heartbreaking: (Default)
thomas sutton :: DURHAM ( 1803 ) ([personal profile] heartbreaking) wrote2012-06-27 12:28 pm

ATX: application

    ❶ PLAYER INFORMATION
YOUR NAME: Shaz
OOC JOURNAL: [personal profile] somerset
UNDER 18?: Nope
EMAIL & IM: aim - shiny effin curls ( no rp plurk )
CHARACTERS PLAYED: previously Hotspur ([personal profile] zooms) & Cambridge ([personal profile] sexting)

    ❷ CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME:
    Thomas William Sutton, codenamed Durham. Sometimes goes by the alias Etienne Carré.
CANON:
    Original.
ORIGINAL OR ALT. UNIVERSE:
    The 'default' Order universe, if two-hundred or so years prior to the current date.
CANON POINT:
    Not applicable.
NUMBER:
    025 - rng me up if it's taken, you guys <3 008!

SETTING:
    The Order
    For the past four hundred years the governments of the world - the parliaments, the senates, the kings, queen, emperors, the fascists and the communists, the proletariats and the bourgeosie - have never really been the ones in control of their countries. Orders - clandestine society of superpowered operatives - have worked tirelessly to ensure the smooth running of hundreds of governments throughout the world. Selecting their operatives according to their own agendas the Orders continue to regulate themselves independently of any governmental involvement whilst maximising their involvement in national affairs at the very topmost political levels.

    Each Order assigns its operatives codenames according to various cities within its country and in the UK it's no different: each seat in the Order of Great Britain comes with its own city-related codename and a particular power. The operative assigned the codename St. David's has the role of gifting each new city their superpower and removing it when their time comes to leave. As befits their city, the operative codenamed London is the presiding leader of the Order. With St. David's as their right-hand advisor and the precog Westminster as their left, London has the last word in any decision that the Order makes.

    Things have not always run smoothly for the Order. In times past events have escaped their control and come to light to the British public - from the English civil war to Jack the Ripper, there have been times when disagreements within the Order have threatened to destroy them...


    This is one of those times. [ from the about page - written by moi ]

    The world that Durham comes from is completely indescernible from any other 'normal' earth except for one crucial difference - the existence of superpowered, supersecret organisations called Orders that control the national governments of the world from behind the scenes. In the past they have been mistakenly called illuminati but agencies generally prefer the term the Order. The very word itself suggests just how operatives like to see the work they do: they move silently amongst the politicians and work tirelessly to bring cohesiveness and discipline to governments around the world who are largely otherwise engaged in bitter in-fighting.

    After recruitment each operative is gifted with a certain power that goes with their codename and each Order assigns codenames based on major cities and towns within that country (with the operative with the codename of the capital leading the agency). Each power is carefully assigned to a suitable operative who then goes on to either take a position somewhere in the political and judicial infrastructures of the country or embeds themselves with either the army or the navy - whichever best fits their power.

    The time that Durham comes from is just before what we now know as today as the War of the Third Coalition. Indeed, it's pretty much down to Durham's actions that this war even starts as his defection to France and the creation of the first French Order is what leads to the break down of the Treaty of Amiens. This is a time period of conflict not just between the great empires of Europe but also between opposing worlds of thought: enlightenment against religion and mysticism, Romance against Classicism, and republicanism against royalism. Before Durham's actions, the British Order was the leading Order in the world whilst many other nations - including France and Spain - were purposefully prevented from gaining one.
HISTORY:
    TLDR HISTORY SUMMARY
    ( because this gets kind of long )

    Durham is born Thomas Sutton to a horrible father (Dr. Sutton) and a psychologically abused French mother. He has a twin sister, Jane, who is presumed by his father to suffer the same 'hysterics' as her mother, and thus begins a miserable family life. When Durham's father dies he is sent to learn various gentlemanly things whilst Jane is married off to a horrible vicar who has attitudes much like their father. Thomas uses his mother's French heritage to get in to Paris a lot where he meets an intelligence officer called Cloquet. Thomas is later recruited to the British Order and becomes Durham, the memory manipulator. Because of his French sympathies and a growing dislike for British rule, Durham defects to France and creates the French Order - and in doing so betrays his friend St. David's, a fellow Order member who is tortured in order to bestow the French with their first superpowered agents. Jane is brought to France and takes up her mother's name; Durham resigns himself to exile in France.

