Study Hall for Hermetics

Gallowglass

Gallowglass is in the library at the House. He is studying because if Gallowglass is not studying he ceases to exist. He becomes something Other. He goes by the nickname he's worn since he was a child. Kit. Gallowglass is studying because this is the quest. This is the gladsome beast: this, right here - words penned by others, ideas sketched-out, philosophies of primals and penny-mystics sometimes but Adam doesn't have any trouble gleaning from these views the truth of what it is they were doing, in their come-at-it-from-an-angle fashion, and has no difficulty re-imagining rotes and ideas so that they better sit in the House of Hermes.

He and Leonhard have a dinner date tonight. Or was it tomorrow night? They have a dinner date some soon night and it's going to be a surprise when they run into one another in the library, but perhaps not that great a surprise after all.

Gallowglass has with him a pen. The pen is a fine one: a fountain pen that is heavy and old and he enjoys the weight of it [Wand] in his hand. He is writing in a journal, leather-bound. The leather was taken from a calf, so it is soft. The calf he has been assured was slaughtered when the Moon was in the Second House and Saturn was crossing the Seat of Cassiel. It is a good journal to take notes in.

Proclus

Something perplexes the Jerbiton about the Library.  Something between memory and cynicism, and try as he might he wears it on his face for a moment as he enters.  Retina scans, electronics, no, not that.  That it's not so exhaustive and likely to entirely swallow one in its content, no not that.  That it's underground; he thinks of The Milestone Bridge.  Never a bridge, and no longer a Covenant, it had been a Miscellanean holdover from centuries past.  They'd berate anybody who didn't believe Pralix herself had regularly visited, building her Ordo Ex Miscellanea.  They'd berate anybody who suggested more formal relations with the British Verbena.  They'd berate anybody who suggested they needed to rethink their library's cellar location.
Perhaps it had been August, perhaps September.  Earning his title, Camel of Cad Gadu, the younger Proclus had returned there, couriering, shuttling, hefting and procuring.  Gone.  Not the building but the library.  Made worthless mush by the Iterators.  Flooded by its own defences turned to water.  Flooded by the six feet of stone atop it.  No bullets, no cybernetic monstrosities, just sly ruination.
He.. finds the Bonisagan.  The Magus of the First House.  Of course he's in the Library.  The Jerbiton himself had wondered whose car it was parked up top, spent his minutes in the Node.  Spent his minutes simply enjoying it, all the more precious than any Library...  Blind, though.  Blind to the Spirit Guardian, and knowing it.  But blind no longer, in the Library.  The Librum, the Ivory Tower and the complete lack of interruption, it would seem.  Well, thinks Proclus, I just ruined the last part for you, didn't I?

He enters simply.  "Salve," comes the traditional greeting.  Hermetics.  The Order is where the Order is, and here is one corner of a manifest destiny, at least according to the rantings of Kyop bani Tytalus.  Wherever two meet, there is Order, or so he wrote.  Forgetting that there is also the Mi'as...

He pulls latex gloves from his satchel.  Something remains in the satchel, bulky but unseen.  He also pulls a soft brush and an air-blower.  Not so much the bibliophile as others might be, it is one such as used to squirt air into camera lenses to remove dust, but suited to use in libraries nonetheless.

How welcome, though.  How welcome the sight, Kyop's totalitarian 17th Century infamy aside, to see the Order in study.  Calfskin, study and Words.

Gallowglass

Gallowglass doesn't appreciate the Technocratic security measures. Surely they'd be child's play for the local Teenage Technocrats (aka Virtual Adepts) to get through. Surely they'd be child's play for actual Technocrats to get through. Surely all they do is give those Teenagers an advantage. Surely there's a more elegant means to protect the books than technology. Aren't there oaths to take? Curses to weave? Aren't there riddles to unriddle? He considers these things often: a game he and Lucius used to play. Lucius was a proponent of elegance in all things and Gallowglass remembers that when he's putting together rituals or judging the rituals of others. How to make them elegant. And complicated. Complication is its own protection, isn't it? Just look at the Universe and how complicated it is: all those Words fitting together, overlapping, nothing neat and yet such perfection in the balance of compacts.

Proclus enters simply. The young Bonisagan doesn't yet lift his eyes from his book but he does lift his chin. He has shaved somewhat recently so the beard is in one of its thinner and scruffier phases, not yet enough that he needs trim it. His shadow does not keep him company.

When the sentence is done, dotted, he does look up, tracking Proclus whichever way he went in order to smile. The smile is genuine because Gallowglass likes Proclus. The smile is serious and whatever nuance it has says he is quietly still thinking of whatever it was he was thinking, though he's ready to put that aside in order to greet his Tradition-mate. "Salve, Proclus."

