The Old Mercy House
The Old Mercy House is the region's grand hospital, asylum, and poorhouse of last resort, a sprawling stone complex where broken bones, battlefield wounds, fevers, and madness are all treated under one roof. It serves the town, nearby farms, and passing travelers, which means its halls are never quiet for long. Nurses hurry past chained doors, surgeons wash their hands in scalding water, and orderlies keep an eye on both the delirious and the dangerous. The place is respected, needed, and quietly feared, especially because one sealed wing has become the subject of ghost stories, disappearances, and whispered claims that something still moves below it.
The Old Mercy House
Busy, damp, and tense by day, then hushed and uncanny after dark, with the smell of boiled herbs, sickness, lamp oil, and old stone
The Old Mercy House is the region's grand hospital, asylum, and poorhouse of last resort, a sprawling stone complex where broken bones, battlefield wounds, fevers, and madness are all treated under one roof. It serves the town, nearby farms, and passing travelers, which means its halls are never quiet for long. Nurses hurry past chained doors, surgeons wash their hands in scalding water, and orderlies keep an eye on both the delirious and the dangerous. The place is respected, needed, and quietly feared, especially because one sealed wing has become the subject of ghost stories, disappearances, and whispered claims that something still moves below it.
Practical, penny-pinching, and eager to avoid scandal
History
Receiving Ward and Triage
The receiving ward is busiest at dawn and dusk, when farm accidents, street brawls, fever cases, and emergency births all arrive at once. Patients are triaged by urgency rather than status, though coin, favors, and local politics often bend the order. A bell rope above the desk summons orderlies to carry stretchers, and a chalkboard tracks beds, bloodletting supplies, and which rooms have been sealed for quarantine.
The Asylum Wing
The asylum wing occupies two upper floors and is kept behind iron doors and barred corridors. Most of the inmates are harmless, frightened, or merely difficult, but a few are dangerous enough to require restraints, isolation, and constant watch. The staff insists the wing is calm, yet the night shift knows that shouting, singing, and scratching from behind locked doors is common after midnight. One corridor at the far end has been boarded over from the outside and chained twice, with no names listed on the ward map.
Treatment, Remedies, and Supplies
The hospital relies on a strict regimen of boiling water, vinegar washes, clean linens, and herbal poultices. Bleeding, splinting, stitching, and surgery are all performed in the main treatment rooms, but any attempt at magical healing is recorded carefully, since some remedies interact badly with fever, delirium, or experimental sedatives. A locked apothecary stores opiates, antitoxins, bone-knitting salves, and the stronger draughts reserved for violent patients.
Sealed Wing and Old Sublevels
The sealed wing is spoken of in hushed tones by nurses and orderlies. Officially it was closed after a structural collapse and a string of unexplained deaths. Unofficially, old staff say the patients who disappeared there were the ones no one wanted to remember, and that the lower rooms were once used for cruel therapies, confinement, and secret burials. Some claim the wing still has a second stair leading down to old stone chambers where voices echo long after the doors are shut.
Denizens
Practical, penny-pinching, and eager to avoid scandal
A tired, capable physician who believes the hospital should serve everyone, even when the city council disagrees. She is calm under pressure, blunt in conversation, and fiercely protective of her staff.
An elderly orderly with a scarred knuckle, perfect memory for faces, and a habit of listening at doors. He knows the building's routines better than anyone and has seen enough to believe the rumors are partly true.
A young nun assigned to comfort the dying and keep records of the asylum wing. She is compassionate, nervous, and increasingly convinced that one of the sealed rooms calls to her in dreams.
A quiet patient who claims to be recovering from shock but is always drawing the same impossible floorplan in charcoal. He seems harmless, yet he reacts with terror whenever anyone mentions the old lower stairs.
Rumors & Plot Hooks
- 1.The sealed east wing is haunted by former patients who died in locked rooms.
- 2.There is a hidden dungeon below the asylum where the worst cases were chained away.
- 3.Some of the old treatments were not medicine at all, but experiments meant to break the mind.
- 4.A nurse vanished while trying to open the boarded corridor, and her keys were found in a locked drawer.
- 5.At night, the bells sometimes ring on their own from the abandoned side of the building.
- 6.The staff hides certain patients in the basement when important visitors come to inspect the wards.
Classified Entry
Beneath the sealed east wing is an old sublevel of stone cells and treatment rooms from the asylum's earliest days. The place was never fully emptied. One chamber still contains a living, forgotten patient who knows what caused the fire and why the wing was sealed, but the stair down is hidden behind a wall panel and the lower halls are now partly occupied by restless dead.
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