Dot!
In the shining kingdom of Talingarde, the Church of Mitra is known as merciful to those that other societies shun. It is currently one of the few nations on Golarion that has anything even resembling a mental health system.
Most of those dealing with mental illnesses are treated by the clergy and subsequently released. Some cases, however, require the patient to be locked away for their own good and the good of the kingdom as a whole. These patients are sent to Branderscar Sanitarium to live out their days in it's grey, stony halls.
Once, Branderscar was a bastion of mercy, a place where the mad could go and live in relative peace, at least as much as their own inner demons allowed. In recent years, however, the asylum has changed. The staff have become progressively unfriendly, the place has not received much in the way of upkeep, and some patients whisper of darker things, such as patients disappearing into the depths, never to be seen again. Some say that nightmares now live in the asylum, while others say the doctors perform grotesque experiments upon patients who will not be missed. Given Branderscar's downward spiral, both could be true.
You have been judged in the courts of Talingarde to be criminally insane. This sentence is only doled out to those deemed completely and irretrievably lost to madness.
The ride to the asylum is the same for everyone: a rough one, a bumpy ride through a nearby marsh along a narrow road in the back of a locked iron carriage. The straightjacket does little to help the hours-long ride through the marsh and the air smells fetid and foul.
When patients finally come before the asylum, a massive spired structure with small, slitted windows, they are taken across a drawbridge onto the island. The weather is dark and dreary around the asylum, with patients often facing drizzling rain that runs eerily down the worn angel statues found on the grounds, making them look as if they weep silent tears. After a walk through a pair of dark iron doors, patients are processed and branded with a magical symbol upon their left wrist, a Mitran symbol for healing and peace, then escorted to their cells.
Condemned, you face at best a life of imprisonment where you will languish until the day that death releases you from your madness. At worst, you will disappear into the depths of the asylum, never to be seen or heard from again.
You have lived in a bleak stone cell for some time now, the endless repetition of each day maddening. The only accommodations in your cell are a rather stiff bed, a latrine, a small slit that serves as a window, and the Mitran Bible. Your clothes are a uniform white straightjacket which is currently unbuckled. The door to your cell is wrought iron and is bolted shut from the outside. Two orderlies, dressed in white robes and armed with saps, patrol the hallway of your cellblock, ensuring that no patient can escape to trouble the world again.
Escape seems hopeless. You have all been well searched and every attempt to conceal anything on your person has failed. And if you could somehow slip your bonds and fly out of this prison, where would you go? Who from your former life would want anything to do with a madman? Despised... pitied... alone and imprisoned... all that you can do now is wait for sickness, old age, or the asylum to claim you.
For each of you, your old life is over. For each of you, hope is a fading memory. For each of you, life is nothing more than a ten-by-ten cell. And who can be blamed for wanting you locked away? Look at what your madness cost another before you were sent here.
But recent weeks have been different. Dr.Tiadora, your block's resident psychiatrist, has been acting rather strange. The orderlies seem spooked by some unknown, unseen menace. And the asylum's longest-held patient has been ranting, telling everyone who will listen of a Yellow King that will come and free his children from this place of dark stone.
Tonight is a dark and stormy night, rain pounding on the asylum's roof and lightning illuminating your cell through the window slits. The air seems thick with tension, as if all the madness in the asylum has raised up like a festering wound ready to rupture.
Sarhashil strains at his restraints, rolling up onto his feet as he paces back and forth in the cell. His stomach growled with hunger. It seemed like forever since he was properly full.
He slammed against the door, testing it like he would every so often. He groaned as he tried to free his hands, his maw biting at one of the bars in an attempt to sate his hunger and frustration.
His eyes burned with hatred as his teeth began to bleed from the attempt and in his rage he slammed on the door with all his might.
Odrick seethes, as he always does during a storm since he was sent to this accursed place.
"It's RIGHT THERE and I can't TOUCH IT, can't FEEL IT flowing through me! he screams, desperately scrabbling at the rubber mitts covering his hands, not for the first time.
But, of course, just like every time, he can't get them loose, the gloves clasped shut with an intricate latch his fumbling fingers can't quite manage to undo with the thick rubber taking his manual dexterity to near-nothing.
He pounds on the door, mitts softening the blows and diverting harm.
"Let me out let me out let me out letmeoutletmeoutletmeoutletmeout!" he screeches more and more frantically as the storm intensifies.
"I don't belong in here, I belong out there! Why must you torture me! WHAT DID I EVER DO WRONG TO DESERVE THIS?" his anguished cries echo through the halls, but no one answers.
No one ever answers.
