Illusory Wall's Real Life Inspiration Behind Cape Escape's Javier

When Keith first invited me to join the as-of-yet-unnamed TTRPG, I was on the fence. I’d never played an actual roleplaying game like D&D before, despite growing up with some D&D lite board games like Hero Quest and DragonStrike. Not really knowing what to expect, and worrying I might drag the group down as an inexperienced newbie, the idea felt a little overwhelming at first. Of course, I’m thankful I decided to join! The Cape Escape campaign was a blast and I was super impressed with everything Kah came up with. It’s not lost on me that I was very lucky to have this be my first TTRPG experience.

To keep things simple for my first campaign, I made things easy for myself with the character creation for Javier by doing a lot of self-inserting. Perhaps it’s a bit of a cop-out, but it’s not too hard to come up with a backstory, and an understanding of your character’s hobbies and interests, if you just sort of tweak your own history and pick things from there. When I saw that Urban Exploration was a stat my character could have, I jumped right on it because that is something I used to do.

When I was in highschool I loved exploring abandoned places. Though it’s not something I would recommend to anyone else, and it’s something I gave up really quickly when I reached adulthood. I definitely got into a few situations where I probably wasn’t as careful with safety as I should’ve been, and risking dealing with the police for trespassing is something I didn’t want to deal with, without the excuse and lighter legal ramifications of being a minor.

[fan art by Jesenos]

I figured I’d share a few pictures I took from a couple of the places I visited. In my head, exploring these exact environments is canon to Javi’s character, although I also picture him having done a lot more of this. And also, ideally he’d actually be better at photography than I am. I was just some kid in the early 2000s with a digital camera I didn’t really know how to use to its full potential, so the actual quality of the photography is questionable.

I did run a geocities site that hosted some of these pictures, but sadly the internet archive seems unable to find my portion of the site.

Fairfield Hills

I was always strictly opposed to vandalizing places I explored. I would always look for unlocked doors or windows, and thankfully we found a basement level window that faced a courtyard that was overgrown with unkempt bushes, providing some cover when approaching this building from the woods (this complex had active security that patrolled the grounds). We closed the window when we left and no one ever noticed, so I got to re-use this same entrance as I revisited this place multiple times.

This building housed the children’s ward, so there were rooms that were painted with bright colors and had all sorts of cartoon characters on the walls. Something intended to lighten the environment, though of course it just made it much creepier in this context.

Is that Roger Rabbit telling me to not use drugs? Wild. Something tells me Javi isn’t going to heed that advice…

Um. Whyyyy? This dog fucks, apparently. Totally not a weird thing to have on the wall here.

If I recite these words out loud, will I awaken the Winter Soldier and set him on a killing spree?

One of the coolest parts about exploring the Fairfield Hills complex was that it had underground tunnels that connected the different buildings. A means to transport patients and supplies between buildings without ever having to go outside, I suppose. They were fully underground without basement-level windows, so they were pitch black. I explored them enough times that at one point, when I’d forgotten a flashlight and didn’t bring my camera, I just walked through dragging a stick along the wall. There were some with branching paths and I didn’t want to walk face first into a concrete wall, so hugging a wall seemed like the safest option.

There was some seriously cool stuff to find down there. There was an underground bowling alley, which I’m sure wasn’t for the patients. The electricity was working there, so it was part of the complex that was still being maintained somewhat.

Norwich State Hospital

Another abandoned psychiatric hospital. The tunnels, at least the ones I found, had some basement level windows and weren’t completely pitch black.

Exploring with a high school friend.

In what feels like some TTRPG logic, we found old, government-issued survival rations in the basement of one of the buildings.
We found this incredible theater on the property. Someone who was here previously must’ve dragged one of the stretchers out here (there were a bunch of medical supplies still underground) and used it for some kind of video or photoshoot, with dummies set up on and around it.

Anyways, there’s a little look into the sorts of things I pictured Javier getting into. I ran into other people who were more dedicated and professional about this sort of thing (check out New England Ruins dot com), so to the extent I imagine Javier made this his main hobby, the influence of his backstory doesn’t come just from my own adventures, but also from others I met in the community who were better at it.

In all my adventures, I never actually got caught or arrested in any of the cooler places I visited, but one time I did have to pay a $77 fine for being found in a supposedly-very-haunted cemetery at night, which is illegal in Connecticut.

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