Sunday 7 February 2016

The Night Doctors - Part 4


Back to Baltimore...
There’s no real need to play through every mile of the journey back to Baltimore – just enact a scene change to move the story to wherever the players want to be: either the clinic at Johns Hopkins or the accommodation used by the remainder of the party; or indeed, wherever else (locally) they would rather be.
By this time, the party is fully aware that the local poor community is getting short shrift from the medical facility in their midst; that that organisation is not above stooping to corruption in order to maintain the flow of bodies to its anatomy classes; and that someone is using scare tactics to threaten and oppress the local townships. An ugly side-effect of this scenario is that the local people are turning to superstition, rather than science, to treat their health issues. The question which now lies before the party is: what are they going to do about it all?
The resolution to this problem depends upon what the Keeper has decided is taking place. If they have decided that this is a scübidüberism, then they need not worry about phantom riders, strange babies and local witches: the story is a tawdry instance of corruption, racist values and vested interests, all dressed up in Halloween rags, and the greatest friend our heroes have is the erstwhile newspaper reporter who is cracking his neck to splash the truth across his front page. If, on the other hand, the Keeper is looking for a Mythos tale, then there are options to pursue...
Hit the Books!
There is a library at Johns Hopkins University and, while it is relatively new, it contains the donated collections of many erstwhile researchers. The party Librarians may well wish to avoid any further physical unpleasantness by hiding out here.
Using the library requires the rolling of a Library Use skill. The players must be specific about what it is that they are looking for as the institution is large and busy, and the personnel do not like to have their time wasted. Each bullet point below will be made available in order for every successful Library Use roll (each roll represents an hour of research).
Legislation concerning the ownership and use of cadavers
·      The dead bodies of executed criminals, or prisoners who have died in custody, are the property of the State;
·       Relatives may petition the Court for the right to claim the body of a dead prisoner (but not an executed criminal) for the purposes of burial; a fee is usually involved, payable to the State;
·       Executed criminals, or persons who have died unidentified and unclaimed by relatives, are buried at State expense, usually in ground allotted for such use (so called “Potter’s Fields”);
·       As State property, the Court can rule that unclaimed and unidentified cadavers (or executed criminals) can be released to medical facilities for dissection and other teaching purposes; dissection may also be listed as a congruent part of a criminal’s sentence, if the wrongful deed is deemed heinous enough;
·       The State is required to do all it can to ensure that an unknown body is identified before burial or release for dissection;
·       Dissection – or the anatomising – of cadavers, may only be performed by trained instructors in the confines of State-recognised institutions.
Grave Robbing
·       Most US States at this time have laws which make the disturbance of graves by unauthorised individuals a crime;
·       The first such laws were enacted in New York shortly after the American Revolution, in order to prevent medical students conducting their own dissections outside of teaching institutions;
·       To combat the crime, the State of Pennsylvania has created a “state anatomising board” with the authority to claim any unidentified body discovered within the state limits; such bodies are required to be handed over to them immediately for dissection;
·       No current laws concerning grave robbing apply to the graves of blacks, whether free or enslaved, or disenfranchised (that is, poor) whites. Such individuals have no recourse under any current law.
Night Riders
·       That slaves in their accommodation after hours were unsupervised has always been a concern for Southern slave owners
·       Many slave owners organised gangs of men to roam the black communities at night to harass and terrify slaves found out of doors; these gangs were called “patterollers”
·       Superstition was often used in an attempt to scare and control slaves; abandoned buildings or wildernesses where it was thought escaped slaves might hide, were described by slave owners and overseers as “haunted” in an attempt to prevent this from occurring.
·       Slave owners and their associates, would sometimes disguise themselves in white sheets and patrol the black townships at night to reinforce these stories; sometimes they would interact with the slaves, claiming to be the ghosts of Confederate soldiers fallen in battle (the Battle of Shiloh was a particular favourite). These disguised horsemen were known as “Night Riders” by the blacks
·       During the American Civil War, slaves were told that Northern doctors would steal them off the streets for dissection purposes
·       Some slave owners dressed up in white gowns and would pretend to be doctors, while roaming the black communities; after the start of the American Civil War, the white gown was often replaced by the Ulster coat, a common item of clothing worn by field medics
·       Scandals in some medical facilities, where hospital personnel actively pursued the creation and theft of cadavers, underscored the fear of dissection amongst black communities; such instances include the “Black Bottle Men” and “Needle Men” in Charity Hospital in Louisiana, who poisoned and injected black targets on the streets after hours
·       The “Night Doctor” has become a fearsome bogey of the black communities, often accorded with dangerous supernatural powers
Witchcraft, especially the American variety
With this topic we’re on more familiar Mythos ground. There are several works extant in the John Hopkins library which might be of interest to our team:
Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions
