When Niami Denmother was feeling particularly frazzled or fuzzy-brained, she liked to harvest. It didn't really matter what she harvested, as long as she was out harvesting "something".

Lately, her new harvest of choice was the swamp ash lumber, for the chance for a bubinga. She just loved the sound of the name, for some reason, and would run around harvesting while chanting "bubinga, bubinga, buBINGa."

Pure silliness, but what else would one expect from a loyal follower of Mischief?

There she was, running amok in Obol Plains, happily harvesting, when she harvested something unexpected. "Swamp ash, swamp ash, swamp ash, bubinga, and ... wha-?"

She carefully inspected the new lumber, noticing that it seemed both magical and oddly malleable. "Hmm, odd stuff. Best see if I can get another bit or twa o' it tae bring back frae th' experts tae examine." Being a compulsive harvester, however, her "one or twa" turned into a half-dozen more of them before she headed back into town ... and a few rare roots ... and rocks ... and stones ... and leather ....

She didn't have a harvesting addiction, really she didn't!

The experts hemmed and hawed and poked and prodded at the new find, Eventually they agreed on calling it Etherwood Lumber, because it seemed to have picked up some ethereal energies along the way.

Only one master artisan, a carpenter, came up with any use for the oddly-malleable wood.

"Mannequins! Only not really, since you can make them morph into various races, set their features and gender, and make them do limited motions and speech. More like ... actors ... but with limited scripts! Kinda. Sorta?" Chikkin scratched her head, then shrugged. "Whatever you call them, it is TONS of fun!"

At first, Mum wasn't so sure of the value of the new discovery, but once she got a chance to play with one, she was cackling in glee. In short order, she had it ensconced at the entrance to her crafting hall, acting as a greeter.

Agnor, her assistant, soon approached her, with several concerned-looking apprentices trailing after him. "Mum, what's with the newfangled greeter? Are you planning on replacing us all with these actor-things? They seem pretty limited, but some of the appprentices are a bit worried about job security."

"Och, nae, nae! Ye've no worry aboot losing jobs due tae these new actors. It is more ye'll be free up from some o' th' extra silliness that ye've been subjected tae at times." Mum flapped her hands in a soothing gesture as she mentally scrambled for some examples that would quickly calm them.

"I mean, how many times hae ye all complained that doing a stint as greeter, directing folks tae th' appropriate crafter's station was beyond mind-numbing? We tried signs, an' folks did nae read them. We tried th' magic mouth, an' folks got upset about voices speaking out o' thin air! Sae a talking mannequin, that sort of looks alive, that beckons them along an' speaks a set script is good, nae?"

Mum pointed at a harried-looking othmir apprentice that was stress-shedding. "An how many times hae that tailor o' yuirs tried tae play dress-up wi' ye when working on a new design? It ne'er works out right, an' it is impossible frae them tae test how things look on a specific race withoot using someone as a living pincushion, as it were."

One of the other coldain spoke up at that, "No more having to wear the pink thing of doom when she needs to test something on a dwarf?"

Mum smirked, "Well, nae unless ye WANT tae wear it!"

A chorus of chuckles was heard at that sally, and as simply as that, the crisis was averted.

"I'm sure ye can think o' all sorts o' things tae use them frae, including announcing special sales an' th' like, an' I'll be setting one up in th' library asking frae writers tae submit book donations soon. I'll leave a few frae ye folks tae play wi' afore I go back harvesting a bit more, an' ye can test them out frae yuirselves." With that, the flame-haired halfling unpacked several more house actors, then scampered out the door.

Several hours later, Niami returned to a total madhouse. Actors in every single eye-searing and/or suggestive outfit. (Truly, some things should never be put on a female troll actor unless you have eyeball bleach along!) A whole clump of actors at the door in every conceivable pose, all talking at once. "Buy my wares!" "Did you see that fae? Rawr!" "I am purrfect" "I's so pretty, so pretty, so pretty!" "50% off all adornments, today, only!" "A stitch in time saves embarassment in public!" "I's not rats, I's mousetongas!" There was even one halfling actor that looked oddly like her, calling out "Welcome to the madhouse!"

Mum clapped her hands over her ears, then looked around, noting that Agnor and a couple apprentices were looking guilty, and her friend Jazabelle was looking extremely innocent. Jazabelle looking innocent meant trouble, naturally.

She pitched her voice to be heard over the din. "All right, ye've had yuir fun. Cut down on th' racket in th' workshop area or ye'll scare away th' customers. Move the more, ahem, racy ones, up tae th' sleeping quarters or th' break room if ye need tae hae such silliness around. An' by Bristlebane's fuzzy feet, if ye need tae keep th' trolless around, get her decently clothed!"

(Several changes/additions were made to this in the hour after it was published, so if you suddenly see an answer below that you missed before, it may simply be new information.)

