|
4 |
4 |
SITE-168
PSYCHIATRIC CONTAINMENT, MENTAL FACILITY
Wood carving of Site-168 upon initial acquirement
Overview
Established: Opened as a residential home and institution for cretins by Johann Jakob Guggenbühl in 1840, taken over by the Authority in 1863. and received official Site designation 16th of August 1868.
Front Cover: Private mental care facility.
Location: Switzerland, Abendberg mountain, approximately 40km west of the city of Interlaken
Codename: "Mountain home"
Hex-code: [168]
Site Occupation: Garrison, Containment, Low and Heavy Humanoid Containment, Medical, Research, Training
Division Jurisdiction: Containment, Research
Total Area: 15km2
Surrounding Land/Water: Surrounded by mountains, cliffs and dense evergreen forests ensuring isolation and privacy. Multiple outposts are positioned throughout the mountain peaks and cliffsides to ensure Site safety and communication.
Background Information: Site-168 is and remains for the foreseeable future a Containment Site. It does not specialize in engineering, biomechanics or in other obvious fields of the Division, instead providing a novel approach to containing sapient anomalies. Enrichment, human contact and psychiatric treatment make an equally, if not even more important aspect when it comes to ensuring an anomaly does not attempt to escape its containment.
Site-168 offers an safe and isolated facility where anomalies and the anomalously augmented can receive appropriate mental care. Due to the nature of their trauma, these individuals are sadly unlikely to ever return to a normal life. Site-168 offers an opportunity where they can regain a sense of normalcy and ensure that they will not harm themselves either through an escape attempt or a violent outburst.
Site staff have a wide range of specialists and personnel trained to deal with both everyday and anomalous mental illnesses. The research and data conducted at Site-168 has proven invaluable for containment projects within the Authority. Deescalation, negotiation and psychoanalysis are offered as training courses for members of any Division, a requirement for those seeking to further their career in the direction of parapsychology.
Lastly, Site-168 has unintentionally become a safehouse and treatment center for Kabushiki Kawaii victims. Its isolated location, experienced staff, specialized security and relatable population has eased the tensions these victims usually suffer from in other sites. Site-168 treatments have led to a number of anomalies to attain a Utility class, assisting staff and slowly rebuilding their lives within the Authority. Whether this is within Site-168 or another location, the freedom, control and decision is given to them once they are recognized as stable and of sound mind.
History: Site-168’s origins can be traced as far back as to 1840, when Swiss physician Johann Jakob Guggenbühl opened the establishment as a pediatric residential home for cretins. Johann’s main goal was to cure cretinism and while he was unsuccessful in his goal, he provided a home and education to many unwanted and disabled children. Officially, the home was shut down in 1860 with Johann passing away three years later.
Wood carving depicting J.J.K. and his initial patients
In truth, Johann's personal project unintentionally attracted anomalous subjects. The first among them was what modern Authority researchers believe was a severe Anopticin deficiency, leading to constant exposure to Celantur anomalies.1 Johann's approach to dealing with the subject was successful, and word of his "holy mountain" spread as physicians and patients arrived in increasingly greater numbers. According to his private diaries, Johann was initially open to this development. But, as time passed, he saw it as a threat to his actual goals. The anomalous nature of the new patients became the center point for many of the recognition-seeking physicians that arrived, leaving the cretins by the wayside
The Authority discovered and contacted the Abendberg School in 1854. Johann firmly, but politely, declined the offer of his establishment being taken under the Authority's wing. Despite his efforts, the majority workforce of the Abendberg School, with chief physician Aldward Bankier, finally pushed Johann and his wards out of all administrative duties and titles bar owning the land the school was built upon. Johann accepted the decision and moved away, officially closing the establishment as it was known in 1860. He took a majority of his patients with him but was forced to leave behind any who showed anomalous properties.
In 1863, Johann was invited back to assist in handling a cascading breach caused by one of his original patients. Thanks to his involvement, the breach was halted and the anomaly terminated - at the cost of Johann's own life. After his burial, the newly appointed Site Director Aldward took over a much more aggressive approach to containing the individuals within the Site. In an attempt to avoid further catastrophic breaches, the new staff replaced the climate, nutrition, occupational therapy and school lessons with restrictions to mobility, heavy drug use and invasive observation. For the next 50 years, there was not a single additional breach in Site-168.
