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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