    FULL HISTORY - Part One: 1771-1786 onwards
    ( warning for gross 19th century abuse of women stuff )

    As was the way in the 1770s the young Thomas William Sutton was so named after his father, one Dr. Thomas Sutton. Dr. Sutton had been a strict, highly moral fellow and a pillar of the sleepy little Devon village he practised in; when he married Thomas’s mother, a young French woman - Tienette Carré - of a nervous disposition and no good income, it was very much seen to be an act of charity. Perhaps, the villagers reflected, Dr. Sutton had married Tienette to save her from herself – at only nineteen (a good fifteen years younger than the doctor) she already seemed like a frail, damaged young lady. Lacking parents and only having travelled from London to Devon after fruitlessly pursuing a job opening as a French tutor, Tienette had found herself completely at a loss and reluctantly married the doctor for lack of any other prospects. Dr. Sutton would always later emphasise how chivalrous he had been in marrying Tienette, and how likely it would be that she would have fallen through the cracks of society and in to the depths of disrepute. Quite naturally, Tienette resented these less than gallant comments.

    When Tienette gave birth to Thomas – and his twin sister Jane – after what was quite obviously less than nine months after her marriage to the doctor, village gossip began to spread. The marriage, having been built on unstable foundations rather than any real sense of love, was already an unhappy one and in adding in vile rumours of Tienette's sexual history and Dr. Sutton's increasingly hostile attitude to what he thought to be Tienette's ungratefulness the poor woman was at a loss. In addition, what would nowadays be seen as post-natal depression was then thought to be an unnatural hatred of her own offspring and Dr. Sutton was only too quick to diagnose his young wife - now barely twenty years old - as having a 'womanly hysteria'.

    Dr. Sutton's prescriptions were harsh: Tienette was shut away in a distant room in the house, confined to her bed and deprived of any 'overstimulating activities' such as seeing any visitors or even having her window shutters opened. The diagnosis of hysteria - commonly attributed at the time to stem from sexual dissatisfaction - was hardly a complimentary one for the good doctor, who proceeded to lie about his young wife's condition - instead claiming that she suffered from a mild consumption.

    Dr. Sutton's treatment of his wife would later have long-standing effects on Thomas and Jane; the former growing to despise his father, and the latter suffering from Dr. Sutton's damning prognosis that she would grow up 'just like her mother'. Whilst Thomas reluctantly attended his father for an education in mathematics, sciences and Classical studies, his twin sister was locked away from the world with a nurse in case she should develop the same symptoms of 'madness' as her mother.

    It was a glorious stroke of fate that Dr. Sutton curiously contracted consumption, fulfilling a truth of sorts in the very lie he had created. The death of the doctor freed the young Thomas - then fifteen years old - from suffering the presence of his much-hated father and he was whisked away to continue his education with an old friend of the family... but his mother and sister continued to live their lives branded by Dr. Sutton's prognosis. No longer being 'cared' for by Dr. Sutton, Jane was moved to the care of a local convent whilst Tienette was removed from the Sutton household and simply disappeared. Both Thomas and Jane were told that she had returned to France but neither were told anything further than that.

    Part Two: 1786-1793
    The family friend - a politician and local Member of Parliament - that took Thomas in treated the young boy - now becoming a man - as one of the family. This was in stark contrast to how Jane was treated: closeted away in a convent and forgotten by everyone except her twin brother. Thomas and Jane would write to each other often, and it was only through these letters that Thomas was informed some years later that through the contrivances of the convent (and the quickly dwindling funds that the late Dr. Sutton had bequethed them to pay for Jane's board) Jane was to be reluctantly married to a local vicar. Whilst upset by the development (and the fear that his sister would be condemned to the same kind of unhappy marriage as their mother) Thomas was in no place to stop it. His tutelage under the politician was coming to an end and soon after his sister's wedding he journeyed to London to begin works as a clerk in the Houses of Parliament.

    Thomas's part-French heritage - and his natural ability to comfortably speak the language as easily as it were English - meant he was completely wasted working as a lowly clerk, and after less than a year he was being roped in to a newly formed intelligence branch to monitor happenings in France - now in the depths of revolutionary turmoil - and the French expatriate community in London. His work took him to secretly cross the Channel and journey to France quite frequently and it would be on one of the journeys that he would fatefully meet monsieur Samuel Cloquet for the first time.

