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Domestic Elementalism is an interactive fiction game written by and copyright 2017 by fireisnormal. It was written in Javascript using jquery and it's playable on your browser. It was an entry in IF Comp 2017 where it took 10th place overall, and 3rd place for Miss Congeniality.
The game is designed to be played entirely with one's mouse. The player clicks on highlighted text or buttons on the screen.
In general, the left side of the game's screen is reserved for the room's description and exits, and the right side of the game's screen is reserved for the player-character's inventory. Which objects and actions are available to click on depends on which items are currently available and in focus. Results of actions are typically presented in black boxes that overlay the center of the screen.
As you might imagine, making a faithful linear readable transcript for this game was quite challenging, but I think this is quite representative. I hope you enjoy reading it — after you've played the game yourself, of course.
— David Welbourn, for Key & Compass, April 2024
You shut your front door on the winds raging outside. It's been a successful but exhausting trip, and you're glad to be home. All you want now is to grab some food and get an early night.
👉 CONTINUE
ENGINE ROOM (FRONT)
This is the engine room of your house. Capillary tubes flow along the walls, supplying aether to the rest of the building. It is mostly self-sufficent by now, requiring only occasional feeding to maintain it.
The aether engine takes pride of place in the center of the room.
👉 About
HOW TO PLAY
MANY THANKS TO THOSE WHO TESTED THIS GAME:
Sam, Stephen, Colleen, Ellie, Mathbrush, Kate
👉 CLOSE
👉 feeding
When you first built the house, you fed it your life force, as much as you could spare, each day for a year, and converted it to aether. Until one day the aether tank was full and you wound the handle and watched aether flow through the pipes to the fridge, the fountain, the oven.
Now that these things are working, they generate elemental power, and the house is able almost to run by itself. It is not, however, perfectly efficient, and requires occasional top ups of life force. You don't mind this, though: it makes you feel connected to your home.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 aether engine
A confection of silver, copper and glass. Glass arteries and veins flow out from it and connect to the network of capillaries in the walls. Thicker silver tubes go down into the floor. Four small circular gauges display the current power level of your four elemental rooms.
👉 power level
All of the gauges showing the power levels for your elemental rooms are empty. That's...odd. Could be something wrong with the input to the gauges. You'll have to check it out once you've eaten something.
👉 CONTINUE
Fire room
Water room
Earth room
Air room
👉 Fire room
The gauge showing the power level of the Fire Room is empty.
👉 BACK ONE SCREEN
👉 Water Room
The gauge showing the power level of the Water Room is empty.
👉 BACK ONE SCREEN
👉 Earth Room
The gauge showing the power level of the Earth Room is empty.
👉 BACK ONE SCREEN
👉 Air Room
The gauge showing the power level of the Air Room is empty.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 GO TO OTHER END OF ENGINE ROOM
ENGINE ROOM (BACK)
The other end of the engine room. There's lots of veins, arteries and capillaries here and not much else, except the staircase, which leads up to your attic.
👉 veins, arteries and capillaries
The aether running through the
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 ENTER FIRE ROOM
FIRE ROOM
You step into your kitchen, and then stare.
The fairy lights that are strung about the room are all off. The smoke in the wall tiles isn't moving. And an enormous sheet of ice covers the entirety of your oven door.
The gauges are taking input from the rooms accurately after all - this room, at least, is clearly out of elemental power. The rooms are supposed to be self-sustaining, so something is very wrong.
👉 CONTINUE
The walls of your kitchen are covered in large blackened tiles, full of smoke.
The oven stands imposingly against one wall. A large, creaky fridge stands against another, and a small microwave perches on a countertop. Above you, fairy lights are strung across the ceiling, intertwined with burned roses. The fairy lights are off, and the room is full of dark corners you can't quite see into.
A steel chair is tucked under the table.
👉 tiles
The wall is covered in tiles filled with smoke. Ordinarily, this would billow around within the confines of its tile, but now, in each tile, the smoke has sunk to the bottom and sits there, heavy and still.
👉 BACK TO ROOM👉 oven
A glistening sheet of ice covers the front of your oven, sealing the door shut.
👉 BACK TO ROOM👉 fridge
You were determined to have a fridge in your kitchen, even though its unquestionable water associations weaken the whole room - the fact that it's made of steel can only help so much. You had to bring in the fairy lights and burned roses to compensate.
You open the fridge, and see that it is off, although the food looks like it's probably still OK.
👉 food
Peppers, aubergines, and courgettes, meant for a pasta sauce. But that will have to wait until you've fixed your house.
👉 BACK TO ROOM👉 microwave
The microwave is a frippery, a silly convenience for a witch. A little embarrassing. You could heat food just as fast by magic, but it would cost you something. Of course, the microwave, like all the other electrical goods in the house, runs partially on aether converted from force, which costs you something too. But the payments are a slow trickle that you barely notice.
