Starke Sanitarium loomed at the end of a a double row of tall moss-draped trees. The thick twisted trunks shadowed the long driveway in an obvious, but always disregarded, foreboding of what experiences lay beyond the austere façade of the old plantation house. The drive ended in a large cul-de-sac that one could imagine being full of horsedrawn carriages and fine ladies in hoop skirts being helped out by white-suited slaves. These days, the sanitarium was no less supported by the suffering of others as it was hundreds of years ago. The mechanisms were just different and the illusions of its respectability had been changed. The original structure suffered a fire, but it was rebuilt in the early 1920s and expanded while keeping the original foundation.
Behind the plantation house, Stark Sanitarium sprawled out with more modern buildings. At least modern as per the 1950's. Paved walkways connected the former house to a patient wing and a prison wing with a recreational area in between. They were originally used to house the sexes separately, but lucrative contracts from the state for housing the criminally insane prompted the reorganization.
Residential patients typically had more freedom of mobility on the grounds and went to therapy appointments in the main house where most of the staff had their offices. The criminal ward only had access to the rec area for an hour a day, if they had any privileges at all, and doctors went to them for appointments. There was a mix of staff, including administrative, psychiatric, general nursing, medical, and guards as well as prison-trained staff in the criminal ward. Patients were typically brought to the plantation house for meetings with family or outside oversight. (Purple part is optional.)
The farmlands of the former plantation have been allowed to be somewhat reclaimed by nature. It provided necessary privacy as well as tax breaks for being a bird sanctuary. The night casts an entirely different mood on the grounds. The moss-covered trees seem to turn into dark bodies twisted in pain, reaching up to the heavens for mercy. The growing forest is full of sounds, not all wildlife, and fog rolls in from the swamp that's slowly encroaching. No other buildings or roads can be seen through the dense foliage, and it provokes a sense of intense isolation. On some nights, it does look like there are other inhabited buildings nearby. One can sometimes see the glow from homes and fires where the slave quarters once stood. But if one were to venture out, all they'd find is darkness and a few fence posts that haven't yet fallen from weathering.
Luke is the kind of guy that it's easy to be jealous of. Rich, sporty, fairly intelligent and running his own social entrepreneurship venture capital business. His looks come from several generations of the casual eugenics of wealthy men marrying models and beauty queens. Being 'not new' money, Luke isn't flashy about his wealth, and he has the effortless confidence of someone who's had a life of security and success. Playing a variety of sports through high school and college have given him an athletic body that can make just about any clothing look good. Grey-blue eyes and short dirty-blond hair round out the look. If it weren't for his philanthropic spirit, he'd just be any other douche that gets up to do crossfit before a business meeting then jumps on a private jet to go to another business meeting and rounds out the evening with sophisticated rooftop cocktails with similar people.
Luke had a comfortable, affluent life full of advantages that he was mostly oblivious to. He did well in private schools, excelling both academically and at sports with the help tutors and trainers. He really could have ended up as any other oblivious privileged sort, except he went on a Habitat for Humanity trip because of a girl he wanted to hook up with. He needed community service for his ivy league university applications, anyways. Luke's achieved his goal, but more importantly, a seed of philanthropy was planted in his mind that grew over the next few years.
During his time at Columbia University, Luke was inspired to go into social entrepreneurship. His family money was from generations of 'business', and he'd never taken much interest in it. Business school was a family obligation, but Luke found a niche in that world that allowed him to do 'business' but have a positive impact on the types of people he'd helped during his Habitat summer. His parents weren't pleased, but his ailing grandfather, who still held most of the purse strings looked fondly on Luke's proposed life direction and unlocked his trust fund early so he could start investing in socially and environmentally-conscious start-ups.
Now, a year after graduation, Luke is toeing the line of a real career. He has plenty of fun and travel, but finds fulfillment in his noble form of venture capitalism. Though, he does spend more time 'networking' and 'hanging' with enthusiastic founders than keeping any kind of regular office hours. He's proud of a few companies he's helped get off the ground in the areas of poverty alleviation and utilizing ocean plastics.
Unbeknownst to Luke, his grandfather has informed his father that he's leaving the bulk of his assets to Luke, skipping a generation. Despite the best treatments money can buy, his elderly body is succumbing to cancer, and the thought that Luke will use the money he made predatorily to make the world a better place is a comforting thought in his final days. Luke's parents were not in agreement. They thought if the inheritance had to skip a generation, it should have gone to Luke's older brother, Steven, who was of a like mind of his parents in terms of prioritizing profits and family over any lower considerations. They decided to get Luke out of the way. Not dead, just out of the way.
Fate smiled on them one weekend. Luke took the news of his grandfather falling into a coma hard, but it was his best friend's birthday the next day. He decided to wait and not ruin his friend's party night, and attended anyways. He figured some drinking was a welcome distraction. His best friend, being gay, ended their club crawl at a gay club where Luke, in a drunken stupor, took a few too many 'candies' and ended up getting his stomach pumped.
