Thorney Towers Home for the Disturbed

Thorney Towers Home for the Disturbed was an area in Psychonauts 1. It was an abandoned mental asylum, and was the only above-water building that remained of Shaky Claim until it was blown up during the events of the game.

Description
Thorney Towers Home for the Disturbed was a tall, dilapidated insane asylum situated high on an island in the middle of Lake Oblongata, and could be seen from Whispering Rock. The stolen brains of the campers were scattered throughout the tower and the grounds surrounding it.

The Grounds
The beach on the entrance side of the tower is lit with floodlights illuminating the small sandbar and the rickety wooden ladder built into the cliffside. The shoreline is covered in cattails and venus fly traps, and many lilipads sit in the shallow water. The cliff face has a number of tree roots sticking out of it, with the tree itself growing at the top of the cliff, just to the left of the ladder. At the top of the ladder was the front gates, which were framed on either side by dense, curved stone walls with statues of angels set into them. The walls are covered in Boyd Cooper's chalk scrawlings, and were discolored and moss-covered. Two lanterns sat to either side of the gates. The gates were large and built of wrought-iron with intricate designs.

Past the gates was a courtyard area with a large fountain featuring a statue of Houston Thorney at the top. The courtyard was lined with a stone path that circles the fountain. A bench sat on the leftmost side, and an overturned wheelchair sat to the right. Five lanterns dotted the courtyard, and an elevator would descend to the far left section of the yard in order to take people up to Loboto's Lab at the top of the tower. Stairs led up to the entrance to the tower, which was boarded up. On the wall below the entrance was a mural depicting Thorney Towers wearing a crown and being praised by many people, flanked on either side by smiling trees and the angels that were depicted as statues beside the gates.

Through an archway in the right wall was a path, lined by an iron fence on the right side, that led to a greenhouse, where Gloria von Gouton resided. The greenhouse would be illuminated with moonlight coming down from the ceiling. Potted plants with faces drawn on them lined the shelves. a door on the left side of the greenhouse led into the lower floors.

The Lower Floors
The lower floors of the tower were collapsed, leaving a semi-large open area covered in rubble consisting of some of the other floors and ceilings, beds, and parts of the roof and supports. One section of the floor remained free of debris, revealing the hexagonal floor of what was once part of the interior. A large part of this floor was covered in chalk drawings emulating the board of a Waterloo-O game, across which multiple miscellaneous items (such as a garden gnome, a wheel, and Loboto's teddybear [show source]) were used by Fred Bonaparte as game pieces. To the right of this, Crispin stood in front of the elevator that led to the upper floors. Torches lined some of the walls.

Above the open area was the art gallery, a high-ceilinged circular room in which Edgar Teglee was chained to a gas pipe. The floor was covered in discarded papers and paint, and all around sat paint cans and canvases depicting many bull fights. A canvas sat off to one side, while in the center was a small table illuminated by a black light. Multiple doors lined the walls just out of Edgar's reach.

The Upper Floors
The upper floors of the asylum, while mostly enclosed, were somehow more dilapidated and chaotic than the lower floors. They were illuminated by dim lights, infested with tumor-covered rats, and, in some places, filled with pools of what appeared to be a caustic green liquid. Grafiti covered some of the walls, and things such as rubble, broken beds and wheelchairs littered the floor. In some places the floors and ceilings of rooms had given way, and in others the walls had crumbled away completely, leaving the outside moonlight to illuminate the place.

Further up, the towers seemed to twist in on themselves in impossible ways, with stairs twisting up the walls or furniture winding up on the ceiling. It is not known how this occurred.

Loboto's Lab
Loboto's lab sat at the topmost point of the tallest tower, above a spiraling set of stairs that could collapse at the press of a button. The lab was housed in a Saturn-shaped structure, with one main floor and a smaller, curtained-off floor at the very top. The topmost point of the ceiling was open. The lab featured a stove, a furnace, a habitrail, a chalkboard, and a number of other items, including random tools hanging from the ceiling (such as medical tools,a book, a spray gun etc.). The top room, accessible through the metal catwalk that circled the outside of the lab, featured dentist chairs and a coffee table. Also accessible through the cat walk is an elevator initially found all the way at the bottom near Boyd Cooper. To the left of the main entrance is the Brain Tank prototype and Dr. Loboto himself along with Mr. Pokeylope who is set in a habitrail on top a stove.

Post-Explosion
Late into Psychonauts 1, an explosion demolished most of the tower.

Thorney Towers is now mostly ruins, with a lot of rubble, beds, and chairs scattered where it once stood. Part of the elevator is still visible, and part of the catwalk of Loboto's lab sticks out above the rubble. Caustic green liquid flows through cracks in the ground. The entrance to the greenhouse is blocked off entirely, and the fountain is crushed by a piece of rubble, with the head of the Houston Thorney statue having been blown across the courtyard, and his headless body on the opposite side. The gates are now gone, having been blown off their hinges. Part of the shell of Loboto's lab lies off to the side fo the ruins.

History
Thorney Towers was built as part of the settlement, Shaky Claim, which had been built by prospecters who set out to mine the psitanium. The rich psitanium deposits in the area drove many of the town's residents to madness, so Houston Thorney built Thorney Towers in response to the "epidemic." Eventually this epidemic became so severe that there were more residents in the asylum than there were residents in Shaky Claim, leading to Houston Thorney committing suicide via jumping from the tower.

Eventually the government claimed to have paid the residents to leave, and flooded the crater to create Lake Oblongata, turning the land mass Thorney Towers stood upon into an island and leaving the remaining asylum residents stranded there.

At some point Loboto set up his lab at the top of the tower and worked there as a freelance contractor, while the other remaining residents carved out places for themselves to live within the decaying structure.

Role
Thorney Towers is where much of the final act of Psychonauts 1 takes place. The towers housed Dr. Loboto, Sheegor, Mr. Pokeylope, Crispin Whytehead, Fred Bonaparte, Edgar Teglee, Boyd Cooper, and Gloria von Gouton, who were all major characters of this act.

Before the events of the game, Oleander traveled out to Thorney Towers, where he collaborated with Loboto in building the brain tanks, mutating Linda, and plotting the brain theft sceme, eventually creating not only a working scale model of the tank, but also a full-sized, fully operational tank. Oleander also hypnotized Boyd Cooper in order to guard the tower and destroy it in order to cover things up.

Throughout the game, Linda brought children to the asylum, where they were then taken by Sheegor up to Loboto and de-brained before their brainless bodies were sent back to camp. Eventually Sasha and Milla were also captured and de-brained, but remained captive in the room above Loboto's lab, alongside Lili, who could not be de-brained due to her cold.

After her hypnotism was broken, Linda brought Razputin Aquato to the towers. He was able to activate Boyd's hypnotism in order to unlock the asylum gates, and then able to help Fred, Gloria, and Edgar in order to obtain items from them in order to disguise himself as Loboto to get past Crispin. Raz ascended the tower, rescuing the stolen brains along the way, and made it to Loboto's lab at the top.

Shortly after Loboto was blasted out of the tower and Sasha, Milla, and Lili were freed, Oleander went to attack Sasha and Milla. Meanwhile, the remaining residents left, and in doing so, accidentally set off a chain of events that led to the tower exploding. In the ruins of the tower, Raz had to fight the full-sized brain tank that then housed Oleander's brain.

Behind the Scenes
NOTE: The following information is not canon.