You try one of the buttons and get no response.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 countertop
A smooth metal countertop, with a couple of drawers.
👉 drawers
Assorted cutlery and gadgets.
There is a butter knife in the drawer.
👉 TAKE STEEL BUTTER KNIFE
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 fairy lights
Strings of fairy lights are hanging across the room. They are all off.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 burned roses
Singed roses with blackened, curling petals twine around the fairy lights. From your research, it appears that in this country roses were associated with earth until the middle ages when, at some point, they became linked to fire instead. The impact of human cultures on elementalism is at the heart of your studies, and endlessly fascinating to you.
👉 human cultures
Of course, your research is limited by the sources available to you. Which materials, objects and ideas are associated with which elements varies significantly between cultures, and historically UK universities have focused disproportionate attention on elementalism as practiced in Europe.
For the paat week, you've been ensconced in a university library, working with texts recently translated into English. You're beginning to realise, though, that to progress further you'll need to learn some more languages (an exciting thought); and start discussions with other research witches from around the world (a slightly alarming one).
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 TAKE STEEL CHAIR
👉 EXIT ROOM
ENGINE ROOM (BACK)
👉 ENTER EARTH ROOM
EARTH ROOM
A quick glance around the room tells you that it's in a similar state to the Fire Room. Your house has been sucked dry, either because there's something wrong with the aether engine, or because of a bug in a spell somewhere, or...well, or something worse. You need to figure out what caused this, but your first priority is to get the rooms powered up again.
👉 >
Until you can fix things properly, makeshift solutions will have to do. In the Fire Room, for example, lighting a fire would be a good idea - probably in the oven if you can get rid of the ice somehow. Finding some kind of replacement for the fairy lights would also help a lot.
Similiarly, if you can think of fixes for one or two things in each of the other rooms, they should start generating power again and help your house get back on track.
👉 CONTINUE
Your bedroom is peaceful and uncluttered, with wooden floors, a large wardrobe, a stone dresser and a queen-size bed.
There are two living walls, thich with moss and herbs. The other walls are panelled in wood.
👉 floors
An earth room without wood or stone would never have much power. There's also a rug under the bed.
👉 rug
A thick, soft, forest green rug with dark brown tassels, like tiny twigs.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 wardrobe
Rescued from a skip in town. You aren't sure how old it is, but it's huge, with plenty of space inside for your clothes.
👉 clothes
You created most of the clothes you currently own around the same time you made the house. You drew them out on huge pieces of paper, which is associated with air, and then transformed them to silk and wool, which are associated with earth.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 dresser
A stone dresser with a mirror. You like the contrast between the rough stone and the delicate odds and ends dotted across it.
Among the makeup brushes and perfume you notice a chisel.
👉 TAKE CHISEL
You pick up the chisel. You don't remember putting it here, but it's possible you did. It's hardly unusual for you to be slightly absent-minded.
👉 CONTINUE
👉 LOOK IN MIRROR
Your hair looks like you've recently stepped in out of a gale, as indeed you have. You're wearing an ordinary black witch cloak with a large number of useful pockets.
👉 CONTINUE
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 bed
The quilt, duvet, sheets and mattress have been stitched together with a line of fine stitching that runs all the way around the bed. You can't think of a single good explanation for this.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 living walls
Most of the earth energy in the room comes from the living walls. Moss and herbs dominate, but there's a sprinkling of tiny flowers.
The leaves are dropping, and all of the flowers are closed.
👉 flowers
The flowers are supposed to open during the day and close at night as they would outside; this is achieved by your house warming during the day and cooling at night. But it's 3pm, and they're shut tight.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
YOU ARE CARRYING:
👉 Chisel
CHISEL
A stonecarver's chisel.
👉 SHARPEN KNIFE
You try to sharpen the knife with the chisel, but the steel is just too hard. It would take you hours to get it sharp enough to cut anything.
Perhaps you should try transforming it - changing its association to a different element?
👉 CONTINUE
👉 CHANGE TO FIRE
You try to transform the elemental association fo the object. An enormous feeling of exhaustion comes over you, and you almost drop it.
Alarmed, you experiment further. Your life force is depleted, lower than you have ever known it. A straightforward opposing transformation - between fire and water, or between earth and air - should be fine, but orthogonal transformation is, for the time being, beyond you.
👉 CONTINUE
👉 BACK TO INVENTORY
👉 Steel Butter Knife
STEEL BUTTER KNIFE
A stainless steel butter knife. Not remotely sharp.
👉 CHANGE TO WATER
You transform the elemental association of the steel butter knife, and in doing so, change the object itself into something else.
👉 CONTINUE
LIMESTONE BUTTER KNIFE
A lifestone knife. Limestone is one of the softer rocks, and one of the few not associated with earth.
👉 SHARPEN KNIFE
You scrape the limestone knife against the chisel. The repetitive motion is soothing, and you soon start to see the knife change shape, its edge becoming thin and angular, the end refined to a point.
