Carter

Uggghhhhh.
I can't believe I am even letting myself give this article that name.... but at the same time, it's kind of required.  Anyways, here goes an actual description:
Carter is going to be ER's bosom companion (somewhat literally) for about 5/6ths of this story.  Originally some sort of spirit of the air from another plane, Carter was trapped inside a frayed piece of parchment an unknown number of generations ago.  Stefano Gorbalienko is of the belief that this investment was performed on a different layer of existence than The Funhouse, and possibly even before The Funhouse even came to exist, although these theories were never able to be confirmed.  Carter's main purpose is to serve as a primitive Planar Positional System.  Every morning, it is able to leave the parchment that is its prison and survey its surroundings, building an image of the surrounding landscape, before returning and portraying what it viewed until the next sunrise.  It is also able to communicate, both verbally and using characters on the map itself.
The detail/range which Carter is able to portray on a given day is limited by the confines of its paper, as well as the elevation at which the survey was performed.  Basically, to get a really detailed view of your surroundings, you have to sacrifice the range which the image will extend, and vice versa.  While Carter is able to represent its own position (and by extension the location of its bearer) on the map as the day progresses, the rest of the image remains frozen as it was the instant the scan was performed.  If, for example, an avalanche devastated a town which was in Carter's range for the day, but did it an hour after the refresh time, the map would not show the change in the town's circumstances until the following day.