At the start of the 20th century, Aldward's son and inheritor of the Site Director title Phylas Bankier met with future Nobel prize winner Charles Richet and became enamored with both his ectoplasm research and beliefs in eugenics. This enthusiasm spread within Site-168 - over the course of the next few years, Phylas carefully selected and reassigned staff to secure an environment which would let him freely experiment on the subjects contained within. By the 1940s, invasive procedures such as insulin coma therapy, electroconvulsive therapy and prefrontal lobotomy became regular procedures. It is believed that these procedures, as well as the more esoteric ones such as videric-induced psychosis, ectoplasmeugenic grudgenings and memotomies have led to a number of subject deaths.
Memotomy of patient
Many of these subjects were Kabushiki Kawaii victims, recovered from trafficking operations and sent to Site-168 to wait out the Second World War. Their deaths were reported as results of sudden anomalously induced trauma development. Numerous escape attempts were made and all of them failed. It is presumed that approximately 15 bodies are still missing in the forests and cliffs of the surrounding area.
In 1963, an organized escape attempt allowed a group of Kabushiki Kawaii victims to break containment and threaten a cascade breach. The aging Site Director Phylas was forced to ask for assistance from neighboring sites. At the arrival of the outsider MSTs and their investigation of the site, the siege was lifted. Phylas and his inner circle were apprehended, but never lived to see the tribunal that was prepared for them.
This catastrophic accident led to the majority of contained anomalies being shipped to other sites, with many of them transferring to the rapidly developing Site-026. Sunk cost fallacy was the only reason why the Site was not simply abandoned - the location had already received a number of recent renovations and expansions which would be impossible to transfer. Instead, the Presidium ruled an overturn of staff and for the Site to become a low-hazard Containment site that slowly began to accept White and Yellow class sapient anomalies.
Over time, this led to a different issue. While the low hazard environment secured a safe future, Site-168 began to act lax in their duties. At the time, more severe cases were spread throughout Authority sites while Site-168 served to either host newly discovered anomalies that needed to pass a screening process and then be reassigned to a different location, or were stable enough to be allowed to interact with all staff and other sapient anomalies. Any attempt from newly arrived staff to motion for a greater effort was quickly stifled. It was not until 2011 that a breach led to the death of the at-the-time Senior Researcher and head of the Site's Psychology Department that the site received a proper change in management.
Today, Site-168 is still recovering its reputation and diligently working to prove themselves as a respectable example of the Authority's capabilities. It has closely worked with multiple Sites and their specialists to cross reference the most effective method of pscyhologically-centric containment and then followed through with expanding and improving them further. Site-168 freely shares its knowledge with all those interested and organizes yearly seminars and training courses. After the budget cuts in 2021, the Site has redoubled its efforts in defending its identity, seeing any attempts by Research to absorb it into itself as a critical loss to Containment's versatility.
Offices & Wings Section
Level 1 - The Asylum
The major component and "face" of Site-168, "The Asylum" refers to the area that patients use as living and social quarters. It consists of multiple buildings in a wide area, each with its own offices and rooms.
The Guggenbühl Home [L1C1]
The largest cabin in the area, fully dedicated to the care and safety of all patients on the Site. It features a number of common, recreation and counseling rooms split among two wings. Bedrooms range from single occupancy to three person, with two Grouped Hazard rooms. Lower acuity patients are allowed to exit the building during daytime and engage in Prolab-organized group events. Higher acuity patients are required to stay within the constraints of their own wing.
The Armenleg [L1C2]
Due to a high number of physical alterations made to Site-168’s patients, the Biomechanical Module has set up a physical therapy center equipped to assist and rehabilitate the patients. The cabin features a gym, pool and a wide range of BM specialists. Many anomalously augmented subjects suffer from a variety of ailments and discomforts caused by missing, additional or replaced body parts - the Biomechanical Module is irreplaceable due to their innate knowledge of the field. The cabin is not limited only to anomalous subjects, but is also open to Authority agents. Interactions between the two groups is encouraged within regular safety parameters. Resultant relationships built up trust within anomalous subjects and a greater level of understanding within agents.
