Sunset Dominion noticeboard · Non-canonical
Sunset Dominion Facilities Notices: Thermostats, Portals, Moats, and Other Shared Amenities
Facilities notices from Sunset Dominion cover the thermostat war, portal etiquette, magical plumbing, gargoyles, the black lake, and the clarinet problem.
A six-week archive from the Facilities & Grounds noticeboard in the main corridor. Resident annotations are reproduced as found. The blue handwriting belongs to Administration. The red handwriting could belong to anyone and has admitted nothing.
Notice 2026-041 — Common Room thermostat: replacement
Department: Facilities & Grounds
The Common Room thermostat has been replaced. This unit is rated for extreme thermal variance and is anchored to the wall with hardware ordinarily used on boilers.
The dial has been replaced nineteen times in six years. Facilities has replaced dials in a dragon’s lair. Those lasted longer.
The Common Room is one room. It has one temperature.
[red pen] The left side of the room is not the same room as the right side of the room, and I will not be told otherwise.
Notice 2026-043 — New resident handoffs
Department: Portal Operations
Scheduled arrivals are not spectator events. When a transfer portal opens, keep the route to the main building clear.
Residents are asked not to:
- gather in the lobby to assess the new resident;
- ask how they were defeated before they have received a room assignment;
- offer committee flyers, recruitment pamphlets, or odds on the first formal complaint;
- critique the escort’s handoff technique while the escort can still hear you.
The escort will depart after the handoff. Do not applaud.
[red pencil] What if the applause is supportive?
Notice 2026-044 — Doom Wing plumbing: spectral residue
Department: Facilities & Grounds
Ongoing. Decades of dark magic, elemental fire, necromantic energy, and vampiric cold have gone down the same pipes. It is cholesterol, but for dimensions.
Purge work continues in sections. Residents may hear screaming from the walls between six and nine in the morning. That is the pipes. It is not a manifestation, an omen, or a message.
If it is a message, it is from the pipes, and it is about the pipes.
Notice 2026-047 — Portal etiquette
Department: Portal Operations
Portals are operated by staff for transfers, staff business, and supervised field trips. They are not resident exits.
- One person through at a time.
- Do not linger in the aperture to deliver remarks.
- Do not hold the aperture open for somebody who is “nearly here.” They are not nearly here, and the aperture is not a lift.
- Do not use a scheduled opening for an unscheduled errand, delivery, escape attempt, or dramatic reunion.
- The smell is ozone and regret. It is a property of portal transit, not a judgment on the individual passing through.
Notice 2026-049 — Shuffleboard Pavilion gargoyles
Department: Facilities & Grounds
Two pavilion gargoyles require masonry work. Scaffolding goes up Tuesday.
Facilities has received eleven requests to have the gargoyles “reactivated,” “restored to function,” or “given something to do.” All are declined. The gargoyles are decorative.
Facilities declines to elaborate on the word decorative.
[blue ink] Do not elaborate. — L.M.
Notice 2026-051 — Common Room thermostat: replacement (2)
Department: Facilities & Grounds
Twenty.
The unit rated for extreme thermal variance was melted and then frozen, in that order, within a single night. Facilities took the housing to a contractor who works on kilns. He asked what did this. We told him a retirement home. He stopped returning our calls.
Notice 2026-052 — Hedge maze
Department: Grounds
The hedge maze remains healthy and unpredictable.
Enter with a companion. Do not enter with a snack you are unwilling to lose. If the maze closes behind you, stand still and wait; the walls open on their own within the hour and always have.
Separately, the maze took another squirrel on Thursday. Services will be held at eleven in the gardens. Attendance is voluntary and, as always, better attended than the film.
Notice 2026-055 — The black lake
Department: Grounds · Water Feature Advisory
The lake is safe.
The darkness of the water is considered purely aesthetic by Facilities. Recent surveys found water, mud, three golf balls, and no repairable defect.
Swimming is permitted during posted hours. Water temperature is seasonal.
Grounds asks residents to stop referring to it as “the moat.” It does not enclose anything. A moat has a job.
[red pen] Everything here used to have a job, dear. Let it call itself what it likes.
Notice 2026-058 — Quiet hours and instrumental practice
Department: Administration
Following forty-one written complaints in five weeks, forty of which concerned the clarinet:
Instrumental practice is permitted from nine to noon and two to five. It is not permitted during quiet hour, after lights-down, or in the ductwork-adjacent practice room on the second floor, which we have now learned distributes sound to four wings and the kitchen.
Administration acknowledges the following descriptions and confirms that none constitutes an actionable grievance by itself:
- “A waterfowl processed through industrial ventilation.”
- “The sound a building makes when it gives up.”
- “Grief, but wind-powered.”
Administration further notes, for the record, that the resident in question practices every day, without fail, and has done so for years. A committee has proposed a remedy. The remedy is not available under state law.
[blue ink] We have discussed the plan. — L.M.
Notice 2026-060 — Lawn-mowing pattern
Department: Facilities & Grounds
The pattern has returned to checkered.
Facilities received a color-coded, laminated diagram with footnotes explaining that the crisscross pattern produced an optical illusion disrupting a resident’s spatial orientation outdoors. The diagram was, professionally speaking, better than anything Facilities has produced this year.
The pattern is checkered. It will stay checkered. Facilities has retained the diagram.
Notice 2026-063 — How to actually get something fixed
Department: Administration
Repair requests submitted verbally in a corridor are not repair requests. They are conversations, and Facilities is a cyclops with a truck, not a scribe.
Requests may be submitted in writing to the Administrator’s inbox or through Resident Grievance Form 47-B, available below. Every submission is stamped, dated, and held for review. Emergencies go to the front desk, not the form.
For clarity, the following have been submitted through the repair channel this quarter and were not repair issues: the crossword difficulty (too easy), the crossword difficulty (too hard), the nature and purpose of crosswords, the missing Monopoly dog, the towels, the towels again, the urinal cakes (lavender, described as an abomination), and one request to have the sky adjusted two shades warmer for a resident’s birthday.
The sky request was, in fairness, the politest thing Administration received all month.
Notice 2026-066 — Common Room thermostat: final
Department: Facilities & Grounds
Twenty-one.
Effective immediately, the Common Room thermostat is under Administration control. The wall unit has been removed. In its place is a laminated card reading THE TEMPERATURE IS FINE.
Facilities anticipates the card will be melted, frozen, or removed within the week. Facilities has printed forty of them.
To the two residents concerned: Facilities has purged spectral residue from a copper line that existed in two dimensions at once and rehung a gargoyle in weather that will not be described. The dial is the only thing on this campus we cannot repair.
Sit closer together. It is the cheapest solution we have.
[blue ink] Leave the card up. Order more. — L.M.
About this piece: This is a promotional, non-canonical dispatch inspired by The Retirement Home for Evil Overlords. It contains no major spoilers and changes nothing in the novel.
Resident services · Form 47-B
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Generate the paperwork immediately. If you submit it, it goes to a private moderation queue for possible inclusion in a future dispatch. Nothing is published automatically.
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