Prologue II: The tale of the House

Magic City Community College, by the way, has an interesting concept of the "application process". There were two questions on the paper:

1. Have you ever heard of the SATs? (yes/no)


2. Can you afford the tuition? (yes/no/maybe)

That was the application I filled out. Again, that should have clued me in. Like I said, I was so obliviously giddy, I was practically shitting confetti.

I digress.

I honestly don't know what possessed me to do this -- probably my inability to pay Room and Board -- but within the first two weeks, I had moved into a large, Victorian manse near the Western edge of Magic City.

The massive Victorian house, on Kide-Taivas avenue, had originally belonged to a crazy old guy named Dr. Délatuer. Apparently, he had tried to take over the world, a number of times. According to the guy down at the coffee shop, he never got farther than, "get off my lawn, you filthy brats! Go away, before I blast you with my deadly laser of doom!"

They also say he wore a waist-coat and knickers.

Well, anyway, when he died, he left his entire estate to the local museum. They kept what they wanted, and sold the rest.

"The rest" included the house. Supposedly, that's why the house is so 'strange'. "It attracts strange people," the guy at the coffee shop says. "When the end of the world comes, and the earth cracks open, to let hell spew out,the Earth will crack underneath that house!", he went on to explain. "I heard it was haunted. If anyone tried to start up his death lazer of doom, he would possess it, and destroy the entire city."

Uh-huh. Yeah. Rumor has it he's a nut-job.

Anyway, the museum put it up for sale.

And someone was crazy enough to buy the Délatuer mansion.

That someone, was Alex Normandy. He had been talked into buying the house, by his sister, Robin. While the house was an "exceptional deal" for a Victorian mansion, it was still an excessive amount of money.

So each sibling bailed out the other, by finding people willing to rent out part of the house, so they could make the mortgage payments. (I'm told this is actually financially feasible, but it's still odd.)

This is what I moved into.