L1C2 also features administrative and Prolab offices of Site-168. The majority of these are closed off to patients and under a higher level of security. Patient documentation, psychiatric profiles and personnel information is closely guarded with frequent security screenings.
The Pill Spill [L1C3]
Due to the nature of patient augmentations, regular medicine and drugs are at best ineffective or at worst lethal to them. The Chemistry department works around the clock to find the appropriate therapy within the site’s pharmacy. Patients are screened weekly and personnel are trained to differentiate between anomalous and mundane ailments. Due to experience with hyperpersonalized prescriptions and the process required to create them, Site-168 pharmacists offer aid to sister sites in form of consultations or personal visits to newly acquired anomalies that do not respond to treatment.
Red House [L1C4]
Red House shares its space with the Site-168's ASF barracks on the ground floor with the main communications center on the upper one.
Site-168 geography is highly mountainous, with a number of forests and cliffs surrounding the area. The Department of Communications has a collection of outposts positioned in key locations that ensure that any infiltration or attack will be quickly noticed and flagged. Additionally, the outposts are in charge of coordinating search efforts should a patient escape the facility.
ASF personnel are required to have experience and training in wildlife survival, mountaineering and tracking to properly utilize the surroundings to their advantage. In the past decade, ASF and Prolab have carefully worked with the Psychology department to create multiple educational seminars and manuals that aid in developing the necessary skills to defuse conflict and prevent possible incidents without the use of weaponry or violence. After their propagation, the number of violent incidents and injuries during breaches has been cut down by a margin of 27% on an Authority-wide level.
The C5 [L1C5]
All non-ASF or MST personnel are required either to live in a neighboring city, such as Interlaken, or in L1C5 as long as they are assigned to an anomaly contained within Site-168. Single and double occupancy rooms are the standard, with a shared dining and entertainment space on the ground floor. Patients are not allowed to enter L1C5.
Site Administration
Site-168 has a very meritocratic approach to leadership, believing that an administrative role does not entail an inactive role. All administrative officials are required to actively contribute and stay active in patient care and site projects to continue holding their position.
- Site Director: Valentin Rock
- Containment Division Head: Containment Specialist Dr Vanessa Milner
- Biomechanical Module Lead Prosthetician: Dr Ernan McManus
- Communications Division Head: Arend Occi
- ASF Captain: Lady Walburga von Effinger
- Psychology Department Head: Researcher Juniper Leigh
- Chemistry Department Head: Dr Olivier Whipper
- Lead Amnesticiologist: Dr Mnemosyne Myosot
Patients: 100-120
On-Site Personnel: 98
- Department Heads: 8
- Medical Personnel: 35
- Research Personnel: 10
- Security Personnel: 20/54
- Communications Personnel: 15
- Maintenance Personnel: 10
- CSD Personnel: 0
Garrisoned MSTs
Lima-700
("Mindtuck")
Lima-700 is primarily deployed as an auxiliary unit with one or two members acting as negotiators and representatives whose goal is to persuade a sapient anomaly into surrender. Extensive training on Site-168 grounds has given members of the team an introspective into a wide range of behaviors, both natural and onset by anomalous influence. While not a primary characteristic, the geography surrounding the site granted a proficiency in dealing with anomalies in high-altitude and rough terrain.
Members of Lima-700 are required an above average level of mental fortitude, empathy and knowledge of medicaments which has led the team being deployed against anomalies that are capable of mental manipulation and psychic assault. Certain agents have volunteered themselves to be equipped by experimental Biomechanical Module prosthetics that further improve their capabilities, such as the subdermal "Greycowl" - an anti-psychic sheet wrapped around the operative's skull.
Due to their frequent interaction with Kabushiki Kawaii victims and anomalies, Lima-700 agents are often assigned on operations with MST Hotel-11 "Karasu" as consultants and key auxiliary supports.
Anomalies Contained
| RPC-880 | A subject that has become the Site's most in-depth analyzed anomaly due to its nature and behavior. |
|---|
Anomalies Previously Contained
| RPC-686 | [PENDING RECLASSIFICATION] |
|---|