Sunday, March 9, 2014

The meeting between the Font and the Key

After the party returns to an  the inn for the night, Kendra Lorrimor secretly contacts Viorec and asks him to meet her outside the inn. The detective finds his love waiting for him in a covered carriage and after a brief explanation the two ride off for Evercrown Cemetery. They meet with another agent of the Palantine Eye there who gives them information on Auren Vrood from his days as a student and junior professor at Lepidstadt University and The Quarterfaux Archives.
Those records have been reprinted here :

  To: Dean Colum Thompson
From: Professor Edwin Orthollo

I have no doubt word has reached you of the work of one Auren Vrood . While I must admit that many in our department had doubts about the young man's aptitude for this field of study, given the circumstances surrounding his sudden change in academic intrest, he has proven to be of a most remarkable mind.
While he has shown significant aptitude in the theoretical, it is within the practical that Vrood's genius truly lies. I suspect this has much to do with his original training in the field of engineering. The boy views the natural sciences with the same analytical and incisive approach one might take while disassembling one of those infernal machines. What's more, this view drives him to apply the same systematic approach to his research efforts.
Vrood has taken the basic concepts of life and systematically codified it in a manner most groundbreaking. I have enclosed his current thesis for your complete review, but in summary Vrood, through months of systematic research and documentation how the passing of traits from parent to offspring is far more complex and sublime than ever realized.
In the end, the monumental possibilities presented by this research make it well worth overlooking Vrood's misappropriation of the various mice, reptiles and birds he procured from lab stores, as well as his conduction of research within his personal dormitory without proper authorization. After all, the expansion of knowledge and understanding, not bureaucracy, is this institution's primary goal.

2 years later.

From: Dean of Natural Science Brandis Fargin
To: Junior Professor Auren Vrood

I do not exaggerate when I say that recent review of your academic work has caused a shocked tremor to ripple through this prestigious institution. While I still believe you are gifted with a most capable mind, I fear it is your very intellect that has led you to this crossroads. Intelligence must be moderated by ethics and morality.
Your work borders on an affront to everything this institution holds dear. You have meddled with the very fabric of life itself, and your twisted creations should have revealed the folly of your attempts to play at the divine.
In particular, your work with the reanimation bodies of lab cadavers is atrocious. While you may claim that your work represents the cusp of a revolution in our understanding of life, I can see only a twisted mockery of science that should never be.
You have mixed and matched body parts of lab animals to create parodies of life. I ask you: in what circumstance does a rat need the wings of a pigeon?
You have gone even further, melding flesh in a way most unwholesome. The rabbit is renowned for its quickness, yet you have felt the need to “improve” its natural ability with implanted alchemical serums, turning one of the most innocent creatures into a nightmare of flesh and claws.
Your radical research methods and disregard for our approval process have left us no choice in the matter. It is clear that only active intervention will stay your hand, as you clearly lack the ethical integrity to rein in your imagination. By decision and order of the Lepidstadt University Natural Science Board, you are to cease and desist in all current research experiments on live specimens. In addition, until such time as this board deems, you are forbidden from engaging in new non-theoretical research. Any requests for laboratory equipment or specimens will be denied.

Despite this censure Vrood continued to retain his position for some time. It is clear that the university leadership was uncertain of how to handle him. His research papers continued to advance intellectual thought, despite their radical bent, but his physical experiments were unanimously viewed as unethical and disturbing.
Vrood's answer came unexpectedly in the form of a visiting lecture tour from The Quarterfaux Archives Professor Adivion Adrissant.
It seems Adrissant was quite fascinated by the work of Vrood and the impact it had on his own fields of study. Adrissant, always known for being possessed of a for more open mind then many of his contemporaries, began to push for the removal of his academic censure and that Lepidstadt University extend a full professorship to Vrood.
The board would remove the censure but kept Vrood at Junior Professor. Vrood was allowed to carry on his research for the next 8 months under moderate prohibitions. When he was called before the ranking professors at Lepidstadt, their response was not one of adulation that Vrood expected but of horror. The university immediately disavowed the work and expelled Vrood from its ranks.
In one final letter Vrood vents his disgust with Ustalav's most vaunted learning institution.

“Too long have I allowed myself to stagnate within the closed-minded and archaic institutions of so-called higher learning. You pride yourselves on ideals of free thinking, of exploration, of expanding the scope of human knowledge. You preach the merits of innovation, of invention, of discovery.

Yet the only thinking you allow is that which is based on old and familiar principles, endorsed books already mildewed and rotting. The only exploration is that done within the confines of a library. The only expansion you seek is that of your own coffers, the only innovation that of creative regurgitation, the only invention that of redefining what you already know and which satisfies your egocentric intellectualism.
You crush free thought because it threatens you. You repress true innovation because it invalidates yo. You fear discovery because it reveals you to be worthless relics of the past.

Throughout my career you have done everything in your power to silence me and to stop my work from bringing about a true revolution of scientific process and innovation. I am o the very cusp of a breakthrough, but without the ability to test via experiment, all is theory and empty air.

Try as you might, you cannot stop intellectual progress. Whether willingly or kicking and screaming, I will drag this world into a glorious new age.”

You can almost hear the maniacal laughter after such a statement. So far though nothing has been heard from Vrood since.

Khu Ba Heteph
seek and you shall find
M.

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