The decorations of the Starfish Mansion always reminded me of Athanasius Kircher's drawings. The high-arched ceiling was covered with geometric patterns, hallways were covered with large square marble floor tiles and every wall was full of decorative protrusions and symbols.

It was like walking through a private museum filled with faux middle-eastern art and 17th century occult curiosities.

“As you've probably surmised by now, this is not an ordinary house by any means. If you could see it from above, the house would be shaped like a five-pointed star. We stepped in from one of the tips of the star, and this long corridor leads to the heart of the star. There are doors all the way along this central corridor and most of the ones deeper inside lead to separate pocket universes or roomworlds, however you want to call them.”

“Roomworlds?” (Mirim)

“That's right, you'll see what I mean later. There are several doors that are welded shut or jammed from the other side, and we don't generally care about those roomworlds – oh, here on the right, a door with a spiral symbol. This is called Dance Hall Room. It's a perfectly safe room, but don't get any ideas, Dancer.”

“Yes, no I won't.” (Dancer)

“Then, there are several doors on the right, but those are just painted on the wall – Pilaster Doors, that's what they were called. And then there's suddenly another normal bedroom room here, then a Well Room with bottomless well in the middle, then there's First Aquarium Room –”

“It all seems relatively normal so far.” (Crys)

“The deeper you go the crazier it gets. There's plenty of time to explore, so don't go into rooms alone. And do not open any rooms without my permission, Rain!”

“Yeah, yeah...” (Rain)

I felt bad about singling out Rain, but it was necessary to be strict here. Some of the dangerous rooms activated immediately when you took one step in.

“Your plan necessitates us staying here?” (Crys)

“Yes, we got here ahead of schedule, just as planned, so we need to play a waiting game for now. Let the platforms align, collect the advanced materials, craft the legendary items before continuing the mission... Two or three months from now the brothers will appear on our doorstep, if everything goes as planned, and then it's time for the final boss fight.”

“What if the brothers don't appear?” (Kimono)

“Mm, I don't think we've changed history that much, unless there's some weird butterfly effects... In any case, we can't attack Caliph Tze directly until the twins have left his side, so waiting them here is the safest play for now.”

Caliph's soldiers hated the twins from the start, so they were bound to break out when the soldiers tried to kill them during the training mission in Winter Forest. They tried to make it look like an accident. but the brothers thought that it was Caliph Tze himself who betrayed them and ordered their deaths.

“...And after the twins run, Caliph Tze thinks that they have gone AWOL, killed his soldiers and betrayed him. Thus, brothers Bodhicoirn and Krajannar become the most wanted outlaws on two continents and get their new outlaw names Ivorythief and Reavertooth. And after they get out of Winter Forest, they will eventually end up at this place, but I intend to speed up that development to get them here faster, otherwise they'll end up having separate adventures and we have to wait longer...”

“Your plan depends on this long string of events happening exactly like that?” (Kimono)

“That's how the story goes in history. If we make big moves at this point, we might mess up the setup, so the safest course of action is to lay low and prep like there's zombie apocalypse waiting outside the house. It's not like multidimensional mansion is a boring place to stay in, no?”

“Are there Strangers weapons here?” (Crys)

“Oh yes. If we're talking about cold weapons, there are several rooms with those, but I assume you want firearms?”

“Firearms.” (Crys)

“There are two roomworlds of special interest for that. First, there's a door further ahead that leads to a place called Shallow Sea. It's a roomworld ruled by a group called Raft Pirates and they use very exotic gunpowder weapons –”

In the anime, Shallow Sea was part of a long montage where the MCs checked several roomworlds. In that particular room, they were immediately attacked by a group of pirates and Crys made the decision to retreat because the door opened out to a narrow sandbank without any cover; they were like sitting ducks without any way to reach the enemy rafts that were circling the sandbank.

Fans thought that the MC gang would return to the Shallow Sea room in some future episode, or visit the place off-screen at least, but Shallow Sea wasn't mentioned after the montage episode at all for some reason.

It was possible that a rare one-time entry effect was placed on that particular door, so just to be sure, we need to collect everything on one go.

I know what's waiting on the other side, so we can prepare by stocking enough ammo for Rain and by bringing a rowboat or something.

“...But more than Shallow Sea, how about some very rare and exotic non-gunpowder weapons? There's a room called Frozen Pyramid where soldiers carry sound weapons.”

“Sound weapons?” (Crys)

“Yeah, sonic pistols that shoot painful sounds. These are different from the Knocking Gun owned by the abbess of Green Mountain cult, they cause straight up physical damage instead of mental damage. The entry corridor to the giant pyramid in the room is itself a massive sound cannon.”

“Hou...” (Crys)

“Exactly. By the way, we just passed a Jungle Room where we can hunt small animals and find poison-producing flowers. Here on the left is a sand-filled room, we definitely don't want open that door because then we get a pile of rough sand blocking the hallway and it gets everywhere... and that there is a Labyrinth Room that is only partially mapped –”

Speaking of Frozen Pyramid, it was one of the longest side missions in casual play. You had to get captured by the enemy at the entry corridor, break out of prison without any weapons, and fight through the levels all the way up to the pyramidion room at the top.

When speedrunning the pyramid mission, you obviously didn't feel like doing any those long RNG-heavy battles, so you just climbed the outer wall of the pyramid and clipped through a corner straight to the boss fight. The downside of the climbing strat was that you didn't collect any sonic pistols, but with this group, casual path through the pyramid would be quite fast.

