Gilded House of Horrors

The Gilded House is an enormous mansion and grounds of saccharine and baroque excess. All the guests, servants, hounds and horses are changeling, forced to wear masks of gaiety even as the excess destroys them. Dancers waltz on broken legs, cooks carve with burnt hands, diners stuff themselves with food until they literally burst. No sleep, no rest, until you are too broken to continue, then you are cast aside.

The Dowager

An ancient and very proper crone, the Dowager is the epitome of impossible standards and righteous disappointment, of acerbic vitriol dressed as compliment. She demands everyone under her roof indulge the excessive abandon of youth, and punishes equally those who indulge and those who fail to show self destructive commitment.

Those that Fled

Sebastian Lund - Majordomo

A personable man before his capture, Sebastian was made an irresistible social force and majordomo of the Gilded House. His durance was to cajole, command and betray every other changeling in the Dowager's menagerie. He was hated, feared and could not be denied. Insightful and empathetic, with every cut and betrayal he perpetrated he hurt himself. He never did inure himself to the pain he caused, but he did build the will to continue and a mask to hide his anguish.

As a trusted servant Sebastian was uniquely positioned to engineer an escape. To ensure his own success he organised a mass escape of others to occur at the same time. He left doors unlocked, slipped keys to those in shackles and drugged guards. 

Lizzie Spoons - Cook

Lizzie Spoons was a bit of a culinary master, she could do amazing things with a bit of this and that. She was taken and chained at the heart of a dark kitchen, more of a torture chamber. For the mistress and master liked their “game” fresh and tenderised while still alive. She was forced to cook her own finger on the second night because her fare was less than perfect, so she has learned to strive for the exquisite. One of her morsels had a key in his pocket to her chains. With the distraction of an extravagant feast she fled to the Hedge.

Ada Milner - Seamstress

Ornate balls require ornate costumes - gowns, shoe, hats and masks. Sometimes a hem needs to be taken up and you reach for the dressmaker’s shears. Sometimes that necklace needs a little something extra, like your molars, and you reach for the pliers. Sometimes the size eight dancer who came in for the fitting really needs to be a size six and you reach for the dressmaker’s shears...

Perfection is expected and demands you put a little of yourself in everything that you do - tears and sweat and blood and a square foot of skin from your own back.

Kindle - Nameless

The Gilded House has hosts of beautiful, young servants, barely into puberty. Their only role is to serve and to no stand out. Their only useful skill is to not be stood on. They are the victims of the decadance of the others, the tools for the exhultance, but primarily they are the silent faceless watchers, waiting to clean up the mess without complaint or else.  

Briar - Garden

We're painting the roses red,
We're painting the roses red;
They bleed when cut,
And scream a lot,
And shy away in dread.
For the vase next to the Mistress' bed-
An arm, a leg, a head!