Magical Insane Asylum

[Barcode]

Full Circle players get out!


My PC's have to break into a mansion that has been converted into an insane asylum for barking mad sorcerers. It is in a very Alcatraz-like environment, with fog on a rocky island in the middle of an ice cold bay with strong currents, except instead of a prison, it is more comfortable. It needs to have the necessary protections, as well as kooky magic effects. The party is 9th level, and they do need to be able to infiltrate and get out.

So, looking for ideas... What sort of weird stuff would one find in a magical insane asylum?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Sagan Darkside]

Salutations,

hmm- it might be very quiet. They would keep the inmates shackled and gagged to keep them from casting spells.

Or - it could be very loud. They developed a cursed set of chains that cause damage to a person trying to cast a spell. The amount of damage depends on the level of the caster. All subdual.. of course..

Of course, they might have their own problems with the vengeful ghosts of dead insane ghosts. They are not satisfied with causing pain, but playing out their insanities upon anyone they can get their hands on.

You could have the asylum run by dwarven clerics dedicated to curing their insanity, but it takes the form of harsh punishments/torture.

SD

 

[AngelTears]

In the Parry Potter books there are creatures that live in Azhkaban, the prison for bad wizards, that feed off of human emtion, leaving the prisoner drained.

Ghosts would be quite often around, a few wizards and each magic-user I suspect would be imprisoned in its own way.

Why am I suddenly reminded of the creepy feeling I get with the Arkham Asylum scenes whenever I read Batman?

-Angel Tears

 

[Shadow64]

First off, I'd go here to check out some of the photos this guy has done of old asylums, crypts, factories and the like. Print some up to give your characters a feel of what they see.

Then, I'd probably make the entire island, or at least the grounds of the asylum, under a permanent silence spell. The clerics/doctors that run the place use sign language to communitcate (for the most part, they still have written reports and the like). This could be an interesting way to make the party work - they can't communicate other then hand signals and notes - which I (being a bastard DM) would probably make the players actuall do!

Something I'd also throw in might be a few low level psions (like 1-3 levels of psion or psychic warrior). I can only imagine that a mad mage would try to access some sort of power and psionics might work under silence spell. Nothing to really hurt the players just make them wonder. Or hurt them if it adds to your fun.

After that I'd start to think about ways to make them scared of walking through the place. Play with their vision. Have the characters with dark vision/low light vision see things those with normal vision can't see/don't see. Have shadows that don't match to anything created by light (people walking by, shadowy runes on the wall, shadow hand prints, shadowy "blood" streaks). Play with their sense of smell as well - whether it's flowers, rust, the ocean, whatever. Maybe even mess with there sense of touch. IE - the walls that look like stone feel like soft fur, the rusty doors they are opening feel like water (slippery, about ready to give, but still solid).

Lastly, add in the ghosts as every one as mentioned. Some may good (help the pcs with what they need, or take them to places that may have a clue), or they could be bad (i don't think i need to say anymore).

You might have them find the older parts of the asylum too, where more aggressive techniques were used to quell the patiants (ie - torture rooms). That would be a really good place to put some unhappy ghosts.

What about having the silence spell that i mentioned earlier fail while the pcs are there? it might be interesting to have an outside force attempt a prison break (maybe for a mad mage prophet of some sorts) and the pcs have to find whatever they are looking for, deal with a loony bin of mages, deal with the incoming jail breaking force and the clerics that take care of the place. oh yeah - and all the weird crap is still happening. Could make for a surreal jacobs ladder/apocolypse now kind of game.

I don't know why your party would be going there for, but i think i may yoink this idea for my own use.

 

[Psychotic Jim]

Have you ever played Baldur's Gate II? They have a harsh insane asylum for the magically adept called Spell-hold in it. The major bad-guy takes control of it and rules the staff through mind-control and locks up all who resist him. You have to free all of the imprisoned people (both former staff and patients) and make them rebel against him.

Also, the 2E Nightmare Lands Ravenloft boxed set has some good stuff of interest, including rival care-takers who approach treating the mentally ill through very different methods- one who is a humanist who tries to take care of and understand the patients and the other who believes that harsh punishment and discipline is the only way to reform them. Also in it, there is the egnigmatic (sp) and evil Nightmare Court which haunts the inmates (and every one else in Ravenloft) in their dreams, bringing woe and insanity to all. They exist in a weird dream domain connected to the dream plane.

What sort of period is the campaign played in? Through most of history, the insane were not treated any better than criminals, kept in shackles and sometimes put into prisons. I think in fantasy though that this has been represented often. If you can stand a little anarchronisms and want to display insane asylums in a dark but different way than the norm, maybe instead of the usual chains and punishment routines, you could have the staff of the insane asylum have a much different (and creepier) sort of "reform". Instead of traditional punishments, these would-be humanists instead think that they can reform patients (with or without their consent) through weird therapies- bizaare behavior management and reinforcement techniques, involuntary hypnotism, lobotomies and other drastic brain surgeries (which were actually used to treat the mentally ill in the real world in the early half of the 20th century with often barbaric results), mind-control drugs or control collars, castings of Modify Memory, etc.

On the other hand, it might be better to portray the insane asylum as not all bad. There could be some genuinely benevolent staff there too who believe in being empathic to the patients and actively working and collaborating with them for reform.

