Houses of Healing

Houses of Healing is an asylum-style facility in Hernand visited during Chapter 3 of Crimson Desert. Presented to the outside world as a medical institution, in practice it is where the city's outcasts and unwanted are locked away. Visione helmets are placed on patients here, supposedly to pacify and calm them, though former patients describe the effect as driving them out of their minds. The Houses of Healing is the first major in-game demonstration that the technology of Delassia can be turned to abusive ends.

Story Context

Cliff arrives at the Houses of Healing during the early part of Chapter 3, after the Grey Mains have set up their camp at Howling Hill. One of the new camp members, Yanne, has been arrested following a bar fight and is being held at the institution. The rescue arc serves as the player's introduction to how the visione helmet, normally framed as a tool for accessing memories, can be deployed as an instrument of mind control over people unable to defend themselves.

Inside the Facility

Exploring the area surrounding the Houses of Healing turns up memory fragments and notes that fill in the day-to-day reality of the place. Patients are kept in long rows of cells and forced to wear plain hospital gowns. Guards are not shy about using violence on those who fail to comply, a fact made plain by one of the recoverable memories. Patients are admitted under the cover of routine medical care: one memory shows a mother sending her own son in for what she believes will be a short ten-night stay, when in practice the institution is closer to a long-term holding pen for those the city would rather not see.

Yanne, who has firsthand experience of the visione helmets used here, gives the most direct testimony. According to him the helmets do not pacify so much as send people crazy. A separate memory follows a patient who escaped by jumping from the bridge just outside the facility. By the time the memory is recorded he is confused and delusional, but he has also begun regaining some clarity simply by distancing himself from the place.

Use of the Visione Helmet

The visione system was originally developed by Marni for memory recall and assisted thought, the same role it plays for Cliff throughout the rest of the game. At the Houses of Healing the helmets are repurposed: rather than letting a wearer peer into the past, they are used to suppress and override the wearer's own thoughts. The arc plants an early seed for the much larger Chapter 11 storyline in which Marni's invention is hijacked by Hall AI to dominate all of eastern Delassia.

Key Facts

Story Significance

The Houses of Healing arc sets up two threads that pay off later. First, it primes the player to distrust the visione helmet as a neutral piece of equipment, which becomes important once Marni and his keep are introduced in Chapter 11. Second, it establishes that civic institutions in Pywell can be quietly hollowed out and turned on the powerless long before any of the abyss-touched warlords appear on screen, mirroring the political conspiracy that erupts in Demoness during the Blood Coronation arc.

Related Articles

• Visione

• Marni

• Hall AI

• Grey Mains

• Howling Hill