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OOC INFORMATION


Player Name: Hats
Are you over 18?: Twice that
Contact: [plurk.com profile] TheHats, thehats#2119 on Discord
Other Characters in Game: None

IC INFORMATION

Character Name: Jonathan Sims, The Archivist
Canon: The Magnus Archive
Canon Point: Season 4, mid-Episode 160
Background: Wiki Link


Suitability:
Jon's got a birdie on his shoulder compelling him to find out more about this new place – he can't help it. If he stops learning, it physically hurts. He'll be worried about Martin (and literally everyone he knows), but as far as he knows, being removed from his Earth is actually protecting it. He just learned, after all, that he was made to be the catalyst of an apocalypse. And the Entities aren't nearly so close to breaking through here. So maybe this will be okay. Maybe he can do something good, out from under Jonah Magnus's schemes.
He'd not be thrilled to study anything about old gods, but his powers might not give him that choice. He'd be much more eager to see if he can do anything to help cure a plague or map someplace. Mapping feels... safe. (Sure, Jon)

Powers:

  • Knowing: As the Archivist, Avatar of the Eye, Jon is able to draw on all concrete knowledge. It frequently happens unbidden, though he can stop it with effort. He cannot unKnow anything he knows. Trying to purposefully Know a specific thing is sometimes painful, especially if it is something a greater power is planning. This power does not predict the future, though it can see which events are unavoidable. It cannot always account for the human element. It includes understanding of any language known on Earth / anywhere the Eye is present. (The Eye, a powerful entity made of the Fear of Being Watched, is always present where the Archivist is.)

  • Compulsion: The Archivist can compel others to give involved, coherent, true, and complete answers to his questioning, either specific or broad. People with power or connections to power of their own may be able to resist. Some who are compelled are aware of the compulsion, many are not. This power also works against himself. Many who have been compelled to recount events to Jon relive those events in their dreams afterwards, seeing him there. Jon may also see these dreams. (Tape recorders often appear just before Jon compels a statement. They are not of his own power, but inextricably linked.) Under certain circumstances, this compulsion can work on questions simply asked in his presence by anyone, even if he's unaware. He can be said to be addicted to using this power; going without can leave him weak and tired, and sudden urges can force him to stop what he's doing and read, recite, or compel a statement.

  • Healing: The Archivist rapidly heals from injuries, even lethal ones. He survived an explosion point blank, although he spent six months in a suspended state afterwards, physically dead but dreaming vividly. He heals faster if he has recently “fed” the Eye by either compelling a statement from someone, or reading aloud a previously given statement. "Feed [your god]... or it will feed on you."

  • Focusing the Eye: Unlikely to apply to this game. Jon can force the focus of the Eye onto an entity. If their existence depends on fear, then being Known by the Eye can destroy them.

  • The Eye: The Eye is not one of Jon's powers, but it is the source of all of them, so it bears mention here. The Eye (aka Beholding, aka The Ceaseless Watcher, aka It Knows You) is a manifestation of the fear of being watched, followed, or exposed, and the drive to know and understand without safe limits. It is one of several entities of fear, reality-adjacent forces which act upon the world via avatars like the Archivist.



PERSONALITY QUESTIONS

Describe an important event in your character's life and how it impacted them.

When Jon was eight, his grandmother, who he lived with, gave him a book. It was really too young for him, an illustrated children's book when he was already reading novels and biographies, but something about A Guest for Mr. Spider drew him. Maybe it was the strange black-white-red art, more grotesque than cute.

“A violence seemed to ooze from it, sticky and pungent. I had no idea what was inside, but I knew that I hated that book. And I knew that wasn’t going to stop me opening it.”

The book, which was contaminated by an entity of fear, would have led to Jon's death but for the interference of his childhood bully, a neighborhood teenager twice his age who stole the book at the critical moment and was ensnared by it instead. As Jon followed him, compelled to try to get the book back, he watched the bully walk, puppet-like, to a strange part of town, knock on a door, and be trapped in webs and snatched inside by “two impossibly long limbs, bony and covered in coarse black hair.”

It was the first step of Jon's enmeshment in the supernatural, his involvement with the Entities that shape the world. It made him a believer, and that made him afraid, which shapes the way he holds everything at arm's reach. For a long time, he wrapped himself in a protective layer of skepticism bordering on contempt, but more recent events have pried him out of that shell.

He also has, from the age of eight, blamed himself for that boy's presumed death. That kept him from letting people close for a long time, reluctant to ask for help and expose anyone else to danger. It took several more deaths to show him the folly of that, and maybe he'll never lose the habit completely.

Does your character have a moral code, or other set of standards they try to live by?

Jon wants to save the world. He's not excited about it, wishes it were literally anyone else put in the position to do so, but that's what he strives for. Since he was eight, he's known that there are powerful, dangerous forces in the world, and he's felt a personal responsibility to at least know about them, because only by knowing can anything be done, can anyone be protected, can any harm be prevented. He's not content to just try and live a harmless life himself – his view is that once you know about evil, it is your personal responsibility to fight it. He's not perfect and knows it – he's fallen into the trap of false justifications for behaviors that made his life easier at the time before – but he corrects his flaws and misconceptions when he finds them, apologizes when it will help, and is quick to make sacrifices he believes will help others.

What quality or qualities do they admire most?

Jon admires courage. Not recklessness or bravado – he doesn't find anything to admire in people who risk themselves or especially others. But he admires courage in the face of one's fear, and especially the kind that tries to foster that courage in others. The kind of courage that whistles in a storm, not because the wind is not terrible or the lightning not lethal, but because other people might need to hear it, to follow that sound home.

(Martin. He admires Martin.)

Do they have a part of themselves they dislike?

All of it? Jon doesn't think he's worth very much.

Isolating – People are hard. He wishes he had the energy to be outgoing, but also misses the days when he could fade into the back of a crowd or retreat into his work. He tends to retreat inwards when things get dangerous, when choices get hard. He knows this is dangerous and counterproductive, but he can't help it.
Negative – Jon envies optimists. He does not see himself as one. He's wrong, again.
Stubborn – A side-effect of having a greater power pour the facts into your head is when you have all (or allegedly all) of the objective data and make a decision based on that, it's very difficult to alter that decision due to subjective data.
Evasive – He lies to protect people around him. He knows better, but he does it anyway.
Coward – Jon is afraid of so, so many things. He sees the fear as a weakness, even though he has a strong track record of doing the right, brave thing regardless.
Untrustworthy – He literally gave up his humanity. He did it for reasons both self-serving (not dying) and selfless (stop the end of the world), but he knows the choice made him a monster in a literal sense. He does not trust that his decisions are right, and not serving the Eye.
Rude – He uses a wall of sarcasm and snark to hide behind. Fear, mostly, but also softer emotions that he'd rather let out if he weren't also afraid of them.
Evil – He's not. But he's certain that he will become so, if he just slips once.

What is their sign, and why?

The High Priestess. The Hanged Man was also an option, but with the Eye in play, the Priestess fit better. Jon's existence circles around the seeking of knowledge, observing everything, recording and preserving that knowledge.

SAMPLES & ARRIVAL

Samples: Top Level with Multiple Threads

Arrival Scenario: Honored Guest

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