Ivan's House

For GLOGtober '23, per Locheil's challenge:

A glance at a city that should never have been built.

...

Ivan's House is a three-story manor in the Cistercian style, behind a low defensive wall and a moat, both of which are mostly decorative. The vane, visible from a distance, is a fanged rabbit. A perpetual aurora hangs overhead. The flowers around the foundation are painted on.

Any fighting force that gets too close to Ivan's House is struck from an impossible angle by a ballista bolt. Traces of the last siege remain: a buried war helm, a broken tent pole, a hastily-covered fire pit, a gnawed horse bone.

Past the courtyard, present your merchant's token to gain entry. Once inside, follow the signs past the portrait room, the covered furniture, the master bedrooms, to the long hallway. Walk forward without looking back -- it will take a few minutes -- until you smell souvlaki. Only a few more steps 'til Ivan's House.

...

Ivan's House is a city, and a well-fortified one. It is made up of several miles of tunnel-hallway-streets lined with white doors and looks like the inside of a dimly lit hotel. The greater part of it exists in the fifth dimension, behind the white stone facade — roughly 5000 men and women in total. They call themselves Children of Ivan, or just Ivans.

If you can't move in the fifth dimension, Ivan's House is a good place to learn.

Ivan's House is a major exporter of drugs and metal crafts, mostly fine cutlery and clasps. They are strikingly critical to the local economy; disrupt their supply lines, and you'll have a lot of lords complaining about shortages of electrum spoons and laudanum.

Ivan's House is cold. It is cold because its extra-dimensional surface area is so vast. Their main import is coal for the furnaces; the smoke paints the ceilings sootblack.

The name "Ivan's House" is a colloquialism. Locals have their own name for it: Bnodura. This name is rarely spoken, except by the city planners, and only when they need to expand a neighborhood or adjust a street.

There are five other names, known to select members of the upper cryptocracy. These are the keys to Ivan's House.

There are abandoned places in Ivan's House: spiraling stairwells with no bottom, massive chambers like ten ballrooms stitched together lengthwise, chapels of inordinate sharpness. They exist between residences, down alleys and under floorboards.

Usually, these are stripped of all valuables. Sometimes, they contain gifts:

• A wooden cube that sings when struck. Strike it again, and it will change the tune. Changes lyrics to beg for its life. 2HD.
• Unworked steel, reproduces asexually.
• Black, sharp grass that grows on glass. Glasswork animals come to graze on it.
• L-shaped titanium wand of Stones to Shogs. (Shogs is very, very friendly. She wants to meet the people depicted on your coinage. She has 20HD.)

...

Ivans favor the kestros; they can arc most projectiles thru the fifth dimension, allowing them to throw thru solid matter 9 times out of 10 (in other words, they ignore armor and most forms of cover) (EXCEPT for lead, which is infinitely long in the fifth dimension)

They can do the same with a ballista, but it's much harder.

Besides this, Ivans are regular men and women -- most with coarse, dark hair, soft noses, dull green eyes -- except that they are always cold, and occasionally ragdoll out of existence upon death.

...

Ivan was a landlord first, a father second, and a wizard as distant, distant third. When the Menuans darkened his doorstep, exhausted by their long campaign into the Boiling East, he was made to house their 800-strong army. When he failed at this, the Menuan general, who was called Caliphreus, brought the heads of Ivan's three sons, and bade him try again.

Ivans live in fear of Caliphreus, who blows ash into their lungs while they sleep.

Ivans live in terror of the Headsmen, who roll thru abandoned hallways and bite the legs off of ambitious scavengers.