Little is known about the Asylum, including its proper name. The information below is hard to come by, so don't assume your character knows this unless they've specifically been told about it by someone IC. You can also read more about this in The Dark Men Amongst Us plot, which introduced the Asylum to the game.

Location

The Asylum might be somewhere in the Veil, possibly in the Dreamscape area where things go especially sideways, or at least close to it. Some have entered the Asylum through doors in Gray Harbor, while others report having accessed it from somewhere "upstate." The growing consensus is that it moves around somewhere on the other side.

In the real world, people simply know of it as "that place upstate." It's something no one thinks about too hard, since the patients there are generally known to be among the hardest cases. They've taken in serial killers from across the country, including the local serial killer, Billy the Ghoul, in the early 20th Century.

Regardless of whether looking for it in the real world or through the Veil, no one currently seems to know how to get there. Thus far, everyone who's been there was taken there (voluntarily or otherwise) by someone else who knew the way.

Patients and Treatments

Everyone that has been incarcerated at the Asylum has Glimmer. They are usually sent to there by well-intending family members or some other authority figure that has run out of other treatment options. A family doctor or someone at the hospital or... they can never quite remember exactly which doctor gave them the referral, but it was someone. They referred them to this doctor who got them in touch with another doctor who took in their family member as a hard case.

No visitors are allowed. The patients never leave the grounds. They are guarded around the clock.

Those committed to the Asylum have badly broken memories of their stay there. They all report memories of darkness and pain, with some adding outright torture to the list. Everyone was heavily medicated, and it seems likely that they were also being subjected to highly controversial "treatments," including electroshock therapy.

Asylum Syndrome

The second a person leaves the Asylum, they start forgetting their experiences there. Not like normal forgetting. The whole experience isn't a blur; it's a gray slate - not blank, just like the details have been dissolved into an uninteresting nothingness. There are no specifics, no chain-of-events to recall, no clear image of their time there, just the vague shape of what happened. In fact...

Every time someone makes themselves remember the Asylum, from the moment they arrived until the moment they left, they forget something else. Something completely unrelated. The color of their mother's eyes, their own birthday, the memory of their first kiss, the smell of Christmas morning when they were a child, where they left their favorite pair of shoes, which pair of shoes is their favorite, and on and on endlessly. It's almost like the memories of the Asylum devour happier memories in order to manifest.

Of course, the person won't be able to remember what they forgot, but they will have a sort of... hole... in their mind. A place where information and memory used to be, and now there's nothing. A gap. An emptiness.

There is no cure.

There is no loophole.

Remember the Asylum? Forget something else.

Doctor Marshall

Most patients at the Asylum would have been there during the tenure of Doctor Montgomery Marshall. He worked there for so many years that no one is exactly sure when he started there.

Eccentric, Monty Marshall almost never left what he called the Facility. He took a pained sort of pride in his work, and shared his philosophy that the work they did was difficult but necessary. He had a Cadillac that he called Cecelia.

Marshall disappeared 14 July 2019. His rotting corpse has been spotted various times since his demise up until May 2020, when he purportedly died.

Dark Men

The prevailing theory is that the Asylum is a feeding ground for the Dark Men. Whether intentionally or otherwise, they are definitely prevalent there. Patients at the Asylum are frequent prey during their stay, and the meds are often a welcome relief.

Getting Out

There seem to be two ways that patients leave the Asylum:

• They turn eighteen after having been committed by their parents. Now legally adult, they sign themselves out of the place.
• They are considered cured and released by the staff, sent back home.

Thus far, no one has been confirmed to have escaped the Asylum, although there are rumors that Alice Whitehouse may have escaped in the summer of 2019.

The question of whether or not the people leaving the Asylum actually remember the method of their release correctly still remains. Some cannot remember their release at all, and only recall that they were sent back home for some reason.

Associated Characters

The characters below are in some way associated with the Asylum, whether as patients, doctors, or others. Unless your character has been directly told about or has a reason to know about the PCs listed here, please do not assume your character knows this information.

Timeline

1991

• Rusty is admitted at age 17 and is diagnosed with a non-specific delusional disorder.

1992

• Rusty turns 18 and signs himself out, only to return after losing a court battle with his aunt for his care. Delusions continue and his mental state begins to deteriorate with manic states, violent outbursts, crushing depressing and unpredictability. He will then improve and be released only to end up back in after a period of time, at his Aunt's behest. Thus begins Rusty 's nearly thirty year long revolving door relationship with the asylum.

1997

• Lalo is hired as a nurse in the asylum at the same time as his younger brother, Matias, is admitted.

1999

• Hattie is admitted into the asylum. She is 11 years old. She spends the next seven years learning to control her abilities as a Mentalist before they drown her.

2001

• Jericho is admitted into the asylum. He is 16 years old. Diagnosis: Danger to himself and others, after a history of youthful mistakes and incidents.

2004

• Quyen is admitted into the asylum at 14 following a violent manifestation of her Glimmer.

2005

• Julia is admitted into the asylum. She is 11 years old. The diagnosis is schizophrenia.
• Lalo leaves his position as a nurse in the asylum when his brother signs himself out at 18.

2006

• Hattie is released. She is 18 years old.

2008

• Alice is admitted into the asylum. She is 18 years old. The diagnosis is TBD.
• Quyen checks herself out of the asylum at 18.

2011

• Ember is admitted into the asylum. She is 16 years old. The diagnosis is Pyromania and is considered a danger to others.

2012

• Julia turns 18 and is released from the asylum as an adult.

2015

• Finnish Ballerina Roxy ( as Riika Korhonen) is admitted shortly before her 18th birthday, after a mental breakdown in Seattle before a scheduled performance.

2016

2017

• Dr. Hailey Stevenson begins working at the Facility as a medical intern (general practitioner - first aid, physicals, non-emergent medical needs, etc., not a member of the psychiatric staff).
• Joseph is admitted early in the year, after a botched suicide attempt. Kept in solitary at first, but released into the more general population after about a month.
• Roxy is released just after turning 20, and comes to awareness at a bus depot in Oregon.

2019

• Rusty's aunt dies in April and he is released, finally, for good. He becomes aware of this in a lawyer's office in Seattle.
• Megan arrives at the Asylum. Her stay is brief.
• Sightings of Alice around Gray Harbor have been reported by at least two people, but these encounters seem malevolent.
• 14 July - Dr. Marshall disappears.
• Early August - Dr. Stevenson resigns from the Facility and leaves for Gray Harbor.
• Late Fall - Megan leaves (escapes?) the Asylum.
• December - A group visits the Asylum, revealing that Marshall now works there under the moniker "The Psychiatrist," and there's a new head doctor there (known only as The Doctor).

2020

• Ember is discharged in early January, She heads home to Grey Harbor.
• Late March - Julia has reportedly been re-admitted to the Facility.
• Late May - A group runs a rescue mission to save Megan. The Psychiatrist is killed. There have been no confirmed cases of anyone being admitted to the Asylum since.