Manton House

The **Manton House** was an Rozlyn organisation that opposed humanity's move into using technological mods on themselves.

## History

The Manton House did not exist during the early days of Rozlyn; those were the days before humanity had begun experimenting with modding flesh and bone, in an attempt to improve themselves. When surgery shops opened up across the planet, the Manton House was secretly set up by Millie Manton - intended to be a pressure group against the mods, in an futile movement which hoped to prevent them becoming fully legal and widespread. However, when this failed, the Manton House slid away into the shadows, choosing to remain hidden, whilst they perpetuated false rumours that they had disbanded. Although they had no power over Rozlyn's day-to-day running or the legality of the mods, they instead cultivated a civilisation underground near the city of Kelfi-Hauten of people who didn't want to be apart of the modded culture and desired humanity to remain "pure".

Many, many years later - the Manton House decided they needed to take action after examining the situation within Kelfi-Hauten, where numerous gangs whose membership depended on what kind of mod you possessed had risen into existence. More specifically, it was the two largest gangs led by Edmund Whitby and Diane Warder respectively that troubled the Manton House the most; as it was extremely apparent to not only them, but all citizens of Kelfi-Hauten that tensions were rising between the two. Then, Manton House leadership had a brainwave. They would conduct murders of gang members and covertly pin the blame of the other gang - with the so-called "evidence" being furthered by the ripping out of the members' mods from their very flesh, trying to make it seem as if the murders were carried out due to the victims possessing the wrong kind of mod.

This plan succeeded in triggering a guerilla war between the two gangs, with members taking constant potshots at each other, terrorising everyone else - unintentionally nevertheless; as the members were acting irrationally due to their anger. It was hoped that this war could help prove that the mods were dangerous and needed to be made illegal, the first step in restoring humanity back to how it was. One such murder of a Warder gang member at the hands of a Manton House agent - and thus, the disposal of the body down an alleyway - was witnessed by the Seventeenth Doctor and Jayanna IX, whose TARDIS had materalised nearby. As they went to get help, the body was located by some of Warder's lieutenants and was taken away just as the two went back to the scene, being unable to find anyone willing to help - their reasoning being that the gang members brought it upon themselves.

After developing an understanding of what was happening at Kelfi-Hauten, the Doctor and Jayanna grew to realise that a third party was influencing events in this war, piecing together clues and using what they'd overheard from the agent speaking over the radio to his superiors and knowing that they couldn't have been part of any mod gang. Following a double murder; the Doctor and Jayanna decided to utilise the TARDIS in order to triangulate any mysterious and unexplained signals, where they found the entrance to the Manton House civilisation - a door hidden in an basement of Kelfi-Hauten's Mechanical Heart mansion - the place people went to, in order to get modded.

As the gangs reached breaking point, they started to gather forces for a final battle to the death at one of Kelfi-Hauten's stadiums; the only place large enough to be an useable battlefield. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Jayanna masqueraded as Manton House members, so that they could investigate this civilisation - confirming their beliefs that the majority of civilians were not blood-thirsty maniacs out to kill all different to them, but rather, the crisis in the city above had been orchestrated by the higher-ups. It was there that they also found Millie Manton herself, long after she should've died - now using a mod to survive as a brain connected to a computer.

Because Millie was the true leader of Manton House, using figureheads to mask that she was still alive, the Doctor and Jayanna hacked her computer, where they found the evidence they required to prove the Manton House was the cause of the war. Originally meaning to present the evidence to Whitby and Warder at a neutral meetup, the Doctor and Jayanna were instead forced to race to the stadium, seeing news bulletins of the battle on their way out of the Manton House civilisation.

Once the battle had been called off - but not without many casualties - Whitby and Warder joined forces with each other and Rozlyn's security force, marching into the Manton House civilisation, so that they could deal with the higher-ups who had been the cause of untold suffering. The Doctor and Jayanna left them to it. (TV: *Mechanical Heart*)