Insane asylms of the core?

[tryst_91]

I would like a list of all of the known sanitariums/ mad houses in the core.

So far I have identified the following 3.

Sanitariums in RL:
-Sanitarium of Dr. Vilhelm Mikki – Chateaufaux, Dementlieu
-Mousel Sanitarium for Mental Health – Mordentshire, Mordent
-Clinic for the Mentally Distressed - Egertus, Nova Vaasa (abandoned in 749)

I am working on a continuation and flushing out of my short story in the fan fiction section (nightmare lands short story) so that I can make it a much better for full filling story.

Thanks!

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Here's a previous thread on the subject:
http://fraternityofshadows.com/forum/vi ... php?t=5762

[Ail]

Here's a previous thread on the subject:
http://fraternityofshadows.com/forum/vi ... php?t=5762

Ah, asylums... They pop up once everywhile.
I love them, I think it's hard to find a more gothic setting than this. Except a cathedral and its catacombs, of course.

[Joël of the FoS]

Ah, I see Alex is too shy to mention his excellent asylum article in the netbook USS 2001! A must read if you plan to add an asylum in your game.

Joël

[Ail]

Ah, I see Alex is too shy to mention his excellent asylum article in the netbook USS 2001! A must read if you plan to add an asylum in your game.

Joël

Thanks, Joël. Indeed, thanks for pointing that one again
I'm very proud of it.

[High Priest Mikhal]

Just remember this. Insane asylums are essentially prisons, even for the mildest patients. Sadly I know this from personal experience. Your day is scheduled by the staff, you eat what they give you or go hungry, and you take the medications and any treatments they assign whether or not you want them. Period. Like I said, they're essentially prisons in that you get only the most basic rights and they crack down hard on troublemakers. What makes me sick is these measures are often necessary; people there against their wills can be truly dangerous (no, they don't separate the less dangerous from the more dangerous, unless they have a "high-risk ward" and even then everyone gets sent there until the staff deems a patient "not high risk"). Even those of us who enter one voluntarily are watched closely and still banned from having anything that could be deemed "dangerous," like drawstrings for sweatpants, hardback books, or "contraband" like books that the hospital deems "too far from reality" as "it could adversely affect treatment." Forget Celebrity Rehab; those guys got the f-ing Ritz Resort compared to what I and millions of other got (and they are essentially the same thing since both are treating serious psychological illnesses).

Now imagine how bad an asylum in Ravenloft could be. Ones with bonuses to Madness saves to recover might be okay, but the ones with penalties I won't even try to imagine. It hits too close to home.

[Ail]

Sad to hear what you hint at, Mikhal. I myself have never been interned, but I visited one. I explain the details in the article Joël referred above, but even as a visitor, I was highly marked, so to say. And even as a visitor (and a visitor of the asylum itself as the background for a series of artistic performances) I still could not escape the sound of lock and key behind me.

There asylums of several kinds, of course, but they were even worse in the time period Ravenloft tries to depict. And yes, at that time, asylums were merely a prison for those people that would not fit in society. With the caveat that they were not meant to cure the inmates, but rather to cure the society from them, to prevent them from harming and desorganizing it. So, whatever went inside was more or less fair game, as long as the people were kept there.

I tend to imagine that the inmates could be mostly used as test samples for medical theories, experiments and so on. And I also acknowledge that there has been (must have been!) a great evolution since then.

Asylums are mainly a place of suffering, at several different levels: the suffering resulting from its being a prison (but the same could happen, at a certain level, with board schools!), but also the suffering resulting from your being abandoned by your kin, expelled from society and to top it all, the feeling that your mind may be your own enemy. I think you suffer as much if you are truly ill (in some cases the patient will understand it) or if you are sane, and suffer from the injustice resulting from it.

Well, anyway, as Mikhal said, that should be the key for asylum adventures.

[High Priest Mikhal]

Thanks for the acknowledgement, Ail. But you needn't go back centuries to find examples of truly horrific asylums like you'd find in Ravenloft. Go back 100 or even just 50 years. Psychology and psychiatry were (and in many ways still are) in their infancy.