    Samuel Cloquet was one of the French revolutionary government's top intelligence agents. As dangerous as he was charming, he instantly saw through Thomas's facade and knew him for what he was: an Englishman spying on the French in Paris. Cloquet played the younger man as easily as a fish - befriending him and passing him a potent mixture of truth and lies about the movement of possible French seditionists in England until Thomas trusted him completely. Knowing Thomas's family history and his mixed feelings towards his own country, Cloquet took it upon himself to educate Thomas in the works of Rousseau and Voltaire, of Emile, The Social Contract, the evils of monarchy and absolute rule - thus giving Thomas an education fit for a possible future revolutionary. These were the seeds that would later blossom in to something terrible in years to come.

    Part Three: 1793-1803
    In between his trips to Paris Thomas continued his education both in the palace of Westminster and - briefly - in the Temples of London's Inns of Court where he picked up a working knowledge of law and the legal history of England. It was during this time of informal university education that he solidified his French sympathies: the contrasts he witnessed between the revolutionary proletariat-leaning ideals being preached in Paris and the ancient monolithic weight of English aristrocratic law were startling.

    When Thomas was approached by William Edwards, a barrister at the Middle Temple, about his possible willingness to join a secret society dedicated to preserving order and stability within England - and, on a grander scale, her colonies abroad. Whilst the idea of a secret meritocratic dictatorship was utterly abhorrent in Thomas's eyes, he was quick to realise that joining such a society would only increase the likelihood of being able to bend it to something more along his own ideals. Knowing that accepting William's offer - who would later turn out to be the current London, and the telekinetic leader of the British Order - would mean both perpetuating an unjust system and hopefully helping to convert it to something less democratically questionable, Thomas agreed.

    Only when Thomas agreed did London let him know exactly what was in store for him. With the all of the Order's operatives working either within London (directly controlling the decisions made in the Houses of Parliament and the king's court) or doing fieldwork in capitals across Europe, Thomas's knowledge of both London and Paris (and his French heritage) made him an ideal person to be able to cross borders without drawing attention to himself. He became Durham, the Order's mnemokinetic, responsible for travelling out across Europe to decommission operatives that had been too grievously wounded in battle alongside the power distributer St. David's. Unlike the modern incarnation of the Order, during the 19th century it was expected that most operatives would work out in the field, away from the English capital - and a great number of these would embed themselves in various regiments of the army and ships of the Royal Navy. The turnover rate of operatives was incredibly high, requiring Durham and St. David's to travel vast areas of the continent at a moment's notice - often without the help of the teleporting agent, Richmond. Now known as Durham, he was trained in sailcraft and cross-country riding, as well as musketry and sabre-fighting techniques. Durham was given a veritable library of aliases and fake identities to travel with but the most important defense mechanism was undoubtedly his peculiar gift of being able to wipe and create memories in the mind of whoever he chose to target.

    After nearly half a year of working alongside St. David's and moving accross the continent on Order business Durham made his way to Paris once again to use his skills to track down an old acquaintance - Samuel Cloquet. In the time that had elapsed since their last meeting Cloquet had gone on to further his own control over the French intelligence network: he now surrounded himself with four other 'lieutenants' and the five of them were the most highly decorated of France's agents. The four men and women that made up this quintet with Cloquet were Augustin Fortin, Avent Chrétien, Grégoire Duval and Manon Cavaillé - and, knowing from their own sources that their friend Thomas Sutton was involved in higher forms of government than he professed. Namely, they had their own suspicions on the existence of a 'supreme power' that governed the British forces and kept their own French troops outwitted and outmanned at every turn.

    The idea of telling Cloquet about the existence of the Order and perhaps offering to help create one for France in turn had been plaguing Durham ever since he was first recruited. In the face of carefully applied pressure from the Five he quickly caved and, in the spring of 1803, he told them about the Order - right down to the very last detail.

    Part Four: 1803 onwards
    The plan that the Five hatched was this: that Durham should somehow contrive to get St. David's to Calais, where both would be met by French agents and St. David's would be forcibly brought over to France and forced to bestow powers upon them and so create the first French Order. Unfortunately for Durham, the current St. David's was an excellent young man and the two had grown to become close friends over the past few years that they had been serving together - to the point where both were quite happy to call each other 'brother' and think nothing of it. To make matters worse, St. David's - also known Frederick Montgomery - had recently became a father to a bright and healthy baby girl... and all of these facts put together almost made Durham refuse to agree to the plan.

    Almost.

    Unfortunately for St. David's, what stopped Durham from agreeing was the fact that he had recently heard from his sister, Jane - long now since married to the Devonshire vicar and plainly desperate to escape her situation. In her letter to her brother Jane had talked about how much she despised her life and that she longed to escape to France in the hopes of being able to track down the whereabouts of their missing mother. With this in mind, Durham agreed to bring St. David's to the French with two conditions - firstly, that Jane would be given safe passage in to France and enough land and allowance to make herself a new life without having to resort to taking a second husband and, secondly, that St. David's be allowed to return to his young family after the deed was done.

