Play@YSDC

Albert, Liz and Clay reunite outside Albert's rather cramped* home.

OOC: Cramped,Largely because it is full of old but well used and top of the range Photographic equipment or equipment associated with photographic reproduction.

Liz looks at the equipment with admiration once Albert lets them inside. "Wow, this stuff is all top drawer!" she says. "I sure couldn't afford any of this. I know a bit about photography, but I'm just an amateur. You're the real deal."

"Thanks" he points to some framed prints on the wall of big name rock stars from the previous century - Bowie, Jagger, Madonna, Springsteen etc. "those are all mine, though I don't do so much of that type of work anymore".

He walks into the kitchen, music starts playing in the background and he comes back a minute later with three cold and opened bottles of Peroni and a pizza menu, he hands a bottle to Liz and Clay and leaves the menu on the coffee table "Make yourselves at home, choose your pizza, I'll be having a vegetarian with extra bacon and pepperoni. I'll just put some of this kit back where it belongs.

He busies himself, clearing his apparatus and moving it back into the guest bedroom/office. As he does so, you realise that the place wasn't particularly messy and that everything had been laid out or placed to facilitate whatever he had been doing, everything is taken back in a certain order.

"Right then" he says, coming in and sitting on a chair opposite his guests now that's all nice and tidy have you made your choices?"

Clay looks about unimpressed with old camera equipment. Must be some geek thing. "Yea, nice place. That veggie with bacon sounds great."

"I'll have pepperoni, please," says Liz. She sets up her laptop on the table and hooks up the external drive to it, then turns it on. She sets to work while they wait for the pizza, and she is finally able to penetrate the first level of security well before the pizza arrives. "Guess all I needed was a change of scenery. Now to gain access to the account."

Excellent! That's a good start Liz

Albert picks up the phone and places the pizza order, adding 3 tubs of Haagen Daz to the order.

Right, that'll be about 20 minutes. While we're waiting why don't we find out a bit more about each other - seeing as we're going to be working together. Clay, you start, where you from, what do you do, what are your hobbies, you know that sort of stuff!

Hang on! I'll be back in a sec. Albert disappears into the kitchen and returns with 3 more bottles of beer, passes them out and then looks quizzically at Clay

Clay thanks Albert for the beer and takes a drink, "Well seeing as how you're the new guy, why don't you kick us off?"

"Oh, goodie, I love Haagen-Dahz!" says Liz as she works, licking her lips in anticipation.

OOC,Each of these Computer Use rolls takes me 15 minutes, so I'd better wait to make the next one. This attempt will be done about fifteen minutes after the food arrives.

Computer Use:,Don't worry about Computer Use rolls this isn't a stressful environment and Liz doesn't have to worry about being subtle with her techniques so she'll penetrate the security.

The most interresting data Liz can find is in the Prof's mail box

Mail One
From: ACGosshamm@brichester.ac.uk
To: 0121233@hotmail.com
Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2008 7:38 PM
Subject: Draft Copy

Sir,
At this point while I admit the paper is only a draft, it fundamentally frames my argument, with some small additions I believe my studies have been nothing less than ground breaking.I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your past generosity both in terms of financial assistance as well as time and effort. I hope that your business interests will allow us to one day meet so I may thank you personally.
I have included an attachment containing the first draft of the paper.
Yours
Adrian Gosshamm

Mail two

From: ACGosshamm@brichester.ac.uk
To: 0121233@hotmail.com
Sent: Monday, July 25, 2008 7:38 PM
Subject: Success.
Sir,
I believe I may have now found the conclusive evidence to prove my thesis. I shall travel back to Northern Albania again. Hopefully, I will have very pleasing news for you when I return.
Yours
Adrian Gosshamm

The second mail was sent 7 days before Gosshamm died.

Mail three

From: ACGosshamm@brichester.ac.uk
To: MDemachi@hotmail.com
Sent: Saturday, August 3, 2008 7:38 PM
Subject: Draft Copy

Hey Mazzi,

Well, despite all the fuss I got home safely. I have just posted you the complete package, including a full and final draft.All you need do is insert the completed translations and it is done. I included the details of everything I saw when over with you and although a bit melodramatic I think it adds a bit of reality to what is an otherwise fantastical conclusion.

Hope you appreciate all the effort, I printed this opus on that same little desktop printer at home you saw last time, and it’ll never be the same again.

