Set in an alternate universe version of Victorian England, Slouching Towards Bedlam casts the player as Dr. Thomas Xavier, an employee of Bedlam Asylum. When the game opens, he's dealing with the recent suicide of one of his patients, a severely delusional case named Cleve Anderson who spoke in tongues during his sleep, claimed to be "infected" by something that altered the very nature of his being, and had ties to an underground group of mystics. As the game unfolds, he learns that perhaps Cleve was not so delusional after all...