https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_4quM2bPuR6X9fTK-B1DZsUGswYLzvDam0BraP8_Th0

So maybe the party DID get a little too wild.  It was sort of a Girls Gone Wild event.    Your sorority house has been burned to the ground.  Animal House had nothing on you.  Now what were you going to do?  You needed a place to sleep.  You needed a place to study.  Most of all you still needed a place to party.  Right?

Okay, that wasn’t REALLY how it happened.  Yes, there was a party.  Yes things got a little wild.  But the truth was the house had been ready to be condemned when they rented the place.  The wiring hadn’t been up to code.  The plumbing had leaked all the time.  The HVAC barely worked.  The floor was sinking in placed.  It was practically a Section 8 building in need to of being torn down.  But three were allegations that they had overloaded the wiring.

Okay, so three of them had been washing clothes (washing and drying).  Two had been taking hot showers.  The dishwasher was running.  So were both microwaves, the blender, several TV’s, stereos, computers.  Maybe they overdid it a little.

Well as it turned out, more than one of them knew a hunky part time student named Eric Blackwell.  The guy was one of those hot guys no father wants his daughter bringing home.  You know the type: always in trouble, rides a motorcycle, had a black book with the names and statistics of every girl in the school, often had more than one trying to hang off his arms.  Only Erik wasn’t exactly like that.  He worked as a handyman, chauffeur, cook, mechanic etc for one of the professors, Dr Alex Tanis.  

Dr Alex Tanis was a young prodigy in linguistics and computer programming.  His specialties were dead languages and decryption.  Erik was in his early 20’s.  Alex was all of 19 years old.  (He got his PhD’s at age 16.)  Alex had an ancestral estate a little north of Boston along with a couple thousand acres.  His place was a haunted mansion.  At least that’s what it looked like.  He never even pulled the sheets off the furniture when he inherited the place at age 16.  (He grew up in boarding schools and hardly ever saw his parents.  He barely remembers them.)  Cobwebs still hang off curtains even after 3 years of living there.

The place is absolutely creepy.  Every mirror in the house is kept covered.  The place is wired with white christmas lights along every walkway or lanterns.  (Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.

[color=a0410d][b]Rules of the Estate[/b][/color]
Mirrors stay covered at night.

Use the night lights.  There are flashlights in every room.

Noone enters the Off Limits area of the Library.  It is filled with rare and irreplaceable literatures dating back centuries.

No unauthorized use of the classic cars.  (He has a huge collection going all the way back to the Model T up a 1970 Electra Glide.)

Do NOT disturb any webs for any reason.  Do not harm any arachnids.  That means spiders if you didn’t know.  If one is bothering you, call Eric - not Alex.  You MAY however, throw crickets, flies and such in the webs.  In fact, that’s a pretty good idea.  A fed spider is a happy spider.

Noone goes to the basement without an escort from Alex or Eric.

[color=00aeef]Alex:  “Eric, I’m not so sure this was such a great idea.  What if she EATS one of them?”[/color]

[color=f26522][b]Posting[/b][/color]
I listed Advanced and Casual both.  Really I am looking for a mix.  For interaction I am happy enough with Casual.  I tend to do advanced regardless.  But I do not want to intimidate folks.  Those of you accustomed to Advanced, please make some allowances.  Part of this is to give people who aren’t quite up to advanced levels of writing a chance to work on those skills.

I am looking for members to post at least every day or two.

Try to post in a way that others can respond to.  Don’t just react to someone else’s post.  Try to do so, but come back with something that prokes a response.  Don’t copy people’s posts back to them.

[color=f26522][b]Character Sheets[/b][/color]
Yes, you will all need one.  No animated gifs please.  (Bad eyesight here.  If you do use one, place it in a hider.)  I normally prefer photos, but higher quality (realistic, not cutesy toon) anime works.

As these are college characters, you should note your majors, how far along you are.  Interests, hobbies, habits, family issues, 

[color=f26522][b]Plots[/b][/color]
Well, there are the obvious romance plots possible.  Yes, the place is really haunted.  There is a demon living there.  But that demon protects the house.  The estate is also surrounded by Nephanic creatures in the Umbra (hence that silly rule about mirrors).  So there is a HORROR element to this story.

The basement has a portal that is the passageway to a mantle, a sort of pocket dimension in what another version of the estate exists.  Alex is a very powerful mage in that mantle.  Outside, in the mundane world, not so much.