    With the mission agreed to by all Five Durham wasted no time in spiriting both his sister and the unsuspecting St. David's to Calais under the pretext of a mission concerning a member of the French side of the Sutton family. Once there, Jane was indeed given her own land in the Southern region of Provence; she quickly denounced the English half of her family, and took on her mother's surname in the hopes of one day being reunited with her. In contrast to how well that side of Durham's plan played out, the aspects concerning St. David's were more harrowing then he possibly could have predicted. When St. David's realised he had been betrayed he quite naturally attempted to put up a fight but was quickly - and painfully - subdued. St. David's treatment at the hands of the Five was nothing less than brutal; despite Durham's protests and pleas for other means of persuasion, St. David's was tortured for weeks before he was finally broken enough to give up the powers he had guarded so keenly all his life.

    The final twist was that although the Five - now Paris, Lyon, Lille, Reims and Bordeaux - kept to their words and returned St. David's back to England and his family alive... they took pains to strip him of his own power in turn, thus leaving the British Order - now their enemies in ways far greater than ever before - without the ability to create new operatives. It was like adding insult to injury; with all of their operatives posted to far-flung battlefields all across Europe, the British Order was forced to recall all of its agents for fear of losing them and so not being able to replace them in turn.

    Durham, knowing that it was far too little and far too late to buy any kind of forgiveness from his old friend, wiped St. David's memory as an act of charity before the latter was returned by boat to England. It was an informal decommissioning; now that St. David's had now power, he hoped that maybe without the traumatic memories of his time in the Order and his reluctant involvement in creating the British Order's newest, greatest enemy it would do something to alleviate any potential guilt. It had nothing to do with covering his own tracks; Durham was quite resigned to living his life in exile in France and went so far as to even write an explanation of his actions - and his political beliefs, now revealed for all the Order to see - and send it back to London.

    It is at this point - shortly after stripping St. David's of his memories and sending him back to England - that Durham is brought in to the game.
PERSONALITY:
    On first appearances Durham always strives to come across as a polite and charming - if a little forgettable - young gentleman. The only problem with Durham is that more often than not it's quite obvious that he tries way too hard; the result is that he comes across as fake at best and a try-hard suck-up at worst. It's not that he is particularly obsequieous as a default, it's just that he genuinely wants most people to like him and think well of him. Some of this may be accounted for with his painfully earnest streak of country gentleman manners - manners that always dictate that he should be polite, even when delivering the most cutting of insults. The idea that he is a charming fellow is never really called in to question - but the intentions behind just how charming he really is seems to always be up for debate. However, it simply boils down to this: as a combination of both nature and nurture Durham adapts himself to be seen as whatever he needs to be to get by without being noticed or particularly thought badly of; he is always and forever playing the role of a spy - blending in to the background without making much of a fuss or drawing attention to himself and mollifying those who do pay attention with his manners and charming graces. But all the while he acts the gentleman Durham is never truly 'switched off' from his true occupation; as a double-agent, a spy and a revolutionary he is constantly evaluating and making mental notes on every little detail in his surroundings (ironically, given his position as Durham and the power it entails, he has an excellent memory for faces).

    Inwardly, Durham's Romantic ideals are more obviously manifested. His key motivation in life has always been a pure and simple desire to improve things - but seemingly always on a large scale. He's a born idealist; he genuinely wants to change the world for the better. He picks causes and 'missions' to commit himself to and will dilligently pursue them until he sees them through to some kind of resolution. Durham is at least self-aware enough to know exactly where this stems from: namely, his family situation prior to his father's death. Durham will never forget how much he hated his father, nor will he ever forgive the way that he treated his beloved mother. In meeting Cloquet and being introduced to radical texts on childhood education and development like Rousseau's Emile, Durham's eyes were also opened to just how much his twin sister Jane must have suffered at their father's hands alongside their mother. As a result a strong sense of protecting the rights of the disadvantaged and fighting in the name of the disenfranchised and the downtrodden has guided Durham's actions ever since. It's precisely this that made him so receptible to the idea of defecting from England - the land of his father, of the hated patriarchal monarch, the country that so quickly stood to oppose his mother's land - to France.