Luke's parents seized upon this opportunity to start the process of having Luke declared legally incompetent so they could control his soon-coming inheritance. After intense badgering, he eventually sighed and agreed to a stint in rehab. He knew he didn't have a serious problem, but he hadn't handled his grief well, and rehab was practically fashionable among his peers. His family chose a well-known facility for disposing of one's embarrassing relations. Formally, they arranged for Luke to be treated for addiction and conversion therapy. Though, their instructions to the administrator were that they didn't want Luke back unless he was docile. With thick sunglasses and a lingering hangover, Luke boarded the company jet to head off to what he thought would be a couple weeks on a nice country estate talking about his feelings and promising not to drink too much, again.
Possibles
Travis Wright
Travis looks like he'd better suited for a football uniform than hospital scrubs, but he's happy with the choice he made. No sane person would want a physical confrontation with him, though he exudes positivity and caring rather than intimidation. His dark handsome face is usually smiling, which earned him nicknames in school. When on duty, he keeps his tightly braded hair in a tight knot inside a hair net. The reminder of fast food jobs in high school was a compromise he was willing to make as nursing and orderly staff weren't allowed long hair. While he's not techincally closeted, he happily considers himself 'straight-acting' as it just makes life in the South easier, both with extended family and at work.
Travis Wright was a local boy and did all the local boy things, like sneak out of school to go to swimming holes, play football, and take care of older relatives. It was probably his great aunt's early onset dementia that prompted him towards an interest in mental healthcare. After earning a football scholarship out of state, Travis did the surprising thing of not trying to get into pro ball, instead quickly changing his major to pre-med and going up through nursing school. The slim chances of getting drafted and the stress of being closeted in the NFL made the entire proposition seem unrealistic. Also, deep in his heart, he didn't want to spend a lifetime away from home.
Travis' family had been in the area for a long time. Theirs was a tragic, muddled history that kept Starke Plantation fresh in their minds. As the story went, an ancestor or more had been sold off from the plantation, luckily before some tragic fire that ended up exposing some really horrific things. Details on these things were always fuzzy, but all his older relatives swore it was true. Even out of sight, it was a shadow that still loomed over their family.
After bouncing around a couple nursing jobs at local clinics, Travis landed the type of psych nurse position he really wanted. Starke Sanitarium was an especially attractive proposition, as he felt that helping people there could be some sort of karmic balance, and even perhaps take off the sting of thinking about the place. With his education and strong body that could take an occasional punch or hold someone back from harming themselves, Travis was confident he could affect some positivity in the lives of the sanitarium's new residents.
Prescott Beauregard-Nader
Prescott is an aristocratic-looking young man. His Middle Eastern heritage is obvious in his sharp fingers, golden tan skin, and black hair. He appears slim but athletic and carries himself with confidence bordering on arrogance. His nearly-black eyes seem to be continually inspecting his environment for something to criticize. Prescott rounds out his look with stylish clothes, designer glasses, and well-groomed short hair.
Prescott hails from an ancestry of Southern old money that lost its money and married foreign money. The Beauregard family was part of the founding of the cult, but their fortune dwindled in recent decades until she was sent out into the world to find someone to replenish their coffers. She successfully did that by luring a useless Emirate into marriage with promises of a life of sexual deviance in the cult. With a new infusion of money, she rose back to a place of prominence and a spot on the board of Starke Sanitarium.
Prescott was raised in a life of privilege and is at ease in affluent circles both in the US and abroad. His parents bounced him around boarding schools in the South as well as the UAE with relatives. They pushed him into majoring in psychology to better position him to take over administration of the sanitarium in the future. Prescott isn't convinced that's what he wants, but power and prestige are good enough ends. He knows his parents are part of some secret organization like the Masons, but they've kept him out of the details and true nature of the cult. His internship at Stark Sanitarium is to slowly acclimate him to the goings on to assure that he'll fit into the life that's been planned for him.
Crisanto Harris
There's something dark about Crisanto, and it has nothing to do with his complexion. It depends on the viewer whether they find that darkness attractive or intimidating. There's a predatory hint in his handsome, ambiguously tan features. Short wavy black hair flops atop his head, sometimes slicked back and sometimes free and wild. Cris's eyes are so dark brown, they're nearly black, and he is one of the situations in which they're a window into his soul. His walk is somewhere between slinky and that of a prowling hunter, unless he's adopted a more demure or polite demeanor in order to manipulate someone. Cris worked his vanity muscles, in the same way an angler displays their lure, and his v-shaped torso is clear in just about any kind of clothing. Since his arrest, Cris has only had prison clothes to wear, but somehow he makes even those 'work'.
