Mansion of Mayhem is a transformation text adventure written in the ADRIFT engine by Chilli TNG.

Every town has one. You know what I mean -- a house. A house of mystery, of unknown possibilities.

The style of the house isn't important. In one town, it might be an abandoned bungalow; in the next, a sprawling ranch that's been vacant for years; or perhaps a decrepit four-square surrounded by a jungle of weeds and fallen tree limbs. What is important is the house's... reputation.

In Harpers Grove, Illinois, the house is known as the Marengo Mansion. The owner, Wilford Marengo, was rich; he was also crazy, but, when one is rich, the preferred term is "eccentric." Wilford Marengo was eccentric in spades. He shaved cats, claiming their fur was causing his eyesight to fail. He kept a horse, which he named Reginald, inside his house and managed to toilet train it. He liked to snack on chocolate-covered dill pickles. He was also a recluse, which certainly didn't help dispel rumors about his eccentricities.

Marengo built his mansion back around the turn of the 20th century, basing its construction upon blueprints he drew after "seeing" the house in a series of dreams. Marengo died exactly six years, six months, and six days after the mansion was completed, which, as you might suspect, added considerably to the persistent rumor that Marengo had been a sorcerer in league with the devil. The mansion has been vacant ever since Marengo's death.

And, it has been said that anyone entering the house is never the same if, not when, they leave.

Harpers Grove, in addition to being the home of the Marengo Mansion, is also home to Danforth University, a small, private liberal arts college in the Midwest tradition. DU has its share of fraternities and sororities, as do many college campuses throughout the country. And, like most of these organizations, the fraternities and sororities at DU require those who would join their ranks to prove their worthiness by enduring some form of test. An initiation, if you will.

The Sigma Omicron Beta fraternity and the Gamma Alpha Lambda sorority are co-chartered organizations and are considered by most at Danforth University to be the best Greek houses to join. They only accept a few members each year. And, since they are co-chartered, their initiation rituals are the same, and had been for years: All pledges had to spend a night at the Marengo Mansion and, to prove that they had been there, remove an item from the mansion as a "trophy."

All of this explains why, on a still October night, just moments before midnight, six people stand in front of the Marengo Mansion, contemplating their next actions....