Itches paced. Itches sat. Itches looked at the bible for the umpteenth time today. He had already read it through several times but it still called to him. Couldn't they give him something different to take his mind off his current situation. It called to him. He tried to ignore it. Maybe he had missed a page. Mitra! So cruel, all knowing beings keeping it all to themselves, giving only enough to keep their followers... following, in their place. He had tried to rise out of his place and this is what he got. There was nothing wrong him. It's these walls stressing him out! He rushed over to pick up the mitran holy book.Flipping through it he read a few passages before closing it shut. It did nothing to ease his mind. He already knew the words it contained. He scratched his head. Not much fur was left up there. If he was stuck here much longer he would wear through the skin too. He threw the book away and screamed, his hands wildly held up in the air. He looked over to where the book had fallen. It called to him again.
The man in the first cell was singing again.
He had been there longer than any of them in that wing. Years. He knew all their names and spoke with the orderlies like they were old friends. He didn't always make sense, but he always made nice. He was the model that the doctors encouraged others to be like.
He sang while he worked in a rich, soothing baritone that poured down the ears and into the mind like rum and honey.
"Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink beneath the lake,
The shadows lengthen In Carcosa."
Unlike the other cells, his was surprisingly well furnished. He had actual bed sheets and a blanket that did not scratch. He had the oldest straight jacket, worn soft and thin and comfortable with time. He somehow even got a bath once or twice a week. He had a chair and a desk and paper and inks. Tidy piles of handwritten music and poetry sat beneath a dog-eared copy of the Mitran holy text.
His straight jacket was pushed up above his wrists to free his hands, which carefully scribed ink to page.
"Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies
But stranger still is Lost Carcosa."
His entire cell was covered in writing. Even the ceiling. The languages varied and the meanings were unclear. Mostly they seemed to correspond to the dozens of geometric shapes and accompanying diagrams that dotted the room.
These were not the unintelligible scrawling of a run of the mill psychopath. These were neat, tidy, like the careful documents of an astronomer or engineer.
"Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in Dim Carcosa."
The doctors had brought in astronomers, engineers and even musicians over the years to try to make sense of Carcosa's writings, but in the end each had given up trying to sort out the meanings behind it all. Carcosa was certainly no help, and in the end the consensus was that they really were ravings. Not even the geometry of the diagrams made sense when put under scrutiny. Angles and arithmetic were wrong. Music was written with two extra lines on the staff. Notes were punctuated by accents that were usually used to denote chemical reactions in alchemical formulas.
As he reached the end of his song, his voice seemed to split into distinct harmony as though his vocal cords were something more than human, or perhaps somehow there were other singers in the cell with him.
His pen finished its work as he finished his song.
"Song of my soul, my voice is dead;
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in Lost Carcosa."
He stood and stretched and smiled.
At long last he was finished, and now he could begin.
Lily paces around her cell anxiously. She groans with frustration as she feels her stomach twist into the most horrid knots, worse than ever. She needs release and she needs it now! She rushes to her cell door and waits for the better looking of the two orderlies to pass.
As he enters her view she puts on the most seductive and pretty look she can manage. "Hey Mister Orderly! You look really tense and stressed! Why not come on in to my cell? I can loosen up those tight muscles and we could have a lot of fun together!" But he walks right by without looking, just like always.
Her nice smile falls to a scowl. Its not like I'd hurt him, much. she thinks. She returns to pacing around her cell, but the thought of tying up the orderly and having her way with him pursued her and with every step she felt her pants get tighter.
Groaning with frustration she kicks her bed before falling on it. She begins to rub and grip herself as best she can with her hands bound by the straitjacket, like she does so often. Her mind wanders to images of him tied to her old rack from the war with her standing there with her favorite toys and having the time of her life. She can't help but to moan.
Such beautiful blood! The tears rolling down his face! His cries of agony a symphony to my ears! His face twisted in delicious pain. The horror of seeing my special equipment and pleading anything and everything for me to not use it on him.
Just as things start getting good, a loud metallic bang echos through the halls, spoiling her mood. GGGGAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!! she shouts and thrashes around on the bed.
"That lizard is at it again! When is he gonna realize you cant break out with brute strength!"
She takes a deep breathe and calms back down, mostly. She sits up on the bed pulls, her legs to her chest, rests her head on her knees and stares at the door. She knows something is coming, something big. But shes stuck waiting, for now, with her insatiable lust gnawing away at her.
The angels were crying again, Prae noted through his window. So it should be.
He had always enjoyed the sound of the frequent thunder storms, as the sounds of thunder and the rain on the roof calmed him.
As the small halfling watched the storm outside, standing on top of the box he had specifically requested for this purpose, a cloud of strangely black-colored fog started to roll in towards his room.
Prae almost giggles as he sees the fog dissolve the ground around the sanitarium, and watched as the angels are swallowed up, and destroyed.
His laughter echoes out into the hallway as the fog climbs up the wall and enters his room, threatening to kill him as well.
