Cursed Asylum

## Ecology

### Lifespan

Will continue to exist until all the spirits powering it are properly exorcised and the building itself destroyed, if not done in this order the building will restore itself by the next night

### Nature

Starts out benign but as more time is spent in it and sanity starts to wane in its victims it will strengthen its attempts to get them.

### Predators

* Witchers
* Priests (Some legitimate ones might survive the ordeal)

A **Cursed Asylum** at its beginning is a simple building that becomes a new monster-like species which first started appearing in the mid-13th century with the creation of mental asylums to help treat mental illness.

While asylums were created to help or at least care for the mentally ill, they also had an unforeseen side-effect collecting Sources whose uncontrolled magical power pooled together to bend reality itself granting the asylum life as more and more magical energy accumulated and eventually when the patients lost their lives their spirits possessed the building they resided in.

## Physiology

A **Cursed Asylum** looks like the building it originally was before gaining power and sentience, it however has several characteristics that can mark apart from other normal buildings.

Cold spots may be experienced in the building even during the day these cold spots seem to act as focal points for the Asylum's attention.

## Abilities

* **Haunting**: The unstable magic of the dead Sources and other souls cause the asylum buildings to become a festering ground for ghosts and lost spirits.
	+ **Cold Presence**: The consciousness of the Cursed Asylum projects a field that lowers the temperature around them, creating a constant chill.
	+ **Dimension Creation**: A **Cursed Asylum** is capable of creating a dimension based on reality in its original building, it separates this dimension from reality by first creating a portal to serve as an entrance that its victims will pass through.
		- **Dimensional Imprisonment**: A **Cursed Asylum** seeks to imprison other beings in its alternative dimension until they die so it can add to its pool of spiritual energy and specters.
		- **Portal Creation**: A **Cursed Asylum** is capable of creating a portal for transport between two non-adjacent locations (i.e its physical body aka the asylum buidling found in the mortal plane and its own dimension that consists of its spiritual body).
	+ **Electronic Disruption**: Discovered by mages, it is found that Cursed Asylums have the ability to disrupt electronic signals, causing electricity or lightning-based air magic items to work erratically, or fail completely.
	+ **Phantasm Manipulation**: **Cursed Asylums** can create ghost/specters out of anyone who dies in their halls, then manipulate their ghosts/specters as well as their energies. A **Cursed Asylum** can induce fear into the hearts of others, using their captive spirits to cause great chaos and control the souls of others when they are dead.
		- **Apparition Materialization**: **Cursed Asylums** can bring spirits or apparitions into the physical realm to do their bidding. Possibly include full-bodied spirits or the spirits' limbs to use as attacks.
		- **Astral Trapping**: **Cursed Asylums** can restrain, trap and/or seal astral beings (including astral projecting beings, ghosts, spirits, psychic entities, etc.) into themselves.
			* **Soul Trapping**: A **Cursed Asylum's** main way to gain power is to trap souls in its other dimension.
	+ **Soul Absorption**: A **Cursed Asylum** can absorb souls that are killed inside their inner space.
	+ **Soul Empowerment**: **Cursed Asylums** become stronger, more potent, etc. when they are in the possession of the soul of other beings, enhancing their existing powers and with enough souls granting them new ones.

## Behaviors

After gaining sentience, Cursed Asylums are usually abandoned quickly (a few weeks to a few years) as mysterious circumstances affect patients and staff.

### Nocturnal

During the day, a **Cursed Asylum** is much like any other building, some of its supernatural occurrences may happen but they are so infrequent that it often goes unnoticed or explained away. However, anyone within the Cursed Asylum's threshold is subject to its rules at night.

### Limited Reality and Space Warping

**Cursed Asylums** are notorious among those who know them or of them for their ability to shift their inner structure, which works like a Labyrinth, effectively creating their own personal plane of existence that a person can accidentally enter through a doorway or window inside the building.

The **Cursed Asylum** can affect its internal dimension in many ways such as making time pass faster inside of it making days pass within seconds or minutes in the outside world, they can also lengthen hallways or rearrange structures inside so that an exit becomes another hallway.

### Spirits of Past Patients

A **Cursed Asylum** is listed as a collective entity because it manifests the spirits of the departed and those who experience great anguish and agony in its halls, which means a lot of spirits.

These spirits intentions can differ but a majority of them do not retain humanity or friendliness, with the **Cursed Asylum** driving them to have intruders join their spectral number by any means possible. Types of Specters present in a Cursed Asylums can include: Ghosts, Siren (Specter), Wraiths, or Yurei.

### Weaknesses

A simple combination of Wolfsbane and Dog Tallow can make an effective oil against cursed beings though stronger variants of the oil exist and are recommended.

#### Weakened by Prayer and Rituals

Because the **Cursed Asylum** is both the product of a curse and a spectral infestation, prayers from legitimate priests and special exorcism rituals can affect entities that manifest inside it.

## Trivia

* **Cursed Asylums** are based on a movie series called Grave Encounters, all credit for the original idea goes to the creators of that series, I'm just taking the concept and giving it a witcher twist.

## Notes

* The entities known as **Cursed Asylums** are a purely fanon creation as such there is no official proof of their existence in the Witcher works outside the fanon community.
* **Cursed Asylums** are free to use in stories and articles, all I ask is that you honor the lore present and if you make one add their name and a link to this page.