiness and bare stone walls. Or maybe it's the door cracked open on the opposite wall, the darkness behind it almost tangible.
Walking into the dark takes you through to another place. Turn and you'll see the door you passed through framed with bright amber, a landing signal: this way home. Start walking away in any direction and you’ll keep walking through pitch dark until the moment you start to think it might be time to turn back, then your foot hits the bottom step of an ascending staircase, and the door at the top welcomes you out into fresh darkness.
This is where rescuers must search for the missing teens and anyone lost through a doorway. Rescuers will find that trapped people don’t register them: they don’t answer when spoken to, they don’t seem to see you. However, they may start to get agitated in the presence of rescuers, which doesn’t always end well.
The house doesn’t want its inhabitants rescued and it wants you out, and as you start to move through the rooms it finds ways to make that very clear:
Shadows are everywhere in this place. The light you carry casts them wherever you walk and your mind starts to play tricks. This is fine while you can still swipe those images away with your light… not so fine when your light source, whatever it is, starts to struggle. Each time it blinks out the tall, thin shadow in the corner of your eye grows more solid. Just before your light finally dies, it drops to all fours.
Your character is being chased by a shadow creature! It’s made of solid shadow so can be harmed, but is difficult to kill. It will try to kill any rescuer characters it comes into contact with using talons and teeth and brute strength, but will stop short of hurting a trapped character. It can be warded off with light (though the original failed light source will not be available again until the creature is defeated or escaped) and will completely vanish if the room is filled with light.
The floor is… gone? Instead of floorboards there’s a massive empty void from wall to wall, so dark you can’t see the bottom. Throw something in and there’s no sign it ever lands. Here’s hoping you didn’t leave anyone on the other side, or that if you did the hole in the floor isn’t so wide that they can’t find a way across. If either of you leave, there’s no telling if you’ll find each other again.
Sometimes, the house creaks. This is to be expected, old houses creak, but there comes a point where it stops being ambient noise and starts being loud, the room filling with the sounds of cracking wood and screaming metal, like the whole thing’s caving in. It’s deafening. It’s time to run as the ceiling begins to give, destruction tearing after you until you’re either buried by it or escape: both outcomes leaving you unharmed in a room with no trace of fallen ceilings or buckled walls, no damage at all in any part of the house you track back through.
Your character is being chased by a shadow creature! It’s made of solid shadow so can be harmed, but is difficult to kill. It will try to kill any rescuer characters it comes into contact with using talons and teeth and brute strength, but will stop short of hurting a trapped character. It can be warded off with light (though the original failed light source will not be available again until the creature is defeated or escaped) and will completely vanish if the room is filled with light.
The floor is… gone? Instead of floorboards there’s a massive empty void from wall to wall, so dark you can’t see the bottom. Throw something in and there’s no sign it ever lands. Here’s hoping you didn’t leave anyone on the other side, or that if you did the hole in the floor isn’t so wide that they can’t find a way across. If either of you leave, there’s no telling if you’ll find each other again.
Sometimes, the house creaks. This is to be expected, old houses creak, but there comes a point where it stops being ambient noise and starts being loud, the room filling with the sounds of cracking wood and screaming metal, like the whole thing’s caving in. It’s deafening. It’s time to run as the ceiling begins to give, destruction tearing after you until you’re either buried by it or escape: both outcomes leaving you unharmed in a room with no trace of fallen ceilings or buckled walls, no damage at all in any part of the house you track back through.
Rescuers can leave at any time through the amber-framed door. The house may make it difficult to progress inside, but it’s always surprisingly easy to find your way back — unless you have a trapped character in tow.
THE EXORCIST
Strange mentioned establishing a tether between the trapped and the world outside in order to bring them back, but it takes a lot of trial and error to figure out what works. Maybe your characters work this out for themselves, maybe they learn some methods from Strange as he’s given more information from rescuers leaving the house, but tethers that work include:
Established tethers will make it progressively easier for trapped characters to perceive rescuers, though each time a tether is severed this easing of the spell’s power over them must start from scratch.
A trapped person can leave the spellscape through the amber-lit door when successfully tethered, but without a tether, walking through that door will just take them to a random room in the house, and they’ll have to be found all over again.
- An established sense connection with a rescuer (touch/sight/smell/sound, though given the house’s ability to warp all of these things they’re the riskiest)
- A magical/powers-based tether to a rescuer (ie: telepathy)
- A physical connection to a rescuer (ie: rope)
- A physical connection to the outside world (ie. an object brought in from the outside held by a trapped person)
Established tethers will make it progressively easier for trapped characters to perceive rescuers, though each time a tether is severed this easing of the spell’s power over them must start from scratch.
A trapped person can leave the spellscape through the amber-lit door when successfully tethered, but without a tether, walking through that door will just take them to a random room in the house, and they’ll have to be found all over again.
RECOVERY
After no more than three days, all characters trapped within the house will have been successfully rescued.
Both rescued characters emerging from the spell and their rescuers will need help recovering from the ordeal: food and water, somewhere to rest, medical assistance, emotional support. The local authorities and townsfolk do their best to set up stations with supplies and places to regroup in the yard of the old manor.
However, NPC townsfolk stray into the area only to leave their offerings and go. These people are familiar with magic, and nobody’s looking to be this close to a spell that nasty. This means it’s down to the metas to support one another in the aftermath of their experiences. Do what you can to look out for one another: it’s been a rough few days.
As a note, it might be useful to add TRAPPED or RESCUER to your subject line for ease of identification!
Both rescued characters emerging from the spell and their rescuers will need help recovering from the ordeal: food and water, somewhere to rest, medical assistance, emotional support. The local authorities and townsfolk do their best to set up stations with supplies and places to regroup in the yard of the old manor.
However, NPC townsfolk stray into the area only to leave their offerings and go. These people are familiar with magic, and nobody’s looking to be this close to a spell that nasty. This means it’s down to the metas to support one another in the aftermath of their experiences. Do what you can to look out for one another: it’s been a rough few days.
As a note, it might be useful to add TRAPPED or RESCUER to your subject line for ease of identification!