The Gatehouse

Contents

1. Overview
2. Key Areas
   1. The Line
   2. Central Tower
   3. Almshouse
   4. Orphanage
   5. Mad Bleaker Wing
   6. Criminally and Irretrievably Insane Wing
   7. The Asylum

Overview

The Bleakers’ Headquarters - the Gatehouse - is located at the very edge of the Hive Ward, on a small hill at the end of a curving road known as Bedlam Run.

Once upon a time, this place was known as Bedlam Blight - a hospital used to house the contagious during a particularly nasty outbreak. Since then, it has changed hands and function, being taken over by the Bleakers some 600 years ago.

The area around the Gatehouse has seen substantial improvement in that time. Homes are very cheap (if they cost anything at all) around here, and a vast majority of Bleakers live all along Bedlam Run, giving them a pleasant five-minute commute to the Gatehouse.

Key Areas

The Line

‘Course, it’s hard to miss the long line of sods waiting for their turn to enter into the Gatehouse. All manner of people comprise those in line: those looking for a hot meal and a roof over their heads, those looking to commit someone, or those looking for treatment from various enchantments and curses.

Sad thing is, folks find themselves waiting in line for weeks to make the front door. The Bleakers see to them as fast as they can, but they haven’t the capacity to keep up. Sure, the impatient can cut in line by switching places for a few coin… but if the Bleakers catch a berk doing this they’ll be hauled out on their asses.

The steady stream of desperate bodies attracts all manner of cross-trade and hawkers. Many berks looking for an extra arm on a shady job need only flash a little coin and they’ll have a small team assembled within the hour. There’s also plenty of peelers working the line, trying to cheat every sorry individual for their last coppers.

The criminal is but a small portion of those working the line, however. Plenty of Bleaker artists canvas the sods looking for inspiration or to share in their art, in part to keep folks interested and give them something to do. Bleaknik poets perform dark and dreary poetry (most of it improvised) to best capture the mood of the line before heading back to the Weary Head pub nearby for a drink to wind down.

Lately, a good number of Athar have taken to working the lines too, helping the Bleakers to triage those in need of more urgent assistance and to take off their hands any who can be treated in their clinics instead.

Central Tower

The Central Tower houses the faction’s bureaucratic offices, as well as the living quarters of various high-up officials. A large open area behind the portcullis is used for processing the folks who make it, where they are separated from their caretakers and taken to the appropriate wing for induction and further assessment.

The Factol has their headquarters within this tower, as well as the four Heads of each Wing.

Almshouse

The Almshouse wing is a tightly regulated area full of bunk beds and bedrolls. This area provides a roof for those needing it and a warm meal from the Soup Kitchens. Truth is, they’re woefully understaffed in here - most Bleakers are out working the Soup Kitchens in the other wards, where things are a bit more controlled.

Conditions here are often cramped and squalid. At the direst of times, the wing has been known to host up to 3000 people… though that leaves little room to do anything but sleep.

Orphanage

A large extension has been erected in the Courtyard recently, in which the Orphanage has moved from sitting atop the Asylum to its own area detached from the rest of the Gatehouse proper. A small door opens from here and out into one of the many alleys off of Bedlam Run.

It's a decently sized building that still fails to be big enough. It has everything you’d expect from it, with large areas for the creative arts and open access to the large courtyard. Whilst it does lie somewhat adjacent to the Mad Bleaker wing, the psylirium walls ensure that the orphans remain blissfully unaware of what lies on the other side.

Mad Bleaker Wing

The Mad Bleaker wing is populated by, well, mad Bleakers. It’s full of mirthful sods who’ve gotten a little too invested in the faction philosophy of meaninglessness and madness. Primarily, each of its 10’ square cells is home to a single Bleaker who’s fallen to the Grim Retreat. A large steel door services each room; heavily reinforced and with only a small shutter that opens from the outside. They have a small straw pallet for bedding, and little else.

Most Bleakers commit themselves here personally when they feel the Grim Retreat descending. Others are committed forcibly. Either way, they are thrown into a room of sensory deprivation, given no food or water or external communication. The Grim Retreat has a nasty way of sustaining the Bleakers throughout their madness, and they’ve found that any food goes to better use among the Almshouses.

When Bleakers recover (which currently sits at about a 50/50 chance), their door is thrown open and they are rapidly attended to the head of the Ward. A small medical area exists on each floor, to which the barmy sod is dragged and given a good seeing to by a healer.

Interestingly, those who survive the Grim Retreat come back with renewed vigour and passion for the Faction philosophy. Very rarely do they leave the faction (those who would have been inclined to do so are suspected to be the ones claimed by the Grim Retreat for eternity).

Criminally and Irretrievably Insane Wing

One Factor governs the Wing for the Criminally and Irretrievably Insane, and has the formidable job of keeping the patients as safe and as secure as possible. This bleak, three-story wing holds a maximum of 282 patients in individual rooms. There’s a tightly controlled outdoors exercise area between this wing and the Mad Bleakers’ wing, with magically-reinforced fencing and mesh wiring overhead.

One of the three floors is a brand new, freshly tunnelled, underground basement. This floor has the most significant of protections, esecially towards divinations and the likes. It is here that such notorious villains as Liches and Mind Flayers are housed.

The wing for the Criminally and Irretrievably Insane bears two private portals - one to the Hardheads’ holding areas, and one to the Mercykillers’ Prison. This wing is full of those who would pose a danger to themselves and to others, and for whom there is little to no hope of effective treatment. Many of the folks in this wing have come in from the Hardheads or the Mercykillers, where they’ve been sent for evaluation and safe holding until their trial. Thing is, the Bleakers are reluctant to hand anyone back to the Mercykillers - only those who they can be sure won’t be put to death are returned.

Not many folks are given the return trip to the Prison.

The Asylum

The Asylum Wing has been substantially expanded upon in the past decade or so. The Factor in charge of this area has dictated a fourth floor be added upon the building, as well as converting the entirety of what was the orphanage floor to be even more asylum.

It’s in this wing that the insane are housed and looked after - including the magically insane. Victims of feeblemind or liberated Mind Flayer thralls tend to be kept on the ground floor where visiting Bleakers have easy access to enter and give treatment.