[network] @jwatson; text [Night 367] [open/semi-open] [shadownet]

[jumpthegun]

[The second part of the message is OPEN. The first part is SEMI-CLOSED to anyone with access to the Shadownet - a text only app created by Winter. Winter is an NPC that you'll read about in the Survival Guide, but the basic primer is that she's a Russian AI who has been periodically contacting the Snowblind characters and trying to help them to some extent. She has been encountered in multiple events and aided characters in making private messages actually private.

Please see this post about Shadownet distribution. These are also characters who currently possess Shadownet. Anyone traveling with these characters will likely be able to read messages on Shadownet through their travel companions. We've found that a copy can be made for a character at the elementary school provided they have an existing copy and the keycard currently held by Ecks, which allows the characters to use the copy machine there.]


Shadownet Access Only
@dulcedeleche
Winter, it's John. I don't know what you did, but whatever it was, thank you. I honestly thought the Admin might be shutting everything down on us. I hope you can get back in contact with us soon and that you're okay. We did find Andromeda. Her body, at least. It's very likely there's a back-up of her elsewhere like you. I'm so sorry, but she was attacked and killed by the cultists. We downloaded some sort of program from her, though. We're trying to get it decrypted. Hopefully, that will happen soon. She gave this to us. Whatever happens when we make it through the bunker, she made it possible for us to keep going. We're going to make it to the center of Norfinbury and we're going to stop this for her and for you. I promise. Bullet points below covering Day 357 through Day 367.

Open to Everyone
This is Dr. Watson. Please find a summary update of recent happenings below. For anyone new, an archive of my previous summaries can be found HERE. I'm available for medical consultation as one of the medics here. Please let me know if you need anything. I'm running an on-again, off-again blood transfusion service for those with severe MN Poisoning. It's only a temporary reprieve from symptoms, but blood transfusions from healthy donors have proven to alleviate MN poisoning symptoms for up to two weeks.

• Every nine-to-eleven days we have new arrivals. The food situation remains stable, as far as I'm aware, but I'm afraid the medical personnel here are no longer able to prescribe medications. The pharmacy may still have repeat prescriptions, though. I have a supply of several varieties of painkillers. If you are in desperate need, please let me know, and I can see if I can get the Admin to deliver the supply to you. Otherwise, I'll need to arrange to leave it somewhere for you to find or meet up with you. If anyone else has medications available, please let us know. We're going to need to pool this resource now more than ever.
  
  
• Day 358, Junpei organized a meet-up for testing blood from a lot of different people under our shared microscope. The hope was that we might be able to see if there are any differences in the blood from people who have been affected by things like the red lines and the loss of their light. To my knowledge, there weren't any notable differences, but it may be a matter of the magnification power on the microscope being insufficient.
  
  
• Day 359, both Peter and Stephen came back from being killed with new memories. Years of them, by the sound of it. This has happened to me and Sherlock, as well as others. I don't know what to make of it. I gained five years the last time this happened and my body hasn't changed at all. It's like the memories just get downloaded into our heads, which, given what we know about how the nanomachines inside are basically us, that's not too far-fetched.
  
  In far less happy news, Ginger and her team found Andromeda's body in the cultist church. She was apparently killed and crucified by them, but I want to emphasize that we've heard from Andromeda before. There is some piece of her still out there, even if her physical body has been destroyed. She might be a back-up or she might well have escaped somehow, before she was killed. That's my sincere hope. Ginger was able to download a program from her body and we're working on getting it decrypted. If you have any programs or skills that could help with this, please let Ginger know.
  
  Also in the church, people found SD cards that show how Samantha, the Prophet, died. I've attached those at the end here. Please be aware that they're extremely brutal and that Samantha is a child.
  
  
• Day 360, Tess rescinded her request for blood sacrifice when she came back to herself. If anyone was taking this seriously, please look at this. That includes Brian Thomas. I'm sorry to report that he attempted to kill Rhys in an effort to sacrifice him for Tess. If you encounter Brian, please be very careful. He has been known to attack others previously while not under the influence of anything here in Norfinbury. I've attached his picture to the end of this message, but briefly, he's a young man in a mask and hoodie who's non-verbal and has some level of severe mental illness related to, I suspect, his physical seizure condition.
  
