Upright Compound
From Ars Arcanum Wiki
Initially identical in appearance to the Reversed Compound, the Upright Compound can be modified/redecorated as characters see fit. Any property damage, however, will cause the Oracles to restore damaged areas to their original states. No one seems to know how they do it, but they do.
Repeated vandalism will make the Oracles unhappy. You really don't want that. Trust us.
The compound is invisible to residents of the City and people on the Reversed side, unless they're escorted by someone with an Upright card.
Contents |
Dormitory
The dormitory is arranged by suits, with a floor for each suit.
The ground floor boasts an elegantly furnished lobby, and fourteen rooms labeled with each card in the suit of Pentacles. There's an elevator in the lobby, as well as stairwells on either end of the building.
Going upstairs, you'll find Wands on the second floor, Cups on the third, and Swords on the fourth.
Rooms for the Major Arcana on the fifth and final floor, which somehow appears to be the exact same size as the floors below it, despite having eight more rooms equal in size to the ones on lower floors, and windows that don't appear to exist from outside the building. (Apparently, Time Lords aren't the only ones who know how to make things bigger on the inside...)
Each character has a mailbox in the lobby for exchanging notes within the compound. Messages left in mailboxes can be posted in the journal community.
Rooms
Despite the unfortunate implications of the term "dorm room", the bedrooms are actually rather spacious and nicely decorated. They feature queen-sized beds with a nightstand on either side, and a telephone on one nightstand. Next to the telephone is a card informing characters of their telephone number, and giving instructions for setting up voicemail. There's also a handy contact list containing phone numbers and addresses for the Jade Room and Healing Hands Medical Center. Your phone number travels with you.
Rooms also have bookshelves and dressers. Each room has a desk with a comfortable office chair and a laptop which your character can take with them. There's a TV stand at the foot of the bed, featuring a decent-sized television, DVD player, and access to the same channels as the television in the lounge. (See below.)
There are spacious walk-in closets, which already contain your character's clothing and personal effects, as well as a clothes hamper. Dirty clothes placed in the hamper mysteriously find their way onto hangers in the closets or into dresser drawers, where they're neatly folded. Clothing with minor tears will be mended. Shredded clothing won't be.
Each room has its own bathroom, with a spacious bathtub/shower, massage showerhead, and a seemingly endless supply of hot water, soap, and shampoo. There's a small linen cabinet holding clean towels and bed linens with an obscenely high thread count. No matter how many towels you use, there will always be more clean towels -- the linen cabinet never seems to empty. Likewise, bathrooms never run out of toilet paper and tissues. (None of these things can leave the compound, though, so if your character hopes to make a fortune selling black-market towels and toiletries, they're out of luck.)
All rooms are locked and unlocked with the tarot cards, so people can only go between each other's rooms when escorted by the holder of the card. Rooms can be shared, but only the holder of the card for the room can unlock it.
The Whiteboard
The whiteboard is located in the dormitory lobby. The in-game, practical use for it is to jot down notes you want everyone living in the dormitory to see. (The actual reason? FOAR TEH LULZ, PPL. We shouldn't need to explain this.)
Although muns will be able to see who wrote on it, the characters won't know unless they recognize the handwriting or the message is signed. When posting on the whiteboard, you can either use a plain text post or use an image program for a doodle or to capture your character's handwriting. It's assumed that all replies to the whiteboard posts are written on the whiteboard, and you can say you erased someone else's message.
The whiteboard will also be where the Oracles leave notes summoning characters for their redraw.
Dining Hall/Kitchen
A large separate building where the dining hall and kitchen are located.
Three gourmet meals are prepared daily, or you character can have the kitchen staff deliver their meal to another part of the compound. The kitchen is always open for characters who want to prepare their own meals or snacks.
In the dining hall is a single long dining table and several chairs, which can be removed if the hall is needed for an event.
Main Building
Lounge
The lounge features a large, state of the art home theatre system, with shelves full of a selection of movies and video games, and a high end video game console attached to the TV. The electronics in this room are magically shielded; characters who cause problems with technology (such as Dresdenverse wizards, or anyone who tends to cause a lot of electromagnetic interference) will find that the electronics in the lounge work regardless of their presence.
The TV has what appears to be an expansive cable package -- there are sports channels, news channels, Weatherview, Music Video Television One, the Toon Channel, and at least one channel that plays nothing but reruns of something called Star Journey: the Successors.
The electronics cannot be detached from the TV, and the TV is rooted to the stand it's on, so no use trying to take any of them out of the room. Movies and video games can be taken out of the lounge, but they automatically return to their places on the shelves in 24 hours.
There's an assortment of comfortable furniture, including couches and recliners, and a telephone on the wall away from the TV.
There are also envelopes of petty cash sitting on one of the shelves, if your character fancies going out for the night or wants to buy something. Try not to abuse the envelopes too much: if your character constantly cleans out the daily petty cash supply so other characters can't have any, the Oracles will get annoyed, and then your character may find all of the envelopes empty in the future, and all the money they took before inexplicably missing.
Library
A very large library full of books with information on the world your characters are stuck in. The Upright library features an extensive collection of books on magic, tarot associations, and mystical lore. There's a very small section on technology, but characters will find most of what is there is mildly inaccurate at best, considering technology a necessary evil, and blatant anti-tech propaganda at worst.
There are also tables with lamps and comfortable, overstuffed chairs.
Recreation Room
Located right next to the lounge, this room has a collection of board games, a card table with cards and poker chips, a pool table, an air hockey table, and arcade machines with classic video games.
Gym
The compound also has a gym in its own building. There's a room full of exercise equipment, punching bags, and sporting equipment, a large basketball court, as well as showers, locker rooms, and steam rooms for men and women (and one labeled "unisex/other"). The gym leads out into an indoor pool.
Garage
There's a spacious garage in a separate building outside the main gate (also invisible to people without Upright cards) where characters may find their vehicles. Vehicles of great sentimental importance will appear, as long as they're primarily transportation-based: cars, SUVs, motorcycles, etc. Giant mecha, not so much.