The head of the chisel eventually snaps off the handle, but hopefully you've sharpened the knife enough.
👉 CONTINUE
POINTY LIMESTONE KNIFE
A limestone knife with a thin edge, carved to come to a point at the tip.
👉 CHANGE TO FIRE
SHARP STEEL KNIFE
A sharp steel knife.
EARTH ROOM
👉 bed
SHARP STEEL KNIFE
👉 CUT
You slice through the stitches, and pull the duvet back.
👉 CONTINUE
👉 BACK TO INVENTORY
EARTH ROOM
[at bed...]
The duvet is folded back.
The quilt that was on top of it now lies in a grey and green heap at the foot of the bed.
There is a small saw lying in the middle of the bed. You recognise it as the kind used by surgeons for cutting bones.
👉 TAKE EARTH QUILT
👉 TAKE BONE SAW
👉 EXIT ROOM
ENGINE ROOM (BACK)
👉 GO UP TO ATTIC
Your attic door is locked. Which is fine, since you keep the key in the door. Except the key isn't in the door. Or on the floor anywhere around it.
👉 CONTINUE
👉 GO TO OTHER END OF ENGINE ROOM
ENGINE ROOM (FRONT)
👉 ENTER AIR ROOM
AIR ROOM
A large armchair shaped cloud sits in the corner of your living room. There's also a round glass coffee table, and a small TV.
One wall is largely taken up by a huge window and a window-seat.
Every now and then you can hear chirping coming from the fireplace.
👉 cloud
Enchanted cloud, naturally. It is soft and dry, and solid enough to sit on, moulding around your body comfortably. But you can dip your hand into it and swirl the seat around, watching the clouds float within the confined space.
The chair should be floating, but currently sits firmly on the floor.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 corner
The walls are sky-coloured, shades of blue. In the corner behind the armchair, there are hints of dawn streaking out. Too much would tip it towards fire association, but these hints of pale pink and orange, the possibility of sun without its presence, are still airy.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 coffee table
The bright polished glass of the coffee table reflects light from the window. A vase of paper flowers sits in the centre of the table.
👉 glass
Glass, being light and see-through, has an affinity with air that may well go back to its invention; Aristotle wrote about it as one of the few associations between elements and materials that was beyond doubt.
👉 BACK ONE SCREEN
👉 paper flowers
Flowers, generally speaking, are associated with earth, but as these are made of paper, are in a glass vase, are deeply fragrant, and have mist billowing about their stems, they manage an air association.
👉 these
There are many different flowers represented here. Lilies with large, fragile paper petals; little daisies; colourless tulips. Some you made out of paper to begin with; others, too intricate for you to shape, you bought or picked and then transformed.
Sometimes elementalism makes the world feel so tender and malleable that it frightens you. But you wouldn't give it up for anything.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 TV
A small TV, connected to the wall by several aether pipes.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 window
A large window. Outside, the wind beats fiercely against the glass, leaves whirling by.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 fireplace
The fireplace presented an interesting challenge. You wanted one in your living room, but how to make a fireplace that's linked to air and not fire? The answer was gas jets that produce swirling pillars of warm air - which seem to be as non-functional as everything else in the house.
You wanted the fireplace to look like a fireplace, so it still has a chimney.
A poker is leaning against the side of the fireplace.
👉 chimney
The inside of the chimney has never seen smoke. You've blocked it up with bricks to stop the cold from coming in this way, and you know (from the twigs that sometimes fall down, and the persistent chirping) that birds are nesting up there.
👉 BACK ONE SCREEN
👉 TAKE POKER
You pick up the poker and frown at it. This ought to be the fan that you use to direct the fireplace's air currents, but for some reason it's set to fire and not air. It's possible you absent-mindedly transformed it before you left, but with the house in the state it's in, other, more sinister explanations present themselves to you.
👉 CONTINUE
YOU ARE CARRYING:
👉 Earth Quilt
EARTH QUILT
Squares of moss green and stony grey. Like the side of a mountain.
👉 CHANGE TO AIR
AIR QUILT
Squares of white and sky blue. Like clouds are drifting across it.
👉 DEPOSIT QUILT
👉 CONTINUE
👉 Sharp Steel Knife
SHARP STEEL KNIFE
A sharp steel knife.
👉 REMOVE BRICKS
You use the sharp steel knife to remove the bricks, and put them to one side. As you remove the last of them, a small bird's nest whooshes down and lands gently on the quilt. And behind it comes the wind, the gale from outside whirling in to rage around the chimney.
👉 CONTINUE
👉 BACK TO INVENTORY
AIR ROOM
[at chimney...]
Wind howls around the opened-up chimney.
👉 BACK ONE SCREEN
[at fireplace...]
Wind pours in through the chimney, whirling around the fireplace and providing more than enough air association to compensate for the non-functional gas jets. Just underneath the chimney is a soft quilt, on which rests a birds' nest.