"What are you after today?"

Proclus

Proclus meanders from sight, the knuckle of a hooked forefinger taps on the shelf he passes, the shelf that hides him.  The very light, incidental knocking of his knuckle telling Adam how fast he is trotting his eyes along the shelf.  The Dewey Index.  How blandly bowed to all the wrong kind of order it is!  He think of Adam's upcoming introduction to Pasaran, such a different place to this, to the Bonisagan's shop.  Most anywhere, truly.  But dinner can wait.  The book has, he knows, been waiting longer. 

"A good bestiary.  Bygones.  More a reflective read than..."  He pauses, his face appears at the end of the bookshelf.  "Well, not study, really.  Wanted to see how much dust is on it, too.  Seems the locals aren't especially well-read on Bygones."

Oh.  Of course.  Jerbiton.  It's said the library at their ancestral chantry was not one known for its hush.  A bustle of conversations, a symposia of collective reading, suggestion, debate, flicking pages, flicking words, pricked ears and talk long into topics of enlivenment.  He'll be Proclus.  He'll be talking.

The expression suddenly beams.  He has something to share.  Something bright and worthwhile, and not bound by pass-codes or Dewey's stifling banality... or, indeed, humidifiers put in place because people don't know how to truly care for books anymore, just store them and fail to read them.  He squits some air over a book.  A little dust.  He looks amused, correct.  The bestiary hasn't been read for some time.

"There was a Peryton in Denver."

And there it is.  The reason for his brightness.  He couldn't have held it in longer, no, not Proclus, not in sharing this, not with Adam.  Frere.  A Peryton.  A Bygone. 

"Kalen seemed to know his chops, but..."  He approaches, with the book, tenderly finding the right entry within its menagerie of content.  (Why does every bloody bestiary swoon over dragons?)  "Does nobody actually read in here unless it's a matter of Spheres?"

[[Turns out it was an Int+Occult Diff8 to know what one was, but happy for Adam to know outright.]]

Gallowglass

Might as well make the roll, so here ya go:

Lux @ 6:41PM
Private Message to Lux
Roll: 7 d10 TN8 (2, 4, 5, 7, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 1 ) VALID

Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 2, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Gallowglass

ooc: aw, when 1s cancelled. *hat over heart*

Gallowglass

"I imagine there has been some research into the umbrood." He is valiant, but he is not fair; this is not fairness. There is a certain acerbic quality to his voice; a certain lemon tartness. Not bitter, but bitter like a rind. His eyebrows have lofted at mention of a Peryton. Behold, Adam Gallowglass, searching his memory, leaning back in his chair, the pen in his hand twirled not idly because idly connotes unbusied hands, but carefully clockwise, following the movement of the sun and the spheres. Spheres.

"A Peryton?" He sounds wondering. Of course he does; wouldn't he have liked to see one? The beasts who change their shadows, depending on the victim. "What happened to it? What chops did Kalen show?"

A pause; now he settles forward, resting his skinny forearms on the desk, back into that scholar's C of a slouch, rubbing his chin.

Proclus

"Study chops.  Not every Flambeau reads the fine print, do they?"  It's not an entirely unfair observation of the House in general - not since the House in general is so historically wracked by young deaths, surging to the frontlines and with only the hardiest bothering to come back and bore themselves with prolonged study - but it's one he clearly enjoys making of Kalen, summing the Flambeau up and liking the results he's seen.

He plants the book down near Adam.  Finding the page, he reads aloud, pleased that Perytons get an entry: "...though rarely seen beyond their usual habitat of... oh, now look at that illustration.  Have you ever seen anything so incapable?  This is pitiful!"  He rings his forefingers around the illustration of the Peryton.  There would seem to be nothing particularly wrong with it, save perhaps: "Obviously drawing from second-hand accounts."  The House of Arts, and each a critic.  He finds the author's name.  An Etherite.  Dr Midas Longback.  Cryptozoological Accounts of Central Europe - 1845 to 1976.  The Jerbiton has grown bored of the book, but not of the topic.  He closes the book.

"A Peryton!  Adam, you would have been...  Oh, it was...  Extant!  Of course, Longback here, he's been trumped.  I can't remember reading of any single account of a Peryton being swayed from its vengeance.  Well, not without a lot of body parts.  Not a big fan of body parts.  But it was.  It was unique.  Worthy of an article.  Thought I might write one.  Can't do worse than Longback, for illustrations if nothing else.  Oh!  It seems that they naturally have brown eyes, not the red that's always written of.  In fact, given its transformation into a crow... I think it was a crow...  Sure it was a crow... Well, it was a crow.  Given that, given the eyes, the change, there seems to be a lot about Perytons that the bestiaries I've seen have omitted.  It was a unique encounter, so far as I can fathom.  And, besides, I hadn't seen one since, oh, '02.  Any Bygone.  On Earth, anyway.  Just such a telling pity that too many others in the Council seem largely oblivious to them.  As if Paradox is just our burden."