Age: 22
Height: 5'10"
Build: Athletic
Demeanor: Charming/Slimy
Orientation: Gay
Mental Illness: Sociopath, Depersonalization & Derealization disorders
Admitted for: determine his mental competence to stand trial for murder and multiple assaults and thefts
Crisanto's father was US military stationed in the Philippines. His mother was a prostitute and got herself pregnant and guilted him into taking her to the US. That marriage didn't last long. Dad got stationed elsewhere and married someone else, liking his new family better. Cris's mother also re-married, a housekeeping client of hers, and dramatically shifted her affection to her new children. After an adolescence of neglect, Cris was on his own as soon as he turned 18. With little in the way of job skills, he remembered what his real father frequently yelled at his mother when he was little. After entering into the oldest profession ever, Cris quickly figured out he preferred spending nights in nice apartments and luxury hotel rooms rather than teen homeless shelters. He started stealing from his 'older friends', too, when they started to tire of him. The first time he got caught stealing, Cris went out of his body and beat the older gentleman badly. Afterwards, Cris wasn't bothered by what he'd apparently done.
The frequency of these incidents increased in the last year, just around when his clients were urging him to leave, not even requiring tense confrontations. When one customer died, the police really put in some effort to catch the violent rentboy. Cris's entire defense was that he wasn't in control of what his body was doing and that he didn't even think what he was witnessing from outside was real. After sneaking in a couple sexual favors, his public defender really pulled all the strings he had to get Cris a thorough psych evaluation in an attempt to keep him out of maximum security prison and a possible death penalty.
Chief of Staff at Starke, "Doctor D." as he's referred to by the patients is a charming, handsome man who runs the sanitarium with a very hands on approach. Nothing goes on without him knowing about it. He has an uncanny ability to know the ins and outs of the sanitarium down to the smallest detail. He's incredible at his job and shows a deeply vested interest in the patients under his care. When not holding private evaluations in his office, Dr. Dayemon can be found walking the halls, checking in or checking over everyone from patients to staff.
Age: Indeterminate, somewhere between late thirties early forties
Height: 6'3"
Build: Muscular
Demeanor: On the surface he's charming and attentive but there's something just a little dark about him
Orientation: Gay
Position: Chief of Staff
On the surface Dr. D can come off as an appealing, likeable person and that's exactly what he wants outsiders to assume. However, the current Chief of Staff is known to be cruel, manipulative and even vicious. He has taken a vested interest in the goings on at the sanitarium and all the programs have been approved by him.
He courts the darkness in people and has made sure that for the most part, the staff contains people more than adequate to do the things he asks of them. In fact, on several occasions he has encouraged his staff to think outside the box and come up with solutions that speak to their own desires but that also align with his way of thinking.
The sanitarium is run smoothly, he makes sure of it but it's also rather hierarchical in that senior staff (nearly all handpicked by Dr. D himself) have complete access to whatever they need and full control of patients with limited oversight to do with as they please.
And why shouldn't he? The Starke Sanitarium is the perfect place to carry out his own machinations.
Beneath the veneer of the human Dr. Kazimir Dayemon is Asmodeus, demon king of lust, sexual desire and perversion.
Asmodeus has his fingers in various pies all throughout the sanitarium and beyond and he's not alone. There are others who have come. Others who hold the belief that they will be rewarded and they thank their dark god as he has promised them their true heart's desire.
Asmodeus has his own goals, he's looking for something, for someone and he's set his sights on a human male who's caught his eye.
Reggie Ford
Reggie or Ford as he prefers to be called is an orderly at the sanitarium and even though he's not head orderly (like he thinks he should be) he's made quite an impression on Dr. D and in his opinion that's a very good thing. He has access to anywhere on the grounds because his position has him treating nearly all the patients in one way or another. He helps them bathe or gets them ready in the morning and transports them from place to place. This comes in handy for some of the other nightly activities that the sanitarium features and because of his commitment to the position, Ford now has access to a lot of other, much more enjoyable things.
Age: 30
Height: 6'0"
Build: Very muscular, it's all compact, he's a heavy man.
Demeanor: Ford always seems in a rush, he's impatient nearly all of the time
Orientation: Ford takes what he can get but he takes it with gusto
Position: Orderly
Reginald Ford was born in Phoenix, Arizona and early on violence was something he was very intimately acquainted with. He lost both parents to a home invasion and was raised by his uncle Baxter Graydon and his grandmother Eudora Creel. His uncle suffered from PTSD, a result of the Afghanistan war and he was not a nice man. Then again, neither was Eudora. Ford had seen his grandmother beat and abuse some of the girls that lived in her halfway house. His uncle also took out his frustrations on the girls but in a very different, much more brutal and violating way.
