#*:p

So, Asylum! 

Once upon a time, a woman has an encounter with a vodyanoy (russian water spirit), and becomes pregnant (its own, longer story). After the woman gives birth, the vodyanoy comes to claim the child. Instead of fighting to keep the baby as the vodyanoy expects, the woman fights to go with the spirit and become like him, a being of wild power; she’s ferocious and strong, and bored out of her mind as Russian noble. The vodyanoy decides she’s a better get than the child ever could be, and he takes her into the wilds. (She expects to become a rusalka, a female russian water spirit. Instead she becomes a wolf. She’s delighted, and starts amassing power among the spirits of the forest. She’d like to return to times when humans knew to fear spirits, and there was nowhere wild things couldn’t go, if they chose.)

Anyway, the kid is named Dimitry. He grows up with an older sister and a kind, nervous father who doesn’t like to talk about how his wife went mad and ran off into the woods.

Fast forward 25 years. It’s 1916. Things are tense in Russia. 

One day, Dimitry has an audience with the Tzar, as nobility sometimes does. Some words are said, Dimitry loses his temper, and official reports will state that the Dimitry attempted to kill the Tzar by drowning him. (No one will mention the fact a sphere of water formed around the Tzar’s head, and only went away when a guard knocked Dimitry unconscious. The Tzar’s close advisor Rasputin says it’s best to leave such matters to him.) 

In any event, the upshot is Dimitry is allowed to plead insanity—a plea he fully believes. Since he can’t be executed due to his noble ranking, he’s sentenced to life at one of the monasteries being used as a prison/insane asylum.

But Dimitry doesn’t get to just go be a sad crazy boy. The monastery has its own strange politics—including but not limited to the abbot’s estranged, would-be-psychologist brother Dr. Alexey Adashev, who is very excited to study Dimitry’s madness. But as Alexey pokes and prods, the two of them come to realize that Dimitry may not be as mad as they think, and there is one hell of a storm coming. 

And that’s where our story starts!