Yes, a remnant of the Mythic Age will do that to you, it seems.  Remind you of what is lost and what is lacking in the world.

"Oh.  Was I interrupting?"  He darts off without waiting for the answer.  It's not so large a place that he can't hear Adam anywhere else down there, of course.  He checks, his fingers waggling independently, his head switching from side to side along the shelves, finding a book.  Hilito's Codex of Lost Lies.  The classic Criamon text, oft copied, rarely truly understood.  While not a universal text, found in just any library, a regular repeat-offender in others' referencing.  The Ars Temporis.  He brings it to Adam.  "Going to be referencing this tomorr...  Oh, you're still on for tomorrow?"

Gallowglass

Has Gallowglass ever seen an illustration so incapable? He's not certain if that's what Leonhard is asking him or if he's asking whether or not the Peryton's construction of bird-parts and deer-parts and human-shadow is incapable. He considers the image without comment. Lashes low. A boy's lashes, those, which is to say somebody'd describe them as a girls. As Leonhard closes the book, Adam places his pen [Wand] between the pages, and flips it open again. He turns to another page. Bygones. What a quaint word. Let bygones be bygones but nobody can can they.

"We're still on for tomorrow," he tells Leonhard when Leonhard returns. "Is it tomorrow so soon?" Absent. Distracted. Abstracted.

"So how was this Peryton swayed from vengeance? You and Kalen gave it a good talking-to?"

Proclus

Pleased that they are still on for tomorrow, the Jerbiton momentarily studies Adam.  Yes, he looks as if he's actually remembered to sleep since last he saw him...

"Oh, not so much.  That bought some time, the old Proclus Waffle.  Well, momentarily managing to get it engaged in talking saw me able to stand in its way.  Sid... the Verbena... got in right there beside me and unless I miss my guess she was at Work with the spirit of... oh, it was a murdered child.  The Peryton was after some biker.  Santa Fe District.  I was down there looking for any sign of that wh...  Well, that's perhaps for tomorrow," he says, patting his lumpy satchel. 

"It's not the least intimidating of encounters, Adam.  Staring at a Bygone, but... oh, it was worth it.  Those antlers are sharp as hate, but sharp as Truth.  Anyway, why would I put myself in between a Peryton and a biker with a confessed infanticidal past?  (Won't be rushing to do it again, I can promise you that.  Gustav's still sneering about it.  Oh, you'll meet him tomorrow.  Try not to...  Anyway!)  It was how it played out.  Kalen and Sera, well, they directly... what would the word be?  (Yes, even I get lost for words, don't you smirk.)"

He plays out the scene in mime, taking the roles of the others.  Including the biker, including the Peryton.  His impersonation of a Peryton is... surprisingly vivid.  There is a flash of something altogether monstrous and yet spiritual in him as he does.

"They soothed the dead child's spirit.  Removed the impetus to vengeance.  It was quite, quite beautiful, though I expect you Bonisagi quite understand how the shift in a humour or vector, and one so profound, can have a potentially detrimental affect upon a Pattern, so I was concerned for the Peryton thereafter (not any thereafter was to last long).  Pan was... yes, he was there, too...  Didn't commit himself until the others did, I noticed, which was quite telling I thought, then it was all By The Power Of Christ I Absolve You for Johnny Biker's confession.  Didn't go buying the time to get, just opportunistically using the fact Sid and I stood up to the Peryton.  Blocked it.  The Magus and the Witch, putting themselves in harm's way and it seems Christ's Salvation is okay as a matter of opportunism after other's work.  Who knew?  Anyway, Hogshit or Truth, I didn't much care for the coddling of a murderer.  Not as if anybody bothered to consider the Peryton.  Told him it might be time for him to fuck off.  (Yes, brusque, but I wasn't feeling like watching a Peryton with a shifted Pattern suffer Backlash by the mere presence of a Common Soul, penitent or not, whose infanticide, repented or not, had wrought in the first place.)  We're to elevate the Common World, not coddle it.  But it looked at me, Adam.  Its red eyes turned to brown.  It knew I knew it for what it is.  Turned to a crow (that surprised me) and it's out there, now, in the world.  I hope to Providence that it's not forever crippled by what we did.  I don't think it is but I wasn't about to let the risk be compounded."

