[network/open] Receipts 2

[thedoctorsmate]

Who: Donna Noble
Username: supertemp
Warnings: character death, animal (rat) death, arson, hypersomnia, pica

((ooc: Everyone please feel free to threadjack around, have your characters respond to each other, rather than Donna! Her suggested groupings for different phenomenon may not be ICly correct, so please feel free to have your character correct/debate her on anything. She has also missed some events/happenings that she wasn't paying attention to or present for, so please feel free to fill in the gaps!))

Hello and welcome if you're new to Gloucester! If you're not, this is the second one of these I'm doing and we're making a bit cleaner. I've put the full notes I have in an attachment to this post. I'll just be updating with new stuff I've added for the most recent months and requesting everyone fill me in on details from recent months so I can add them to the guide for new arrivals. If you've got an idea what powers they're associated with, I'd love to hear it.

Also, there are notes here referencing Garner Cinderbrook. I'm broken up to bloody pieces about him dying. Wouldn't mind hearing about him from anyone else, if you knew him.

[Everyone will find SuperGuide.txt attached.]

A Guide to Supernatural Phenomenon in Gloucester - It's Kind of Awful

The most important place to know in town is Dogtown, a big park to the north in the city, surrounded by a fence. A LOT of weird phenomena seems to start there. Never enter alone, and try to keep people unaffiliated with ADI out. The place is getting weirder and more deadly by the day. Below, you'll find a header for each of the Entities. I've tried to group encounters with different phenomenon (and avatars) under a specific Entity header. Some of them are more debatable than others. Everything's subject to change with a greater understanding, and I'll be updating this regularly with new info. Phenomenon are listed in the order of the date we encountered it.

New in September:

Desolation

• The avatar Pyre may be back on his way to Gloucester. Or at least some sort of Desolation avatar who wants to circle around the area. Jaeger did some digging into recent news reports and found that there's a new trend of 'fire shots' going around that are causing fires. He's seen a few photos and has been able to track someone in a specific jacket heading toward Gloucester. It's not the same person every time, but the jacket seems to be the same.

End

• Ava's graveyard music came back. Same effects as the year before, but people ended up going into full-on comas this time.

Spiral

• Garner had a previous conversation with Fenix Down (avatar for the Desolation) who said that some drawing by M.C. Escher was actually a cursed object that had hallucination-type effects. The tearabouts of the drawing are currently unknown. Possibly tied to a recent sale of an Escher art piece to some rich guy in California.

New in October:

End

• A few people went to investigate the Better Loaf Than Never bakery, which has been selling tombstone bread. Cortana found that a few rats she fed the bread to died a few days after eating it. She thinks they probably died of fear. Given what we saw later in the month with the place becoming weird and the owner locking himself into the bakery to keep baking... yeah. That bread was cursed.
  
• ADI brought in a specialist from Copernicus to train everyone on lucid dreaming in an effort to combat Ava. This time, the dreams seem to have been focused around turning people into avatars and experiencing the power can comes with inflicting nightmares on people. And probably killing them. Yelena was able to figure out that Ava was probably a girl named Amber from Wolf Trap, VA. The sleep attacks like we've seen started ten years ago after Amber was the only survivor of a house fire. When we finally encountered Ava/Amber in dreams people were able to pull her out of the dreams and discover she was actually a young woman. She killed Garner. ADI killed her.

New in November:

Flesh

• People have been eating weird things. Like, dangerously weird. Don't eat weird things. I caught Jessica in Admin trying to eat her stapler. She told me it was a croissant. Please stop eating anything you didn't get from a vending machine or someone in the canteen.

Comments

[thedoctorsmate]

You're right.
It's just hard.
I'll try to think of something... else.
Maybe we can't do charity work with our names attached so well, but there are other ways about it.
Leaving things outside shops or in places where they'll be found by people who need them.
And just trying to help the people who'd turned up here.

[bloodalwaystells]

As odd as it is, we have formed something of a community among ourselves. We can't rely on ADI or the world outside, so it makes sense to do what we can with what we do have. As much, or as little, in common as we have.

It is hard. I admit, I'm used to fighting, more than anything. Improving things in other ways? I'm still learning. Taking the guidance of others. Gloucester seems to need the help badly, though, so it may be just as well that we're here.

[thedoctorsmate]

I'm just we're the ones causing half the problems by being here.
The supernatural side of things, anyway.
I get being used to fighting and doing things, though.
This is the longest I've been stuck in one place for ages.
Used to hopping around wherever and whenever I want.
The Doctor's not one for sticking around places.
More of a pop in, pop out.
So this... this sitting and not really having the power or resources to fix the systemic things?
That's hellish.
Easy to stop one big disaster.
Harder to stop a whole bunch of smaller things that've built up over decades.
Like that ritual?
Stopping that felt good.
Just doesn't come along often and it doesn't actually fix the underlying problem, does it?

[bloodalwaystells]

We didn't ask for this. Whatever brought us here, we didn't get much of a choice and we can only do as much as we can with the circumstances. It *is* a difficult situation...feeling that lack of control and the scale of the things we deal with.

I suppose I'm the wrong person to talk to, though. For me...I don't know. I'm used to thriving on whatever mission is in front of me, of continually moving. Not literally, though there has been some of that, but...focus on what is there, what there is to solve. Or fight.

It's what comes in between that's difficult for me.

[thedoctorsmate]

That's the same way for the Doctor, I think.
He can go whenever or wherever he wants, so he calls anything else the 'slow path.'
It's not like a disparagement.
Some people are just wired to be running around at a pace.
The stuff in between it all's the hardest.
Like a bit of both, myself, at least when I can manage it.
Knowing there are people and things out there who could help and not being able to reach them.
I think that's it.
That's my biggest problem.
But I'm glad I've got some people to talk to.
Yourself included, Jaeger.

[bloodalwaystells]

We do the best we can. I don't think learning to slow down is a bad thing, either, because constant awareness, constant motion takes a toll. There's a balance somewhere.
Even if this place isn't always conducive to it.
And thank you, I appreciate it. I'm not always the best at communicating, at sharing thoughts, but I'm better than I used to be. I spent a lot of time very isolated in some ways, and I'm trying to get past that mindset.
But it's funny how it's the quiet times that feel so unreal.

[thedoctorsmate]

Well, if you ever need to talk about it, I've got a better way to do it than over the network.
Cuppa tea round mine?
Door's open for you.

[bloodalwaystells]

I think I would like that, yes. Even just company, sometimes, something that's not all work.

Although I'm happy to do that, too, if you ever need thoughts on what you've put together, or to compare notes on new developments.

[thedoctorsmate]

Thanks, Jaeger.
We'll talk soon, I'm sure.
For this or something else.

[bloodalwaystells]

I'm sure, and I'd be happy to take you up on that tea. Sometime soon, we'll work it out.