Unfortunately, I’ll have to ask Charles and Tom to give their copies back; I don’t think they’ll be upset when I tell them why, although I suspect they’ll be gutted I came out to see you without telling them.

Love
Ade

OOC: Sorry,Thought I'd posted all this yesterday.

Liz copies the attached final draft to her hard drive and opens it up to take a look at the file. "It certainly looks like he was onto something before they killed him," she says. "This Mazzi Demachi chap may know more. He may also be a target, so we'd better find and speak to him as soon as we can. I'll see what I can find out about him on the Internet. He'd also know who Charles and Tom are. They've seen this paper too. I wonder who's behind this 0121233 account? All I can tell is that it's a man, that he'd never met the prof in person, and that he's been the one funding this research. That means he's prolly involved with Kush nderton, a charity dedicated to preserving Albanian heritage and history. When I spoke to the prof's assistant Shauna, she told me they were the ones funding it."

OOC,I thought it was currently May 2008.

Clay makes himself at home. If there is a tellie, he flips it on and looks for a football match. Maybe Arsenal is playing. "From your squeals of delight I'm guessing you cracked it. Anything interesting?"

"Yup, that's what my squee meant," says Liz. She turns the laptop so he can see the screen. "This paper should explain why he was planning to return to Albania, and we've got some more leads to check out now."

"Great job. Have you talked to Greg and Jacob yet?" Clay flips through a couple more channels, and leaves it on a match of 2 teams he could really care less about, but football is still football and goes over to read what Liz found.

"Not yet," says Liz, "but I'll do it now." She sends a text to Greg and Jacob that she found what she sought and to expect an email. Then she copies and pastes the professor's email messages into one that she sends to both of them, attaching the final draft of his paper.

Clay looks over at Albert, "Yea there are a couple more of us."

"Oh right! Are they near by,do you want to invite them in to the party?"

He looks to Liz "Can you send me a copy of that paper too?"

Albert clears away the empty pizza boxes and brings the ice-creams, spoons and more beer from the kitchen.

"So what are your friends upto tonight, more breaking and entering?" he smiles while cracking the joke.

"Sure, no problem," says Liz, forwarding him a copy of the email once he gives her his email address. "Tonight I think we'll just be doing research. Otherwise, how are we to know where we have to break and enter and what we have to nick next?" she adds with a wink. She eagerly takes a tub of ice cream and a spoon and begins to systematically devour it.

Albert flips open his laptop, opens the attachment from Liz and begins to skim read it.

Greg arrives at Alberts house having taken a Taxi from Deerhurst to Brichester.

After making introductions and receiving assurances about Albert, he fills everyone in on the stuff in the lockup. Passing around his phone so everyone can see the photos.

"There is simply to much stuff there to look at in the half hour we had, I reckon its worth going back at some point or other, so we can take a proper look at this stuff. So whats the plan now? I looked at the mails can we work out who he is talking about in them?"

OOC: Link,Will take you to where the contents of the boxes is discussed if you haven't already read it

Clay finishes off a piece of pizza and washes it down with a beer. "Ok, it looks like we still aren't any further along as to figuring out what the prof was into? There is some weird stuff there. What is with the scratches?"

Greg shrugged. "The only thing I can tell you for certain is that it is somehow related with the Maltese fragments. They are very similar... the pattern scratched here and the fragment designs. I have some photos of those too, scroll over to the next folder," he said pointing at his phone in Clay's hand. "He... or she... scratched those patterns in repeatedly, like a ward or something."


"So here's my suggestion, for what it's worth. I think we should go back to this place after dark, cover the windows and cracks in the door with blankets, and do a more thorough investigation of the contents. Clearly, our answers are contained within, and if we don't move fast we might lose our opportunity."

Jacob is happy to see his friends and greet Albert. He politely rejects the pizza they ordered since it's not kosher.

The professor storages several important things with the help of his landlord. I managed to convince him that I and the professor were close friends and to let me see and take some of "my" stuff. Now I hate to lie and I will pray for the lord forgiveness but it was crucial for our investigation.
The books are in my car.

Jacob, with the help of someone will bring what he found to the room.
Well, what do you say ...
Oh, and one more thing ... I found this invoice ...
He take the invoice from his wallet and show it to the others.
The invoice is from the couriers DHL for the delivery of a manuscript and camera memory cardto a Ms. Maria Demachi in Trieste Albania.