    Unfortunately, Durham has always been painfully aware of just how unpopular his radical (and often outright revolutionary) ideals are - which has, from a young age, instilled in him a frustrated need to always prove himself as justified. All he wants is to be given the opportunity to convince other people that he really is in the right - that he is a hero, not a traitor; and a champion of men, not a damned coward. He constantly seeks validation from others - and funnily enough, it's the opinions of people who remind him most of his sister that worry him the most.

    Throughout his entire personality there are deep imprints of his family life. In being forced to work so closely with his much hated father Durham quickly made the decision that he never wanted to be anything like him. Dr. Sutton was a man of medicine and science; he hated society at large (an unfortunate quality for a community doctor); and was generally overly loud and offensively conservative in every single one of his beliefs. As such, Durham grew to love poetry, nature and the written word; he developed an adoration for the subtleties of language - both French and English and later the Provencal dialect. When his father tried to get him to take up the violin, Durham chose the viola instead - spurred on by the fact that his father called it the 'peasant's instrument' and that no self-respecting Englishman of good breeding stock would ever think to bother with it. Naturally, Durham adores the viola to this very day.

    He actively purges any qualities that he sees in himself that remind him of his father in every effort to make sure that he will never be anything like Dr. Sutton. In doing so, Durham very much cultivates himself as he wishes to be seen rather than allowing his father to mould him. It's this very same ability to forge his own path - to create his own facades and impressions to present to the world - that in later life did him so well in his career as an Order operative and a spy. From his memories of his mother's abuse at the hands of the so-called of medicine that was his father, Durham has inherited an instant defensive streak over those who clearly need protecting. He is not the kind of man who will ever stand idly by when there is something to be done in the name of pity and compassion. From his sister Durham has gained an instinctive desire to drift towards sisterly-figures who remind him of Jane; of all people, it is those that are most like her that he desperately seeks validation from.

    In being so keen to be seen as a champion of men Durham has grown to despise any kind of lack of morals or compassion in others. To be without pity, Durham thinks, is to be unworthy of the title human. Selfishness is a terrible sin as far as he's concerned and Durham will often do everything he can to distance himself from anyone that he sees as being detracting or negative about the ideals that he stands for. Durham won't tolerate criticism - neither of himself, nor of other people - and will often dismiss it is either rudeness or unnecessary cynicism. What he likes in other people is exactly what he strives to be himself - he likes caring and motivated people, fellow idealists and revolutionary underdogs.

    But whilst Durham is essentially a born Romantic and revolutionary, he also has a terribly rational streak that he's yet to identify as an inherited trait from his despised father. Whilst espousing the tenets of sensation and feeling Durham is actually the kind of person who will always take time to think very carefully through the consequences of his actions. It's his in-built predisposition to worry; he wories that whatever he does must always be the right and correct thing and that it must always fall in line with his ideals. More importantly, it must always be justified - at the end of the day, he constantly seeks the validation of knowing that his actions are not only for the greater good but are just generally right. He wants an odd mixture of reason and Romantic enlightenment - except in place of the sublime mysteries of the Gothic, he seeks the glory of justice and truth and all those French Republican ideals. In short, he's an activist who is constantly seeking to validate his ideals to both himself and to the world. Everything he does must be for a higher purpose: to serve mankind, to change things for the better and to generally improve the world around him.
ABILITIES, WEAKNESSES & POWER LIMITS:
    Abilities:
    Whilst not possessing any of the highly developed scientific knowledge of modern men and women on board the Tranquility, Durham is certainly a quick-minded individual. He's a fast learner and even before his power he had a good memory for faces and shapes (if not numbers and facts, although this has been rectified thanks to his mnemokinesis). He's built fairly well and perhaps when he's adjusted to the firing mechanisms of modern weaponry he could make a decent marksman. Durham rides well (although there are a distinct lack of horses in space) and his physical strength is good. He grew up bilingual (English and formal French) and soon picked up the regional Provencal slang and linguistic affectations native to that point in history (not that either of these skills have any bearing in the game, thanks to the nanites).

    Weaknesses:
    Durham's greatest weakness is a contextual one - he is severely limited by his the experiences, education and mindset of a nineteenth century middle class white man - and there will be a vast amount of technology, terminology and social customs that will seem nothing short of alien to him. The jarring gap between these things and his own personal comfort zone will take a lot of time and effort to breach and will probably lead to quite a few misunderstandings and awkward situations before it is rectified.