👉 birds' nest
Three chicks sit nestled amongst twigs and fluff. They seem undisturbed by their fall, or by the wind.
Something lies glinting in the nest. The key to your attic.
👉 TAKE ATTIC KEY
You pick up the attic key, wondering how it got into a birds' nest in your chimney. You suppose a bird could have got into the engine room, spotted the key and carried it back to its nest...except the chimney was blocked and you shut and locked the front door and windows before you went away, so it doesn't seem very likely.
👉 CONTINUE
👉 EXIT ROOM
ENGINE ROOM (FRONT)
👉 ENTER WATER ROOM
WATER ROOM
Your bathroom walls are covered in mother of pearl tiles. A large bath sits against one wall, and there's a sink, a mirror, and a toilet.
A fountain bowl stands in the centre of the room. Pipes run out from it in all directions, connecting it to the ones running along the walls.
👉 tiles
This is the room in the house that took you the longest to do - apart from setting up the aether engine. Carefully cutting polystyrene into hundreds of identical squares. Gluing them, one by one, to the wall. And transforming each one to mother-of-pearl. Afterwards, you were so exhausted you curled up and slept on the bathroom floor.
👉 polystyrene
The creation of an artificial substance with a strong air affiliation would have revolutionised construction if architects were more comfortable hiring witches. It certainly helped you where you were creating the house: your kitchen table and bed, like the tiles here, were made of polystyrene first and then transformed.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 bath
A nice big bath with large taps and a plug with a chain attached, currently plugged in. Your shampoo and other toiletries sit on a shelf just above it. Except that the shelf is now a metre higher than it's supposed to be, and the bath is full of what looks very much like lava, although the intense heat stops you getting near enough to look at it closely.
There is a bottle floating on the lava with a miniature ship inside, but you can't get close enough to take it.
👉 CLIMB ON BATH
The sides of the bath are too narrow and slippery to stand on.
👉 CONTINUE
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 sink
The sink is small, with a hot and cold tap. You turn the tap, but nothing comes out.
There seems to be something stuck in the plughole, just out of reach.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 mirror
Not made of glass, because glass is associated with air, and doesn't belong in your Water Room. You tried a mother-of-pearl mirror, and a polished shell one, but though both were beautiful, neither gave you a clear reflection. In the end you used an artificial substance with no elemental associations.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 fountain bowl
This should be an aether fountain, a pool of glinting scarlet with shimmering jets raining perpetually down on it. But the bowl is dry and jetless, the star-veined waterlilies that live there shrivelled and curling inwards.
Replacing the aether is unlikely to be possible right now, but you should at least try to find some water.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
YOU ARE CARRYING:
👉 Poker
POKER
An iron fireplace poker.
👉 CHANGE TO WATER
PLUNGER
A small plunger.
WATER ROOM
👉 sink
PLUNGER
👉 UNCLOG SINK
👉 CONTINUE
👉 BACK TO INVENTORY
👉 Bone Saw
BONE SAW
A small saw designed for cutting through bone.
👉 CHANGE TO AIR
THROWING STAR
A throwing star with four extremely sharp points. There's a hole in the middle with a very long string running through it.
WATER ROOM
[at sink...]
The bar of soap you got out of the plug is sitting by the taps.
👉 TAKE SOAP
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 bath
THROWING STAR
👉 THROW AT SHAMPOO
👉 CONTINUE
👉 BACK TO INVENTORY
WATER ROOM
[at bath...]
Your shampoo is lying on the floor.
👉 TAKE SHAMPOO
👉 EXIT ROOM
ENGINE ROOM (FRONT)
👉 GO TO OTHER END OF ENGINE ROOM
ENGINE ROOM (BACK)
👉 GO UP TO ATTIC
👉 CONTINUE
ATTIC
You try to keep the attic - your potions room - reasonably tidy but still full of enough explosive organised chaos to be creatively stimulating. This is your livelihood. It's pretty dusty, and beams slope off into the ceiling. Bookshelves line every wall.
There is a tiny dollhouse sitting in the corner.
👉 creatively stimulating
Loneliness is good for magic. Why waste life force on conversation when you could use it for a spell, when you could bottle it, convert it to aether? In any case, though, you are rarely lonely. When the fever of creation and experimentation and research takes you, you don't want anyone else nearby.
👉 anyone else
Anyway, you have the house. Sometimes when the wind is wailing outside and a flask is bubbling over with possibility and you are poised over it, notebook and pen in hand, breathing fast, watching tiny scarlet and silver bubbles rise to the surface, burst into flames or glitter, and go still - sometimes when rain beats hard against the rooftops and you lie on your stomach in the attic writing like something possessed - sometimes when the sun blasts through the windows and you hold a book in your hand and look up in tight, frantic revelation - sometimes it feels as though your house is the only thing that holds you in place, stops you disappearing into your own mind in ecstatic discovery.