"All that gold certainly fits with the Verbetoi," says Liz, looking over the photos. She examines the invoice next. "Maria Demachi...that's prolly the same person as Mazzi Demachi in the prof's third email. Interesting how he uses the word 'love' - sounds like there was something between them. She must know a lot about this, and she's got the manuscript and an SD card. I thought Trieste was in Italy, though it's right at the border. The recipient of the first two emails must be connected with the Kush nderton charity that funded his research. I dunno who Charles and Tom are."

"Can we give this Ms. Demachi a call?" Clay jumps in.

"I don't know," says Liz. "We'll need her number; I'll see if I can find it online. We can certainly send her an email, of course. Her address is right here."

With the delivery address on the invoice its relatively easy for Liz to obtain the relevant contact details for Maria Demachi as well as the following background.

Maria Demachi PhD, Director of the Albanian Archaeology Rescue team.
Received her BA in 1986 from Oxford where she studied Classics; received a separate MA in 1989 from Miskatonic University. Main research interests include the colonization in central Albania and the Adriatic Coast, and the study of jewellery from Archaic to Hellenistic periods. Other interests: mortuary archaeology, techniques of excavation, sciences applied to archaeology, techniques of production of ceramic and metal objects, conservation.
Was the assistant director of the Albanian Archaeology Rescue team since its foundation in 1998 till June 2007 when she became director.

While at Miskatonic she co wrote one of the leading papers on ancient linguistics with a Prof Tom Mathers

NB Trieste is a typo I mean Tirana (Albanian Capitol)

"Found her," says Liz, showing the information to the others. "We'd better work out what we're going to say beforehand. I'm not even sure if she's heard about the professor's death yet."

"What is it we want to know from her? As you say she may have been romantically linked to him. How do we want to play this? Colleagues of the professor following up on his work? Concerned friends trying to help tidy up his affairs?"

"Good question," says Liz. "Well, she's likely to know his colleagues, as she's one of them. She'll prolly see through it if we claim to be them. I think our best bet is the concerned friends bit, though ones with a keen interest in his research."

Greg looks up from his phone a bit sheepishly. "She's not answering her home phone and there's no answer phone either."

OOC:   GM: NPCing Greg in his absence, if the others don't pipe up you two should feel free to move things along. If you others are waiting for something from me feel free to pipe up.

"All right, then we'll just use email," says Liz. "We may have to wait some time for a reply, but at least we can compose what we're going to say with care. Which of us should send it, and how shall we phrase it?"

Now this is completely out of place but everything we went through is out of the ordinary and wierd but I can suggest ... oh, I don't believe I say it ... but breaking in to the storage and take the rest of the books and the fragments when we'll need it.
Jacob says, clearly with unease.
I'll have to have a good alibi as I and Tom, the professor's landlord, are the only ones to know about the place I belive. There are too many clues inside the storage.

"Right, because we haven't committed enough burglary tonight," says Liz. "Aren't these things in the prof's storage going to take up a lot of space? And how are we supposed to carry them all? If you can get access to the storage unit, wouldn't it make more sense just to look at the clues while they're there, where they'll be safe, and perhaps photograph them? I can see removing the books to study later, but those fragments are pretty bulky from the way you describe them."

"I think Liz is correct, let's try and reduce the incidents of law-breaking. Being locked up won't help our cause much."

He turns to Jacob - "Describe the lock-up to us. Where is it? Is it a garage? A warehouse, a lock-up in a storage facility? How easy is it to get in and out of? Is it overlooked or remote? If we need to break into this place - let's try and gather what we need in one go. We don't need to take anything, I can photograph anything that's of importance. OK one or two books might need to be lifted but let's try and leave the actual thieving to a minimum"

"Now about this email. How about we frame it that we are trying to tie loose end ups on behalf of the University. That way we aren't necessarily close friends of the professor, we're just admin staff trying to arrange the professor's affairs that pertain to the university? As I am enrolled at the university I have genuine university email address - so we don't need to spoof emails and the like. I think this way we can initiate contact without raising suspicions. Then we can decide what to do after we receive her reply"

"How does that sound to everyone? Have we forgotten anything? Liz let me take a look at those emails again"

"Its an old mechanic's garage at the end of a quiet lane, 1930's redbrick, frosted glass, solid doors but nothing super special, relatively private as it is at the end of a short lane and its surrounded by hedges. Greg adds that he saw an old looking burglar alarm bell on the front of the building.

