The Province of Floran
For nearly 500 years the Island of Despair which sits just east of what is today the city of Floran was used as a permanent holding asylum for the mentally deranged and psychotic. Surrounded by sheer cliffs up to 300 meters high, the asylum covers almost the entire island. This massive and secluded island was a destination from which few ever escaped or returned–alive.
Even the workers who themselves were often said to be mentally unstable, often died during their time on the island. Sent there for months at a time, the doctors and workers would go as mad as the inmates and hurl themselves over the cliffs and onto the rocky coast that surrounds the island. Some say that it was the severity of the patients’ mental problems, or the fact that the workers were outnumbered 30 to 1 that drove the ‘normals’ insane. Others however, insist the island was and still is cursed. It wasn’t many years into the asylums operation (many of the men and women that built it said it was cursed even before completion) that it acquired that label and it has retained it ever since.
Between 400 PM to approximately100 EM the insane asylum was used without a break. It was built over a 40 period by the people of Floran and Bedrin and opened officially the seventh day of Desanna, 400 PM. Even before the facility opened though, workers were killed or were said to go mad and hurl themselves over the cliffs. And when the first batch of patients were locked up, an overwhelming number escaped through the untested security and hurled themselves, again, off the cliffs. While it is said to be haunted by the eternally tormented souls of the mad, what initially caused the panic and fear remains a mystery typically explained as the supernatural, a curse or is simply dismissed as an insignificant but spooky coincidence.
The conditions within the facility were never intended to be comfortable or even adequate for the insane or workers. Visitors who stayed only briefly (even those there for research or the early and short lived tourist attractions) found it almost impossible to differentiate between the patients and workers. Wandering around the grounds, the insane were left without any care (the staff only worked in the few enclosed buildings and rarely if ever patrolled the grounds) and would frequently start fights and murder one another in their rages. With hundreds wandering the grassy ‘recreation field’ the death count would, in an average day, reach at least 10 and often more. And when the weather turned ill as was often the case (the area is known to have an intense hurricane season), the insane were still kept outside. This is because the facility was built as quickly and inexpensively as possible, the builders opting for grassy fields instead of enclosed buildings. A huge wall lined redundantly with barbed wire followed the edge of the island (a six square kilometer area). Inside the walls were small open air shelters with concrete floors and few benches where the inmates could escape the weather. Other than the few shelters there were only a handful of real buildings: one administration building, two testing facilities (where everything from executions to medical experimentation took place), a cafeteria, a hospital and bunks. All the buildings were clustered near the entrance on the west end of the island. This allowed for the inmates to wander off literally for kilometers and also added to the danger. Many patients died from things like pneumonia and diarrhea and dehydration, after being unable to return to the bunks at night or during storms.
Because the facilities were six kilometers from the opposite side of the wall, more often than not, sections of the retaining wall would collapse for any number of reasons. This would allow the inmates to escape and jump off the cliffs. Further, murders and fights often escalated into full riots. It was noted that during one particularly devastating hurricane nearly 2500 people including both workers and the insane were killed. The causes of death ranged from illness due to exposure (approx. 1000), debris and structure failure (150), Fighting and rioting (850) and jumping off of the cliffs (500).
For those who were there not as ‘caretakers’ or as patients, but were visiting for any number of reasons, they frequently returned after only a brief visit, themselves becoming disturbed for years afterwards, scarred emotionally and physically from the conditions. Because of this coincidence or connection, more validity was given to the possibility of the land being haunted or cursed. For those who believe in the curse, they ask, what other reason could there be for so many odd and otherwise unexplainable deaths?
Originally the asylum was intended to rid the cities of Bedrin and Floran of the incomplete, as they were called. The law abiding citizens of good birth and mental stability became bothered by the urchins, beggars, thieves or any others they felt to be mentally incomplete. After a few years the citizens demanded the incomplete be removed once and for all (after a few years of mostly inconsequential regulations). Once the facility was finished the incomplete were sent by the hundreds. Soon, anyone who displayed even the slightest ‘irregularity’ was sent too. Men temporarily without jobs, beggars, radical thinkers and the unusual, anybody considered unacceptable to the ‘normal’ were sent over without so much as a trial, hearing or even a chance to somehow prove their sanity.
