snowblindrpg | [network] @Mnemosyne; video; night 227; history will judge us [open]

[Beckett starts the feed sitting huddled in a corner against a wall that's been burned a featureless black. He's not wearing his tinted glasses, and both his look and voice are flatly composed, distant.]

I am going to start recording everything. Simply leave this thing on at all times. We are losing too much information to patchy and inaccurate records in a way that is simply inexcusable considering the means we have access to. I strongly recommend that you all do the same. [He pauses, then nods half to himself.] If nothing else then for those who will come after us. Eventually.

[So optimistic, Beckett.]

Do let me know if you would like to receive regular transmissions of my records. And if you have, and are willing to use the means to put some of them on SD cards that may be preserved in the event of lost access to our iteration of the network. There is... a certain comfort in the thought of posterity, in my experience. Such as it is.

[Such as it is. He wrinkles his nose at the thought, and puts the tablet aside, though the recording keeps running. After a bit of time, he picks it up again and adds a text message, along with an attached file: TheBookOfNod.txt]

The file I am attaching is the complete text of the Book of Nod: the mytho-historic principle document of the Cainites, namely, the vampires of my world, transcribed from memory. I doubt this is of particular interest to anyone, but my physical copy was recently destroyed, and as far as I am aware, that was the last copy in existence. My purpose here is thus its preservation as a text. I am the last record of my Kindred. Let something remain.

[OOC: I didn't want to directly link one but if anyone's interested for whatever reason it's actually really easy to google up an online copy of Vampire the Masquerade's Book of Nod. I'm sorry it's so painfully 90s.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm not looking for guarantees, Stephanie. I'm looking for - strangely enough I think I'm looking for hope. Perhaps paper notes would have a better chance of being overlooked than SD cards. Can you think of a good place for a cache? Somewhere in the eastern pass, maybe?

Edited 2017-04-18 15:23 (UTC)

[ She recognizes the start of a fight she's been getting into a lot. ]

It's very hard to convey my feelings through text. It's not exactly easy even with video. I don't have a whole lot of hope even if the best of times. Mostly I substitute determination, I guess. I don't mean to try to push that on other people. It would probably be wiser to leave things in the northwest corner, if that's the start of the spiral. Better chance of people finding it before it's too late to be of use. A journal might go unnoticed in one of the houses where books can be found. Slipping an SD card between the pages might work, but it might also be noticeable. With the board games, maybe? Just slip it in one of the boxes?

I'm not asking you to open up to me. We all know how it is. But let me rephrase: I'm seeing an option here to do something meaningful, which might have a lasting effect even if I fail and die. I don't get many of those.

[He is absolutely not trying to push hope on her. But he wants to do this. Needs to do this. For himself. She happens to perhaps have the means to help.]

Hiding one book among many is clever. I like that. I have noticed that in some houses any acts of reorganisation are reversed overnight, but not in others, so that may be a lead... but another part of me thinks that if it were that easy, we'd have found many more instances of the obvious effects of previous cycles.

You'd think. I have to wonder if all the gutted wiring isn't from previous cycles, instead of the Admin like I thought at first.

You mean, that previous cycles found the town still with electronics intact? That's a fresh theory. What makes you think that? I had considered that all that went into whatever machinery some of us have been taken to repair - remember the patchwork? - but technology has never been my forte.

I sort of remember that, but it was all so hodgepodge I'm not totally convinced it would work in the conventional sense. And none of the stuff we 'contributed' were electronic parts. Bits of wire though, that could be useful to scavengers. And if people have been coming through here for the past hundred years they could clean out a box way better than someone actively trying to strip it bare in a limited period of time.

Would that suggest that somewhere in the town may be found vast quantities of electronic raw material? Could we use that?

Although I cannot say that I'm entirely convinced. It seems to me as though technology was at the centre of intense conflict in whatever happened here in Norfinbury, even if I am not ready either to credit House's argument that all this is the result of technology gone rogue. But I find it easy to believe that the residents have gutted their own town in an effort to "cleanse" it, or else in fear.

Maybe, but it may have been swept away when they all died.

Also a good point. None of this explains the missing street signs, though. Unless the street signs were electronic, I guess, but that still leaves them to navigate a whole town with no signage.

Also a possibility, though in that case, where is it now? Is the Admin using it as a resource? I don't think anyone has ever attempted to request any such raw materials. Perhaps worth trying.

It is easy to believe that they were electronic... but this particular absence, I find it easier to attribute to the general scrubbing of any source of location and period information. Have you noticed that none of the books in town have dates or places of publication, and packaged food items have no expiry dates?

The same place all my weapons and tech are, I'd imagine. I wonder if they're keeping them confiscated or using them... If they didn't want us to know where or when we are, they would have gotten rid of the hospital bracelet with the admission date. Miller shouldn't have told us how long he's been seeing weird data either.

The bracelet could have been one of the items placed by a helpful ghost. Those have precedence. As for Miller, I confess that his motivations still elude me. But he's certainly not been forthcoming when it comes to truly useful information.

I can't pin him down either. I think both theories have merit. Like everything else we'll just have to keep observing until one looks better than the other.

[network] @Mnemosyne; video; night 227; history will judge us [open]

Shadownet; text

Shadownet; text

Shadownet; text

Shadownet; text

Shadownet; text

Shadownet; text

Shadownet; text

Shadownet; text

Shadownet; text

Shadownet; text

Shadownet; text

Shadownet; text