1.1 - In Search of Sanity - Prison of the Mind

You head south and open the door into the room at the far end of the long hallway. A nest of cushions and linens squeezes between this room's rear wall and a battered desk covered in folded paper animals. A sculpted emblem of a spiraling comet overlooks the otherwise ransacked room.

Sitting in the corner are three figures: a man wearing a hodgepodge of leather armor and a dagger at his hip and two children, both seemingly intent on creating more of the aforementioned paper animals. They all look up at you as you enter and the man stands, bowing his head.

"Good day," he says, extending his hand, "My name's Tolman. I saw you earlier with Winter in the chapel and hear you're responsible for killing the monsters that have plagued the halls of this hospital. Thank you for that."

After some apprehension, he took the 'zoog'.

"Winter should see this creature," he said.

At the next room, he let the others go ahead as he intoned, አስማትን ፈልግ።

With his arcane vision attuned, he looked around the room and its occupants.

Axon senses no magical auras in this room.

"You're welcome, Tolman. I'm..." he started, again hoping his name would reflexively follow but it didn't. "I'm just glad to help. And who are you, little ones?"

At being addressed, one of the children, a small boy, reaches to grab a nearby shadow lantern and pulls it closely, dropping an origami orchid he's been working on in doing so. "M-my name's Brenton," he says timidly, "Brenton Lieklan." He snatches the papercraft orchid back and holds it close to himself, watching you closely, a nervous look in his eye.

The other child, a girl, stops working on some sort of animal she's trying to recreate and uses her free hand to pull herself closer to Tolman. Her lips tremble looking at you, but she suddenly seems to lose interest altogether. She stares up at Tolman's face, pleading, "Tohmen, when can we go pay outside? I don't wanna pay in here anymore. Pease can we pay outside soon?"

"Not today," Tolman says gently, pointing at her origami, "that's a pretty horse you're making there, Maeve. What's the next step? do you remember?"

He looks back to your group. "Sorry about that. Poor Maeve here must have seen some terrible things when the violence erupted - she never acted below her age before the riot. One of the orderly's pulled her out of a pretty bad situation, as I understand it." He gestures to the boy, "And Brenton - he did fine, better than most, before all this happened. He had his big brother here protecting him. Not many patients had family here with them. Good kids, but his brother Debis went missing when all this started and now the boy is terrified at every shadow.

Winter has me bring the kids here most days - all the people and noise in the chapel stresses them out." He gently gives Maeve a one-armed squeeze to comfort her.

"We can't sleep here though," Brenton says pointedly, "or we'll get nightmares."
 
 
 
 
 
  
 

 
 

His heart ached at the children's plight. Adults being forced to experience all this madness was bad enough but young ones? He decided not to add to their waking terror by going any further inside, both because of his monstrous shadow and his scars.

"We... We have nightmares, too, but we try to stay brave. You have to stay brave, Brenton. You, too, Maeve."

Elias smiles as he watches the kids. Looking over at Maeve, Elias watches her as she works on her creation. What do you like to play when you're outside? Elias asks politely.

"Talking helps me to not be afraid sometimes. What do scares you in those dreams, Brenton?"

He was loathe to make the children relive night terrors but the information might be useful.

Razhel remains in the back of the group, as the opening door reveals the children. She can only imagine how nightmarish she and some of her unnamed companions appear to these two small ones.

"We should keep moving." Grim suggests. "Finding a way to get through that aberration on the door outside is going to be a challenge I suspect."

"I-I don't know," the girl's answers the nice-looking man that addressed her. "I like to look at the butterflies," she after a few moments, then buries her face in Tolman's clothing again.

"The nightmares? Same as most," Brenton looks more reserved in his answer to Axon, "sometimes of different things, frightful things, but always he comes - the yellow man with the scarred face. We all see him, if we don't sleep inside the chapel."

Iosef shifts his feet, "I agree with Hat-man. I'd like to take a closer look at the thing. I believe it to be a haunt, a sort of manifestation of spiritual energy. We should be careful, as they can take on many forms and some can be quite deadly."
 
 

  
 

Elias and those who join him step into a smaller room to the east. Here, candles array themselves before a violet wall hanging embroidered with the shape of a spiraling comet. A wall of bars divides the room, locking away a row of filing cabinets to the east. The cramped space on the other side of the door appears accessible via a squat door of singing bars. A tug at the door finds it securely locked.

"That's Chaplain Setrakian's private shrine," Tolman says from behind you. "We've kept it unspoiled, hoping the chaplain will return, though as the days pass we lose hope."
  
 
 
  
 
 

"Any ideas how we get rid of this haunt." Razhel asks Iosef.

Iosef pushes the glasses up the ridge of his nose. "Well, they're said to be near limitless in how they present themselves, and each unique, but they all have some means by which they can be ultimately banished. Of course, that could be anything - beating it down with an axe, or even, uh, singing it a lullaby. They're sentient, to an extent - the spiritual remnants of a maligned spirit. It will want something."

Grim closes to the door and makes an attempt to pick it open, but his skills appear rusty.

Elias watches as the attempts to open the door fail. Eh, perhaps well find a key to fit the lock. Looking around Elias joins the others as they discuss the eye.

He joined in the effort to find the key, still trying to stay away from the young ones as best he could.

Tolman watches Grim and Axon searching and attempting to bypass the lock on the barred door. "I-I have the key," he says, "found it shortly after Winter had me start holing up in here with the kids. Like I said though, we've put off ransacking the shrine, out of respect that his holiness may return. He left two days ago north of the barricade with his backpack and supplies, hoping to do away with the monsters. He was convinced they were people - our colleagues and patients - twisted and malformed."