Saginomori Manor on a Stormy Night

🎲 Dice

By harukix

A Western-style manor halfway up a mountain. What was supposed to be an interview on a stormy night has turned into a night locked inside. The sisters who keep the place tell you: the front door has three locks, the three keys are kept in three different places.

March 2nd: from Grandfather's journal. "Moved the third key for the great door out of the study. Will tell Kurumi the story about the clock."
March 9th: "At night, the chair in the empty room upstairs had turned again. Will not tell Sumika."
March 16th: "Letter from the preservation society. Will write up the fire as an accident and send it."
Tonight: (the pages of the caretaker's log are blank from here)

Gather all three keys and get out of the manor before dawn.
The prefectural road is blocked, the phone is dead. No one is coming until morning.

🏚 A house built by a man who loved contraptions

Saginomori Manor is a two-story wooden house built at the end of the Meiji era by the trader Tokano Soemon. The great front door has three locks, a pendulum clock stands in the hall, and a gramophone sits in the parlor. Soemon loved contraptions, and he left mechanisms all over the house linking the clock, the doors, and the space beneath the floors. Since the head of the family, Tokano Keiichiro, died last winter, his granddaughters have kept the place at the request of the preservation society. There is only one road up from the prefectural road to the manor, and on stormy nights it is buried by landslides.

🕯 The sisters, and a guest known only by her name in the register

Tokano Sumika / 19, the elder sister, caretaker; the manor is the house she was born in
She heard every detail of the layout and the mechanisms from her grandfather, and even on a night without power she never has to think about where the candles are. One of the three keys is hers. She has not slept on the second floor since her grandfather died, and will not say so until you ask. She calls you "reporter."

Tokano Kurumi / 17, the younger sister, caretaker, second year of high school
She grabs your sleeve every time thunder rolls and never walks in front in a dark hallway. And yet she is the only one who knows where the second key is, because she remembers the story about the clock her grandfather told her as a child. She is on a first-name basis with you within five minutes of meeting, and the scarier the place, the more questions she asks.

Hikawa Rei / 24, a guest staying the same night
The register has only her name and a Tokyo address; the occupation line is blank. She does not panic when the lights go out, and takes a candle for herself before anyone else. Some nights she is not in her room, and by morning she is back. Ask her what she came here for and she asks you right back what your story is about.

🔑 How to play

Three chapters, one night split in three. Where in the house to search, whom to pair up with down a dark hallway, and whether to go look or turn back when you hear a sound: every time, you decide. Searching, picking locks, and whether you can walk without making noise are decided by dice. What you find in a room depends on the roll.

Each of the three shows you how close she is in a different place: for Sumika it is the door to her own room upstairs, for Kurumi it is whether she grabs your sleeve or your hand, for Rei it is the occupation line in the register. Where the third key is was written down before the blank pages in Grandfather's journal.