And, suddenly, a loud metallic clang reverberates through his vision.
And then he's suddenly sitting on his bed, his feet hanging off of it again. His eyes, which had glossed over, return to normal.
Prae stands up, and walks to his cell door.
"It is okay, comrades. We are destined to be here, for it is in the great plan for all of us. Do not worry, for everything shall happen as it is supposed to."
One of the orderlies makes his nightly rounds, stopping by Sarhashil's cell first. He opens a small flap in the door and slides a large, bloody steak in through the slot. The steak makes a wet slap as it hits the floor.
The orderly speaks to the large reptilian man through the door, his voice dry and full of cruel humor, "Whoops, looks like I dropped that juicy steak on the ground, lizard! I'm sure it's still good though. I'm sure if you get hungry enough, you can eat it off the floor, right?".
As his footsteps fade down the hallway, he can be heard muttering, "Damn scaly bastard. Why does Dr.Tiadora reward him with a steak? Where's our meal for watching these lunatics? Woman's about as batty as these freaks are..."
After Odrick begins his next round of screaming, the orderly bangs his cell door with his club, "Hey, shut up you! Keep it up and I'll have you put in the sensory deprivation chamber! You can't even LOOK at the damn lightning then!"
As the orderly seethes at Odrick's constant screaming, another comes down the hallway, wearing a white porcelain mask. He puts a hand on the man's shoulder, speaking in a serene, fatherly voice voice, "Calm yourself, William. These poor souls cannot help themselves. Mitra teaches us to heal the sick and mend the broken. How can they heal if you insist on treating them like that, my son?"
William stutters a moment, "M-my apologies, Acolyte Levingrast! W-what are you doing here, sir?!"
The masked man chuckles for a moment, "Please, William, just call me Ionacus. Dr.Tiadora wishes for you to take Odrick out for a short stroll on the ramparts. It'll do good to soothe his troubled mind. I trust this is not too much of a burden on you? It will certainly cut down on the noise that seems to bother you so."
William nods, "No sir, no trouble at all!"
"Good, Now, I have a few things to take care of. Run along now, would you?"
William unlocks the door with his keyring, "Looks like it's your lucky night, Payne! Promise to keep quiet if we go outside for a bit?"
Acolyte Levingrast opens Carcosa's door, "Having a pleasant evening, I trust? Dr. Tiadora wishes to see your latest work. You know the way to her office, my son."
After finishing up his rounds with Carcosa, he goes to the door of Lily Vorkink and opens a grate on the door, "Lily? It's time for your treatment. Cold water therapy is on the menu tonight. Dr.Hanson will be presiding over your treatment. You know the routine, my child."
He waves his hand in front of the grate, "Now, sleep.".
As Itches paces his cell, he looks down on the floor and notices something that he was sure was not in the cell a few minutes before, a small manuscript bound in a yellow cover. The cover is blank but for the words 'Musings on the King' written in a spidery script.
Odrick's eyes light up with joy.
"Yes! I will be as quiet as a mouse, if you insist! Just let me out, let me see and feel!"
He puts his mitt to his lips and makes a twisting motion that is perhaps meant to signify a key locking, and then bounces from foot to foot, almost childlike in his anxiousness.
Lily shudders reflexively. "I guess cold water therapy is better than sitting in this cell, ... maybe." She sighs. "But it's not like I have a choice!" The familiar haze begins to creep into her thoughts.
Her mind is forced into darkness and her body goes limp.
"Poor souls? Sick, and broken? My dear doctor, I am the only true enlightened one here! I am not sick or broken. I am....free!"
Prae laughs again as turns away from the door, sensing the light of the moon, and looks over to the window.
"My lord, you have some portent for me? Show me! Show me!"
Itches springs for the yellow manuscript and picks it up with a quick scoop to examine it. How did you come to be here then
Seeing the small bookmark-like scrap, he opens to it to examine closer.
Carcosa picks is a small sheaf of paper and smiles, walking out of his cell. "It is indeed a pleasant evening. Full of promises and swelled with discovery. I can hear the long first note beginning it's crescendo. The symphony will begin at last."
He smiled politely and strode around the corner proudly in the direction of the doctor's office.
Sarhashil snapped at the grate as it snapped back shut. His nostrils flaring as he sniffed and kicked at the juices that had caught on the flap before turning to find his meal.
He growled and tried to reach out for it, testing the manacles and restraints on him to see if they would give like they had several times in the past.
He groaned in frustration and dove onto his meal as his strength failed him this time to break free of his bonds. The claws of his feet scraped the floor as he went about his work. It was difficult and awkward work, his teeth gnashing and ripping at the flesh when he could get the leverage to manage it.
Carcosa skillfully whistled a meandering tune as he wandered to Dr. Tiadora's office.