👉 holds you in place
When this happens, it's like this: you feel worn thick floorboards against your legs. The smooth plaster wall rasps under your hand. The warm attic air stirs, very softly, against your face. You open your eyes, if they were closed. You look up, if you were staring down in fixed fascination. You unclench your fists, if you'd clenched them. The house is there, waiting for you, patient with you. You remember that anything worth doing is worth doing gently. Pace yourself. Don't burn. Don't drown. Don't bury yourself alive, don't choke on your own breath.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 livelihood
Up here is where you make your potions. You package them up in smart bottles and sell them to the local chemist, who marks them up and sells them on. This is necessary because the townspeople are afraid of you, and would not buy anything diretly from a witch, unless they were desperate.
👉 potions
Elemental energy can be distilled and bottled, if you know what you're doing. A cauldron of flame, stirred in anger, can be used to make potent energy drinks. A flask of shell beads can be gargled to reduce anxiety. But the elemental energy must be refined carefully for the potions to be effective. It's taken you years of practice, observation and trial and error to get yours to the quality they are at now.
👉 BACK ONE SCREEN
👉 desperate
Perhaps there's a living to be made in selling a small amount of deliberately overpriced potions to people with no other choice, but not by you.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 dusty
There's not a few cobwebs too, but that's all to the good. They're associated with air, and are useful for potions to enhance concentration.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 Bookshelves
You own hundreds of reference works on elemental association. Many are on the bookshelves, many more are stacked up in precarious heaps around the room. An entire wall is given over to Agatha Tollingwood's seminal seventy-volume work 'On Materials'.
👉 heaps
Valerie Flick's single slim volume 'Amalgamism' sits by the beanbag in the corner where you sat reading in astonished fascination just before you left last week. Keldora Hart's works lie scattered all around; rarely a day goes by without referencing one of them. Other books, by the likes of Isioma Okoro, the Petrichor Coven and Yan are so well loved they're falling apart.
👉 Valerie Flick's
Valerie Flick lives on the edge of a cliff and occasionally gives odd, stormy lectures at obscure universities, although she is adamant that she is not a research witch. She doesn't write down hypotheses or repeat her experiments. She makes storms in teacups and mountains fo molehills and brings things together in violent, vibrant ways that you have seen plentiful proof of but still cannot quite believe.
Her interest is in elemental combinations. She writes of 'swamp' (earth and water), 'moor' (earth and air), 'lava' (earth and fire), 'steam' (fire and water), and so on. This is an area you find fascinating, although not one that you deal in yourself. You have never been able to do anything with combined association, and find its messy, uncontrolled energies intriguing but alarming.
👉 BACK ONE SCREEN
👉 Keldora Hart's
Hart worked in a factory for many years, became a union leader and then finally left to pursue other forms of activism. In between activist work, she writes sensible, short, exceptionally useful books on what she calls, with the light, self-deprecating tone common to all her writing, 'kettle magic'. Combine water and fire, she says, and the world will bend for you.
👉 BACK ONE SCREEN
👉 Isioma Okoro
Originally a physicist, Okoro takes a scientific approach to witchcraft, and is interested in the areas where magic and conventional physics intersect. The Okoro text you refer to most is a short paper published in the Aethereal Review two years ago, called 'Variations in Elemental Affiliation at the Atomic Level'. But you read everything she writes, and always find the dry, technical quality of her work strangely soothing.
👉 BACK ONE SCREEN
👉 the Petrichor Coven
The Petrichor Coven's website identifies it as an 'anonymous academic collective'. It produces dense, highly theoretical works, with recent output including 'Dreaming Spores: Doctrine, Earth Affiliation and Hermetic Growth in 19th Century Oxford', 'A Deconstruction of Roses', and 'Leaves in the Glassy Stream: Earth-Associated and Water-Associated Paintings of Ophelia's "Muddy Death"'.
👉 BACK ONE SCREEN
👉 Yan
Yan mixes science, autobiography and fiction in their work with gleeful abandon. At first you focused on their more obviously acadmic writing, but soon discovered that you could not afford to dismiss works that appeared to be beautifully written science fiction short stories or confessional essays: vital revelations about elementalism could be hidden there, without fanfare or hard evidence.
Yan themself would reject the term 'hidden': there is no deliberate attempt at deceit in their work, they have said in more than one interview; it is simply that memory, and hazy half-fictionalised memory, and hearsay, and things read in books, and things learned by observation, and things made up wholesale, cannot be neatly divided into categories without some loss of meaning.
👉 BACK ONE SCREEN
👉 BACK ONE SCREEN
👉 'On Materials'
'On Materials' was Tollingwood's only work and took her a lifetime to complete. She travelled the world, recording thousands of elemental links: the association of steel, obsidian, coal, ash and iron with fire, of shell, limestone, pearl and mother-of-pearl with water, of paper, gauze, lace, glass, aluminum and polystyrene with air, of slate, bone and wood with earth.