Gallowglass

He does smirk. Of course he smirks. A name's a thing, and the smirk is conjured up by its very mention. He is leaning back in his chair during the pantomime, tapping the edge of his pen against his journal, which is closed now. Adam's script is neat, but slanting, as arcane as its master. 

His expression is poised between a smirk and consideration there-after, speaking of there-afters; when Leonhard mentions Christ's Salvation, Magus and the Witch.

"Seems a pity Patience and Grace weren't there. You nearly had a full hand."

Does he find it strange that so many disparate Willworkers came across such a thing as a Bygone chasing down a murderer at once? He does, but it is no stranger than disparate Willworkers finding one another at all.

"I'm glad you had a thought for the creature," he says, when Leonhard has finished his tale. "Will you try to find it again?"

Proclus

Oh, the wordplay of Adam's quip isn't missed.  Neither is the smirk, which actually earns the Bonisagus a near-sneer, playful as it is.  But the quip catches the Jerbiton's attention and he beams again, "Very good, yes, Patience and Grace were certainly in little supply, so it would have been at that."

As for finding it again, no, he says.  No.  "I'm always looking for it, Frere.  Always."

Gallowglass

Hilito's Codex of Lost Lies. Leonhard had brought it to Adam. Adam looks over it now but hasn't yet allowed his mind to wander from the present and the presence of the Jerbiton. How considerate his gaze is; how considering, both of the book, of tomorrow, of the bygone, the Mythic Creature, the pen in his hand, the weight of it, the prospect of Time (a pang [how he wants]), the last page of his journal, a scrawled out improvisation which would combine - but no. It needs refining; it is not yet elegant. Or complicated. 

So a spell of silence. Then Adam grins. "When you find it," whatever 'it' has become, everything's connotations and symbols and meanings under meanings anyway, "what will you do after?"

"Did you really just come to this vaunted hall of learning to see how thick a layer of dust was on the first bestiary you pulled?" The smirk is back; or at least, the promise of a smirk is back. 

Proclus

"Share it," the Jerbiton states, as openly and unguardedly as anything he's ever truly said to Adam.  He thinks of Pymander and Pasaran, and the Peryton is just a component of it all.  Beautiful, but finite.

"By and large, yes," he answers, gesturing with a thumb to the shelf he had found the bestiary on.  "Had a hunch, and the other one was written by an Akashic.  Who's going to have read that?   (Not that I won't sometime....)  Oh, and the Hilito, of course.  Here," he says, finding a section in the book.  It takes him a few miss-turned pages to find the section he is looking for.  Whether it is a prank by whoever copied the book, changing the size of the writing as the book continues, or some last grin from Master Hilito... Hilito the Confounding...  bani Criamon... but the copy is not exact.  They never are, of course, but this one eventually yields up the Jerbiton's quarry.  A series of lies, an exercise in postcognition.  The Criamon and their Enigma, as plain as day, as plain as mud.  "I think we'll work from some of this tomorrow.  It's been years, of course, since I read it but I think it might be new to you.  I remember it as a very... fitful approach to postcognitive applications of the Ars Temporis.  Thought we'd start with the past.  (Always do, don't we?)  And then I'll confuse you with the future.  I was thinking, a little technique we Jerbiton share...  You might call it direct sensory exchange.  All the better for you and I to stay on the same page during some training rituals.  The Fifth Degree of Temporis is, after all, still sensory.  But, well, that's why you want to learn it, isn't it?  To know.  I will tell you this now, though: it is not satisfying."

Yes, quite the experienced time-delver.  Who knows what ten years of it in his isolation might have built in his Praxis?  Nevertheless, a deal is a deal, and he made it quite merrily enough.  Still, there is a firmness in his cautionary tone.  Friendly, but firm about scrying the past.

Gallowglass

"I don't expect to be satisfied," the dark-haired unshadowed young man says. He says it with this flinch of a smile and this leap of both eyebrows; Adam is assured of himself but this does not mean he is still. His expressions are visible even when they're shadowed; even when they're difficult to read, because the nuance is so fine. The nuance isn't fine now; it's a hard-flinch of a smile, a certain arrogant self-knowledge in his eye, and a looking forward. Ahead. He has goals. Dominic Adam Julian Gallowglass bani Bonisagus. Ambitions.

But that cautionary tone. "Whose past?" Will they be starting with. "Or should I rather say what?"

Proclus

"Of course you don't," the Jerbiton notes a little drily.  But it's a good thing, he is thinking.  A Bonisagan who grows static and self-satisfied is a wasted magus indeed!

