jon bio

**Name:** Jonathan Sims (Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.)
**Source Material:** The Mangus Archives
**Age:** 31- ish?
**Gender:** Trans M
**Appearance:** 5'10", skinny as a beanpole. He looks like the sort of guy that never quite grew out of his college phase of living strictly on take-out and microwaved macaroni and cheese. He has dark skin and dark, shaggy hair, though there are a few streaks of premature grey that make him look much older than he is- mostly from constant stress. He usually pulls it back in a messy bun to try and keep it out of his face, but he also usually fails. Deep-set brown eyes are rimmed by thin wire glasses and he constantly looks tired. Despite his relatively young age, he dresses somewhat similarly to a kindly old grandfather, or a particularly assholeish college professor, all sweaters and pressed shirts and slacks and neat shoes. When he's particularly deep in the throes of sleep deprivation, he might revert to old hoodies and sweatpants, or the same clothes as a few days before but particularly more rumpled, or anything that somebody happens to give him. He holds himself very proudly, head high and face hard. Leisure time? Taking a break? What's that? All that he does is read, critique classic literature, crime, overwork, and lie.

The Jonathan Sims scar inventory includes, but is not limited to: Pockmark scars across his body from worm bites, a large burn on his palm, a smile shaped scar over his throat, various cuts along his body from what seems to be shrapnel, and top surgery scars. He doesn't talk about them much, but he doesn't attempt to hide their existence much, either.


**Personality:** To say that he isn't the friendliest guy might be the understatement of the world. He's proud and stubborn, and if you don't fit into his rigid concept of people that deserve respect, then you might as well be kicked out to the street. He doesn't take criticism well, and he's prone to immediate judgement that last a very long time. He's a coward, in the same breath, so whether this is legitimate distaste or fear of what an individual may be capable of, he can't say. If the only thing that you knew about him was that he was a bit of a prat, you wouldn't be wrong.

All of that being said, he's at least relatively well mannered. He's polite about his hatred, able to mask it as a little gentler than it is. He's quiet, too, in the sense that you may not even realize that he's there until you hear him speak. He's more of a watcher than a do-er, though he'll let himself get pushed to *do* something now and again. When you do happen to earn his respect, he holds you in very high regard. Once you get past the gallows humor and the general deadpan to his voice, he can be pretty funny! He's also relentlessly inquisitive. Once he wants to learn more about something, he devours everything that he can about that thing until he's an expert. Think of him like a walking Wikipedia! He has a new obsession each week, though he refuses to share this with anybody, and part of his sheer aggression is to turn off people that can't handle the mumblings of a delusional scholar. Do you want to hear about emulsifiers?


**Powers:** He can inherently know things- he understands basically ever language and is pretty good at picking up knowledge. This is often extended to interactions with people- if he doesn't focus on blocking out the influx of information, he can passively learn details about them. If he wants to know something specific, he can compel just about anything to directly answer his questions. This is a lot more effective on regular humans than it is on something else that's evil and supernatural. He's not technically human himself, basically being the vessel to an eldritch fear god. He heals a little faster than normal, even in a hell world where he's not allowed to die- it's the passive ingestion of suffering that does it for him. If he directly hears somebody's experiences (specifically the scary ones), that healing factor is increased. And, on the flip-side, if he *doesn't* directly hear somebody's experiences, he goes into a sort of withdrawl.
**History:** Statement of Jonathan Sims, the Archivist, regarding the circumstances of his life and death. Recording in situ.

Statement begins.

He was an insufferable child. Everybody could say that, sure, but Jon was self aware enough to know that he was worse than most. He was raised by his grandmother, both of his parents dying unfortunately young, and Jon would never dare say that he was unloved. There was no disputing the matter, really- he was a difficult child. Prone to wandering off and easily bored, it was difficult to get him to sit still and stay out of trouble for longer than a few minutes at a time. His grandmother's solution, giving him as many books as physically possible, was frankly genius.



Mister Spider didn't like it much, as eight year old Jon reasoned while he stared down a dark door and listened to the screams coming inside. As he watched somebody charge right into the belly of the beast, holding a book that Jon had been reading just moments before. He still saw those images when he was very, very tired, or when he was just barely in the throes of sleep and needed something to keep him awake for days on end.