She wasn't interested in the shapes objects took or how they were used, only in the materials they were made of. She paid no attention to - seems barely to have noticed - the variations in elemental association in different cultures. She would have had no interest in your work, but you are, nevertheless, grateful for hers.
👉 BACK TO ROOM
👉 tiny dollhouse
On closer inspection, the dollhouse is a tiny model of your house. It is identical in every respect except one: the outside of the house is covered in thick, soft fur.
This isn't yours. You have never seen it before today. Whatever is going on here is weirder than you thought.
👉 STROKE FUR
You hesitantly run a hand over the roof. The fur is silky under your fingers. As your hand moves through it, the little house begins to make a soft rumbling noise. Almost like purring.
And then - a flash of energy so intense that you forget where you are - the unmistakeable feeling of power being transmitted - and the dollhouse is gone.
👉 >
There's a puddle of aether on the floor where the dollhouse stood. And your blood is thrumming with energy; you can tell without trying that your powers of elemental transformation are back in full force.
👉 >
You face the facts. Whatever's going on, it isn't an accident. Rooms losing power, objects in the wrong places, you own loss of life force; that could all just about plausbily be due to a failed spell.
But what just happened had to be deliberate. Someone came into your attic, shaped aether into the image of a house - your house - and enchanted it to dispel its energy on contact. The question, of course, is who would do this, and why.
👉 CONTINUE
👉 GO DOWN
ENGINE ROOM (BACK)
👉 ENTER FIRE ROOM
FIRE ROOM
👉 oven
YOU ARE CARRYING:
👉 Throwing Star
THROWING STAR
👉 CHANGE TO WATER
ICE PICK
Used by mountaineers for climbing icy slopes.
👉 SWING PICK AT ICE
👉 CONTINUE
FIRE ROOM
[at oven...]
Your oven door is open now, and you can see the black metal interior.
There are some tongs sitting inside the oven.
👉 TAKE TONGS
👉 BACK TO ROOM
The ice that fractured off the oven door has formed into several large spheres, which sit on the kitchen floor.
👉 TAKE ICE SPHERES
Ths ice reshaping itself is more proof, if you needed it, that a deliberate spell is at work. But who could be responsible?
The townspeople are afraid of you, but you don't think they'd do this, and anyway, none of them have anything like the power required for this. Whoever is doing this must be an extraordinarily powerful witch, and you can't think of anyone like that who you could have offended. You never see any other witches.
👉 CONTINUE
ICE PICK
👉 CHANGE TO FIRE
AXE
An axe designed for chopping firewood.
👉 BACK TO INVENTORY
👉 Steel Chair
STEEL CHAIR
An imposing steel chair, with a high back. Its legs have been shaped to resemble leaping flames.
👉 CHANGE TO EARTH
WOODEN CHAIR
A wooden chair with legs carved in the shape of flowering vines.
👉 CHOP UP CHAIR
You chop up the chair with the axe.
👉 CONTINUE
LARGE PILE OF WOOD
Planks of varying sizes.
👉 PUT WOOD IN OVEN
You heap up the wood inside the oven.
👉 CONTINUE
👉 Shampoo
SHAMPOO
Cheap stuff, little more than liquid soap.
👉 CHANGE TO FIRE
CURLING TONGS
Battery-powered curling tongs. Heat up alarmingly fast.
👉 LIGHT FIRE
You push the curling tongs into the heap of wood and then switch them on. After a few minutes, the wood around them starts to smoulder. You step back, and the fire roars to life as only one in an elementally attuned Fire Room can.
👉 CONTINUE
FIRE ROOM
[at oven...]
A fire blazes joyfully in the centre of the oven, warming the whole room. You could use this to melt or burn something, if you needed to.
