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Please remove my name from this mailing list.

Understand that normally I would not do this. I asked to be removed from this mailing list some time ago and was apparently ignored. Repeated efforts to be stricken failed, as I still receive emails from you people, my "peers." This website had an initial appeal to me as an intellectual observer. Sadly, as with all things involving the general populace and the internet at large, mass communication servers only to display the gross ignorance of humanity rather than facilitate further learning. This self-important group is no exception. Every day I receive subintelligent, hysterical, and illiterate messages that simply make me weep for higher thought. It baffles me that so many of you would "imbues" as you call it, when so few truly deserve the privilege. Perhaps our "creators" are not as enlightened as I would like to believe. Yet I cannot give up hope on them. What other hope is there?

Normally I would remain silent and pray to God that some glimmer of insight might twinkle out there in the void, as I believe Witness1 and a few others intended with this list. Perhaps some morsel of information would be of use to me in my own pursuit of dealings with what you so thoughtlessly refer to as "monsters." But, where my belief in higher beings persists, any hope for humanity in general has been lost.

And yet, an event has occurred which demands that I make my voice heard. If I did not, mankind itself might be at stake. And though I have happily pondered the notion of a world absolved of so many drudges, there are enough of us hidden away who cannot be sacrificed because of a lesser whole. It is for these few that I perpetrate this distasteful act.

A singular item that has recently come into my possession is causing me profound distress. Do not concern yourself with how it arrived in my hands. Simply accept that a unique acquaintance has supplied me with it, clearly in recognition of my studiousness and keen perspective.

This object seems to suggest possibilities that apply not only to myself, but to all of us chosen. It is a very ancient parchment, perhaps once bound into a scroll. The paper is very brittle; a gentle breeze causes it to crack, and even mild temperature changes are sufficient to cause the fabric to yellow. The material seems like rice paper, as used in the Far East since recorded history's start. It astonishes me that something so seemingly old and delicate could still exist, and yet here it is before my eyes.

My mysterious benefactor provided me with no origins for the item, and made no mention about how he might have attained it. I suspect that it has been procured from an archive or museum of some sort, maybe Asian or perhaps some English collection of colonial acquisitions. Unless my acquaintance purchased the parchment, I can only assume that it was gained illicitly, for who could ever part with such a treasure willingly?

I have reproduced the face of the paper and posted it for your inspection. As you can see there is some form of script penned on it. Much of the writing has faded, been marred, lost or destroyed, but enough icons remain to allow some kind of translation -- or so I originally thought. As a scholar, I hoped to learn the text's meaning simply by researching old-form Asian script to identify similar or related symbols. My investigation quickly proved more difficult than anticipated. The symbols were not like any Asian language that I could identify, and yet their line work, shape and form begged a connection.

Without revealing my true nature of these past months, or how I came into possession of the parchment, I contacted a onetime correspondent, a professor in Hong Kong. He received the same image that I have posted here. I thought, with his native catalog of history and record, that he might identify the text immediately. He could not. In fact, it was some time before he contacted me again, baffled by the images. He recognized similarities in very old Chinese, Korean and Indian script, but could ascribe this writing to none of them. Rather, he posited that it might be a precursor to even those written languages! As I said, astonishing.

I requested then, that my would-be translator suggest what the icons might mean, based upon comparison to any languages that could have evolved from them afterward. He tentatively ventured these words and phrases, separated in text but interpreted in the following order: "Heaven's chosen, protectors, Golden Age, temptation, hope, fall, demons, destruction."

As I said earlier, I normally would not reveal myself on this list and endanger my activities and life by beckoning whatever it is that much lurk out there among you. And yet, as exclusive as I might be, not even I can remain quiet while this document poses burning questions. After the perhaps millennia that this parchment might have existed, after all the seasons, life and death that have transpired from who knows when until now, after all that we chosen have been exposed to, seen, confronted and in some cases destroyed: What happens when an apparently bygone age of "demons," "heroes" and "divine beings" -- an almost painful corollary to our current reality -- returns?

For the love of God, what are we?