Artists in particular were shipped over by the literal boatload after being forced to make the long march down the trail that skipped back and forth to the sea from the top of the Floran cliffs (a 750 meter vertical drop). Art and music were seen as dangers to the hard working, farming and law abiding society. Often times the creative process would be seen as producing negative effects on the normal citizens. Musicians performing at any time other than the middle of the day and in designated social concert halls were considered mad. One tale still told amongst the locals is of a famous traveling bard who had just arrived in Floran from a long journey beginning in Gale. This man’s voice was said to be the voice of the gods, and the way he performed was beautifully strange at the very least. Only performing on nights with no moon at the mid-night hour, the man would sing of the heavens and the gods. He spent the days and nights between the new moon writing his poetic verse, awaiting the great orb of the moon to vanish or for a solid layer of clouds to block out all light from the night sky. His lyrics and style were known across Atla as mystical and inspiring like nothing else. When he arrived in Floran few took notice until the night with no moon. In his usual fashion he made way to a local landmark, in this case the cliffs, and began singing at midnight. By the following midnight he was on a boat along with over 100 others to the Island of Despair as it is known today.
With hundreds of years of service and few people ever returning, the number of corpses both in and around the island grew overwhelming. The waters around the island are still the most shark-infested in all the known sea. Layers and layers of corpses, more than the sea could handle, have piled up on the sea floor. A few explorers have gone diving in the water bringing back stories of a sea bed where there is no sand, algae or rock, only endless piles of bones. Though no accurate record of the seas depth existed before or since the asylums existence, many say that the bones at least halved it.
In a strange twist of fate, it was the very nature of artists and free thinkers not being allowed into the province, or their being shipped away that gave rise to the capital city of Floran becoming the arts center of modern day Atla. Though most who were discovered to be artists or touched mentally were shipped away, during the time of the asylums busiest days artists would often come to see what the city was really like (the city took on a near mystical identity as word spread throughout the rest of Atla). Few of these travelers dared reveal the fact that they were, according to themselves or others, artists. But like cultural sponges and masters of the craft, even while the asylum was in operation many great stories and poems were published after leaving Floran and the Isle of Despair. Considered by many to be the greatest time for art and giving rise to the Transformationalism movement, the asylum became a frightening muse and a paradox of spreading art by binding its limbs and mouth.
Even though the asylum has long been silent and still, the land of Floran has become the epicenter for new movements in every area of art. With galleries and concerts, libraries and bookstores on literally every corner, the city is filled with young adults exploring their minds and the worlds around them through a rite of passage into the art community. Volunteering, working, displaying or performing in Floran at least some time in a rising artist’s career has been the bar with which to judge the talents and progression of the individual and the community as a whole and a rite of passage.
As for the asylum, the tangible feeling of death that hangs around the island has kept away all but a few people ‘insane’ enough to wander the haunted grounds. There are no tours to the island; nobody has made it their goal to ferry people back and forth and few would pay for the torture of visiting the island. Some still seek the holy ground as it is often considered by many, but even today the majority of people seeking to experience the island often meet an untimely death. Many are killed on the journey there or back, but most vanish while there. The few who make it back however, are often stricken with bizarre illnesses or plagued by accidents until their deaths, which in every instance, is within one year of their departure to the island.
Because nobody who has returned from the island has lived for over a year afterwards, few can help but wonder what exactly haunts the island. Whether it is the gateway to the underworld or an extreme set of coincidences, the Island of Despair is directly and indirectly responsible for more artistic achievements than almost anything else on Atla. It has been the key factor in transforming the quiet eastern coast of Atla as it was 500 years ago, into the arts capital of the world.
