Owlpen Estate

**Owlpen Estate** is a stately mansion located approximately 14 miles outside of Sacramento, California. It is the home of both **Edgar Nulph** and his niece, **Odessa**. It has also served as the home, on and off at different times, to **Haniel**, **Arthur Reid**, **Walt Chen**, **Mephisto** and **Colin Fairbanks**.

The manor is also generally the headquarters of **Team Humanity** and serves as a sanctuary, magical repository and training ground for most of the group at varying times. It is heavily protected from supernatural incursion, including varying scrying wards, **devil's** and **angel's** traps, enochian sigils and other defenses.

It was first introduced in season 1 of **Urban Arcana.**

## History

"Owlpen Estate" was named by Edgar Nulph, the house's first and only owner when he moved into the house in July of 1992. He named it Owlpen partly because he thought that it was a very silly name, and Edgar dislikes conforming to high society, who insisted all of the homes be named. The name also derives from the **Nulph** family crest, which is an Owl with a wand in its claws.

The land was originally forested land, devoid of any human habitation. It was later purchased during the housing boom in the area that occurred during the late 1980's, when the upper-class citizens that were beginning to move to Sacramento started buying land in the forest outside of the city. This particular house was made to resemble a mountain cabin on the outside but on the inside was a much more traditional, almost Victorian style. The man who commissioned the house never bought it, for reasons unexplained.

By 1996, the area was no longer a quiet mountain road, but a neighborhood of the rich, whose houses were spread apart by about a mile between them, giving each house extreme privacy, and the distance from the city made sure that they suffered no unsolicited visitors.

It was these last two traits that attracted 18 year old Edgar Nulph, freshly on his own from **Richmond, Virginia**. He purchased the house with cash, put up a bunch of "No Trespassing" signs and quickly became known as a shut-in.

His eccentricity only grew when he came to the first Neighborhood Association meeting after moving in (which he was forced to attend), where he showed up in jeans and sneakers. His eccentric, rebellious attitude garnered him no friends and before long his presence was no longer requested by the association for their meetings. Not that he minded, of course.

For the next seventeen years, Edgar used the house like a giant closet and the house was kept in generally poor condition. It was famous for having clutter, such as old tea cups, saucers, laundry, scrolls, spellbooks, lore books and other bits of rubbish lying around. One room was stuffed with a random assortment of brooms, wands, staves, boots and other magic items for him to test and keep from falling into bad hands. This later necessitated the need for ***The Junk Drawer***.

The house remained a disorganized mess until Edgar's niece moved in to the house in August of 2011. She spent the better part of a week cleaning the entire thing from top to bottom, organizing and otherwise just cleaning the place. This made the house look much grander and much more fitting of its status.

## Grounds

Owlpen is a large, 15,000 sq. foot manor built approximately 14 miles from Sacramento, California. The entire estate is about 12 acres in size. It rests along a mountainous, heavily forested road and is surrounded by tall, mostly coniferous trees. The house sits one mile east of a branch of the California River, which marks the western edge of the property. A 1/8 mile long, dirt driveway connects the house to the main road and the parking area can fit more than six cars, not counting the garage (which has been magically expanded).

The grounds have a hidden, underground bunker beneath the garage that is lined with salt-treated iron and contains many glyphs, wards and a devil's trap, in order to protect Edgar and the other residents of the house from demonic or **spiritual** attack if the situation arose. There is a stable on the grounds, but they have fallen into disrepair and have never been used by Edgar, as he's never owned horses. There is an unused deer blind in the forest behind the house, nearer to the river. The deer blind is magically sealed and can only be broken by a spellcaster more powerful than Edgar, or Edgar himself. It is filled with supplies, weapons and other minor magic items, as a safety precaution were the house ever compromised.

The backyard, just out from the kitchen, is a lounging area. There is a patio and a large swimming pool. There are dark tiles along the bottom of the pool that form a strange arcane sigil and the water is blessed, making it **Holy Water**. Odessa has used the Holy Water from this pool on several occasions to protect herself from demons. It was at this pool that Odessa discovered the world of magic, when her uncle pushed her into the pool, but she simply landed on the water's surface thanks to a Water-Walking spell he had just cast. In the warmer months, Odessa uses this pool every morning to exercise.

The house resembles a mountain cabin on the outside, which fit in with its mountainous surroundings. The inside, however, is much more traditional, almost Victorian. Owlpen has a considerable number of antique paintings and furniture, which Edgar added to give credence to his supposed career as an Antique collector and seller, though he says he dislikes the decor.

## Resources

Edgar converted the basement into a training area but never used it. Instead, he began keeping boxes of old rubbish and other things down there that he had no room for elsewhere. In *Mirror, Mirror*, Edgar kept the Mirror he purchased down there that eventually proved to be a **Gateway Mirror**. After this incident, Edgar and **Percy** moved the contents of the basement to his store and the two set about converting the basement back into a training area, giving it a marksmanship range, a hand-to-hand training corner complete with a practice dummy and a magical training area. This space was used regularly by Odessa until she received her own training space (see below) and the basement was later used extensively by Arthur and Walt during their training.

Odessa's room is converted from the largest of the guest rooms and was described by Odessa as "quite comfortable". It was later enchanted to contain an entire apartment, complete with its own plumbing, energy and training basement. While everything worked perfectly safe, Edgar could not get the fire to turn any color but emerald green. Odessa has used her magical basement quite often and it is where she undergoes most of her training.

The crown jewel of the manor's antique collection is the Library on the second floor, which Edgar claims houses more than 1,000 ancient texts, some from as far back as original Talmudic writings and Sumerian hieroglyphs. The library also has many spellbooks, ritual books and grimoires from "the old masters", and many spells and rituals thought to be lost to the magical community were recovered thanks to Edgar's efforts. The Library is constantly used to research, either by Odessa, Mephisto or Edgar. Odessa usually does her homework in the quiet of this library. Edgar also usually performs *his* research here and taught Odessa her first lessons about magic in this space, until she started shooting **Flaming Hands** spells at the priceless scrolls and they both decided it better to move their lessons to the basement.

Edgar keeps a large number of potions, scrolls and other magic items in an armoire in the study, which could only be opened by Edgar or a more powerful mage.

## Motto

The official "motto" of Owlpen is not the motto of the Nulph Family, which Edgar tries his best to distance himself from. Instead, the motto is: "*rosas sunt rubri /* *violas caeruleae sunt /* *Sum schizophrenic /* *et sic sum*"

Translated from Latin, the motto reads: "Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, I'm a Schizophrenic and so am I". Edgar chose this motto only because the Homeowner's association told him that every house in the subdivision needed a name and a motto. Annoyed that he was being forced to go along with traditions that he had run to California to get away from, Edgar chose a line from one of his favorite movies to be his estate's official motto. This choice of motto has made more than one socialite scowl and is one of the many, many reasons why Edgar is seen as a mad, eccentric hermit.