  In happier news, we also had Kunsel return. He was absent some memories as his death price. For anyone new, this is a fairly common one. When you die and get revived, you temporarily lose something. It might be memories, it might be one of your senses, but it's typically significant.
  
  Alfie also led everyone in a round of joke-telling. I'm sure he'd still be up for hearing some if you'd like to chime in. I think all of us could use a laugh.
  
  
• Day 363, Mr. Mycroft Holmes made an ass of himself asking who ate his finger when we were all trapped in the cells. On a more pertinent point, it does raise the question of what exactly happened down there. A lot of us are missing our memories.
  
  Which Dr. Hannibal Lecter has offered to assist with. Dr. Lecter is a trained psychiatrist who has practiced hypnotherapy before to try to bring out repressed memories. Recent events sidetracked his efforts, but if you'd like to have him attempt to hypnotize you to bring out the memories, please let him know.
  
  
• Day 364, the ADMIN sent out a message that resources were critically low. chaos noted later that day that we seemed to be having a communication issue. Whatever universal translator is in effect now broke. A lot of us speak English, but a number of people don't. I'm not sure what to do if we have this problem again. Maybe for those who don't know English, we can start teaching you now? At least some basic phrases.
  
  Later that night, the ADMIN sent out another message and the network shifted to text-only. I started tasting blood in the back of my throat.
  
  
• Day 365, all the power went out completely and the taste turned into actually coughing up blood.
  
  
• In the morning on Day 366, Winter sent out a message that we were in trouble and she was fixing something, not that any of us could see it at the time she sent it, I think. I don't know what she did, but we're back to where we were because of her.
  
  
• Earlier today (Day 367), Mr. Graham sort of announced that he's returned. To my understanding, he's down in the entrance area. He seems to be somewhat disoriented, so if anyone is in that area, please assist him, if you can. He'll be near the police station, as that's where people revive.
  
  Angel also informed us what was on with the galaxy app that downloaded onto everyone's tablets. Apparently that's from the program that was downloaded from Andromeda's body and it contains some sort of key. The key also downloaded a video file that showed Andromeda's death. That's been included as an attachment below.

New SD Cards

• Sam #1
  
• Sam #2
  
• Sam #3
  
• Sam #4
  
• Sam #5
  
• Sam #6
  
• Andromeda #1

Brian Thomas
[Attached to the end of the message is a photo of Brian that John obtained when he asked for photos of everyone during the red lines event. It shows a person in a hoodie with a black ski mask that has a red frowny face drawn on it.]

Comments

Text: @hexappeal

[sleight_of_fate]

I don't think there's anything left of Andromeda in the church

I did her funeral. Got stabbed. That's it.

[It takes him a minute to to the math.]

361. Night.

[jumpthegun]

[Christ.]

I'm taking it you're okay? It didn't stab you in the same place, did it?

[sleight_of_fate]

Yeah. Same place. Just under he ribs, missed the vitals. Same tool. Icepick or sharp chisel or screwdriver.

[Coughing had sucked. But not nearly as much as the "I old you so" would.]

Have it on tape but didn't post it cause I didn't want to upset Ginger.

@magenta2; text

[himalayanyeti]

POST POST POST I WANT TO SEE

@hexappeal, text

[sleight_of_fate]

Dude. It was a nice funeral UNTIL I GOT STABBED. There's a lot of distortion, too.

[He likes you Magenta but whyyy]

[himalayanyeti]

fine be that way

if youre not gonna show me i guess ill have to never talk to you again in my whole lifetime

[sleight_of_fate]

You know the way things are going that could be, like. A week.

And I'll show you but I'm just saying, it's not that interesting until I get stabbed.

[himalayanyeti]

get off my ass i havent died in months

and i want to see anyways. i want to see the body

2/2

[himalayanyeti]

also sorry you got stabbed whatever

[jumpthegun]

Setting aside Magenta being Magenta, it might be helpful. Ginger, it's best that you not look at this. I don't know what kind of help it might be, but there are people here who can maybe make something more of it.

[sleight_of_fate]

There was a lot of distortion but I'll post it if you give me a few minutes.