Cotton Mather was notorious at the Salem witch trials for strongly recommending that “visions” and other supernatural phenomena recounted by the victims be admitted as evidence. Of a strongly spiritual turn of mind, Mather was renowned for fasting and sitting vigils in order to fully experience the nature of God and his relationship with the divine. Of the many books which he penned during his lifetime, this was his first and reveals his encounters with the evidence of Satan’s presence, whom he felt held sway over much of New England and the wilder territories beyond. Readers will find mention in these pages of the rites and rituals of witches, particularly of their making a pact with a mysterious dark figure known as the “Black Man” who is sometimes described as being hoofed.
English; Cotton Mather; Boston, 1689; 0/1d2 Sanity loss; Occult +4 percentiles; 1 week to study and comprehend
Spells: None
*****
Necrolatry (“Worship of the Dead”)
An odd volume which concerns itself with recording the lives and activities of those who undertook to encounter and to reveal the rites and rituals of secret societies and cults; much of the book discusses the lives of both Ludwig Prinn and Abdul Alhazred. Whether the book was written as a warning to those who would follow in the footsteps of these intrepid adventurers, or as a guide to avoid making the same mistakes that these investigators committed, is unclear. Much of the text concerns itself with the activities of witches and their covens: there are references to the “Black Man” and a shadowy mystical presence for which he works, unnamed, but equated by Gorstadt with the Devil, and referred to in one passage as “the Thing Which Should Not Be”. There are few spells in the book and those that there are, are definitely illuminating.
A copy of this work was said to have belonged to the Hoag family of Kingsport and is assumed to have been removed to the Miskatonic Library – perhaps it has made its way to Johns Hopkins Library instead?
German; Ivor Gorstadt; Leipzig, 1702; 0/1d2 Sanity loss; Occult +4 percentiles; Cthulhu Mythos +4 percentiles; 3 weeks to study and comprehend
Spells: “An Exorcism” (Cast Out Devil); “The Mysterious Looped Cross” (Crux Ansata); “Salts of Protection” (Powder of ibn-Ghazi); “A Potion of Warding” (Tikkoun Elixir); “To Sanctify an Area” (Warding)
*****
De vreselijke zonde van degenen die proberen om Heksen voor hulp terecht (“The Fearful Sin of those who seek to Witches for Help”)
Jacob van Hoogstraten (1460?-1527) was a Flemish cleric born in the Belgian town of Hoogstraten. He studied at Louvain and graduated in 1485, later becoming ordained as a Catholic priest of the Dominican order. After this he moved to the University of Cologne and matriculated in 1504 as Doctor of Theology, and later Professor of Theology at the university.
Controversy dogged van Hoogstraten. At a time when mendicant orders of priests were perceived as abusing their privileges, he published a defence of their status within the Church. This led to him being appointed as Inquisitor General of the archbishops of Cologne. Further controversy came in a dispute concerning the confiscation of Jewish books at the Catholic universities. Van Hoogstraten acted to support the confiscation but was overruled by another bishop appointed to adjudicate when the argument came to a standstill. The matter initially saw van Hoogstraten stripped of his offices; however, a later decision by the Pope restored him to power. He went on to preside in the Inquisitorial case against Lutherans Johann Esch and Heinrich Voes, who became the first of that schism to be martyred by the Catholics in 1523.
This present work is a clear and precise overview of the heretical nature of witchcraft and the sin involved in seeking the assistance of witches in personal gain. It is unusual in being presented in the original Latin as well as the language of the Netherlands.
Dutch and Latin; Jacob van Hoogstraten; Cologne, 1510; no Sanity loss; Occult +2 percentiles; 2 weeks to study and comprehend
Spells: None
*****
Dissertatio academica, de sagis sive foeminis commercium cum malo spiritu habentibus e Christiana pneumatologia desumpta (“Concerning Witches, & those Evil Women who traffic with the Prince of Darkness”)
This academic paper, written by Christian Stridtbeckh, was overseen by the Lutheran philosopher Valentin Alberti, and thus reflects the instructor’s worldview more than the author’s. Alberti was a staunch defender of Lutheran orthodoxy and an opposer of the views of Jacob van Hoogstraten and his followers (see above). In a period when notions of “natural law” were being filtered through Catholic and Protestant lenses and vying for supremacy, Alberti and his students were strongly in opposition to the Roman Catholics.
This thesis, which discusses the possibility of people being able to form pacts with the Devil, was first published in Latin in 1690 and again in 1716; this is the first German language edition published in 1723. It discusses the form of the Black Mass and the participation of the Black Man (possibly a hoofed figure) at such events; it also talks about the possibility that souls in Purgatory could be reincarnated.
German; Christian Stridtbeckh (with Valentin Alberti); Leipzig, 1723; no Sanity loss; Occult +2 percentiles; 1 week to study and comprehend
Spells: None
*****
Del Congresso Notturno delle Lamie (“A Study of the Midnight Sabbats of Witches”)
Tartarotti (1706-1761) was an Italian writer who believed that witchcraft was simply a melange of commonly held peasant superstitions, and not an organised demonic faith as portrayed by the Church. He held that much of what was reported as supernatural witch activity was mostly due to the effects of overwrought imaginations. He did not dispute the existence of sorcerers who did evil deals with demonic forces, but he felt that belief in witchcraft was simply a holdover from pre-Christian notions of a cult to the Roman goddess Diana.
Italian; Girolamo Tartarotti; Rome, 1749; no Sanity loss; Occult +1 percentiles; 1 week to study and comprehend
Spells: None
*****
Traité sur la Magie (“Treatise on Magic”)
In 1732, the physician to King Louis XV, Francois de Saint-Andre, produced a sceptical treatise which claimed that the Devil was powerless to intervene in the natural world. In retaliation, Antoine-Louis Daugis wrote this work which was intended as a refutation of those claims. In actual fact, the book does little more than catalogue the instances of demonic possession, exorcism and witchcraft that occur in the scriptures, rather than directly attacking any of de Saint-Andre’s arguments.
French; Antoine-Louis Daugis; Paris, 1732; no Sanity loss; 1 week to study and comprehend
Spells: None
*****
This is more than enough for the party to chew over for awhile.
To Be Concluded...

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