When Ford was eleven, he was with Baxter and Deandra Green, Baxter's sixteen-year old girlfriend at the time. They were arguing because Baxter accused her of cheating on him and as the argument escalated, Ford remembered seeing his uncle pull out a pistol and shoot his girlfriend point blank in the face. Then there was the clean up and the road trip out to the desert to dump the body down an old mine shaft. Baxter made him swear not to say anything but he later learned he didn't need to worry. Ford had been taking in all the lessons he'd learned from watching his grandma and his uncle and he came away with the understanding that if you had power over another person, you could do whatever the fuck you wanted to them.
After high school Ford enlisted just like his uncle before him and his time overseas helped to shape him as well. He'd learned new skills and applied them to what he already knew and came away with a greater understanding that pain and coercion could make people do whatever you said. It was a revelation.
Through the years Ford worked odd jobs but he found his calling in the medical profession. People were dependent on him, they needed him for things and that gave him power. He could do what he wanted, it was perfect. He soon found himself employed at Starke Sanitarium, he'd been sent a personal letter by the Chief of Staff and there was no way in hell he was turning that down.
Dr. Daniel Cabb
Dr. Cabb has dedicated his life to the mind and all of its inner workings. That's not to say that he isn't appreciative of the body but discovering why and how people do what they do has always fascinated him. His quest for knowledge and satisfaction has pushed him toward many unorthodox practices, some of which could be considered abusive, reckless and perhaps downright evil. None of this phases him in the slightest for in the pursuit of knowledge nothing is sacred.
Age: 32
Height: 5'10"
Build: Lithe, he's not skinny but he's built a bit like a runner, though he certainly doesn't partake in the activity.
Demeanor: Quiet, observant and analytical but cruel
Orientation: Gay and opportunistic
Position: Clinical Psychologist
Daniel James Cabb had always wanted to be loved, appreciated, seen and understood. It was what drove him and pushed him into areas of medicine most never ventured for fear of malpractice. Cabb was undeterred and spent years trying to understand the brain so that he could better control it. He experimented with psychotropics which showed great promise but it wasn't enough. His subjects eventually always woke from their stupor. He tried drilling a hole into the skull to reach the brain and would drop various substances onto the temporal lobe and when that didn't work he injected mixtures instead. Nothing seemed to last.
He came close with a mix of Phencyclidine and Carbamazepine but the dosage was off and the patients died. All covered up nicely with a bow but it was still a crushing blow to his confidence. Cabb had begun to despair until he ran into a colleague who had the same interests as he did. He was introduced to the wonders of Brugmansia arborea or the angel's trumpet; a species of flowering plant that does the most wonderous thing. When the seeds are dried and ground, they create a tasteless and odorless powder that can quite easily be mixed into drinks, food, cigarettes, hell anything! And the most exciting part of all is that once a patient is exposed, they appear completely aware of their surroundings but they are highly susceptible to suggestion. It was the closest he'd come to the perfect solution.
Three years ago he was sent a personal invitation to Starke Sanitarium and upon accepting the position. Cabb learned that he would be free to run his experiments on the patients without restraint, so long as he shared his findings with Dr. Dayemon, something he was all too happy to do. Now with unrestricted access to patients, Cabb is able to continue his work in an environment that nurtures his deviously brilliant mind.
Age: 48
Height: 5'9"
Build: Average
Demeanor: Strict
Orientation: Heterosexual
Position: Director of Nursing
Barbara is a no-nonsense head nurse with almost 30 years experience. She's also a upper level member of the cult, and her family has been for generations. She's a traditionalist, and despite her frequent irritation with the complicated machinations of the male hierarchy, she pragmatically gets done what needs to get done. She vents all her stress with wild and aggressive abandon during cult gatherings. Work hard, play brutally.
Beau Pruett (Cult Member)
Age: 41
Height: 6'1"
Build: Sturdy
Demeanor: Kissass/Old Bitter Queen
Orientation: Gay
Position: Barbara's lap dog, desperate for advancement in cult
Possible Plot Points:
Would really like a go at Reggie and Travis. Crosses the line with flirting in public.
Reba is a prominent cult member's "niece or cousin or something". At least that's what the insiders know. She's not good at this or any job she's had before. They can't all be winners.
Jaxon Delford
Age: 20
Height: 6'1"
Build: Scrawny
Demeanor: Lazy, Mean, Dejected
Orientation: Anything he can get
Position: Janitor
Jaxon skipped finishing high school and went right into a janitorial job. He still thinks he's smarter than everyone else, despite all evidence to the contrary. Jaxon isn't the kind of material that the cult is looking for, but he fits in perfectly with the local white supremacy group.
Quiet and ever-present, Amador has been working at Starke Sanitarium longer than any other employee. He's not a member of the cult, but he's seen enough to figure some things out for himself. Amador also knows where the bodies are buried. Because he buried most of them. His talent for keeping his mouth shut has gotten him almost to retirement with his body, and a portion of his soul in tact.
