Experimentation Updates

I've received an offer of help from the 'Master Warrior'. This could be interesting, and if what he says is true he may be able to provide me with the proper resources I need, or test subjects.

In actual news, the experiments have not been going too well. I have run across a new problem. After experiment #1's success, I tested further. It has become clear that mental barriers are a very real threat to my work.
Mental barriers are created through intense fear, childhood events, that sort of thing. They're extremely hard to remove, and I didn't believe I had any.
It seems I was wrong.

I have got over their deaths.
I'm not obsessing over this project because of that. There are other reasons too, such as helping other people, so they don't suffer the same fate as they did.

All right, I admit it. It's because of them I'm doing this, and I won't stop. You know this.

But what's the use? More and more Dying Men are reported each day. How can I possibly destroy all the shards? That's just this universe; given Stephen Hawking's research I wouldn't be surprised if there are others. Parallel universes; that would be just my luck.

The use? I need to help them.

The others.

Any others.

The fear must be eradicated.

Experiment #1 - Analysis

Experiment the first is now over.
I did not get quite the results I was hoping for.

Detailed notes shall follow:

Experiment 1 worked around theory as described here, revolving around somehow entering the subconscious mind of the host.
To enter the subconscious in myself, simple self-hypnosis techniques were used. Once in a deep enough trance state, I could turn my focus inwards.

Wandering the mental plane, I found nothing of note.

Conclusion: either theory used is incorrect. Consider revision.
Other option is to persevere, until theory is proven or disproven. Either way will be sufficient.

Morticide

So little to do, so much time to wait around for the experiments to end and a new one to begin.

This isn't matricide... this isn't a mother.
This isn't patricide... this isn't a father.
This isn't infanticide... these are not children.

It is more like deicide... but these shards of a monster are not gods, or if they are, may all that is holy strike them down.
Religion is in the eye of the beholder. When things go well, their gods are praised for it, but when things go wrong they pray to their gods for forgiveness. I just do not see the logic.
No, this isn't deicide. This is morticide. Killing Death.

Sources

I've been researching, using blogs as I mentioned in another post to track Dying Man shards down.

Silvermist - still alive
http://inthefiresofhell.blogspot.co.uk

HELLFIRE - current host is named Estren Saltown, formerly of the Game Master's control. I don't know much about this one, I'll have to look into it more.

The Fear of Humanity - apparently still resides within a host named A. This one is confirmed to be a very dangerous shard, actively mutating the host's body.

The Sleeper - this one is less harmful. It spends more time sleeping in the hosts, on standby as it were. I'll be going for this piece last.

Experiment #1

The experiments I have been attempting have only been partially successful.

Experiment number one focused on a theory about the Fears.

What we fear becomes a Fear.

Fear needs fear to survive.

Throughout history, what folk have feared takes on different appearances. For example, in the Medieval Age, the Bubonic Plague spread. People were terrified of this mysterious unknown disease, because they did not know how to combat it. The doctors would brick up houses of victims to prevent the spread if the disease reached a stage where it was no longer treatable, and wore masks with a beak to filter the 'bad air' that supposedly caused it. Today we have the Fear of disease and plague. He wears a bird beak mask and is known as the Plague Doctor, because this was the one time when all were in terror at disease, even more so than today's HIV and AIDS.

Another example is what is today called EAT. It represents the fear of water, drowning and obsession. This fits equally well in other times as it does today, with our drug addictions and alcohol dependence. Of course, water has been around all this time so no new form has had to be taken. The fear of a vicious predator such as the Rake has been around for many years.

But what of Fears such as the Slender Man? Has his suit changed with the centuries? If you could travel to Ancient Egypt would you find him in a loincloth, or in fancy nobleman dress? Some Fears change with the times, to become what that culture fears the most.

The most interesting part of this theory is that the Fears themselves may have influenced the development of culture. Had an Egyptian looked through a door to the Empty City and striven to replicate its buildings as best they could? Could it, in fact, have been the Empty City guiding humanity’s architectural progress all along?

We may never know. 

So. This is the theory I've been using.

If the Fears are our fears manifest, logically the only way to kill them is to remove those fears.

