Play@YSDC

Brichester University Library is a reasonably modern well equipped library. The index seems full of papers written by the professor over the course of his career.

Library Use,What are we searching for? The professor has written hundreds of papers during his academic career, on top of which there seem to be more books on Albania than you've seen before.

Jacob is searching for the most recent and papers that deal with the Ur language, the Maltase fragments and the Verbiti.

Greg wants to check to see if there are any recent reports on field trips that include names of students that they might want to speak with later... perhaps see if there are any recurring names in the trips.

Library Use - Success!,[url=http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4058544/]Library Use (45%) (1d100=38)[/url]

Greg quickly has a several yearbooks each of which details the field trips conducted by Brichester University's Geography and Archaeology Society at the very least he has the authors name for each one (they are all different)

Jacob however, is gathering an ever increasing pile of papers and books on the desk in front of him, the large majority of them don't tell him anything new. Although its hard to escape the idea the professor was working towards a theory which would link the three and might well have been working on such a paper when he died.

Hmmm ... too much reading material.
Jacob decides to focus on the Ur language. He wants to see if the language is some kind of ancient Hebrew.

Although there are links with Hebrew as a member of the Afroasiatic family of languages which to the Ur language idea, its quite clear to Jacob that Linguists certainly don't consider the Ur language as some form of ancient Hebrew. Also Gosshams ideas would seem to fly in the face of the Ur language idea, on the one hand he seems to indicate the Maltese fragments and verbti symbolism are somehow linked to the Ur language, but cannot show any linkage between the Verbti language and the accepted connectors*

*those sounds which are found in lots of language families and thus would seem to show some common proto-language to link them all.

Let's search for the Maltese Fragments.
Jacob says to Greg.
Maybe we can find pictures of them ... I wonder if these are pieces of stone with symbols carved onto them. Maybe we'll be able to find the actual fragments as well and see the big picture.

Looking for books with pictures of the Maltese fragments is easy enough, they all show pretty much the same thing a number pottery shards some big some small with a variety of different markings.

The shards are described as Early Neolithic Period (ca. 5000 BC) there seem to be two opposing points of view, one (Gossham's and a couple of others) is that the markings on the pottery is evidence of the earliest language in a written medium. If this was true it would be a pretty startling discovery as it would predate any other example by 3000 years. The other argument is that the the markings are simply repetitive patterns which seems both the most strongly held argument and the one which the evidence seems to support.

Greg is following along as best he can, but this whole archeology thing just isn't his strong suit. "So... you're saying Professor Gossham's belief was that these little images on the pottery made up some sort of pre-historic alphabet, right? I think maybe I'll jot them down as we see them so we have them as a reference later on."

This will take Greg some time as there is a great deal of disagreement between the relevant parties (even those who do support Gosshams view point) so collating an inclusive list will involve looking through all the books.

Yes, let's write them down or take a picture of them and see if we can find similarities to the tattoos we encountered.
Jacob replies
I don't want to believe my theory but after what we saw, what are the chances these are, you know, words of power of some sort.

Greg nodded to Jacob, pulling out his cell phone that came with a camera, as most did these days. "Great idea. My artistic quality leaves a lot to be desired." He remembered trying to reproduce the tattoos he saw a while back and screwing that up royally.

Photography (1d100=44) - Fail
well, it's going to take a while.
Jacob says as he begin to photo the pages with his cell phone.

The problem Jacob has with his camera phone is not taking the photos per se, but ensuring they are clear and usable, so much time is wasted moving around the library books in hand looking for a window or light source which works best.

Working together Greg and Jacob collate what they consider a fairly comprehensive set of photos. Which for a few quid the library can print out using their high quality printers and bind.

OOC: Time check,Consider yourselves in step with Liz time wise, if you have anything else to do.

Photography - fail,[url=http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4083195/]Photography(10%) (1d100=54)[/url]

Greg says, "Yeah... I've always sucked at taking photos. Let's use the scanners, it might be quicker ... and more legible."

Greg says to Jacob, "Ok, so ... maybe we should see if we can find any of these people who went on the field exhibitions?"