    Power:
    Simply put, as the Durham operative for the British Order he has the power to manipulate memories. This can be anything from simply reading them (via touch, although not necessarily touching of the face or forehead) to completely wiping every little detail and replacing them with complete fabrications. Whilst this Durham lacks all of the background scientific and psychological knowledge and understanding of his modern counterpart, he makes up for it with simple intuition. Admittedly, there have been times where Durham's 'intuition' has simply been a few repeated bouts of trial and error (sometimes with unpleasant side-effects for the victim) but over the years he has grown in to his power and now considers himself more than adept.

    Proposed power nerfing:
    On awaking on board the Tranquility, Durham will find that his power to create new memories has been completely removed. Whilst he can still read and erase memories, there is no way that he can replace or amend them. ( NOTE: obviously, this will be subject to a permissions post and any memory tampering will be only be with explicit player consent. It's probably a given that Durham's powers will not work on Wardnik. )
INVENTORY:
    A set of clothes:
    • one black tailcoat, missing several buttons
    • one (tellingly) red waistcoat
    • one white shirt, turning a little yellow in places
    • one pair of grey, patched trousers
    • one basic neckcloth
    • one hat, dented
    • one pair of ankle-length boots, black leather
    • one silver pocket watch, now broken

    A satchel:
    • Discours sur l'Origine et les Fondements de l'Inégalité parmi les Hommes - JJ Rousseau
    • Du Contract Social - JJ Rousseau
    • Dictionnaire Philosophique - Voltaire
    • Paradise Lost - J Milton
    • Lyrical Ballads - W Wordsworth & ST Coleridge
    • A viola, tuned in scordatura for Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante, and bow

    A parcel of sheet music:
    • Sonata VI for Violin and Piano (Adagio) - Handel (viola part only) ( x )
    • Sinfonia Concertante (Andante) - Mozart (viola & violin parts) ( x )
APPEARANCE:

    PLAYED BY: Rupert Evans, from the 2009 TV adaptation of Emma.

    Thirty-two year old caucasian male. Five foot ten inches with a decidedly stocky and atheletic build. Hazel coloured eyes that err more on the side of green than brown. Rather unkempt brown hair that's more often than not pushed and pulled this way and that until it resembles a more Romantic kind of frizz, as if trying to make his scruffiness look like it was on purpose.

    Durham dresses himself pretty badly but for someone who tries his best to look scruffy and carefree he certainly puts a lot of effort in to his appearance. His face is animatedly expressive - although he's terribly good at putting on a poker face when he needs to.
    ❸ SAMPLES
LOGS SAMPLE:
    No cloud, no relic of the sunken day
    Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip
    Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues...


    That's what has upset him most about his time on board the Tranquility. The absence of light, of real light, was increasingly unnerving. The stark, overly-bright sheen of the ship’s lights were a constant presence and inescapable everywhere. Strip lights, fluorescent lights, emergency lights - all painfully bright and equally unsubtle.

    On, off. On, off. On, off – nothing in between. No middling dimness, no sunsets, no flickering finesses as you would find in delicate little flames. All light and no warmth, the fixtures of the Tranquility were a constant, invasive presence – and very unlike Durham’s fond memories of cosy fireplaces and sweeping canvasses of orange and pink clouds at sunset. There was nothing natural about the light on board the Tranquility and it grieved Durham sorely.

    Light switches had been a frustratingly novel experience. It had taken Durham nearly two hours of attempting to find a candle – tallow or wax, he wasn’t fussy – before he was informed of the plain-looking little panel that activated the lights in his cabin. Blinking against the harshness of the strip lights he had been dismayed to realise that he didn’t even have a choice in the matter – it wasn’t as if he could ignore the light switch in favour of keeping to homely little candles, because neither life nor money could he find any homely little candles.
    Reading was becoming nothing short of a painful experience. The long hours that he had confined himself to his drab little cabin in order to comfort himself with the words of Coleridge and Wordsworth had been frustrated again and again by his inability to tolerate the harsh lights above him. The words were too jarring on the page and leaped about before his very eyes, leaving them watering and sore as he winced against the yellowing paper.

    No, it just wouldn’t do. Durham collected his precious collection of books in both arms and – ignoring the light switch – he bundled himself out of his hideous, hateful cabin and stumbled away in to the corridor and in search of dimness and subtlety.
COMMS SAMPLE:
    JGJUHELLOHELLO#
    HELLO
    GOOO
    GOODMORNING
    GI
    G
    a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
    good mi
    good morm
    good morning
    gii
    good morning
    good morning#
    GOO
    Good Morning.
    Good morm
    Good morning.
    . . ... . ! ?
    ? ? ?
    twenty firf
    2 1 st
    21stt 34565677890-a
    Good morning.

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