As for safety guards, you are going to want maybe activatable walls of force and dimensional anchors to keep in the interred and keep-out unwanted guests. Magic Mouths would also be useful for making the prisoners think they were never unwatched, and permanent arcane eyes would help it be actually ture. You might want to take a look at the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook for a few more ideas.

 

[demiurge1138]

Have the head doctor of the asylum be secretly trying to keep the paitents insane, perhaps because they know too much. For example, a servitor of a dark god could become an asylum keeper in order to ensure that those who were driven insane by the visions of chaos and death that this god will bring don't talk.
So the keeper could be some horrible monster (illithids are always nice, as are some of the psionic critters) that is properly disguised. Whenever a paitent looks like he's about to get discharged, or if he tries to talk, the keeper appears in his true form and sends the fragile paitent back over the edge.
Or, you could have a similar scheme, but the creature is keeping paitents there for their fees, not to protect his plans.

Demiurge out.

 

[Barcode]

What sort of period is the campaign played in? Through most of history, the insane were not treated any better than criminals, kept in shackles and sometimes put into prisons. I think in fantasy though that this has been represented often. If you can stand a little anarchronisms and want to display insane asylums in a dark but different way than the norm, maybe instead of the usual chains and punishment routines, you could have the staff of the insane asylum have a much different (and creepier) sort of "reform". Instead of traditional punishments, these would-be humanists instead think that they can reform patients (with or without their consent) through weird therapies- bizaare behavior management and reinforcement techniques, involuntary hypnotism, lobotomies and other drastic brain surgeries (which were actually used to treat the mentally ill in the real world in the early half of the 20th century with often barbaric results), mind-control drugs or control collars, castings of Modify Memory, etc.

On the other hand, it might be better to portray the insane asylum as not all bad. There could be some genuinely benevolent staff there too who believe in being empathic to the patients and actively working and collaborating with them for reform.

As for safety guards, you are going to want maybe activatable walls of force and dimensional anchors to keep in the interred and keep-out unwanted guests. Magic Mouths would also be useful for making the prisoners think they were never unwatched, and permanent arcane eyes would help it be actually ture. You might want to take a look at the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook for a few more ideas.

Thanks!

The period is Renaissance, and the Asylum is the former estate of a powerful mercantile family whose members have a reputation for innate magical power and madness. I intend to keep it relatively humane, since the inmates are generally wealthy and formerly powerful (politically). Since such a place could not contain very many truly powerful sorcerers, most are relatively low level, but I am thinking of adding a wing for two or three powerful inmates (but ones who are "voluntarily" committed). So we are really not looking for One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest here, just contained weirdness.

 

[Stone Angel]

The powerful ones cells could be like there own little world. PC's open a door and step through into a forest at midnight, or a desert island. These spell casters would have a certain amount of control over the enviroment. They don't try to escape because they don't believe that they are imprisoned.

Let us know how this works out I think that I might use an idea similar to this one.

 

[Sagan Darkside]

I intend to keep it relatively humane, since the inmates are generally wealthy and formerly powerful (politically).

You could make it a very nice place then- they live the life of ease. They are also fed a regular dose of Cha-damaging poison. With a low wisdom- they are now incapable of casting spells. Otherwise, they are allowed a comfortable life within the confines of the estate.

SD

 

[Psychotic Jim]

Thanks!

The period is Renaissance, and the Asylum is the former estate of a powerful mercantile family whose members have a reputation for innate magical power and madness. I intend to keep it relatively humane, since the inmates are generally wealthy and formerly powerful (politically). Since such a place could not contain very many truly powerful sorcerers, most are relatively low level, but I am thinking of adding a wing for two or three powerful inmates (but ones who are "voluntarily" committed). So we are really not looking for One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest here, just contained weirdness.

Hmm... Sometimes in psychology role-playing is a technique sometimes used to help treat patients, where the the therapist pretends to be some relation to the patient and the patient plays himself in different situations and they act out schense with different behaviors and consequences. But what would be amazing in a fantasy world is how much this would be aided by even the simplest of illusionary and trasmutation magics. Are the staff at the asylum magically adept? If so, they use tactics as simple as using change self and alter self to assume different roles in their treatment of the patients to complex aids such as literally reshaping the environment to be more conductive to treating the patients and keeping order through the use of high-level spells like illusionary wall , permanent image , and hallucinatory terrain . Imagine a few rooms that could on command reshape themselves to be whatever the activator wanted? You are walking through the maze of a dark, dank asylum only to run into a completely out of place room like a big, grassy field filled with sunlight? Or non-lethal traps aimed at disabling escapees or intruders without actually injuring them, like say spell traps like hypnotism, hold person, sleep, and other such spells instead of the normal lethal or hazardous traps a normal dungeon might have? Also, the staff could use various summoning spells for desensitization treatment, making some phobic patients come face to face with the objects of their phobias. Like say, summoning a fiendish viper for a person deathly afraid of snakes, trying to desensitizing the person to their horrible fear by overloading them with it. Granted, all of this stuff is fairly anarchronistic for a Rennasaince setting, not actually developing in the real world for a few hundred years past that, but with things like alchemical healing potions, clockwork creatures, and steam technology which tend to frequent such fantasy settings, it probably would not be that out of place.