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

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

[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

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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

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.

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?

Huh. Maybe. I have the footage from the high school, too, can't hurt. There's a lot of distortion on camera around the time of the stabbing. If this was home, I'd put my money on normal ghost activity, honestly. I've been scratched, bitten, pushed, groped, you name it by invisible shit before. It causes static and temperature shift because ghosts draw energy from around them and put off their own field of distortion. Making the TV fuzz out, that kind of thing. But things are a little different here.

Is there... 'abnormal' ghost activity where you're from?

Demonic activity. Elementals. Outsiders. All things that are a lot more dangerous than ghosts and in some cases can fuck you up just by looking at them. Kinda like ghosts with more holes in reality and swarms of otherwordly organ-eating flies.

[And all things that creep him out just to talk about.]

This stuff all seems to be more...I don't know, tech-oriented? And I don't know much about that. I mean, my cell phone catches fire at least once a year and I'm clueless except for checking my email and Googling shit, so I'm the wrong person to talk to about that.]

[Fair enough. Neither of them are particularly tech savvy here. John leaves that to Sherlock or his contacts.]

Right. Remind me never to visit your universe with anything electronic that I like, mate.

Well to be fair most of the world is fine, it's just people with strong magical ability that suck with electronics. Also people who are jinxed by death/fate/war/magic goddesses but that's a long story. Let's just say I was born under a bad sign and that probably explains a lot about me.

[John puts zero stock in zodiac nonsense, but he does have to ask...]

So, is this where I ask if you're an Aries or if you were born in the Year of the Dog, too?

[The funny thing is, Rhys doesn't put a lot of stock in it either, except for it being entertaining. And in his case at least, accurate enough that he's got his sign tattooed on his foot.

But other than that, it's mostly just bunk.]

Libra, actually. Happy go lucky idiot that's everyone's mom-frirnd didn't give it away?

I know Gemini's the twins and Aries is a ram, mate. That's about all I know. Is Libra... the scales?

Yep. The scales.

September birthday. Artistic, social, and fussy as hell. We're basically the cheerful tramps of the zodiac.

Pretty accurate in my case, at least.

September? [There's a pause as John checks his notes.] What day in September? It should be... September 15th-ish now based on what Captain Rogers worked out for the dates ages ago.

...You know, it's not like I've celebrated much in the past few years, but...

I'm gonna be thirty-four on the 28th. I'm not sure what year everyone else is from, but I was born in 1983.

Happy early birthday, mate. Anything I can get you? I've got a lot of snow on offer.

"Well there's the snow, that hasn't got much snow in it", right?

[He might have caught a few episodes of Monty Python on late night with Carter. Just a few.]

Don't worry too much about it. It's been a few years since I've bothered celebrating with anything that didn't nearly land me in the hospital, so maybe taking a break from it isn't such a bad idea.

Unless you get your hands on some extra paper, though? That I could use. Or pens or pencils.

Drawing again has been good for me. Helps the cravings.

I have got some sticks of charcoal, if those'd be of interest. 'Fraid I'm using the only paper I've been able to find here for a journal.

[Some people draw, others write.

'Not that you've been writing much in that lately,' Mary points out.

John ignores her.]

Glad to hear you've found something to help, though. That's the best way to handle it when you're starting out. Transfer the attention to something healthy.

I've got charcoal and chalk, it doesn't take on regular paper very well, though. They can be set with hairspray, but it's a lot of hassle just to sketch.

Pens are the best bet for trying to draw on the go. I've got quite a few colors now.

[He should not be this pleased about office supplies, but he is.]

Yeah, I.

[He pauses, rubbing his stubbly jaw, because this is weird and crazy but it all feels very far away right now.]

Before the tablets went down, I was writing to my ex-girlfriend. The one that's still alive but hates me. Even knowing she'll never see it, and knowing she'd just give me hell if she did, but it was something. I don't know.

But drawing is good. It's something that makes sense, it's "someplace else" for a little while.

Writing to someone you care about is... a good way to pass the time. [It's a healthier way than hallucinating them and holding conversations, certainly.

'If you cared about the healthier way to deal with your problems, I wouldn't be here, John Watson.']

I'll see if I can find anything. We're heading to the bunker area soon. Probably gonna pick up the microscope along the way. See about maybe having a look at your mold, then.

[It's funny how used to ghosts you get, when you're both a haunted soul and an addict. Even spirits that should that have moved on stay with you, a tangle of white dresses, cool fingers and the bitter stink of marigolds to remind you of both your angels and your devils.

But talking, and letters, help keep the ghosts at bay.]

If you do that, let me know and I'll be happy to meet you with a sample. People are starting to show up here and I think we're gonna have to rotate a few out. Between cabin fever and anomaly risk, it'll be a good time for me to make a food run and get a break from the crowd.

Hopefully, the anomalies won't be able to get into that bunker. I don't like the idea of dealing with them in an enclosed space. Not sure if it's the nanomachines inside of us or the buildings themselves that cause the Cabin Fever, either.

But sure, I'll let you know. Keep warm, Rhys. Talk to you soon.

Yeah. We'll just have to see. There's not enough room to move in there, and too much of the mold, well.

[They'd already gone through that with what happened to Cas. There's not far to run.]

I'll see you soon, then. Good luck.

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

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Cw: drug use, cravings

cw: drug use, cravings

cw: drug use, cravings

cw: drug use, cravings

Cw: drugs, cravings

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