The Mansions
To outsiders, the name "Mansions" might evoke opulence, but to the people of I’Cath, it is a bitter irony. The Mansions are countless rows of identical, gray-walled dwellings that fill most of the waking city. In Tsien Chiang’s dream-realm, these buildings are perfect homes—geometric, symmetrical, beautiful—but in the waking world, they are claustrophobic, crumbling, and full of dread.
The Mansions of I’Cath are a monument to uniformity, despair, and subtle horror—a place where reality itself breaks down under the weight of one woman’s vision of perfection. Though they may seem like ordinary homes, the Mansions are more prison than refuge, more nightmare than neighborhood.
“No one remembers moving in. No one remembers building them. But the Mansions are always there, always watching.”
Purpose / Function
- Every Mansion hosts a family, a household, or sometimes dozens—packed into spaces that feel both too large and too confining. These people sleep little, often going mad from exhaustion or from what they see behind closed doors.
- The residents live under the influence of Tsien Chiang’s dream-born compulsions. Even those who wake try to maintain the illusion of normalcy: cooking elaborate meals no one eats, polishing floors no one walks on, arranging furniture according to forgotten rituals.
- Some Mansions are empty and sealed, but strange lights flicker behind their curtains and soft music or whispers leak into the night air.
Alterations
- The False Hearths: In many Mansions, fireplaces seem warm and lit, but produce no heat or light. Looking into them too long induces hallucinations of the dream-city.
- Mirror Children: Some homes are haunted by figments of dreamborn families, ghost-like children who reenact perfect lives in eerie silence.
- The Mansion Below: Rumors speak of one house among the Mansions that contains a staircase spiraling endlessly down into Tsien Chiang’s subconscious, where the city's true heart may be found.
Architecture
- The Mansions stretch for miles in tight, unbroken rows, each home nearly indistinguishable from the next. Their stone façades are lifeless and stained, windows fogged or boarded.
- Narrow alleys called “grief lanes” divide them—spaces so tight that only one person can walk through at a time, casting the city in a maze of echoing footsteps and shadows.
- Inside, the homes have too many rooms. Unlit corridors twist inward. Doors lead to windowless chambers, to stairs that descend farther than they should, or to rooms that are never the same twice.
- Despite the oppressive atmosphere, the Mansions remain hauntingly clean—scrubbed and ordered by their restless inhabitants or by unseen, compulsive forces.
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