"Whose past.  Yours."  What now?  Adam's past?  The Jerbiton, commanding as he does some practiced skill in performance timing when he wants to, lets the moment breath for half a beat.  Perhaps a tease, perhaps a comment upon the roles of teacher and pupil, thought certainly more of a pause than needed even at only half a beat.  He spins away as he continues, returning to where he found Hilito's Codex.  "Or, more specifically, one of your senses.  People always think, oh, looking through time.  Looking.  Well, that's fine enough, useful indeed, throw in some hearing, and then there's always Ars Conjuctionis sticking its nose in... and we get armchair scryers."

Failing to find whatever other specific book he had been hoping might exist on the library's shelves, Proclus turns back to Adam.  One of his gloves hands continues to flit its fingers at the edge of the shelf, but only idly, frustrated that it isn't plucking out some other book.  He will have to come back sometime and really work through the shelves, obviously.

"So, yes, your past.  In a finite, ah, control period.  Specifically, your sense of smell or taste."

Gallowglass

His past. His eyebrows lower. An inscrutable (perhaps), "Hmm." And Proclus has played his game, and the beat's gone on. 

Nuance, again. No flinch of a smile this time but when Leonhard mentions looking, Adam is an attentive pupil but he smiles. The smile is not broad and doesn't approach a grin. Doesn't carve dimples out've his cheeks or shake-up the expression in his eyes. His eyes don't flicker around when he's listening to somebody, and his eyebrows stay mostly stationary, which lends him a certain intent cast.

A beat.

He cups his chin in the palm of one hand, elbow on the table. Taps the book once or twice with his pen, then says, "My mother does like to claim I once enjoyed the taste of her cooking. It would be nice to verify that fact, though I'm hard-pressed to remember the cooking."

Proclus

"You say that now," smiles the Jerbiton who would enable him to do exactly that.  "I can't promise your mother's cooking on our first session but who knows?  Oh, we'll be conducting the, ah, session in my Sanctum so it's possible.  Anyhow, you have your homework," he offers, beginning to slip out of his gloves.  "And I have run out of bestiaries."

Wait a minute.  He's leaving?  He's not scouring the library for everything on Ars Temporis?  Doesn't he want to attain Adeptcy NOW if not SOONER?!

Gallowglass

The corners of his eyes crinkle. "Promise, threat," and then, chin still cupped, "I'll see you tomorrow, Proclus. I'm looking forward to viewing your Sanctum."

He is, too. The Sanctum of a Mage who'd been denied (denied himself) contact with the Awakened World for ten long years. 

"But wait. Try not to what?"

Proclus

"Try not... sorry?"  Oh!  His unfinished mention of Gustav.  He looks quite comical for a moment, his head dipped, a freshly-ungloved forefinger's tip flicking with some thoughtful speed across the tip of his nose.  Try not to get stabbed in the throat.  Try not to blame me for His Awfulness being there.  Try not to judge the man too harshly.  "Oh, nothing.  Gustav was once a Tytalan.  Still is, to hear him, and the rest of the House stopped deserving the name decades ago.  Certainly before the Second Massasa War.  Gustav.  A delightful man you'll no doubt enjoy meeting," he lies blatantly.

Gallowglass

"I've never found a Renfield to be anything but delightful," Adam says, deadpan, scrutinizing the Jerbiton rather carefully. Then he flips open his journal, giving the man another nod. 

The Bonisagan is in his element surrounded by books: even those outside of the realm of Night Owl (An Arch Key) Books.

Knowledge. Truth. Words are always true, somehow. There's a truth.

Gallowglass

ooc: wait, make that, "I've never found a Renfield to be anything but delightful, even after they pick the bugs out of their teeth and move on to more lively pastures,"

Proclus

Meeting Adam in the depths of Deadpan territory, Proclus notes, "You'll feel right at home with him, then.  He feels the same way.  The Renunciate and the Interdictee.  It's all go at Pasaran, Adam."

Passing back towards the door, he takes the bestiary back to its home unless Adam is keeping it.  

"Shall we say ten past six?  I've been logging the sunsets, so that seems to be a good time to welcome you."  But that would mean the sun would be nowhere near setting in Nederland... ah, but Mercury will be setting as Adam gets into the main house...

Gallowglass

His eyes drop to his journal, and Leonhard gets an abstracted - "Mmhmm, whatever you say."

Upstart bastard, Gallowglass. But it seems less deliberate disrespect (he certainly knows somebody who would've stabbed him in the throat after the bug-teeth remark) and more agreement coupled with the inevitable lure of getting back to a project.

"Ten past six sounds great. I'll bring a curry."

Oh yes. The books have him now.