The House of Doors

This house, on the Waste's first layer, lies in the middle of a vast, featureless plain. It is so far distant from any other thing that from the house, all that can be seen is flat, featureless grey as far as the eye can see. On first glimpse, the house appears to be misnamed, for it has no windows, just a single door. This is the only door in the entire house and, to a visitor's lament, is only present on the outside.Upon entering the house, you'll discover a room with no doors - definitely not the one you came through - and only windows on the walls. Each window shows a different room. Some rooms are very big, some are very small. Some show rooms of grey wood, others show rooms made of stone, many of which seem like they obviously don't belong in the house. A few times, a body can find a window that looks out onto some kind of garden. That place is best not spoken of. The important window, though, the hardest one to find, is the one that shows a field of stars and various stellar phenomena - nebulas, binary black hole systems, and other astronomical beauties. That is the window out.

And when I say there are no doors, I'm not fooling you. There aren't any empty doorways or archways or the like, either. The only way between rooms is through a window. These windows don't just slide open and let a body crawl through, though. They're like portals, and each key is a puzzle. It varies from window to window, but by looking into the room you wish to visit, you can find a clue to the key through to that room. Sometimes it's just an object. Other times it's something that needs to be done.

It is believed that the rooms, and their window-connections, change subtly, especially when the house has visitors, so describing the layout of the house would be futile. What we can speak of is the nature of the rooms. As soon as a body walks into the house, he's assailed by images and sounds he'd rather not be experiencing. That's what drives people to find the exit. Each room is filled with unpleasantness, and the house seems to know what a body finds disturbing. Though none of it is directly harmful, it still sets you on edge. At first, the keys tend to be innocuous - hold an object up to the window, say a few words in an unknown, but foul-sounding, language, move a chair from one side of the room to the other. As a body moves through the rooms, though, and becomes more unsettled, more desperate to get out, the keys slowly change. It's almost imperceptible at first, but the keys gradually force a visitor to act out scenarios which he finds distasteful. As he moves through the house, a body is forced to become part of that which he finds foul. If he ever finds the exit and escapes the House of Windows, the poor sod is drastically changed - inevitably for the worse.

The house is not empty. There are, according to people who've made it out, somewhere between one and five other creatures. They seem to be native to the house, and are able to move around it at will. They are usually attributed control over the house's madness, and are said to be able to peel back a sod's brain-box and peer into his mind - find the deepest, most hated parts, and bring them out into the world. Nobody's exactly sure what these creatures are (although most assume them to be yugoloths), as their appearance varies wildly. Most of the time, they are simply heard - a patter of bare feet running along wooden floors, the heavy clomp of boots slowly searching for something, the sound of doors slamming shut - and cannot be seen anywhere nearby. Other times a glimpse of movement can be seen through a window, but a second look into the room reveals it to be empty. Sometimes they whisper, in ancient, blasphemous tongues, about the horrors to be inflicted if the visitor doesn't leave quickly enough. They have been seen, however. Sometimes a face will be seen peering intently through a window at its guests, and when noticed will look surprised and frustrated before disappearing. The most common sighting, though, involves a woman sitting in a chair. She will be so still, and so grey, that at first a visitor might assume her to be some mockery of a person and part of the scenery. Eventually, though, a body gets curious. Even if it's just when it's time to find the key, he gets curious. As soon as someone starts paying attention to the woman, she looks absolutely horrified before her face melts away, leaving a chattering skull. After another moment, she's gone. The chair she sat in smells like burned flesh afterwards.

As I mentioned earlier, the only way out is the window of stars. And a body can be sure he won't be shown that window until he's nice and battered from his experiences inside the house. Some, though, don't make it out. Nobody's sure what the strange residents of the house do to those they don't let escape. I, for one, am not interested in finding out, and I don't think you are, either. So if you find a windowless house on Oinos, go the other way. I don't care how tired you are, or how low on supplies you are.