Let’s keep on with gristly tasks! HouseAuthors, your challenge today is to unearth the Power of Reason… carefully buried under one of the many graves in the plot before you. This challenge requires no special skill, nor any specific tactic. Just pick up a shovel and dig! And don’t worry about coming up empty handed! Five graves hold items for you: one has the Power of Reason, and four others hold objects that may prove useful to you in one way or another! Now, are you all ready? Let’s begin!

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HouseAuthors, the much coveted Power of Reason shall be won by the bravest of you all! Your challenge this week reflects one of many scientific-driven armageddon the world may face: nuclear annihilation. As your world’s love of science began to flourish alongside the Enlightenment, so did the capacity for destruction. Limits no longer exist, and nuclear power is considered to be the “energy of the future.” For those of you not familiar with this concept, it boils down to this: radioactive isotopes utilize heat energy to release steam… blah blah the world has power. While it’s viewed as a very powerful energy source, its dangers cannot be ignored. In fact, the likelihood of the world ending due to a nuclear-related explosion is very, very high! Our own Realm used to be in danger of such a fate, but we quickly realized that such energy sources are unnecessary and terrifying.

Your challenge is not to survive a nuclear fallout, so don’t you worry HouseAuthors! (Our producers wouldn’t sign off on such a spectacle.) You will, however, be tasks with dealing with the supposed “sole survivor” of a nuclear blast. The cockroach. The doors to the room you’re all currently in are locked, and in a few minutes, cockroaches will begin to crawl into the room via secret passageways. If you become afraid or sick then you lose the challenge – don’t worry about how I’m going to judge whether you are or not, we implanted you all with a computer chip that can measure anxiety and nausea levels before the game began. The last HouseAuthor standing will win the Power of Reason this week.

Are you all ready to begin? Yes? Then release the cockroaches!!!

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Your Ideal this week, HouseAuthors, deals with how you and your societies view the role of women. Some of you see women as your playthings, and some of you fight to prove that us women are just as good as men. A noble, noble crusade. Your challenge this week will “reflect” how you see women. Before you is a “selfie” of me. The “selfie” is an archaic form of self-portrait usually associated with the desire to garner attention to your most beautiful attributes. Silly notions of physical beauty are but a thing of the past here, but we felt the choice to the “selfie”. Behind you are eight dolls. Only one of these dolls is an accurate representation of my “selfie.” Through predetermined numbering, you will all, one by one, choose a doll and place it on the pedestal.

If your choice is correct, then congratulations, you’ve won! If you choose wrong, then I shall take it personally since you clearly aren’t noticing my face well enough to choose the right doll. Are you ready to begin?

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HouseAuthors, for this week’s Power of Reason Challenge, we are going to play a little game of luck. As you may have noticed, you are all together in one empty room. Before you are ten doors. Nine of them lead into a room similar to this one, but one door will contain a book filled with scientific advancements that are unparalleled to the societies you originally come from, and a book of matches. For the nine of you who choose the doors leading into the next room, you are safe, and get to move onto the next room. The unlucky HouseGuest who chooses the one door is eliminated from the challenge, and must signal their defeat by burning the book. The next rounds will work in a similar fashion, until only one HouseAuthor remains, and can then claim the Golden Cross – the symbol of Power of Reason in this game.

If you truly believe in free will, and not the relative comfort of predestination, then surely you will win this challenge. That is, unless your beliefs are misguided? The best of luck to you all!

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