Meridian House

How to start

1. Open your AI. Start a new chat in ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. No paid plan required.
2. Paste the card. You are inside the north door, satchel empty, and the shadow is on the first mark.
3. Walk the House. Eleven rooms, three slots, thirty-four marks. Read everything, because reading is free and walking is not.
4. Get the tin out. Bank what you carry in the barrow and step out before the shadow leaves the line.

Questions

Is this a real text adventure, or is the AI making up the map as it goes?

It is a real map. Eleven rooms, their compass exits, eight objects with their slot costs, three documents and three mechanisms are all written into the cartridge you paste, and the card's third hard rule tells the AI to run only what is written and never invent a room, an exit or a way through. The door it describes is the door that is actually there. There is no hash and no engine here — the House is fixed because the text is fixed, hand-built and checked before release.

Can I actually lose?

Yes. A brass meridian line runs the nave floor and the shadow on it moves when you move: thirty-four marks, one for every room you walk and one for every mechanism you work. Looking and reading are free, so what runs you out is walking the same corridor twice. If the shadow leaves the line while the tin is still inside, the House shuts for the season and the run scores nothing. The best route found clears everything in twenty-five marks. A run that reads nothing, hauls twice from the tower because the sand bag takes two of your three slots, and searches the cellar blind spends nearly all the rest; one wander down the vine walk and back is the difference.

What is the satchel limit actually for?

It is the game. Your satchel holds three slots, the sand bag takes two of them, and the things worth points compete for the same space as the tools that get you through doors. Everything you pick up is a thing you have to come back for, and every trip back is light you do not get again. The barrow inside the north door holds whatever you carry to it, and what stands in it when the run ends comes out of the House — but nothing scores at all unless the tin is among it.

Do I need dice, an account, or any tools?

None. No dice — the House has no randomness in it at all — and no account beyond the chat app you already use. Paste the card into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini and you are standing inside the north door with an empty satchel. Say "save" whenever you stop and paste the save code into a fresh chat with the card to pick the afternoon up exactly where you left it.

How is this different from the sealed cards in the library?

A sealed card hides its answer behind a SHA-256 commitment published before release, so the AI cannot move the culprit or the code once you start guessing. Meridian House has nothing to hide: its map and its answers are in the cartridge, in plain text, which is what stops the AI improvising a corridor that was not there a moment ago. The honest tradeoff is that you could read the card and spoil it. Do not read the card.