Madstone Asylum

Written by Innokha

East Viridite is well known for it's dangerous locales with towns and areas overrun by either criminals or wild Laruia... but the Madstone Asylum may sit near the top of 'places you should never visit in East Viridite'. If such a list existed, which, it probably does. The building itself is on the Southern Coast of the Indigo Sea and is ancient, dating back several hundred years long before the rise of free energy. It's made mostly of concrete and dark glass, and from the distance (as close as I was willing to get) it looks like a geometric obsidian castle. Oddly enough, it's quite beautiful out there on that cape, surrounded by the serene blue sea.
From what I've gathered the Madstone Asylum started it's life known as the Madstone Penitentiary and was a high-security prison back in the early 2080's. As free energy rose during the 2140's, and thus wealth more evenly distributed among the population (not to mention all that lobbying from human rights activists), the prison was closed. The prisoners were relocated/released, and the building was repurposed into a hospital for the chronically ill. It then suffered it's first name change and became the Madstone Sanitarium.
Now this is where things get interesting...
The Laruian Dimension is discovered in 2875. After the first portal was created in Opulence, due to The Free and True Knowledge Act, dozens of portals began to open up in major and minor cities around the world. This was before we discovered that wild laruia would leak into our dimension through open portals, and by then it was too late to keep them contained. Through bureaucratic laws safe guarding people's rights to all technology, nobody had (nor has now) the power to stop the operation and experimentation of portals to Laruian Dimension by any public or private entity.
The disease Coeldynia began to pop up randomly and seemingly everywhere (as it still does today), but early on nobody knew what it was from or why it was happening. The Madstone Sanitarium quickly became overrun with cases of coeldynia and soon it was the only thing there being treated. Due to the fact that the illness twists the human mind and body into something else.. something horrible and alien, with no cure, no treatment, and oddly enough no apparent route of transmission... Madstone found itself back at it's roots. It became a prison again, a prison for the dangerous nightmarish horrors that were once people's loved ones. For a few years, mournful people made an honest effort to care for the ill in what was now called the Madstone Asylum, even if it was just an attempt to feed the demented souls inside and maintain some sanitation by providing maintenance to the various bots that performed such duties inside the cells. But it became too dangerous. A few breakouts from cells was all it took before the physicians, researchers and maintenance engineers fled the scene entirely and shamefully abandoned the ill inside.
But hope soon found it's way back to the situation when nobody expected it.
Auctor Ellory Morrison died.
I heard it was peaceful, and with his family all around back at his home in Brill. But what links his death to the fate of Madstone was that his death caused his Therumbra to become untethered. The therumbra known as Aurrison-Ova, became feral. While tethered to Morrison, it was a benevolent power and aided Morrison in grand gestures of fantastical healing which included unbelievable feats such as regrowing amputated body parts and curing congenital birth defects. Set totally loose, the therumbra vanished for a while, as many do. Then, something incredible happened. People began to walk out of the Madstone Asylum. People. Cured of coeldynia. Teams trying to track what happened to Aurrison-Ova predicted that the entity had settled itself into the Madstone Asylum soon after it was abandoned, following it's precursor for healing and began to work it's power to fix the wrong there.
Very few celebrated. And still nobody dared go near the place. Because those who study and follow therumbra and what happens to them once they go feral knew that the grandeur of Aurrison-Ova settling the asylum was a bad recipe. A bad bad recipe. Therumbra gain their human-like sense of morality, sanity, and motivation by being tethered to a human, and once that ends and they go feral, it all slowly seeps away like water leaking from a tiny puncture in a hydration capsule. Their alien nature resurfaces.
A couple lucky families reclaimed loved ones thought long lost, but soon the trickle of cured people exiting the Asylum stopped. Most of those suffering from coeldynia presumably still remain inside and Aurrison-Ova has claimed complete domain over the Madstone Asylum doing... what? Nobody knows what's going on inside or what the feral therumbra is using its incredible powers to do. All we know is that is it there and is no longer intent on curing the sick.

This article was written for the Wynstonne Chronicle by Liam Sundseth on August 3rd, 2892.

Liam is a journalist from Hymmel who describes himself as an explorer of history, myths, and current happenings about the most interesting buildings and landmarks throughout the region. He is also fascinated by finding and documenting what possible wild therumbra are up to.

Type

Hospital

Parent Location

East Viridite

Owner

Aurrison-Ova