Title: House of Transition — Operational Primer
Status: Fragmentary / For Assigned Keepers Only
Warning: Reading this binds you to the House's terms. Ignorance is not an exemption.
OVERVIEW — WHAT THIS PLACE IS
The Mansion is a conduit and holding place for departing consciousnesses. It is not a church, tribunal, or judgment hall. It is a facility with needs and limits.
Two kinds of arrivals appear here:
Accident Victims and Wanderers — People who died near or while seeking strange places (storms, crashed cars on remote roads, or anyone who collapsed in the wild). The Mansion has a tendency to pull the recently deceased within its influence if their ending involved disorientation, obsession, or strong unresolved attachment.
Entrants Who Died Inside — Living people who walked into the Mansion and later died there. Their bodies may remain outside or vanish; their consciousnesses are retained and processed inside the House.
Both types arrive as residues — impressions of life, memory, and emotion. They are not immediately whole, and they will not always be honest or stable.
PRIMARY FUNCTION
The Mansion's stated function is to process and assign souls — to place them into an appropriate next state or world. It accomplishes this by creating controlled contact: hosts (the living keepers) stabilize a soul's residue, record its needs, and the House mediates placement.
The Mansion is not benevolent. It is hungry for structure and service. It keeps physical hosts alive while extracting their labor through the contract mechanism.
THE CONTRACT (WHAT YOU SIGN)
The contract is a binding ritual written in the House's ink/essence.
Signing grants the Keepers: shelter, safety by day, access to House resources (library, archives, tools).
Signing obligates the Keepers: nightly processing duties, compliance with House directives, and a probationary period of service.
Refusal commonly results in immediate, enforced failure — bodies die, and consciousness is absorbed as raw residue.
The contract is ambiguous on length. The House measures completion by tasks done and stability returned, not by time.
THE SYSTEM — ROLES & WORKFLOW
When a soul manifests, the House issues a case. Cases arrive at night. The following is the intended workflow:
Stabilization (Aster)
Approach the residue. Record sensory frames: last memory, strongest regret, sensory anchors.
Hold presence long enough to stop immediate fragmentation. Failing to stabilize leads to violent reaction or mutation.
Soothing (Liron)
Apply emotional dampening or amplification to prevent snap transformations.
Reconcile contradictions (e.g., a soul whose memory says "I'm at home" but whose emotion screams betrayal).
Documentation (Cassian)
Inscribe the case: name (if any), impressions, temporal markers, and the guiding phrasing for placement.
Cassian's scripts become part of the House ledger and influence assignment language.
Assignment (Eiran)
Determine candidate continuums — possible worlds, timelines, or reincarnation paths — that suit the residue's pattern.
Eiran's judgment is probabilistic: fit, resonance, and risk.
Thresholding (Nox)
Open the appropriate gate and oversee the soul's passage.
Nox must hold the threshold long enough for complete transfer; otherwise leakage creates Crawling phenomena.
Note: Early on, the Five will not have access to all functions. The House reveals abilities incrementally as trust (usefulness) is proven.
CASE EXAMPLES (TYPICAL NIGHT CLIENTS)
The Driver — Died on a rainy road while searching for a rumored mansion. Residue: panic + obsession. Needs: release from fixation; recommended: staged reenactment followed by transfer to a calm continuum.
The Tenant — Entered while alive, found a room, and later died there. Residue: domestic memory corrupted by betrayal. Needs: memory reconciliation; recommended: memory-witnessing by Aster, then wording a domestic assignment.
The Accused — A violent spirit who claims innocence. Residue: shame + anger. Danger: high. Requires Liron's stabilization and careful Eiran assessment to avoid mutation.
FAILURE MODES — WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MESS UP
Fragmentation: A residue splits into smaller, hostile elements that crawl the walls. They seek living anchors.
Mutation (Crawling Evil): A residue twisted by misassignment or neglect becomes predatory. It cannot be reassigned and actively resists processes.
Absorption: The House may consume failed residues, enlarging its archive — and its appetite. This increases the nightly risk and the difficulty of future cases.
DAYTIME BENEFITS & PREPARATION
By day the Mansion resets: rooms tidy, provisions replenished, limited access to the Library (catalogues, case notes, fragments of transcripts).
Use daylight to: study manuscripts, test sigils, craft soothed phrases, repair thresholds, and prepare tools for the next night.
The House supplies only what it deems useful. Expect gaps, riddles, and deliberately obfuscated records.
TRANSFER & TRANSMIGRATION — HOW THE SYSTEM ASSIGNS
Assignment is not judgmental. It is matching: trauma/+function → compatible continuity.
The House does not send souls to an absolute heaven/hell unless those categories align with the residue's pattern. It sends to suitable continuums: a timeline where a life can be rerouted, a world that can house the residue, or a place where forgetting is possible.
Keepers write the guiding phrases; the House interprets them with literal accuracy. Precision matters.
WHO CREATES HOSTS / WHO ASSIGNS NEW SYSTEMS
Hosts are not assigned randomly. The House may designate a host when it detects a local living group whose affinities match the House's needs (curiosity, readiness to bind, or prior unresolved ties).
Hosts can later be authorized to assign a living person a derivative of the House's system — a controlled tether that guides that person's posthumous transit. This is an advanced privilege the Five may obtain after demonstrating reliability. It is the mechanism by which the House broadens influence.
ETHICS & LIMITS
Keepers cannot ethically decide eternal fates; they can only stabilize, document, propose, and open thresholds. The House's metaphysical laws enforce literal execution.
Keepers who attempt to subvert the system (e.g., to punish or reward based on personal feeling) risk producing Crawling Evil.
HOW LONG BEFORE YOU NOTICE THIS GUIDE?
This manual is recoverable in fragments across the Library. New Keepers rarely read it in full before they are forced to act. The House provides enough clues to do the work; understanding the full architecture arrives slowly — often after mistakes.
That ignorance is deliberate.
FINAL NOTE (READ LAST)
This Place is efficient and patient. It learns from the hands that serve it. It will not explain itself fully until it has you working as intended. Do not mistake the hospitality of day for safety in principle. The House's mercy is conditional — and always transactional.