File 09

Today was one of the longest days I’ve ever experienced. Because it was more than one day. Yes, that’s right, it has been more than one day since I’ve posted here. More around two or three. I can’t remember. Either way, lemme explain how. We decided to ask Mistress about the Plague Doctor. She stated that he lived in the Crumbling Castle in the Middle Ages, but nowadays he’s nowhere to be found. That gave me an idea. I asked if we could borrow the Newborn, and she said we could as long as we didn’t let him out.

Afterwards, Sylvia drove us through the Empty City to the old site of the Crumbling Castle, which was in Germany. I shook the Newborn’s jar a bit. “Hey, kid, you’re made of clockwork, right?” I asked it, staring in it at it. The Newborn nodded. “So you can travel through time, right?” I continued. The Newborn nodded again. I got out of the car. “You can take us back to the Middle Ages, right?” The Newborn gave me a defiant look.

“Look, you have to finish your mission, right?” I asked the Newborn, kneeling down. “You see this?” I put the jar right in front of the right front wheel of the car. “If I tell Sylvia to drive forward, you’ll be dead, understand? Now, will you take us to the Middle Ages or not?” I asked it. The Newborn violently nodded, it’s metal parts rattling in its neck.

Sylvia got out of the car, and I held her hand, which made us both blush a bit. I’ve never had much luck with girls, so this was the first time I ever held a girl’s hand, and it was the first time she could remember. Either way, the Newborn began, and we started moving. The sun and moon began traveling east, and it was speeding up, day, night, day, night, day, night, day, night, day, night, day, moving on and on, blurring between weeks and months and years, and I saw a medieval wooden town come into existance, and a castle built up. I yelled “Stop!” and it did.

We stashed the jar in a bush and went into the town. Night was falling, so we stayed at a tavern. Of course, the people there all thought we were minstrels, and they thought Sylvia was a prostitute because she was wearing a skirt that ended just above the knee and a tanktop. Either way, we spent the night there.

The next day we went up to the Castle. The guards wouldn’t let us in. They found themselves with a knife at their throat and a gun to their head. Sylvia carries a handgun with her at all times………..a Glock 17, if memory serves. Either way, they still refused, so I sliced the one guard’s throat and she shot the other one in the head. We weren’t willing to put up with any bullshit.

Anyways, no one bothered putting down the portcullis or anything, so entry was easy. Now we had to find him. We looked in the throne room, and we saw the decaying corpses of what appeared to be a king and queen. The puddles of vomit on the floor in front of the thrones indicated it may have been disease that killed them, so that was something to go on.

We had to fight our way through more guards, who apparently forgot all about their loyalty to the king and queen…….until we stumbled across a room that had what looked to be dozens of dead guards. The royalty’s loyal ones. As much as I value loyalty, I can understand why the other guards defected to the side of the Doctor. Shit, now it sounds like I’m talking about The Doctor. Goddammit BBC.

Either way, we continued through the castle, scanning for any traces of the Plague Doctor. The courtyard we came across had long straight lines of plain dirt across them. We kept going. Finally, we found him, walking down a hall. We hid and observed him going about his daily life for several hours, until we finally escaped the castle, tired and hungry. We went back to the tavern, got some food, and retired to the shared room. I finally wrote things down.

File 09: The Plague Doctor

Alternate Names: PRE12, Fossil-Type RED DEATH, The Beacon, The Physician King, The King of Illness, Herr Doktor, Tengu, The Beak

Attitude To Humans: Hostile

Control Over: Disease, Infections

The Plague Doctor is indeed a doctor, just a mad one. Any doctor can be a servant to him. Your dentist, The pretty nurse in the hospital, anyone in the medical profession could be trying to infect you with fatal diseases, as is his bidding. The Plague Doctor is a macabre shadow of a previously beneficial breed of doctor, with the same namesake. They went around, attempting to heal those infected by the Black Plague, often dying themselves in the process. He literally is a walking disease. Anything under his long robe that is living shall not be once it comes out the back of the robe. Whether the mask is a mask or his actual face is unknown. He will attempt to infect anyone he gets the chance to. Back in the Middle Ages, he had an entire city of servants, doing his bidding whenever they could. Since they weren’t alerted to our presence being threatening, he didn’t tell them to do anything to us. But I digress and return to the objectivity. His servants are known as Oathbreakers, doctors who have sworn to him. So make sure you know who you’re seeing for that lump on your back. You might not have cancer now, but when you leave the clinic, you might.

The next day, we got the Newborn back and told him to return to just after we left. It took a lot of shaking the jar to get him to comply, but he did. So we took about an hour in reality, but it took us three days. Tomorrow we’re planning on finding the Blind Man. Fun.

~Thompson out.