dexfarkin

"This is not a place for treasure hunters, Mister Pitt. Or for quasi-mystics, Mister Graves. These are halls of Science, and that is the mistress we serve." Professor Henry Boyle-Moniteau drew himself up to his full five foot four and grasped his lapels as he stared at the room full of twenty-ish men in neat black suits. "You are supposed to represent the best the Royal Society can find for us; men of the world, traveled, tested in martial service, possessing a keen intellect and ease of language. I would hope such a search did not yield any accidentally unqualified candidates."

Boyle-Moniteau gave them another piercing glare before he went in. "Until I was interrupted, I was attempting to explain the role those of you who are worthy will fill. It is one that you cannot tell those closest to you about, but fortunately, even if you did they would think it a jest, or that you had lost your mind."

"Cryptoethnology, gentlemen; the last great frontier left to us. It is the secret history of the world, and it is dangerous. You! Parks, is it?" He singled a man in front out with a yellowed finger.

"Sir?"

"You served in India. No doubt you heard whispers of the great Cult of Kali that held sway over twenty million natives in the north, during the time of Alexander. How they would strangle their victims and toss them into deep wells, tapping dark powers from the vats of decomposing flesh."

"Well, yes sir. But I didn't believe it."

"Good. It's not true. Stuff and nonsense cooked up by the Thuggees. However, a clan of weretigers did rule a northern het at the time, and invented a new language before being wiped out by Timur-e-Lang's mages around 1380." He turned to another man.

"Smythe. A vampire God-King who ruled in Panama from 1250 to the coming of Spain. Do you believe it?"

"No sir."

"You're wrong. We exchange letters three times a year." Boyle-Moniteau said, and returned to the front of the front, all attention riveted to him. "It is a vastly strange world, gentlemen, and the mandate of the Society to learn all we can of it. Each society, each ruin, each language hides echoes of what came before. The cultures we know; the Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians, their exploits are the stuff for histories. Ours are the societies which didn't win, and which did not write their histories down. Echoes in the world, gentlemen. That's where we mine for the truth."