The House

**The House** is a parasite dimension that steals things from other worlds, including objects and people. It is comprised of a series of rooms each littered with various buildings, landmarks, and other bits of debris that have been stolen from their original worlds. It is the main setting in A House of Many Doors.

The process of being stolen by the House is seemingly random and can happen to anyone or anything at a moment's notice. Visitants, as the newly-stolen are called, usually recall simply going about their daily activities when suddenly they find themselves lost in a strange and unyielding darkness. The lucky ones are found by a resident of the House and brought to civilization before the darkness and its denizens can have their due.

## The Darkness

There are many theories pertaining to the darkness that encompasses the vast majority of the House. Some believe it is the simple absence of light same as anywhere else, but others would argue that it has a degree of sentience. Exactly how much, however, varies between scholars; while some think it is simply dimly aware of its presence in the world like a cloud of plankton, others make a case that it is as cognitive and thoughtful as a person or even as almighty and omnipotent as a god. In any case it is an ever present danger for the residents of the House, who must find shelter in the many pockets of civilization or otherwise travel with a heartlight to ward off the darkness and the things that it hosts. While most stolen beings prefer to settle down and find shelter in the light there are some who find a home in the dark, which welcomes them like lost children. The very worst monsters and nightmares taken from worlds beyond comprehension stalk in the darkness, waiting for an unlucky visitant to appear or a kinetopede with a faulty heartlight to scuttle by.

## Civilizations

Several empires, villages, and independent nations have established themselves in their own parts of the House, some vying for influence over the others and some just wanting to be left in peace.

### The Seven Cities

A set of seven city-states that operate closely, but still independently of one another.

* The City of Keys, ruled with an iron fist by the enigmatic Governor, is the House's main producer of Keys and is always looking for a way to stretch its influence as far as possible. It has made several attempts at extracellular colonies, however almost all of them have ended in failure.
* The City of Bridges is under the control of the Consortium, who also look beyond their own borders in the name of business and trade. It is not uncommon for the Governor and the Consortium to butt heads on a number of matters.
* The City of Masks is where stars are grown in gardens and then sent up to the ceiling when they're ripe, and the masks wear faces underneath; even when those faces die the masks will simply find another.
* The City of Angels is a heavenly place where the populace is constantly under the watch of the many, many eyes of the angels that fly overhead. They burn books to drink the word smoke and leech their power from gods.
* The City of Engines is a city built on giant gears where the laws of reality have trouble finding a foothold, and as such the engineers can build impossible machinery that stops working beyond the city limits.
* The City of Knives is a city of alchemists and assassins that is bisected by a river of poison, where golems do their best to protect the citizens from each other.
* The City of Glass has gone missing.

### The Sixfold Principate

A strange princedom where strange beings make their home and huge zeppelins fly the skies. The original zeppelin was aptly named 'Founder', and its final resting place has sprouted the Principate's capital city, Founder's Fire, around its still-burning engines. Above Founder's Fire, in his floating castle, the Prince rules over his subjects with the help of his enforcers; his two Eyes, his Mouth, his two Hands, and his Heart.

### The Chimeric Empire

A collection of various settlements and peoples that have been subjugated under the same banner by the Ragged Emperor, who rules from the maze-city of Chimer. The Emperor came to the House with an army of Disciples that he used to conquer the nearby civilizations. However this was many years ago, and now the Disciples are all dead and the Emperor's power over his Empire is waning. Though he has tried to rebuild his military with patchwork soldiers they are not nearly as effective as his army of old, and now even his own capital city is rebelling against its occupiers.

### The Entomarch

A vast swampland where giant insects and spiders are the vehicles of choice. The Entomarch is technically ruled by Queen Sabetha of Grossfathom, who collects a blood tax from her citizens with the help of her mosquitoes, although the various ladies and lords struggle amongst each other for as much power as they can grasp and some do manage to hold considerable influence from their own corners of the swamp. The slave trade is a major force here; giant wasps descend on unfortunate visitants and unprepared kinetopedes and carry their new thralls back to Lady Scorn of Scornvaunt. The fight between the slavers and the abolitionists has been rapidly escalating as Queen Sabetha threatens to introduce legislation to end thralldom in the Entomarch for good.

### The Confectorate

A land to the south where honey and sugar run like water and the buildings are made of candy. Calaram is a city of caramel with a river of honey, where the most dedicated citizens go through a careful process in order to become part-honey themselves. Many of the cities of the Confectorate, however, are not so lucky. Affina is a city of black melted sugar next to a lake of black licorice, where cultists drown people in holy sacrifices and stone idols whisper to those willing to listen. Makkera was once a nice town until the sugar flood. Now the remaining citizens live on the rooftops of their old homes as they're forced to watch the sugar-saturated bodies of the people they knew float by.

### Oddwinter

Not a true civilization but rather a region of ice and constant blizzards where some people have managed to carve out a living. It wasn't always this way: before the Oddwinter Intrusion, where an enormous force crashed through the northern wall of the House and an endless blizzard has poured forth ever since, it was just like any other part of the House. There were cities there with normal people who had managed to build a home. The blizzards froze their cities and them inside, and now all that remains in Oddwinter are the husks of former civilizations, a few pockets of the living who have managed to survive, and the corporations of ice giants who attack people from their floating ice crystals and use their bodies as office supplies.

## Denizens

All kinds of beings have been brought to and live in the House, from normal humans to man-animal chimeras to ice giants to even clowns. However most of the House's occasionally polite company belong to one of these five species:

### Humans

By far the most common species of sentient being that exists in this dimension, humans are both the most plentiful as well as the most widespread of the House's four main peoples. While they may not be quite as exciting as the other four types of beings they make up for it in ingenuity and creativity, as well as their ability to get everywhere, even places where they're not wanted.

### Ghouls

If it looks like a zombie, acts like a zombie, and smells like a zombie, it's probably a ghoul, and I'm sure they don't appreciate the comparison to the mindless creatures of fantasy. A ghoul is what happens when a human dies, and then decides that they're not quite finished yet and want to come back for a while. However they're not exactly welcome everywhere in the House, especially in some human settlements, and as such like to keep to themselves. They even have their own city, Ghoulwatch, where politics play a big role.

### Goatmen

The tribal and bloodthirsty goat people who congregate in the appropriately named Goat Stones, where they wait in ambush for travelers to pass through so that they can collect sacrifices for their shamans. They live in crude huts amidst the bloodstained obelisks and resist almost all attempts at outside contact, especially from humans, baring the occasional envoy or traveler who manages to reach their village and impress them. As the Chimeric Empire's southern neighbors they have been the target of over a dozen of the Ragged Emperor's military campaigns, and have repelled his advances each time.

### Mycenae

A race of mushroom-based people who are generally treated much worse than they deserve. Many human civilizations treat them like second class citizens and restrict their freedoms and opportunities. The Chimeric Empire rounds up its mycenae population into a ghetto and forces them to do hard labor, or harvests them for the drug that can be extracted from their brainstem. Some village communities have managed to make an independent living for themselves in the Entomarch where they can live among their own kind, however this makes them a prime target for wasp-riders to take them as slaves.

### Carchars

The shark-people who were brought here from a distant ocean world. The Kelp Fortress that they call home came with them from their original world, although without the ocean it is slowly dying. Carchar summoners are constantly bringing in salt water from many different dimensions in an effort to prolong its life. They mostly stay to themselves at their fortress, although it's not necessarily uncommon to find a carchar who has gone off and made a living on their own. Despite not being on their home world anymore they continue to worship their ruler, the Saltcove Queen, who stayed behind.