This didn't stop him from devouring books. In fact, in hindsight, he was almost certain that that triggered a frightening craving for knowledge in him. A way to understand just what happened to him, to see if there were more things out there that were just as frightening. In a way, it almost felt like a game, scouring books for some hint of an explanation as to what else could go on in the world around them. This drive pushed Jon through school, and eventually to university, nearly becoming an obsession. At Oxford, though, obsessions were somewhat encouraged. If he could write an essay a week on something, he could research it to his heart's content. That came with a price, though one that Jon was more than willing to pay. His work came at the reduction of his personal life, to the point where he didn't have any. While he had a fling here and there, a romantic partner, it tended to end quite spectacularly when he ruined dates by reading too much, or by saying the exact and precise wrong thing.

But, how was he supposed to know that that was wrong? How was he supposed to care? He had things to find out.



He graduated with flying colors. The question was what he was supposed to do afterwards. He didn't expect the job to come to him, a little note in his email. The Magnus Institute was looking for researchers, particularly those specializing in literature. He'd heard of the place, and he'd heard of what they did, but that wasn't precisely enough to turn him off of the prospect. If a bunch of crazies(?) who believed in the supernatural(??) wanted him to date some books, then by God he would go and date some books.

He worked there for a few years, happily pouring over books and ignoring his coworkers. When the Head Archivist died, he'd heard talks about who was supposed to take her place. He didn't pay them much mind- he rarely if ever talked to the Archives, only occasionally sending them emails to confirm that something they had given him was, in fact, an unlabeled Leitner and super fucking cursed. He didn't care who was to be promoted. It wasn't supposed to involve him.

And then it did.

The Head of the Institute came to him directly. Jon knew that he wasn't qualified, but "Head Archivist" was a title with a nice pay raise (important, when thinking about how badly he needed to consider his grandmother's end of life care) and the chance to dig deeper into some of these mysteries. He took the job, obviously, but there was a catch. Because, of course  there was a catch. The most important thing, his "goal" in this new job, was to do what Gertrude Robinson had failed to do. Clean up the Archives and digitize them for a more technical age.

It was menial, really. Jon agreed, pulling two of his most trustworthy coworkers (and... some incompetent man that he really only just met on his first day) with him. Of course, that was before he saw the state of the Archives, and before he realized just how much of a mess he had gotten himself into.



It probably started with the worms. He knew that Prentiss was a threat, he'd read all of the reports, and he knew that it was one of the few things that the Archive actually dealt with that *was* real, but it... it felt so distant. Far off, in a way. It wasn't something that would ever threaten him. There wasn't supposed to be any- any *attacks*, or whatever this was. This was a normal job, with normal people, and he was supposed to be a normal boss.

But, he wasn't. Jane Prentiss attacked his archive. Something was wrong after that, and he drove himself mad and drove anyone that would understand away by that notion. But, he was right, wasn't he? He was right, and something *was* wrong, there was an imposter among them that took the face of his *friend* and tried to kill him when he tried to make things right. The man that had caused his whole damn life to fall apart saved him, he was accused of fucking *killing* him, and-

And he wasn't supposed to be a hero, either. He's not the tragic protagonist- just some asshole with a tape recorder. But, he had a responsibility. To Sasha, and to Tim and Martin. He had to figure out what was happening, at least *somewhat*. So, while he was on the run for a murder that he didn't commit, he tried to learn. Dug through the world, figured out just what type of *fear* was in the hearts of man. And it burned, and it threw him out of a window, and it almost slit his throat, and it made him into a beast that lived to process everybody's fear.



But he was a beast with a purpose. If people out there were to destroy the world, to shape it into their shitty god, then if nobody else would save the world he would need to be the one to do it. Sure, he didn't think  that it would be with plastic explosives, but things rarely went how one planned. It almost went wrong, too, but if he's good for anything, it's turning things around. And, in the end, it was worth it. If he could give himself to stop the world from dying, he would gladly do so.

For a while, he wandered through nightmares. He had seen them in his own dreams, time and time again, but this time it was *unending*. There were voices, outside of his hellscape, that he swore he recognized, but they weren't close enough for him to reach out to, or to stop the torrent of fear.

And then, it stopped.

He woke up in a hospital bed in a room filled with fog. He woke up to hands around his throat and a woman with a bag covering her head. It was pretty easy to figure out where he was supposed to go from there.

Oficially, Jonathan Sims disappeared on 15 February, 2018. He was last seen by Antonio Blake, who has not been sighted since. Unoficially, things are much, much more variable than that.

**Other Information:**
- Asexual biromantic, currently feeling emotions?
- He actually has perfect vision, but still wears the glasses. He gets headaches without them.
- Would kill for a cuppa right about now.
- He's not necessarily hunter *or* hunted. He leans slightly more towards the latter, but he's more of an observer at the end of the day.
- Hey, where did that tape recorder come from?
- [Click.]