RIFT MANOR

Rift Manor was the unofficial name of the house and estate that served as the home and base of operations for the Guardians of Empire City.

HISTORY

The mansion and estate were located in the Tower Hill area of Empire City and had been there for over a century. The place had a storied history, a Gothic-style mansion constructed in the early 19th Century by the eccentric Lucas Bloch. Bloch was rumored to be a mystic of some kind and stories of dark goings-on at the mansion persisted into the early 20th Century. The place was abandoned when Bloch's last living relative committed suicide after losing his fortune in the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and remained so until the 1960s, when it was briefly turned into a commune for New Age cultists. The mansion was empty again after the cult vanished mysteriously and was generally avoided by the public with rumors of it being haunted persisting. Near the end of the 20th Century a base of operations for the Crime Cartel was established in a network of caves beneath the mansion.

Ownership of the mansion became hazy until it came into the possession of teenage supermodel Kyle Grant, who inherited it from a previously unknown uncle of his. In reality the inheritance was arranged by the demon Lord Satanus, who needed a mortal to access magical power linked with the mansion. After moving into the manor Kyle found the Zodiac Amulet, a powerful mystical artifact which he used to become the hero Rift. Kyle discovered the caves being used by the Crime Cartel and joined with a group of fledgling heroes who were pursuing a group of Cartel agents. Kyle joined forces with the heroes and helped defeat the Cartel's forces. When the heroes decided to band together as a permanent hero team, Kyle joined as well. Calling themselves the Guardians, the team decided to use the caves as their own headquarters.

The Guardians began to jokingly refer to the house as Rift Manor, but given that Kyle made no effort to hide his true identity the public also started referring to it by that name. Almost immediately it became apparent that there was something unusual about the Manor. Tazer's then roommate Debbie discovered that the closet in their apartment was connected to a closet on a heretofore unknown third floor of the Manor, allowing them to use it to travel from the apartment to the house with ease. The third floor also manifested a stairwell up that led to the basement of the house.

Initially only Rift lived in the house, but soon other members of the Guardians took up residence. Paladin was the first, moving in as soon as he joined the team, followed shortly by Omen. Tazer moved in when her roommate, Debbie disappeared, and Debbie herself moved in when she reappeared a short time later and joined the team as Guardienne. When Tazer's boyfriend Flashback joined the Guardians he also moved into the Manor.

When the mythic beings known as the Millennium Giants arose and began to destroy the Earth, Empire City was one of their targets. Because the city lay on a mystical ley-line nexus, the Giant known as Sekhmet was homing in on it. The Guardians and several other teams tried in vain to stop Sekhmet and as the creature approached the city, Rift was contacted by Visionary who told Rift that if the two combined their powers they could use the bond between their respective artifacts and mansions to disrupt the ley-line nexus, removing what was drawing Sekhmet to it. The plan succeeded but as a result both mansions were expelled from the Earth realm. With the Manor gone, and several of their teammates missing, the Guardians disbanded.

DESCRIPTION

Rift Manor was at the center of a small estate located in the Tower Hill neighborhood. The grounds were surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, accessed by a front gate. A gravel driveway and walkway led up to the house. A separate building next to the house, originally built as a stable, served as a garage for cars. Behind the house was a hedge maze that could be used to connect to the realm of Destiny of the Endless, and possibly other locations if stories told by Debbie can be believed.

From the exterior the Manor itself appears as a normal, if creepy, two-story (with third-story attic under peaked roof) Gothic-style house. The ground floor held a living room, dining room, kitchen and library; with a large deck off of the dining room. The second floor housed the bedrooms, five of them, with Rift using the master bedroom and his teammates taking the others. When Damien Omen was reduced to an infant, his nanny took one of the bedrooms and another was turned into a nursery.

Initially the third floor was a cramped attic, but after the discovery of a portal connecting to Tazer and Debbie's apartment a completely different third floor appeared. The third floor occupied a larger area than the physical footprint of the house itself and is thought to have actually existed in a different dimension. In addition to three additional bedrooms, including the one with a closet connected to the girls' appointment. Even more unusual, the third floor has a large room that appears for all intents and purposes to be an outdoor wood. The woods have their own environment, where the time of day and weather have no relation to that outside of the house itself. Walls and ceiling are not visible in the room with the woods, but a rough path guides an individual around. A staircase appears to lead up to a fourth story, but climbing it takes a person to the Manor's basement.

Other than the staircase down that takes one to the mysterious third floor, the basement is relatively normal. A large room has been converted into a finished living space, decorated as a games room with a pool table and couches. A utility room houses an old furnace, the fuse box, and a washer and dryer. Two other rooms have been turned into a conventional workshop and a magical laboratory respectively. A hidden door reveals a tunnel leading to the caves below the Manor that served as the headquarters for the Guardians.

The headquarters caves consisted of one large cavern with a small power generator and a set of advanced computers that served as the main chamber, with several small caverns that acted as storage and quarters. One of the adjacent caverns was turned into an advanced science and engineering lab where Paladin could work on his gear. A disguised tunnel led to an exit in a hillside a half-mile from the Manor grounds.