"Good thinking, Albert," says Liz. "I'm actually a student, but from Cambridge. If we need to explain my connection, I'm a friend of the prof's assistant, Shauna Wilcox. I've only met her today, of course. Still, it might be best for you to be the sole contact and keep the rest of us out of it for now. That way, if she won't cooperate with you, she won't know you're associated with us and the rest of us still have a chance."

OOC: E-mail,Someone want to paraphrase the contents of the email, there isn't an immediate response to it BTW, so feel free to move on.

"OK" says Clay "E-mail sent, whats next?"

"What about the books you brought back from the garage?" Liz asks Greg and Jacob. "We could start looking through them."

"What about these guys that are mentioned in the email" Albert looks up from his laptop "Charles and Tom? says here he needs to ask them for their copies of his work back. Have you come across these names before? I think we should try and track them down. You know, I think that we should expect that everyone that has seen the professors work is a potential target for these killers and i think they should be warned that their lives might be in danger"

Clay will start going through some of the books to see if anything remotely related to what we have discovered so far.

"I'll look online," says Liz, "starting with the prof's webpage. They must be colleagues of his, but they might not be at Brichester. We should warn Maria of the danger by email too. She's in Albania, so it would be even easier for them to get to her."

Jacob grabbed two books from the box. Skimming these books doesn't reveal any major revelations, but simply looking at the index indicates there are a couple of entries pertaining to the Verbti/Verbetoi.

Pliny’s Natural History – Latin w/English translation 233pp Oxford University Press, 1937:

"when speaking of the “Illyripropriedicti” ("Illyrians properly so-called"), we must explicitly exclude the Verbetoi. for “they preceded the Illyrians and were like, but not of the Thracian Stock, both wild and uncivilised. Only their horses and metalwork were handsome”.

The Histories – Latin w/English translation, 448pp, Polybius, Cambridge Press 1954

A conversation between Xerxes and Demaratus - an exiled Spartan king in his retinue after the Battle of Thermopylae wherein Xerxes notes of Leonidas, “did he not know I would have gladly rid them (the Greeks) of the Verbetoi".

OOC:   You call them Verbti I'll call them Verbetoi,While the names Verbti and Verbetoi now seem interchangeable, its apparent that in the past the people were more widely known by there latin name Verbetoi, but that more recently they are known as the Verbti. This popular modernusage though is incorrect as Verbti though was/is apparently the god they worship or worshiped.

In the Prof's potted biography on his webpage is a very dated picture of him and three others at Miskatonic University in Mass US, one of whom is clearly a much younger version of Maria Dermarchi.

OOC:   Further research is a difficult Library use or a normal Computer Use to trawl through Miskatonics records and year books.

So what should be our next step ?
Jacob asks
How this Verbti is connected to the fragments?

Liz codes up a spider to search through the Miskatonic University webspace, and it eventually hits paydirt.

Liz's spider finds a reference to a Alumni dinner two years ago which contains a photo of three men, one is Profess Gossham the others are:

Professor Charles Grundy - UCL (University College London) School of Slavonic and East European Studies.

Professor Tom Mathers - Chair of Russian, Eurasian and Eastern European Studies, University of Warwick

"Found them!" announces Liz triumphantly, showing the results to the others. "The chaps we're looking for are Charles Grundy at UCL and Tom Mathers at Warwick. We could even visit them in person. Let me see what I can find on them." She searches for biographical and contact information on the other two professors.

There isn't anything out of the ordinary about either of them, they have published papers in their area of study none of which have had anything to do with the Verbti/Verbetoi have what look to be normal academic profiles.

Liz shows the others what she's found. "We can at least email them," she says. "That way we can be sure to warn them quickly." She next opens up the file containing the professor's draft of his final paper and starts reading it.

Un-titled Thesis

The Maltese fragments Fragments were discovered by the archaeologist David Tavernier in 1985, at a dig in the Mgarr region of Malta. Called as such because these engraved stones are thought to be part of a much larger stone-working, the other pieces of which have never been recovered.

They are particularly fine examples of artefacts associated with the people Gosshamm has dubbed 'the Readers', who are thought to be descended from Sicanian stock and arrived on Malta from Sicily around 5200BC. They formed mainly farming and fishing communities, living in caves and open dwellings and predate the island's temple period (3600 BC), by which time they were likely extinct. Artefacts associated with the 'Readers', such as pottery and cave paintings, are recognisable due to being covered in intricate but crudely rendered script, several characters of which are tantalisingly similar to characters found in Archaic and Old Egyptian.

