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Lev gets eaten by a monster because I don't know anything about the magnus archives
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"Yep!"

The list, when they're done, looks like this:

Embodied

-Doppelganger
-Mary Keay
-Jane Prentiss

Partially Embodied

-Anglerfish
-Breekon and Hope deliverypeople

Unembodied

-Spirit of War
-[DATA EXPUNGED]

Artefact

-Coffin
-Dead tree
-Leitner book
-Graham's table

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In the next week, he finds three more non-digitizable statements, alongside thirty or so; all three of them are suggestive of being genuine.

The first statement is by Julia Montauk in 2002, regarding her father, the well-known serial killer Robert Montauk. When she was a seven, she awoke to sudden noises; when she went downstairs to investigate them, she saw that the back door was open and her mother's silver pendant with a closed eye design was on the table. When her father saw it, he became very concerned, though it was later found that he never filed a police report. After that, throughout her childhood, the lightbulbs would periodically break, and dirty water would come from the tap. He began to spend a lot of time in his shed, and seemed to always be injured; one night, when he thought she was sleeping, he whispered a promise that “it wouldn’t get [her] too”. A man named Rayner called the house; when he did, Robert visibly paled, and became angry, saying "No, not already. Do it yourself." After a long conversation, he agreed to whatever Rayner wanted, and spent the rest of the day in his shed. He also developed an obsession with film photography, but always kept his darkroom locked. Once, when Julia noticed that it was unlocked, she sneaked in to see what was there: photographs of corpses, with strange symbols drawn on them. She speculates that these may have been her father's victims, but they didn't match any of the photos the police showed her. She told him what she had seen, and he gave her a long hug and told her that it would be over soon before leaving the house. That night, at 2:47a.m., the streetlights all began failing: faraway ones at first, then closer and closer, until the lights inside their house broke as well. Someone began knocking on her door, at first politely but then devolving into thumps and growls; she called the police. After telling the police her location, the door broke, and she ran out the back door into the darkness. It seemed to envelop her entirely until she saw a strange blue light from the shed. She opened the door of the shed to see her father, standing over a corpse and glowing, holding the man's still-beating heart and chanting. The dead man wore the same closed eye pendant as her mother. The walls were covered with jars, each containing a preserved heart. Before she could react, her father plunged a dagger into the man's heart, and the glow and darkness both vanished. The police, responding to Julia's call, discovered Robert Montauk's shed. Follow-up research shows that the symbol on the pendant is that of the People's Church of the Divine Host, a cult headed by Maxwell Rayner. It also establishes that Robert Montauk died in prison after being stabbed 47 times, with no suspected culprit, weapon, or other evidence, right after the lightbulb in his cell broke.

The second statement is by Trevor Herbert in 2010, who claims to have killed multiple vampires as well as one human who he mistook for a vampire. These vampires do not appear to create more of their kind through feeding; they also do not speak, but are able to make themselves known through unclear means; if not actively paying attention, people interacting with them do not notice that they are communicating through anything other than the normal method. They seem to avoid direct sunlight if possible, and may be somewhat weaker in it, but are not truly harmed by it. Their primary sense is smell. They have sharp teeth, and catch fire with extreme ease, burning so completely as to leave nothing behind. For the time of his encounter with at least one of the vampires he encountered, he was on heroin; the vampire tried to bite him but reacted very negatively to the heroin. Trevor Herbert notes that he believes that vampires are very rare, and feed only infrequently. The statement seems to end abruptly; Martin mentions that this is because Trevor, who at this point had late-stage lung cancer, took a break from writing the statement and died before in the Institute before he could finish it or get medical care. There is a photocopy of a bag of teeth, which are similar to shark teeth; according to correspondence with the zoology department of King's College, the teeth do not match any known species. If Lev tries to find the bag of teeth, he will learn that they were requested by local law enforcement, and the Institute complied with this request.

The third statement is by Lesere Saraki, given in 2012, about her experience working the night shift at St. Thomas Hospital on 23rd December 2011. At about 1:30, the ambulance arrived with two unconscious burn victims. The burns were second-degree, which is not typically severe enough to require hospitalization, but these burns were unusual. In the first patient, they covered his entire body, including beneath his undamaged clothes. The same was true of the second patient, except that the burns stopped at a clean line on his neck; at every joint, he had small, tattooed eyes. The skin around each tattoo was entirely unburnt. The first man had nothing on him; the second had a zippo lighter with an eye design, a brass pendant with an eye design, a small book bound in red leather, and a passport identifying him as Gerard Keay. Later, the first man began to chant quietly but intently in various languages, without waking up; in English, the words were 'the lightless flame'. Lesere Saraki returned to the reception area of A&E; it was entirely empty, including of staff, despite the fact that five minutes ago there had been thirty people waiting and a full team behind the admissions desk. Freaked out, she checked the other areas; all patients that were not unconscious or too sick/injured to move had also left. Back in the waiting room, there was a strange noise; when she looked around, she saw that the vending machine was shaking. As she got closer, she saw why: every drink in it was boiling, exploding their bottles and collecting at the bottom. She then tried to leave the hospital, but the metal handle of the door was also intensely hot. She searched for another exit, but as she did, she heard that the first patient's chanting had gotten much louder. Going into his room, she saw that his eyes were now open. She tried to put her hand over his mouth, but Gerard Keay, now walking, grabbed her arm and shook his head. He was strong, despite the bandages on his hand, and he radiated heat. She screamed; he apologized, saying that touching the man would have been bad and that he wanted to protect her. He asked for the pendant and the book; as she got them, the saline solution in the IVs began to boil. Lesere delivered the book, and Gerard nodded in appreciation, saying, “Yes. For you, better beholding than the lightless flame.” Lesere left the room again, but this time the hospital was once again full of people, and the heat was gone. Gerard was back in his bed, sleeping, as was the other man. The other man was later identified as Chris Parker; after a short recovery time, both he and Gerard were discharged from the hospital. In the follow-up research, Sasha gained access to the hospital's CCTV footage. At 03:11:22, it shows all 28 people in the waiting room standing up and calmly filing out of the doors; over the next 15 minutes, Lesere Saraki enters and leaves the waiting room three times; at 03:27:12, the 28 people walk calmly back in. Sasha also noticed that at 03:22:52, the feed cuts out for a single frame, and is replaced with a close-up of a human eye looking directly into the camera.

