That Which Lies Beneath Bishopsgate

That Which Lies Beneath Bishopsgate, also known as the Darkness That Lies Beneath, is some form of supernatural being haunting the mounds and the tunnels now lying under the East Wing of Bishopsgate Mental Asylum.

Overview

Having lain under the mounds for time immemorial, the Native Americans who lived nearby gravely feared the being and warned off any who wished to settle there. This would go unheeded by James Teesdale and those who came after him, building directly over the mounds without a care.

The authors of World of Darkness: Asylum provide a number of possible explanations for the nature of this horror:

• Option One: The tunnels under the mounds house ancient ruins of a dead and vanished civilization. For all that the its people are gone, however, relics of terrifying power still remain. These artifacts, even as far down as they are, still have the reach to haunt the minds of those within Bishopsgate. Needless to say, bringing them up to the surface could have dire consequences.

• Option Two: A xenophobic, hostile culture still exists beneath the mounds, capable of bizarre feats of emotional manipulation in those near them. Their exact origin is unknown. Perhaps they are pre-Columbian; perhaps they are inbred descendants of Teesdale’s old coven.

• Option Three: A terrible contagion awaits beneath the earth. Whether it is an alien plague or an ancient bioweapon, whatever its symptoms, it is a nightmare best left buried.

• Option Four: Beneath the mounds is a vast deity, powerful enough to view humans as nothing but minor amusements. Once worshipped, this god was imprisoned somehow in the past. Its nature is nigh-incomprehensible to mortal minds. Perhaps it is a personification of hate, fear, and madness — their Platonic ideal. Perhaps it is an amalgam of material and abstract only partially accessible to mortal eyes. Regardless, it feeds on the emotions of those above in the hopes of one day waking fully.

• Option Five: The Darkness Beneath is a fallen angel named Inothiel the Herald, a betrayer cast aside by God after taking the side of the Dark Ones following the War in Heaven.

• Option Six: There is nothing supernatural at all beneath the East Wing. In truth, its horrors are only claustrophobia, paranoia, and, perhaps, the bodies of an orderly’s victims or a doctor’s harem of brutalized patients.

References

• CofD: Asylum, p. 54-55, 97