Was a lot like the high school.

[Lesson learned: empty houses are probably safe, like that first one, but no more rituals in the cultist-controlled places.]

[jumpthegun]

Thanks, that is appreciated. I think we've definitely learned enough to know that rituals in the cultists places probably aren't a good idea. Here's hoping the way ahead's less trouble.

[sleight_of_fate]

Yeah. As much as it makes people feel better, we've got to focus our energy on the endgame. Lights out scared the fuck out of me, but things are happening faster. If we've got a chance, it's gotta be soon.

[He hopes they have a chance. Even as ruined as he is, he doesn't particularly want it all to end here.]

[jumpthegun]

[If they have a chance it had better be soon. John doesn't know how much more some people's sanity can take, including his own.]

Thanks for trying, at least. I'm sure there are a lot of people who appreciated it, including Winter. Andromeda deserved to have some words said.

[sleight_of_fate]

Didn't have a chance to clean it up or anything, but posted it here.

It does have me wondering if the cult had an "official" weapon now, the way druids used sickles and the meso-American religions used obsidian clubs. But don't think that has much bearing on the big picture, just trivia at this point.

[jumpthegun]

An invisible weapon is a bit important. Makes me think of those cloak things that killed people. Quantum dagger, maybe. That'd be... a problem with trying to find any sort of defense.

[sleight_of_fate]

The attacks are pretty specifically not fatal, though, which is something.

Unless I'm really that lucky that it didn't hit a lung or liver. The theory I keep hearing is that we're doing it to ourselves with the nanites, but it could be modeled on this place's history, like everything else.

[jumpthegun]

Maybe. I'm not sure that really holds for those cloaks, though. But we don't have video footage from the Admin for it. So... not really sure about that. Maybe try sending your footage directly to the Admin and asking her if she can identify some sort of issue with your nanomachines at that time?

[howdull]

If you could take photographs of the wound in close up, that would be appreciated.

[sleight_of_fate]

[Oh. Hi, Sherlock. It's a reasonable request, so Rhys frowns slightly but nods.]

Yeah. Sure, just give me a few minutes to get the bandages off.

[Shortly after, Sherlock will receive a bunch of photos of Rhys's lower right torso, with a black moth tattoo and a string of blackberry vines. Between them is a raw but healing stab wound that appears to have been made with something long and sharp, like a very large icepick, maybe a sharpened chisel. He sends shots of a couple of angles- he's clearly had some experience with forensics.

For comparison, Rhys also includes pictures of the pink, healing scar on his upper chest. It looks like it was made with the same tool but is a couple of months old now.]

[howdull]

[At least someone here knows how to acquiesce to sensible requests without making a big song and dance about it, that's good. He leans in and examines the photographs of both the current wound and the scar.]

What were you doing when you received the older of the two wounds?

[sleight_of_fate]

[Don't get too comfortable with it, Sherlock. Rhys still remembers you got buddy-buddy with his demon and he's not exactly comfortable with it.]

There's video of it on the network, but I was doing a prayer for battle to my patron deity in the high school to try and piss the ghosts off. It worked.

That was day 298. Beckett got stabbed, too.

[howdull]

[The demon was way more pragmatic when it came to experiments and morality, he prefers the demon.]

Have you attempted to perform ceremonies in a variety of different religions, to see if they garner different reactions?

[sleight_of_fate]

[The demon is easy to deal with as long as you're going along with what it wants. It will also throw you under the bus as soon as things stop going its way. Or when it gets bored.]

I think this is a pretty good sample so far, that both a war ritual and a non-antagonistic ritual got the same response. The Cult are zeslots and as long as it's heresy, it's met with violence.

[There's only so many resourses he wants to put into this.]

There's only so many times I'm willing to get stabbed for this particular line of research. I'm fairly sure that a few Hail Marys and Our Fathers would get similar results, though.

[howdull]

It might be worth researching, to see if the manner of attack or ferocity changes with different religions. Some might be more offensive than others to the consciousness of the Prophet cultists.

[He pauses for a second, and then tacks on a belated and rather bored:]

Of course I'm not suggesting that you put yourself in danger.