Most are irrational, such as drowning. It's not likely to happen.

The Dying Man... well, we all die in the end. You'd have thought humanity would be used to it by now.

The hypothesis I'm currently working on is that phobias are stored somewhere in the mind. All you have to do is enter the subconscious, find it, and remove it.

...it's not that easy.

For one, most people don't even know about their own subconscious mind. They only access it when sleeping.

There's a pseudo-Hypnotism method known as NLP, Neuro-Linguistic Programming. I've been using it.

More info later.

Man With A Plan

I have an idea that, if executed correctly, could eventually lead to the destruction of all the shards of the Dying Man.
I'll expand on this idea later after testing it.

Oh, and while I'm on the subject, thank you proxiehunter and Phobos. You have added to my list. Soon we'll see how strong the self proclaimed 'God of Fear' really is.

For now, I have:

• proxiehunter (containing a shard) [whereabout currently unknown]
• Phobos [whereabout currently unknown]
• HELLFIRE [whereabout currently unknown]
• Silvermist [whereabout currently unknown, status currently unknown]
• Grey [whereabout currently unknown]
• The Liar [whereabout currently unknown]
• The Fear of Humanity [whereabout currently unknown]
• Judas [whereabout currently unknown]
• INSANITY [whereabout currently unknown]
• The Coward [whereabout currently unknown]
• The Dethroned Queen [whereabout currently unknown]
• The Sleeper [whereabout currently unknown]

Now this may appear to be a daunting list, with no leads to go on, but it's not. I really do have the Compulsion to thank here, for making some bog their progress online. It'll lead me straight to them.

Even better, if this experiment works, I'll have no need to physically search for them.

Message to all shards of the Dying Man, including but not limited to those in the lost above. I am coming for you, and I will be smiling as I wipe you from this plane of existence. 

What He Did To Me

This is what the Dying Man did to me and my family, written here clearly for the entire world to see.

I was a young man, content with my lot in life, with a happy family. I had a job, I was pulling in enough money to keep my family going. I wasn't rich, but I got by.

I worked as a biologist - that is, I was a scientist studying nature. I also was working on a project that would reveal links between plant chemical effects on the brain and the ancient Druid groves.

I was at the site of an old grove, taking samples, when the unspeakable happened.

Unspeakable, because I do not remember it. All I remember, if I think very, very hard, is the faint memory of pain blazing through my head, and a solid clunk.

When I woke up, I was tied with my hands behind my back. My head was in agony. Of course I panicked.
Of course I could not move.

A man was standing there. He seemed to almost shine with black light, but it was unholy... he felt wrong.

He leaned down and touched a finger to my head. The pain grew even worse, but I felt something else happening.

I felt something else, sharing my skull, something else inside my mind.

I was more terrified then than I have ever been.

I managed to reach, ever so slowly, one of the syringes I'd been filling with dew samples. I used the tips of my fingers to squirt the substance into his face. While he spluttered, I pulled myself to my feet and ran, my hands still tied behind my back.

I felt the entity being torn... ripped in half. I still felt it within me, but it was weakened, dormant.

The man shouted. It was the first time he had spoken. His voice was deep, deeper than could possibly be natural, and I sensed two minds working in concord.
"Stay where you are. Do not move."

I ignored him, and ran like all of Hell's denizens were chasing me. As I reflect on it, it was close to that.

The man made no attempt to follow me. It puzzled me at the time, but when I returned home I realised just why.

My family were dead.
Their bodies were mangled, torn corpses.

My wife was headless, her head staring unblinking from where it rested on top of the television. My son's body I found in the bath, all four limbs hacked off and his eyes put out. They had put him through terrible agony before they killed him.
Worst of all, my daughter. I found her in the kitchen.

She would not speak, although she did not appear harmed.
I opened her mouth and found what made me throw up.

They had forced a glass bottle down her throat. She had choked to death.

There was a piece of paper in the bottle. It read simply:

'Do not continue your research, unless you enjoy coming home to this.'

I have spent the four years since them investigating. I will kill the Dying Man. I don't care if there are fifty thousand pieces; I'll hunt them all down and enjoy every last kill.

Because nobody touches my family.