Pied-a-Ciel

Pied-a-Ciel was built in 2060 by Dr Hilary Quirk, a magician and sometime superhero. It was bizarrely like a normal brick Georgian manor house in its construction, with the rock foundations appearing in the sky first and the rest of it being built thereupon. In the spring of 2062 it was announced that CBSU would be offering courses in magic from that autumn, with Dr Quirk teaching them. A short time thereafter he was murdered, his body falling from the house. Several superheroes managed to catch the murderers (or some of them?) - "ninjas" who proved to be of Indian nationality, who carried strange knives. They remained silent throughout their subsequent trial.

Dr Quirk had no living relatives. He left the house to Lisa Davies, one of his students. The house and all its contents was sold in July 2063 to Dr. Liam Reynard, who expanded the grounds slightly, reconnected the lapsed utilities, remodeled the kitchen and converted several storage rooms to guest rooms.

Description
This house is more than slightly odd. Furniture can be found on the (generally indistinguishable) floors, walls and ceilings, and people can walk on all these surfaces too (though often only in gangways between the bookshelves or other furnishings lying on the relative floors). The rooms doors open onto are not always adjacent, although which door leads where remains consistent and the doorways are always bidirectional. Nor do windows in the same wall necessarily look out in the same direction - indeed it's very uncommon: rather, each room gets some sunlight whatever the time of day.

Among the house's more notable rooms are the entrance hall, the parlour, the libraries, the sanctum and the wonderfully relaxing meditation room. One of the changes instituted by Dr Liam Reynard upon gaining ownership of Pied-a-Ciel was a remodel of the kitchen and the conversion of several storage rooms into guest quarters.

Exterior
Above the CBSU Student Quarter hangs a rock. It doesn't move in the wind and storms do not shake it, but it is not entirely stationary: it rotates slightly in apparent response to the temperature and path of the sun. The rock is shallow and faintly bowl-shaped with a flat top.

Covering at least two thirds of the flat top of this rock rests a brick Georgian manor house.

Grounds
Outside, the house is located at the edge of a flat-topped expanse of rock. The only windows on the front or sides of the Georgian style brick building are a small semicircular pane of stained glass above the front door and three dormers in the third floor attic.

The property is not large (the house occupies more than half of the available space), but what is open contains a short, smooth solid rock driveway large enough for two cars to park end-to-end, a pair of cobblestone paths around a Regency era marble fountain, and several raised flower beds along the path and opposite the short drive.

The back of the house contains a sheer drop to the CBSU campus far below and all the house's windows (although, inside, every room has a window regardless of the room's location). The driveway also ends in drop-offs at both ends.

Entrance Hall
The entrance hall is a room of doors: on the floor, the walls, the ceiling (all of which are covered in richly coloured carpets). From here almost every room of the house may be reached if one but knows which door to take. The front door, though, is unmistakeable by being larger than the others.

Parlour
The fireplace affords the parlour a more definite sense of "up" than most of the house has, but the room is nevertheless laid out so that one can sit around the fire on any of several surfaces. Comfortable stuffed chairs and warmly burnished antique furniture give a comfortable, familiar feel to the room despite its oddity.

Libraries
The library of Pied-a-Ciel is larger than many public libraries and extends to several rooms. The largest is a general library, but India, language, philosophy and the occult each have dedicated rooms. In each the walls, floors and ceilings are covered in shelves of media, often true books, but each room reserves space enough for windows providing good lighting and decor suiting the theme of the library.

Sanctum
The sanctum has everything a magician's workshop should, from mystic sigils to stuffed unearthly creatures to potions bubbling away in eccentrically shaped glassware. It is hard to imagine something so strange one could not find it in some corner of the organized but cluttered laboratory.

Kitchen
Of all the rooms in Pied-a-Ciel, the kitchen is perhaps the most mundane. The room is divided in half by a white island with a butcher block counter-top. On one side of the island are cutouts for a brushed steel sink and a removable cutting board, on the other side (facing the foor to the entrance hall) are white bar stools. The general feeling is intimate: a cook can prepare food and face guests seated in front of him. A person standing at the sink would have a brushed steel stove and refrigerator at his back.

However, being Pied-a-Ciel, little oddities are present even here. The door to the pantry is located on the ceiling. The room contains no shelves; dishes are simply stacked on the wall to the left of the entrance like paintings. To the right of the door from the entrance hall, a window offering an attic view of the grounds to the north of the building is flanked by two windows with a sky-high view of the city to the south.

Guest Rooms


The doors that lead to the guest rooms tend to be located near the 'ceiling' of the entrance hall. Although they vary in color and style, each Georgian style room contains rugs on hardwood floors; a modest double-sized poster bed with a set of gauze curtains inside a heavier curtain set; an empty wardrobe with two drawers; a corner stand with an enameled bowl inset in it's top; an empty glass and a full pitcher on the corner stand; and an empty chamber pot under it.

A single window (which is ordinary glass but does not open) looks over the city to the southwest on cool evenings and warm mornings and to the southeast on cool mornings and warm evenings. At noon, the window faces directly south.

Note: If a finger is placed on the corner stand bowl and the word 'empty' is spoken, any liquid in the bowl drains away. If upright, the pitcher is always full and the chamber pot is always empty. The pitcher does not refill itself if left on its side or upside-down.

Location
At the time of its construction, Pied-a-Ciel was located over a vacant lot in the CBSU Student Quarter. It has a mailing address, but attempting to find the address assigned to it will discover just a mailbox and several utility meters wedged between two larger pieces of property.

Logs
Remember Where the Flying Carpet is Parked