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Lev eats lunch with Martin every day that week! They hug when they're at lunch. It's extremely good.

He sleeps with the light on. It makes him feel safer.

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His lightbulbs don’t break, and nothing disturbs his sleep. Or his work, for that matter, except for Tim occasionally pointing out a typo. Everything seems to be continuing normally.

Martin holds Lev very close when they hug and always hesitates a moment before letting go. 

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"Gerard Keay showed up again in a non-digitizable," Lev says.

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“Does the statement have any connection to the other one, do you think? I mean, other than Gerard Keay, obviously he’s a connection.”

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"Unclear! Could be, or it could be that Gerard Keay is just... generally being helpful about supernatural things? He's the most consistently benevolent person in any statement so far. --Except for maybe murdering Mary Keay, I guess."

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“Maybe she deserved it?” Weak laugh. 

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"Yeah, it seems like there are a lot of generally benevolent reasons to kill someone actually. --I guess also he has small tattooed eyes at every one of his joints and an eye pendant, which might be connected to the People's Church of the Divine Host from the previous statement, which would also point against him being benevolent."

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“Yeah. ...Didn’t the People’s Church have a closed eye as their symbol? Might still be a connection, but.” He shrugs. 

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"Unfortunately the statement givers didn't include, like, drawings of the designs, so we can't know. But it's at least possible. And certainly all of Gerard Keay's actions in the statements seem to be helpful."

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“Yeah. Maybe we should let people know that, if anyone comes in with a statement about Gerard Keay, we’re interested in talking to them? ...Might be a good idea to do that for anyone who comes in with a non-digitizable statement, really.”

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"We can make a list. Gerard Keay, Breekon and Hope, the People's Church of the Divine Host..."

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“...Plus anything in our, uh, ‘monster manual’? It won’t catch new real statements that don’t mention something we already know about but it’s probably better than nothing. Or we could ask for that and non-digitizable statements, but I don’t know how much work that would be? We don’t get that high a volume of statements, I don’t think, but I guess I don’t know for sure...”

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"I'm not sure how to usefully describe most of the things in the monster manual so they can be distinguished from things that aren't. They're not really monsters that exist in urban legends or myths. Except for, uh, the vampires."

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“Yeah, that’s fair. Definitely makes it harder to figure out which ones might be the same, though, when there’s... no real concept to point at? I don’t know.”

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"Yeah, I'm sort of hoping that if we classify them in some vaguely sensible way and collect more information then natural categories will fall out. Right now it's sort of like trying to figure out biological taxonomy if you've only ever seen a dozen animals."

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“Yeah. So we can just... write up a list of stuff where we might be interested in talking to any statement givers who arrive, and just— send that to Rosie, I guess?”

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"Sounds like a plan. --Not sure if we should add a 'humans' category to the monster manual, but I don't know how else to classify the People's Church. I'd put it under the being they presumably worship but I don't want to assume that their powers come from a being, as opposed to the act of murdering people and collecting preserved hearts or whatever."

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“I mean, I don’t see why not. Gerard Keay can go in that category, too, unless you think he’s actually not human?”

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"The problem is coming up with some sort of principled rule about when humans get to go in the monster manual. Presumably we're not going to put in every statement-giver. If someone shows up in multiple statements they should definitely go in. I guess if they're in one statement and appear to be doing something magic?"

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“That works, yeah, at least for now. What else— do you have any other ideas for things we can do with what we have?”

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"It's sort of hard to do experiments on statements and I'm kind of reluctant to anyway given how often interacting with the supernatural at all results in people being dead. We might want to consider contacting Gerard Keay at some point? And when we have a better taxonomy looking at Artefact Storage and seeing how their stuff fits in? --I guess one thing we could do is try to talk to the Watchful Thing."

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“Well. I guess if it’s watching us anyway?”

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"Yeah. I'm really curious about what it has to say. --And, hey, Chris Parker survived his contact with the lightless flame, whatever that is."

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