👉 EXIT ROOM
ENGINE ROOM (BACK)
👉 ENTER EARTH ROOM
EARTH ROOM
👉 living walls
👉 flowers
CURLING TONGS 👉 TURN ON CURLING TONGS You turn on the curling tongs, and hold them close to the wall, then move them slowly along. The flowers open as the warmth passes them, one by one, petals curling outward. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 BACK TO INVENTORY EARTH ROOM [at flowers...] Fireflies are fluttering about, and every now and then one lands on a flower to feed on the nectar. YOU ARE CARRYING: 👉 Tongs TONGS A pair of fire-tongs, which you normally use for adding coal to the oven. 👉 CHANGE TO WATER PIPETTE A micropipette. It could hold a few drops of liquid, but is currently empty. 👉 FILL PIPETTE You slide the tiny pipette into a flower and fill it with nectar. 👉 CONTINUE PIPETTE FILLED WITH NECTAR The pipette is now filled with nectar. Since the nectar is earth-associated, the pipette now has mixed association and can't transform. EARTH ROOM 👉 EXIT ROOM ENGINE ROOM (BACK) 👉 ENTER FIRE ROOM FIRE ROOM 👉 fairy lights PIPETTE FILLED WITH NECTAR 👉 PUT NECTAR ON FAIRY LIGHTS You put a little drop of nectar on each fairy light. It takes you a few trips back and forth between the Earth and Fire Rooms, but soon every fairy light is topped with a nectar bead. 👉 CONTINUE PIPETTE 👉 BACK TO INVENTORY FIRE ROOM [at fairy lights...] Strings of fairy lights are hanging across the room. They are off, but a glowing firefly sits on each one. The room is much brighter now. 👉 BACK TO ROOM [...] The fireflies perched on the fairy lights fill every corner of the room with soft light. In the glow of the fairy lights, you can see a terracotta mixing bowl in the corner of the kitchen. 👉 TAKE MIXING BOWL 👉 oven YOU ARE CARRYING: 👉 Mixing Bowl MIXING BOWL A terracotta mixing bowl. 👉 CHANGE TO FIRE CAST IRON SAUCEPAN A heavy, fireproof cast iron saucepan. 👉 PUT SOAP IN SAUCEPAN You put the soap in the saucepan. 👉 CONTINUE SOAP IN SAUCEPAN A heavy, fireproof cast iron saucepan with a bar of soap in it. 👉 MELT SOAP You hold the saucepan over the fire. After a short while, the soap softens, and then rapidly becomes liquid. 👉 CONTINUE QUESTIONABLE SHAMPOO A saucepan full of melted soap. You could wash you hair with this, although you'd prefer not to. 👉 CHANGE TO AIR MISSHAPEN HAIRDRYER A slightly misshapen battery-powered hairdryer that blows cool air when you switch it on. 👉 BACK TO INVENTORY FIRE ROOM 👉 EXIT ROOM ENGINE ROOM (BACK) 👉 GO TO OTHER END OF ENGINE ROOM ENGINE ROOM (FRONT) 👉 ENTER AIR ROOM AIR ROOM 👉 cloud YOU ARE CARRYING: 👉 Curling Tongs CURLING TONGS 👉 CHANGE TO AIR HAIRDRYER A battery-powered hairdryer that blows cool air when you switch it on. 👉 TURN ON HAIRDRYER 👉 CONTINUE 👉 BACK TO INVENTORY AIR ROOM [at cloud...] The chair is floating a few inches above the floor. Under the chair, you now can see a small glass bottle lid. 👉 TAKE GLASS BOTTLE LID 👉 EXIT ROOM ENGINE ROOM (FRONT) 👉 ENTER WATER ROOM WATER ROOM 👉 bath YOU ARE CARRYING: 👉 Ice Spheres ICE SPHERES Glittering orbs of ice. Large enough that it will take them hours to melt, even carried in your cloak pockets. 👉 THROW ICE IN BATH You chuck an ice sphere gently into the lava. Then another. Steam hisses frantically, but you can already feel the room getting cooler. As you throw the last two ice spheres, you move rapidly forward and are able to get just close enough to pull the chain attached to the plug. As the lava drains out, you see it leave the influence of whatever curse is holding it and turn back to water. Soon the bath is empty again. 👉 > That's what's odd about this attack: the vicious completeness of making your entire house rebel against you makes you think the perpetrator must hate you - and yet there's been so little resistance to your attempts to put things right. Why curse someone with both lava and ice, and let them use one against the other? Someone or something is playing games with you; something vastly more powerful than you are. 👉 CONTINUE WATER ROOM A nice big bath with large taps and a plug with a chain attached, currently looped around one of the taps. A now empty shelf sits high above it. A bottle containing a miniature shop is lying in the bath. 👉 TAKE SHIP IN A BOTTLE YOU ARE CARRYING: 👉 Ship in a Bottle SHIP IN A BOTTLE A tiny three-masted ship in a bottle. 👉 CHANGE TO FIRE SPACE ROCKET IN A BOTTLE A long, thin rocket, pointing towards the mouth of the bottle. 👉 EMPTY BOTTLE The opening of the bottle is just wide enough to let the rocket slip out. You set the rocket to one side and keep the bottle, as you may want to put something else in it. 👉 CONTINUE EMPTY GLASS BOTTLE An empty glass bottle with no lid. 👉 BACK TO INVENTORY 👉 Glass Bottle Lid GLASS BOTTLE LID 👉 CHANGE TO FIRE WAX BOTTLE LID A piece of wax shaped like the lid of a bottle or small jar. 👉 PUT LID ON BOTTLE You put the wax lid on the bottle. It's slightly too big, so you reshape it, pressing it down against the bottle's neck until the lid fits snugly. The bottle is now airtight. 👉 CONTINUE BOTTLE OF AIR A sealed bottle, full of air. 👉 CHANGE TO WATER BOTTLE OF WATER A bottle full of bright clear water. WATER ROOM 👉 BACK TO ROOM 👉 fountain bowl BOTTLE OF WATER 👉 PUT WATER IN FOUNTAIN BOWL You pour some of the water into the font, and the lilies perk up at once. Their curled brown edges smooth out, and their pale, sickly colour deepens to midnight blue. They look more beautiful than you have ever seen them. It's hard to believe that whatever power is doing this to your house is a true enemy when it helps you to produce something this lovely. But if it isn't trying to hurt you, then what does it want? 👉 CONTINUE WATER ROOM [at fountain bowl...] The lilies are the blue of a night sky, with silver stamens, and have never looked so alive. They float happily in a pool of clear water. 👉 EXIT ROOM ENGINE ROOM (FRONT) 👉 aether engine
