I have another idea for an asylum job that is better than the last one (Asylum job - mixed realities).
What if the City is running out of resources, and there is a push to euthanize the Asylum patients because they are not contributing members of society?
In order to counter-act that, an experimental process is established to extract magical energy from madness.
I could introduce a fuzzy mechanism where mad people are minor portals into other dimensions, and with the right combination of magic and science, magic energy can be drawn through that portal?
This storyline would tie The Asylum to both ‣ and Magic as a resource.
How does this sub-story end?
I like this to be an ongoing mechanic so I don’t want it to flat out end.
Mostly I want the jobs James works on to fail, but in this case I need it to succeed.
However, since it is the first job depiction, it is important to establish the cynical tone here.
Is there a way that I can make the job succeed but still feel like a farce and/or loss?
So people are opening up a portal into another world through madmen.
Of course the other world is going to be a Cthulhu nightmare.
Instead of building the machine from scratch, wizards built the machine but it is not operating. Either it never worked, promptly stopped working, or—my favorite option—for some reason the Wizard’s pulled out and the Asylum does not know how to operate the machine without them.
For the latter case, the Agency would be hired to circumvent the Wizards and figure out how to leverage the Wizards’ tech without them.