The House of Mystery
Like all semi-permanent locations in the Far Realm, this structure cares nothing for the normal limits of space or time, inasmuch as it is not a destination that can be traveled to in any conventional way. It does have a higher coherence than most aspects of the plane, as it recurs with some regularity. It is possible that there are many such structures that come and go, unrelated to each other, but the denizens and contents repeat often enough that, even if each is unique, its common features and the things inside are similar enough for that uniqueness not to matter.
- It appears as some form of relatively small building, normally three stories or fewer in height, and appearing no more than 100' across, large enough to take in the entire structure without turning one's head. Additionally, more often than not, the structure is round or has more than five sides arranged around a central point, with noticeable orthogonal symmetry around a central point.
- The entrance to the structure tends to be through a large central door; often the lower floor seems to be noticeably larger/taller than floors above it. The initial room tends to be spacious and round or hexagonal. The entrance room almost always has at least two and no more than four exit doors in addition to the one that leads in from the outside.
- The interior space operates under strongly existential parameters in a quantum state of probability; looking at any particular thing makes it permanent as long as it is being seen, after which it reverts to probability flux until viewed or perceived once more. This lends the House of Mystery a dreamlike quality, as things seen in dreams tend to behave in a similar fashion.
- However, unlike in dreams items in the house of mystery take on more permanence when interacted with; one may pocket a coin and later retrieve the coin unchanged, or take a book from the shelf and find it's the same book later. Until noticed and actively in some exchange of attention, however, the materials - down to the furnishings, window coverings, wallpaper and floorboards - changes in the most disconcerting way, never the same twice and never observed to be changing. The transformation itself is never seen, merely the result of it.
- The entry room will generally present some form of puzzle to solve, though the puzzle will often make no coherent sense and the rules of the puzzle will change midway. Solving the puzzle may give access to rooms beyond, unlocking doors or revealing secret passages, but the rooms beyond will conform to their own logic, or lack of it, and usually the puzzle is merely a distraction or time-waster for intruders while the entity or entities controlling the House decides what sort of interactions to have with its visitors, whether positive or negative.
- The Hair Woman, who comes in two varieties - one that has cascades of hair spilling out of her mouth, or one whose hair crawls off her head a few strands at a time and slithers into her mouth while she speaks. Pure disquieting horror that seems connected somehow to the Borda, a folkloric drowned hag that strangles people with her hair who wander too close to cursed fens and pools at night.
- The Waspian, a fly-like creature larger than a human with stingers at the ends of each of its six limbs and protruding from its mouth as well as from the end of its segmented abdomen. It has the appearance of some aberrant animal, but it speaks using its wings in complicated tonal frequencies and by shaping the surface of the wing similarly to the way another creature might shape its mouth and tongue. Rather than plunging these stingers into flesh to inject a venom, the Waspian injects foreign or false memories, which generally erase itself. It may feed on memories, or pain, or flower pollen; the biology of these creatures is, as with everything in the Far Realm, almost totally unknown.
- Hethor, the wounded one, is evidently a dispossessed divine being that somehow passed out of the Astral plane and into the Far Realm, where the dead husk was reanimated with chaotic vigor. Hethor is perpetually on the edge of death, begging for help, and often lures unlucky charitable folk to their doom as only the souls of living mortal beings can give him (her, it?) any relief from their suffering. Retaining some of its godly power and ways, it will often present a puzzle that involves a great temptation, and when the victim gives in to the temptation and fails to solve the puzzle, they find themselves snared in Hethor's bottomless hunger for souls. Those who resist the temptation, on the other hand, may be granted a significant boon.
- Doctor Toll, the Puppetmaster, trades in the mutability of soul energy as one of the few currencies with value anywhere in the planes. A withered being with dry skin and threadbare clothing, the 'good doctor' has a vast knowledge of the things of the Far Realm, and seems to enjoy sharing this knowledge - but he also enjoys the changing of living beings into mere cloth and straw puppets, and vice versa, going on at length about totemic transmutation should he be asked. He seems less aggressive or hostile than the others, but clearly has an agenda of his own as well.
- Lykoa the Nightstalker is a curious denizen that seems to prove that these are not in fact all the same entity. She appears as a stealthy rogue who navigates the shadows of the House of Mysteries effortlessly, through a series of liminal spaces and vents to which only she appears to have direct access. Lykoa is a survivor who has spent years evading the horrors that lurk in the dreamscape of the Far Realm. She may prove to be a valuable ally, guiding PCs through the treacherous passages and offering her expertise in defeating the mindless logic and trickery of the Realm. It is possible, however, that she is simply a more elaborate version of Hethor, presenting what a visitor most needs - an ally and a guide - but leading only to their eventual doom.
Geography
Scholars suggest that the Far Realms is itself an absence, rather than presence, and that the mind fills this space with its own worst nightmares in a vain attempt to make sense of this anti-universe. While this may be accurate, it's not particularly helpful knowledge. The Far Realms appears to be a series of discontinuous islands or pockets of varying degrees of permanence and reality, and navigating it in any linear fashion is impossible. Instead, settings, environments and locations in the realm simply appear and disappear around those able to perceive them, some lasting an instant and others solid for millennia, though still coming and going as if by random chance to any given 'location' in the realm. It fundamentally disobeys the physical laws binding our own multiverse together, and concepts like gravity and the speed of light are unpredictable here; as a result time also flows randomly, and in fact, time is said not to flow at all from an outside observer's point of view. One could step through a portal without slowing down, but in the instant of time spent in the far realms, a hundred million years of insanity could pass for that person.
As such, and because long-term stay in the Far Realm tends to be fatal on its own, or cause irrevocable madness in the survivor, it is not known what or if fresh water or edible food is available, or what processes may be required in order to interact with the contents of the place; the question is like asking what a reader has to eat in a book they read, or how far it is from one place to another inside a fever dream.
Ecosystem
While simple things like food and bodily functions may be alien here, clearly the realm has predators and prey of its own, and its denizens survive using some kind of energy transport for sustenance; energy is not an infinite resource of this place any more than it is in our own multiverse. The nature of these entities, however, makes few other comparisons meaningful; it does not have native plant and animal species competing for sunlight and territory, or empires of men waging wars of supremacy; instead it has jerking, chitinous creatures longer than whales slumbering in pale starlight, nourished on nightmares, and new races of beings are born from the void and extinguished in the unforgiving vacuum without a thought. If higher beings reside here, their goals and desires are beyond the comprehension of beings such as us, and the rush and patterns of our lives are completely beneath their awareness.
Related Reports (Primary)
Related Reports (Secondary)
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