This site features the history of psychology (mental causes) while this one features a history of psychiatry (neurochemical causes). Be warned. These include some truly outrageous (and racist and sexist) ideas.

Oh, and don't assume that asylums and brain surgeons are found only in Chivalric and Renaissance domains. Archeological evidence of neurosurgery has been found in cultures that go back to the Stone Age, including skull plating of the hole using animal bone, copper, and bronze.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

I tend to imagine that the inmates could be mostly used as test samples for medical theories, experiments and so on.

Not to mention more tawdry uses, like indulging the gawkers who pay a few coppers for the chance to laugh at (or poke with sticks) the residents. Or, since it's Ravenloft, the local vampire who's charmed the orderlies into letting it have its pick of necks each night.

[High Priest Mikhal]

I tend to imagine that the inmates could be mostly used as test samples for medical theories, experiments and so on.

Not to mention more tawdry uses, like indulging the gawkers who pay a few coppers for the chance to laugh at (or poke with sticks) the residents. Or, since it's Ravenloft, the local vampire who's charmed the orderlies into letting it have its pick of necks each night.

To quote the great sage Homer, "D'oh!" I've been getting into nWOD so heavily I should have realized the vampire angle. And it's not just vamps who would use asylums for dark purposes. Spellcasters in need of bodies and/or souls could find all they need without raising too much suspicion. Especially since all too many patients have no family--or none that care enough to deal with them or look too closely at how they died. Especially if they magically charm or dominate the staff, much like vampires do.

And as sick as it is, people really would pay to gawk at patients. Especially the more bizarre ones. It's just like the old circus freakshows, only the show stays put and the freaks don't get paid (many real life freaks got paid handsomely and were the most adamant foes of anti-freakshow protestors. "If you think I'm being exploited, you obviously haven't seen the size of my paycheck"). Showed off like freaks without half the respect from the people in charge and none of the pay. There's salt in the wound for ya.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Especially since all too many patients have no family--or none that care enough to deal with them or look too closely at how they died.

Actually, the worst of the asylums probably wouldn't have that many patients without families. If they don't have families, then corrupt sanitarium administrators can just let them die from neglect or disease, fail to report their deaths, and keep right on collecting whatever stipend the political authorities pay the asylum to keep lunatics off the streets.

OTOH, the most violent offenders would probably go to the gallows, not an asylum. Insanity only became a legal defense in the 18th century, IIRC; unless mentally-disturbed murderers are related to someone with political pull, most Ravenloft courts would go ahead and hang them.

[Manofevil]

Don't forget, many women, especially young ones, were prostituted by the keepers sometimes to the very relatives who had them committed. It often went that way with boys, too.

[Ail]

Actually I wasn't going back centuries. I was thinking probably more of MotRD than RL timeframe and therefore the XVIII and XIXth century. Ravenloft for me tends to be a bit more advanced than canon. And indeed, from what I read almost 10 years ago now, the picture was very bleak even during the first half of the XXth century.

That point about the vampires in the asylum is a nice one. It reminds me of a scene in Vampire of the Mists, at the start, where Jander gains his ticket into Ravenloft, no? I recall someone depredating on the inmates of an asylum :/

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Yes, Jander did feed off of asylum inmates when he was back in the FR setting. IIRC it wasn't a regular thing, but something he did when his craving for non-animal blood got so bad, he feared he'd lose control and kill someone if he didn't sip just a little from somebody.

It wasn't his feeding in the Waterdeep asylum that got the DPs to nab him, BTW, but his going berserk with grief after Anna died in his arms. He'd gotten away with such visits for years before then, evidently without any collusion from the asylum's staff. (It's a residence of sorts, but not a private residence, hence was no more off limits to vampires than an inn.)

[Ail]

(It's a residence of sorts, but not a private residence, hence was no more off limits to vampires than an inn.)

And that is a subtle point I tend to forget, indeed
Thanks.