The orthodox view, and the one held by Tavernier and his team, is that the Readers' script is entirely decorative and the resemblance of some characters to characters in written languages is coincidental, or else the artefacts date from a much later period than is generally thought, and are the result of interaction with Egyptian explorers.

Gosshamm disagrees, as do other proponents of progenitor civilization theories. He points to the facts that there is no evidence of any Sicanian tribe practicing this sort of decoration in Sicily, nor of any Egyptian expansion into Malta. He also maintains that whilst the characters are crudely rendered, they are more numerous and distinctive than those of Archaic or even Old Egyptian scripts, suggesting they may form a more sophisticated language.

Grossham's thesis is that when the Readers arrived on Malta they encountered artefacts of a much older civilization - now lost to time all together - and were in some way profoundly affected by them, causing them to endlessly reproduce the mysterious characters they had encountered without understanding them. The Maltese Fragments are of particular interest to Gosshamm as they represent the largest uninterrupted example of Reader script found to date, and using various esoteric and contentious sources, such as past life experiences, psychic readings and the Book of Eibon, Gosshamm claims to have succeeded in translating sections of it.

He claims the translation identifies the text as belonging to the mythical Book of Skelos, and whilst while there are several disparate passages, the longest deals with the history of a nomadic people called the Atahath, who settled for some years in the city of Yb in the Western deserts of Shem before migrating across the Mediterranean - then a desert - to a land Gosshamm identifies as modern-day Albania. It was through his studies of Albanian peoples that might be descended from the Atahath that Gosshamm became aware of the Verbetoi, whose language appeared to be Afro-Asiatic in origin in stark contrast to their neighbors.

The problem with the ideas which form the evidence and arguments for the thesis while coherent are certainly not conclusive, the evidence is also lacking and requires something more incontrovertible. Basically, the thesis doesn't really prove anything and is at best an early draft, its certainly not something to send out to peer review.

"Hmm..." says Liz. "It looks like this is an early draft. Maria, Charles, and Tom must have the latest version. It doesn't seem likely that anyone would want to kill him over what I'm reading here, but there may be more to it. It seems like the Verbetoi really want to conceal their origins. Whatever he discovered that proves his thesis must be the key to all this, and his plans to return to Northern Albania may have prompted his murder."

The professor's killers probably wanted the fragments or preventing him to explore the topic further?
He might have found out something before he wrote his thoughts and findings on paper.
Jacob throws the notion to the air

Clay puts down the books unable to find anything worthwhile. Wasn't like he was really looking, but he didn't want to seem like he wasn't helping in the nerdathon going on.
.
"So what do we know of these, what did you call them, Ver-bo-tee? Anything on the internet about them?"

"I found a bunch of stuff last month," says Liz. "I've still got it saved on my laptop." She brings it up and shows him.

OOC,I know I found some material on the Verbetoi back in Chapter 1, but I don't remember exactly where in the chapter it is or what it said.

"So it sounds like these guys are not a good group to cross, which is what the prof obviously did. Does the Prof have any family? From the sounds of this, they could be in trouble as well." Clay gives his 2 cents worth.

Greg looks around. "Well we can start trying to get phone numbers and ring these people at their homes tonight, or we can wait until tomorrow and ambush them in their workplaces." He thinks for a moment. "These guys are in different part of the country aren't they? Warwick is about as far from London as this place isn't it, so if we want to see them at their offices will we need to get a move on and arrange transport? Also what are we going to tell them?"

"I don't know, when is it too late to save someone's life? Are they in a different time zone, maybe its earlier there?" Clay asks.

OOC:   what time is it here?

Liz shakes her head. "They're both in England," she says, "so it's Greenwich Mean Time all round. But you're right, we should call them tonight. If we don't warn them, they might wake up dead in the morning."

"We should call the one in London first," says Liz. "He'll be in greater danger. We already know these guys had a presence in London. Whoever makes the call should prolly have more social skills than me."

OOC:

Guys for the sake of clarity and to move things along a bit. I'm moving things along to the next day (the numbers Liz has are all work numbers and we're well past office hours)

You have either a) returned home to London b) dossed at Arthur's assuming he's OK with that c) found lodgings in Brichester.

Finally, if anyone has plans to break into the lockup to steal/document its contents please yell and we'll start a new separate thread.

Opening a new thread here