“Here we come to a section where the corridor seems to split into two separate corridors, but they return to one corridor soon. The closed section in the middle without doors is actually a spiral staircase leading from second floor to basement floor called Deep Basement. Yes, there's a basement level in this place too, but the stairs to the basement are actually in the second floor. This house is really much bigger on the inside... But you should never go to the Deep Basement. We definitely don't want to go to the Deep Basement, it's a silly place.”

Deep Basement was one of the Top Ten Silliest Places – a non-euclidean dungeon full of surreal horrors which should not be named.

In fact, let's change the subject.

“That door leads to Second Aquarium Room, but there's just large tanks of muddy water without any fish, not very interesting. There are many water-themed levels in Starfish Mansion... And that's a door to another side corridor with blue and green mesh walls, and the next one opens up to a dirty corridor with collapsed and burned lava floor, can't recommend going that way...”

I continued to explain the doors while we walked deeper and deeper. The gang didn't seem completely convinced that I was speaking the truth, but that's how it was in the anime and that's how it was in the game. They'll understand when we visit some safe roomworlds later.

The Filler Rooms, as they were called, lead the main characters into different worlds that offered new, dramatic plot possibilities. Every pocket dimension challenged the main characters to explore the strange outside worlds and challenged their own inner worlds at the same time – that's how plot routines worked in old, episodic science fiction series.

And that plot routine became one of the reasons for the fall of Revolution Movement. The characters stayed inside the house like hikikomori heroes and fought against their inner enemies (metaphorically speaking) in Filler Worlds instead of going out and fighting against Caliph Tze in the main world.

And constant filler episodes eventually lead to the fall of the series in the real world, of course. How meta-metaphorical, you could say, and totally intentional, claimed the showrunner – why else there would be a set of interdimensional portals in one corner of the main world? Starfish Mansion was there to deliberately diminish the value and meaning of the main world.

---

At the end of the long corridor, flanked by rows of closed doors, there was a massive rectangular door similar to a bank vault.

"We have reached the heart of the house without opening any doors on the way. Well done, party people, give yourself pat on the back!”

I applauded their effort, but they didn't seem amused. Maybe they were still a bit nervous being on the center stage.

Our band started by playing to uninterested audiences in smoke-filled cellars, now we were playing arena concerts in the world hub –

“...What's inside? More doors?” (Rain)

“No need to be on your toes, but behind this metal door there are undead gardeners. Well, they are not exactly undead, more like automatons, or more like griefer golems – ah, I don't really know what they are, it wasn't explained in the lore. They look more inhuman than deviant lords and they are like distant cousins of Sorry Man, meaning that they are practically indestructible, but dont worry about it, I got this. Rain, are you listening?”

“...What about Sorry Man?” (Rain)

“Yeah, so, behind this vault door, there's Petrified Garden. Kind of like a big Japanese zen garden, if you happen to know what that is. Anyone? Thought so. There are eight golem gardeners who cannot be killed, but thankfully they are slow and armed only with rakes and shovels. If they catch you, they will either hit you with their gardening tools or hug you very tightly, so don't get too close to them. However, they treat Sorry Man like he doesn't exist, so it's fine to leave him behind for a while. Yes, Rain, we'll come back later, he'll be alone just a little while. He's just going to play with the petrified trees for a while.”

“Haa...” (Rain)

“Your next question is: how do we get rid of these immortal aggro-gardeners? The answer is that we don't kill them, we just lure them next to a deep chasm on the left side of the garden, kick them down, and that's it. They can't climb smooth walls and we can pour sand and rocks on top them at our leisure, if they cause too much noise. Bury them alive, trap them in time, or launch them into outer space, that's how you deal with immortal enemies.”

“You seem really happy about this.” (Kimono)

“Oh, you don't even know how happy I am to be in Starfish Mansion. There's really cool stuff behind some of the doors, but again, do not open them without me! We only want to open the cool doors with cool stuff behind them and avoid the not-cool trapdoors...”

“...Get to the point.” (Rain)

“Okay, here's my detailed plan: after we enter the garden, Mirim will immediately shoot the tower bell diagonally on the right side to turn their attention there. Then we all run to the left path. Kick the gardeners, if they try to bodyblock you, or shoot them in the face to put them on the ground for a moment. If they try to speak, just ignore it. Run all the way to the red bridge, then diagonally right and forward until you reach the edge of a deep chasm. You'll see it on your left next to the barrier wall. Then wait near the chasm to push the gardeners down. Rain and Kimono, I leave the kicking and pushing to you, we'll manipulate them at the right position. Dancer, Crys and Mirim, just follow my example to trick their navigation. If they make unexpected moves, improvise.”

“What about Sorry Man?” (Rain)

“So you didn't listen earlier... The gardeners don't care about Sorry Man, he's safe staying still. Sorry Man himself is more interested in fingering the petrified tree branches. You can leave him behind for a moment, okay? Don't get distracted.”

“...Fine.” (Rain)

“What is the opening mechanism for this door?” (Crys)

“We just knock politely. The idiot gardeners will open it from the inside. Ready?”

I knocked the vault door loudly and prepared for another easygoing Petrified Garden run.

“Guys, open the door! It's-a-me, Mario!”