Week 3 - Theme Park Assignment

Worthingham Manor (Photo Set 1)

Several centuries after the first iteration of humanity was extinct, by the far end of the Northwestern acid lakes, Worthingham Manor was initiated and opened to the public in a grand ceremony that was attended by no one. The Manor looks like a standard brick building from the outside, but the Earthly façade is merely an illusion to what it has to offer to its visitors, upon their arrival to the legendary lake land of Windemia.

Throughout the Land of the Forgotten, Worthingham Manor is considered one of the most entertaining and thrilling experiences, and visiting the manor is every boy and girl’s dream. When the new humans (or newmans) reach the age of 422, they are considered sufficiently mature, and can be selected by their clanmeisters for a trip to the manor. Once inside the manor, rules of life and death do not apply. Time flows in all directions and logic is left in the third engine chimney, before reaching the main hall.

The closer one gets to the gates of the manor, the clearer it becomes: a mirage of a train wreck going right through the main hall on the second floor and out passed the front doors. In fact, the destroyed remains of the engine are the actual entrance. Through the broken chimney visitors can climb and enter the main hall, where they are greeted by the hosts: The Triplets. These three identical sisters share one long mane of shiny, black hair. Their hairs grow to and from each other’s heads, and they walk together in silence, leading visitors through the main hall’s attractions.

The most popular attraction is probably the floating river, where a stream of acid runs through the center of the room, maybe ten or fifteen feet high, from one window and out through the other. Visitors can rent a boat and sail in the floating river around the manor. However, upon entering the boat, reality is guaranteed to become utterly distorted and the differences between outside and inside become unclear. Once a visitor steps into the boat, he or she is no longer a guest. They become a part of the tapestry of the house, joining its vast crew of hosts that ranges between twenty and thirty five hundred permanent residents of the manor. Visitors who choose to skip the mysterious boat ride get to roam around the manor for a bit longer, and enjoy the various peculiar rides and attractions it has to offer.

In one of the smallest rooms sits Tabitha Marsbith. Tabitha is a blind mage with the ability to generate lightning between her fingers, spinning it like thread until it escapes in an incredibly loud thunder. The visitors who step into Tabitha’s room are usually so enchanted by her magical lightning weaving, that they forget that flesh is an excellent conductor, and when lightning escapes Tabitha’s fingers, it goes straight into the visitor’s heart. Then Tabitha pulls the curtain and places the dead in the corner, for the rooster man to come and feast on.

The skeleton of the visitor, of course, rises after the feast and continues the tour, for the manor is no usual experience and should not be wasted because of small matters such as death or decapitation. A special ride, designed especially for skeletons of formerly fleshy visitors, is the Moon Room. In this room, nine generals of the Great War sit on a smiling moon and are willing to answer any question visitors present them with. They guarantee a truthful answer, but cannot guarantee how long it will take to arrive at a single conclusion. Until then, the visitor must climb into the moon’s left nostril and watch the glowing worms quietly, for what could be an hour, a week or a decade. The generals always come up with an answer eventually, and it is believed that the creator of the manor assembled the generals when he was a young boar, and asked them for his life purpose. Sitting on the smiling moon, they sat and debated for 63 years, until they announced to him that it was his calling to construct the great Worthingham Manor, a miraculous place where the limits of existence are warped.

The fourteenth floor, also known as the Odezeil, is a long corridor with precisely eighty-seven doors. Behind each door is a different attraction for visitors to enjoy, but not everyone can enjoy all of them. The correlation between a visitor and an Odezeil attraction is not a matter to be taken lightly, and it is upon the Celtic to match visitors with the proper door. These doors are portals to other places, times and beings. Some of them lead to lost children that never age, some lead to oceans and ship voyages, some lead to the minds of The Triplets, and some back into the engine chimney that goes through the main hall. Door number eighty-seven, however, has never been opened. It is believed that when it is opened, the manor will cease to exist in its current form, and become an all-knowing entity with the mass of a thousand dying suns. Fortunately, no visitor has ever been matched with that door, but it is up to the Celtic to make sure that no one within the manor, especially the rooster man, doesn’t try to open it unprompted, or catastrophe will ensue.