That's right, folks. House actors are here! (They went live on June 17, 2014))

What, exactly, is a house actor, though, and why would you want one?

Initially, they look just like a generic mannequin when placed, however, you can then:

• Set race to any player race (permanent once chosen)
• Set clothing appearance
• Set gender
• Set every aspect of character appearance (hair, eyes, height, etc.)
• Set them to perform an emote action when approached, or choose to have them repeatedly loop it
• Set their name
• Set a greeting message for them to say when approached
• Set greeting range (added with the July 1, 2014 patch)

At first, he doesn't look so impressive ...	... setting the race and gender helps a bit
Don't forget to dress him up!

That's the rough overview, but of course you want details! Never fear! A boatload of details coming up!

Details

• House actors are crafted by level 95 carpenters from a tradeable recipe, "House Actor Crate" that is sold for 5 loyalty tokens on the loyalty merchant and in the loyalty section of the Marketplace.
• Note that while the recipe is only sold to members, the recipe is tradeable.
• The crates are fully tradeable, and unpack into an Heirloom House Actor
• This actor can be placed in any house, guild hall or dungeon where you have trustee access.
• The recipe requires 1 etherwood lumber, 3 swamp ash lumber, 2 rhenium ore, 2 thick bear pelt, 10 effulgent sandpaper.
• The recipe is NOT charged, so you can make as many of them as you wish, whenever you want, once you spend the 5 tokens.
• Etherwood lumber is obtained from T10 wood nodes in any T10 zone (Vesspyr, Obol, Eidolon, Cobalt Scar, Withered Lands), and is a chance (only a chance, not guaranteed), when you harvest a rare bubinga. By this, I mean that when you actually harvest a bubinga, you may ALSO get an etherwood lumber in the same pull. I was getting roughly 1 etherwood for every 2 bubinga, over a long period of time. You can ONLY get them from manually harvesting - upgraded ponies and gathering goblins cannot bring them back.
• Once the race is selected, it is permanent. All other customization options can be changed by any trustee at any time, as long as the house is not published.
• You may only have one action and one greet text on a single actor at any time, but you can change them as often as you wish.
• Actors in a published house can only have their clothing and action changed, not any other setting.
• There are a large range of emote actions that can be changed, a list will be provided below. In order to change these actions, you need to select the customize option on a placed actor, which drops you into the same sort of window you see when dressing a mannequin. Look at the bottom of that window for the dropdown for actions.
• The action options from the main examine dropdown are "play action when approached" and "loop action" ... so if you want your sarnak to continue his wardance forever, you can. ;D
• When you swap gender on the actor, the face customization window immediately pops up, so you can set everything for the new gender.
• You can use a greeting of up to 150 characters on the actors. Special symbols (some windows character map special characters) that you can use in EQ2 chat can also be used in the greeting, such as musical notes. Alt key codes can also be used.
• Actor names can be up to 50 characters long and can include spaces (which are counted in the character count). The name does not display over their head, but is included in the line of greeting text.
• All player races are available as options (list to follow below)
• For the storage-conscious, the crates will stack up to 5 in your inventory before they start a new stack.
• You cannot hail the actors, their text fires off when you get within range of them. You cannot set the distance radius for their speech.
• When you dress an actor, it is *just* like dressing a mannequin - it takes the appearance, but you keep the clothing.

Changing "face" is much like a barbershop visit

Actions

• Agree
• Attention
• Be Afraid
• Be Angry
• Beckon
• Blow Kiss
• Boggle
• Bow
• Bye
• Cackle
• Chair Sit
• Cheeri-o
• Clap
• Crouch
• Cry
• Curtsey
• Dance
• Double Thumbs
• Fed Up
• Flirt
• Flourish
• Formal Salute
• Gag
• Giggle
• Glare
• Greet
• Hot and Bothered
• Hover
• Howl
• Itch
• Kick
• Lay Down
• Listen
• Moon
• NOPE
• Nudge
• Plead
• Rant
• Salute
• Sit
• Success
• Tease
• Thank
• Threaten
• Tradeskill Alchemy
• Tradeskill Artificing
• Tradeskill Cooking
• Tradeskill Gathering
• Tradeskill Metalworking
• Tradeskill Scribing
• Tradeskill Tailoring
• Tradeskill Woodworking
• Wave
• Whistle
• Who Me?
• Wince
• Woo Woo!
• Worship
• Yawn

Races

• Arasai
• Barbarian
• Dark Elf
• Dwarf
• Erudite
• Fae
• Froglok
• Gnome
• Half Elf
• Halfling
• High Elf
• Human
• Iksar
• Kerra
• Ogre
• Ratonga
• Sarnak
• Troll
• Freeblood
• Wood Elf

At this time, I do not have an ETA on when this will be available on all servers, but I am going to guess "Very Soon". They are in testing now, and we're getting some great feedback in.