👉 power level
All the gauges are full. Your house should be coming back to life - smoke billowing in the kitchen titles, the water fountain splashing in the bathroom, lights coming on, flowers blooming. But everything still feels dead. What do you have to do to appease whoever is playing this game with you? And then you think of the tiny house you petted in the attic. The petulance of what's gone wrong, combined with the extraordinary power involved. You think of the life force you have poured into your house over the years, and of fairy tales, previously disregarded, about inanimate objects made sentient by human attention. 👉 > Your house is alive. Your house is alive, and despite the inconvenience it's caused, despite the fact that this is new and shocking and unaccounted for by any serious magical research, you can't help but feel a rush of delight. You reach out to pet a nearby aether pipe, and immediately the aether bubbles, gurgles, tries to rush nearer to your hand. You laugh in realisation. 'Is that all it is?' you say, and the pipes respond to your voice with a purring sound that fills the whole room. 👉 > 👉 CONTINUE 👉 ENTER AIR ROOM AIR ROOM 👉 HUG You hug an area of your house. There's no visible reaction, but you feel a shift in the atmosphere, a brief sense of happiness and affection. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 PRAISE You whisper words of praise to an area of your house. There's no visible reaction, but you feel a shift in the atmosphere, a brief sense of happiness and affection. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 PET You reach out to pet an area of your house. There's no visible reaction, but you feel a shift in the atmosphere, a brief sense of happiness and affection. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 cloud 👉 PET You stroke the arms of the cloud chair. The clouds nuzzle your hands. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 PRAISE 'There's a good cloud chair,' you say. The cloud chair bobs happily up and down. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 HUG You wrap your arms around the chair and feel clouds snuggling against you. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 BACK TO ROOM 👉 corner 👉 PET You pet the pale clouds. The painting shifts, the clouds butting happily against your hands. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 PRAISE You tell the walls they are good walls. The blue becomes brighter for a moment. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 HUG You hug the dawn, and feel, momentarily, clouds drift past your arms. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 BACK TO ROOM 👉 coffee table 👉 paper flowers 👉 PET You very gently pet a few of the petals. They fold softly against your fingers and rest there. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 PRAISE You tell the flowers they are good flowers. They wave about happily. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 HUG You hug the vase of flowers. The flowers lean over to lie against you. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 BACK TO ROOM 👉 TV 👉 PET You pet the TV. It shows you a clip of a purring cat. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 PRAISE You speak to the TV in affectionate baby-talk. It plays some soft, happy music. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 HUG You hug the TV. It shows you a series of hugging emojis. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 BACK TO ROOM 👉 window 👉 PET You stroke the glass. The curtains swing forward to flick playfully against you. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 PRAISE You tell the window it is a good window. The curtains nuzzle you. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 HUG You wrap your arms around one of the curtains, and the other drapes itself around you. 👉 CONTINUE 👉 BACK TO ROOM 👉 EXIT ROOM You take a step forward, and know, as you move through your house, that something has changed. In the Fire Room, delighted fireflies whirl giddily around bright fairy lights. The oven blazes with warmth, and smoke swirls softly in the walls. In the Earth Room, flowers tilt their faces upwards, and grow exuberantly. The rug becomes softer, the colours of the clothes in the wardrobe richer. 👉 > In the Air Room, clouds float across the walls, and your chair bobs among them, swept here and there by carefree gusts of wind. The nestlings in the fireplace prepare their tiny wings for their first flight, the TV showing footage of soaring eagles to encourage them. In the Water Room, jets arc from the fountain in intricate patterns, and the lilies twirl beneath it. The sink and bath twist their taps this way and that in time with the fountain. 👉 > You know all this without needing to visit each room and look. You are in tune with your house now, its moods rhyming with the movement of your blood. You know what you will see when you look at the aether running through the pipes, but you look anyway, because you know it will be beautiful. The power source flowing through your house has become a rush of midnight glitter. It is cosmos-coloured, eternity-textured. It is liquid darkness, but full of light. When you come near, it dances inside the pipes. And so you bow, throw your cape aside, and dance with it. THE END PLAY AGAIN AUTHOR"S TWITTER
You turn on both hairdryers, and hold them under the chair at opposite ends. It floats gently into the air. You switch off the hairdryers, and the chair remains airborne, bobbing very gently up and down.
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