Very rarely does anything irritate me, most of the times I tend to block out any distracting thoughts because I am simply too busy with my research. However, if that research is at any point compromised or hindered, that is when I allow myself the occasional feeling of displeasure and in this case it is going to be a written one.
As you may recall, I had finally created a vaccine for the Azoth which manifests within our bodies after we come into contact with Longus Homo and had successfully administered it to a "hollowed" test subject. It seemed to work resulting in the subject's memory loss, wiping it's memory of it's interaction with Longus Homo completely, I say that with confidence because the next step in my research was to keep tabs on the subject, to see if the vaccine may develop some negative side-effects, or if it had worked at all. During my observations the Subject was trying to make their way back home, which is something they wouldn't do if they had remembered what was the reason for them not being at said home to begin with. Over the course of a month I was observing the subject's way back home (The means of said observatory methods I will not divulge), when suddenly their progress was interrupted by unknown people wearing some very expensive equipment, they pulled up in their van and abducted the test subject, making me lose track of them and in the process hindering my research.
However, as annoyed I am at the situation, the implications of this abduction were more severe. What this abduction meant, was that I had finally blipped on their radar and my existence had become very known to them. In this case I figured it would be a good idea to finally reveal a few pieces of information that I had withheld over the course of this blog.
You might not recall how I had begun my research into developing the Vaccine, but it all started here, back when I talked about infiltrating an organization's HQ and acquiring the finger from which I extracted the anti-Azothic properties for the Vaccine. Of course they would attempt to track and pursue me, but unfortunately for them I've refrained myself, or Hannah from revealing anything about the "nature" of our hiding place and I was able to evade them quite effectively. Few years later I would infiltrate one of their bases yet again, this time in search of equipment, all of which was hidden within a loop, this is where I ended up running into a returning Kelevra, from whom they stole his Azothic companion. It was fairly easy to stay off the radar this time, because all their eyes were probably on Kelevra, since out of the two of us he is a far greater danger.
Since then I've tried to talk in relative vagueness when referring to them, trying my best to continue to stay off the radar on their end. I have learned a long time ago, the less you talk about someone, the less they are likely to show up on your doorstep, but I guess that doesn't always work, since this abduction indicated that they were yet again trying to track my movements. In fact, now that I think about it, they might have been trying to track me all along and were just waiting in silence for me to make some kind of breakthrough in my research, where they failed.
Considering all of that, I feel that it is only fair that I introduce them to you, or rather re-introduce since they've been around for quite some time.
The Panopticon started out as a think tank of various corporations and organizations aimed at the extermination of Longus Homo, or at the very least, that's what a lot of their newly employed were told/thought, in reality some version of The Panopticon dates back a long time, to such an extent that I am not aware of the exact year as to when this organization took shape, or even if it was always called "The Panopticon". I am aware that their first documented sighting on the blogs was around 2012, when one of their employees Jack Castel started a blog titled "Don't Let Them Tell Us Stories". Within that blog they ran into a few other bloggers which documented their activities and their methodologies, bloggers like: ProxieHunter and Adam Krug.
What was their methodology exactly? Fairly simple, they reasoned that the best way to battle Longus Homo is to essentially convince people that the entity didn't exist, very clearly following the "Tulpa Effect" principle, also I believe this was an off-shoot off of Jay's research conducted and documented within "Anomalous Data", within which Jay's research led him to using Kainic Acid via injection to the hippocampus, the goal was to cause amnesia within the test subjects making them forget everything about Longus Homo and essentially free them from the creature's hauntings. I personally denounce Jay's research in both it's ineffectiveness and danger levels, but I can not judge, to some extent I even admire Jay and his research, he was arguably the first one to try and find some kind of answers, it's too bad that he happened upon all of this during the early outbreak, there was very little information at that time to go on, nobody was aware of Azoth at that point in time, as well as many other details we are familiar with today.
My guess is that The Panopticon saw this and shifted the research in a different direction, if forgetting wasn't working, then disbelief had to be the key, discredit the monster as nothing more than a hallucination of a delusional mind and it may cease to exist. Their main way of achieving said goal was via abduction, they would abduct people that were running away for their lives and would torture them for months, they would fabricate evidence which they would then present to the abductee's, trying to convince, or rather condition them to believe that everything that had transpired in the abductee's life was logically explainable and in actuality, didn't happen. Such was the case when they abducted ProxieHunter who recounted the experience on his blog: "Other than that they tried tactics similar to those they used on Adam to convince me that my wife had died not at the hands of a Slenderproxie but a simple home invasion. Doctored footage, edited copies of police reports that claim to show no evidence of the scene I recall finding... There was talk of my "psychosis" providing an unanticipated line of mental defense against their program. One of them was talking about moving on to drug enhanced methods or "engaging in the use of other physical stimuli" which I think is scientist for torture." -ProxieHunter (I'm Free) I'm certain you understand the gist of it.
Eventually their activities had seemingly ceased, I am certain that it was due to how much attention they had received after being featured on a few blogs, can't exactly conduct unethical experiments if people are looking. However, prior to their disappearance and my memory loss, I had apparently taken an interest in them and made it a point to keep track of their activities as they went into hiding, it is these documentations that I had conducted prior to my memory loss that had led me to finding out about them housing the source for my Vaccine. Apparently their research was shifting gears yet again, seeing as the two previous methods had failed, a while back Morningstar had asked me what their goal was in the comments of this post, I tried to obfuscate their goal despite knowing full well what the end result of their current research was, as I said, attention is something they don't want and me providing an answer would instantly put me on their radar which I couldn't afford to do.
Apparently it was all for naught as I've stated earlier, so I see no reason to hide their intentions any further. The purpose of their current research, the reason as to why they are carrying out experiments on various servants that they abduct, the reason for their theft of Kelevra's Azothic counterpart and the reason that they are seemingly working on an Azoth vaccine much like myself, is because they are trying to eliminate Longus Homo, by creating a creature of their own that they can control.
As you might guess, a lot of people wouldn't mind having a seemingly mystical weapon at their disposal, so I would assume that the funding is quite generous from various companies, government bodies and individuals.
We'll be laying low for the foreseeable future, if they were able to track me before, they will definitely be trying to track me down now.
