[IC]Pickman's Model Revisited[CoC]

[Dakkareth]

Leaving the school after two particularily annoying hours Jens takes the bus to the Boston Public Library.

Why can't children simply do, what they're told? It's so annoying, I give them a task and instantly they start bitching about, talking to their neighbours and generally producing noise. With most of the school away they probably feel as if in holidays or something. Mmhhpf. At least it leaves me free to do other, more interesting things.

Well, at a second thought maybe it was his fault, too. His thought had invariably wandered back to that strange tome, Renard had shown him. His failure to determine anything about it had only hardened his resolve to learn something about it.

Jens threw a quick look at the street signs - three more stations to the library.

There are two possibilities. The first is, that it is a rather new text, probably 17th century, written in Greek for some reason. In that case, it would be of little interest to a classical philologist, which would explain, why I found nothing about it. But at that time texts scientific and religious in nature as well as most other texts were written in Latin ...
The other possibility is, that is is a reprint of some antique Greek text. In that case it would be an incredible valuable source and every Greecist would know about it - unless someone purposely hid it. Maybe it's some sacrelegious revelation about some unknown mystery cult that the priests of old hid away? Or maybe collector recognized it's value and choose to incorporate it into his collection - without giving the scientific world access. Whatever the reason, I must have a closer look ...

Leaving the bus strode into the library in a quick, almost impatient pace. Some of the accountants knew him from sight from his often visits, with the supervisor of the classical department he was on a first name basis.

Mmmhhh, let's see ...

He unfolded the list he'd prepared the last evening, when he had come to see, that his reasearch wasn't going to bring him anywhere.

• Existance of Book (see register of known sources. Medieval text?)
• The sign (religious context? ancient mystery cult? link to normal pentagram? <- look at pentagram, too!)
• Pickman's life (See events of the journal, newspaper articles? what with the paintings? collector of some kind?)

If there was time after he'd be done with these points he'd look a little into the history of the Cobbs cemetary. Plans, subterran parts and maybe whatever odd things had happened there. After all if Pickman disappeared into tunnels, they could be connected to catacombs or something. The Romans often built subterran ossaries and old monasteries also had extensive cellars, so it wasn't too far-fetched.

Mmmhh, maybe there'd also be time to do some browsing through the rare manuscripts section? Probably not, but it was always interesting.

 

[bruin]

OODM: I'm posting whatever research Jens does after meeting up with Neal and the others. Feel free to insert the meeting below if you wanted, or you can just assume you had it. Jens can learn from Neal, whenever and wherever they end up meeting, all the information Neal was able to scrounge up on Pickman earlier. A subsequent check yields no further information.

IDM: Looking into some books on the early history of printing, Jens learns that Venice became the preeminent city of printers in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. While the majority of materials printed at this time were religious texts in Latin, there was a preeminent press that specialized entirely in reprinting Ancient Greek texts from manuscript. The owner of this press, Giovanni Batistelli, was eventually executed for some sort of involvement in the occult, but the books Jens is looking at don't have any details on precisely what this involvement was. It does mention that the Batistelli was executed in the midst of the Roman Inquisition, shortly after Pope Paul IV detailed his "Index of Forbidden Books" in 1559. The only modern reprint of this text at BPL is checked out, but a 19th century reprint is available in the Rare Books & Manuscripts section, which unfortunately closed at 5.

Jens can find no specific information about the symbol he saw on the book. He looks into the history of the pentagram and discovers that historically, up until the 19th century, the pentagram generally had positive connatations and was appropriated by a variety of belief systems, including Christianity at times. It was only later that the pentagram, especially the upside down pentagram, began to be associated with witchcraft and satanism.

OODM: The plans for the cemetary can be accessed from the city archives during business hours. It would probably be a good idea for Neal and Jens to meet up at closing time to share notes, especially if Jens can't follow up on some of the leads himself.

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

OODM:If Neal is an iron man researcher, he can do something else before the appointed meeting time, or he can assume he took a break for lunch somewhere in the above schedule and that the time for the meeting is drawing near.

[OOC: There's nothing else I want to research right now, I'll go ahead with the meeting]

 

[bruin]

IDM: Just a block or two away from the BPL, a small coffee shop is open at all hours.

OODM: Hope you weren't waiting for me, I assumed you'd just choose where you wanted to meet. I generally have no problems with players using their own props, etc., to cover stuff like this, as long as it doesn't create some sort of unreasonable advantage in terms of what you are trying to accomplish.