A brief phone call to the Lower East Precinct, under the excuse of wishing to speak with Detective Cameron MacBrady, had revealed that the detective, along with several other police officers, were working at a local cemetery, having answered a “shots fired” call at the location early that morning. Jake’s contact, a helpful secretary, was unable to provide any further details.

A sympathetic teaching assistant had brought a pot of fresh coffee and a tray of blueberry scones from a nearby bakery to Professor Wells’ office, after noting how bleary eyed Wells and his visitors appeared to be. The adjoining corridors remain quiet after the assistant departs, the lull of the summer session providing the men with ample privacy to discuss their recent grim discoveries.

Sully deposits his bundle of ancient books on the Prof's desk. He unties the tablecloth and pulls it back so that the academic, and anyone else who dares, can peruse the volumes. Then he takes a cup of coffee and a couple of scones and sits in a chair.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:26, Fri 09 Dec 2022.

The assistant had been heaped with genuine if awkward thanks for the provisions, leaving Jake to clutch a scone like the world's luckiest rat and nab himself some coffee.

"No update on what the cops found yet," he tells the others. He leans back from Sully hauling the second sack of stolen tomes onto the table from wherever it'd been stashed and starts picking them over to look at the spines.

"Anyone done anything but get some sleep in since we skedaddled? I was hoping that communal diary book might have some signed confessions." The left side of his mouth quirks to a half-smile, acknowledging the liklihood is almost a joke, but then again that slayer's scrapbook had been left out.

Arthur set himself some coffee and scones, and then turned to the bundle and slowly approached it.

Twitching in his face as he picked up the Elizabethan book bound in black leather on boards, Arthur sat at the spot he had established for his work station previously, and with trepidation turned the book open. He looked up at Jake, and simply said, "Well, if you want to know, you can join us for...study."

There was something peculiar and resigned in his bearing, something only Professor Wells could understand just yet.

Wells assembled the various volumes before him, setting the ritual objects he had taken to the side for more study or in case they became relevant.

"I have done little but sleep, and have things set up here," he said, referring to the assembly of books and ritual objects. The books were laid out in sequence, with the ritual objects set to the side.

"I'd be happy to review all of these, but if we split them up and skim their contents we might more quickly get a sense of what is in each volume and how much use it might be before diving deep."

Jake downs some coffee, willing to help but not sure what they're looking for. "Hold up, Professor...what kind of 'use' are we talking about here? Getting in touch with the cannibal tribe - if there is a cannibal tribe, not just some kinda grave-robbing racket - working out where Bishop's hiding if him and his tunnel people didn't walk right into the cops, material for some paper of yours?"

There's enough of a smile to suggest the last bit's a joke, but he's still confused. "Only what I'm concerned with is having something to show Missus Hargrave - preferably that killer's teeth, but we never got so far. Am I...I dunno, I get the impression you'n Arthur know of something more specific going on, like...is this Agatha our Dracula, like she's gonna make another Top Hat and set it all up again, with her grunts killing girls when they get bored, or...?"

Jake waves his mug vaguely, ready to believe most things after getting used to the exanguinated walking dead. Then he actually sips the coffee, since disrupted sleep tends to haul the itch of addiction up near the surface and he wants a drink, badly enough that it'll take clear focus on a project to ignore what his body tries to convince him is a need.

Sully polishes off his scones and washes them down with some coffee. He wipes his fingers with his handkerchief and tucks it back in his breast pocket.

"I'm not very much of a scholar but I'll lend my efforts as I can." He reaches for what Jake calls the "diary" and pulls it over in front of him. Setting a new notebook and pencil beside it, he opens the cover and begins to read quickly along the pages, puzzling out the archaic script and language. He pauses to make a note now and then and tears a piece of paper into strips to bookmark certain pages.

Seeing Sully settle down with the diary and Art having nabbed the Necronomicon, Jake gets up to hand over the last 'special collection' book to the Professor, eyeing the general collection without an excess of academic enthusiasm. "I guess you get Wormy Mysteries, Prof, my Latin doesn't go so far."

"Truth be told, I'm not sure what kind of use these might be, but I'm not certain what to make of what we've found so far. I reason only that studying the items that Bishop prized and kept aside might lend some hint as to what purpose he has his eyes set on."

He picked up the remaining volume, along with a selection of Latin dictionaries to help with the translation effort, and had started the task of trying to understand at least a surface level of what was within them. He focused on anything that had been bookmarked or noted, or areas where the binding seemed there had been a lot of time spent on those pages.

The quiet that pervades the building proves to be ideal for study as each of the men begins to explore the strange texts retrieved from Bishop House. As the hours begin to pass however, the silence takes a forbidding turn, the absence of noise within the office and adjoining hallways assuming an isolating quality, a pressing reminder that each investigator is, in many respects, alone as they delve into secrets best left forgotten.

OOC: Could each of you kindly supply me with a sanity roll?

The silence from Jake Morris takes on a tense, even sinister character as he leafs from book to book amongst the non-special collection. One volume by M. Tarrare seems to hold a particular unholy fascination, until he finds the next...

[[09:43, Today: Jake Morris rolled 100 using 1d100.  SAN check]]

Sully tries to hum a tune but keeps losing the thread of the melody as his mind is drawn into the text before him. He has to consciously just skim the words and refrain from a deeper reading.

Sullivan (Sully) Quinn rolled 40 for Sanity 46.

Arthur had already begun to gain some deeper familiarity with the subject, perhaps insulating him from the shock of parsing this difficult subject matter.

Wells worked feverishly to understand the material, eyes flitting from the dictionary to the text, mouthing things he was reading and working them out, seeming to move with a strange speed, his fingers used to turning pages.

OOC:

Somehow managed it!

21:25, Today: Anthony Wells rolled 9 using 1d100.  SAN (44).

OOC: Somehow managed to forget about appending my roll before! I think Sully also succeeded

"03:25, Yesterday: Arthur G. Flatt rolled 36 using 1d100.  SAN (55)."

The four investigators read in relative silence, the normally welcoming office taking on an isolated, almost oppressive character as each man explores the books before them. Time passes quickly, the afternoon shadows growing long as dusk approaches.





OOC: Jake loses 6 sanity points and gains 4 points in the Cthulhu Mythos skill.

Everyone else takes an immediate loss of 4 sanity points and gains 8 points in the Cthulhu Mythos skill.