RotLB
Plans and Preparations, Baron Primordial's Preparations
Lunch was entirely ala cart, mostly cold food, and both visitors were invited to lunch in the main city by groups of Librarians. Sandy demurred, saying he'd like to begin his studies as he could, and the Baron gave similar reasons. Both men joined the other scholars in drifting in and out of the dining room throughout the afternoon, Sandy to snack – having a little meat shaved from a haunch roasting on a spit was the closest he got to a real lunch – and the Baron to eat a series of small meals.
The afternoon disappeared into a steady rain of questions and conversations as the men struggled to complete the tasks they'd set for themselves. It seemed as hardly had they disengaged from one questioner before another appeared in his place. Polite references to upcoming lectures, evasions, and even the occasional blunt comment failed to deter the endless stream of Librarians: both men had fired too many imaginations. Sandy's strange magic and unusual devotion attracted one set of inquiries; Hyperborea, its people, and its arts and sciences attracted another. Primordial and Sandy became intimately familiar with the meaning of 'hundreds', as in 'hundreds of scholars studied at the Library'.
The Baron managed, with difficulty, to study the Library's architecture at the same time as trying to follow up the hints in his previous day's notes and talk to his fan club. His clever eyes found the sealed-up doors in the math building. They weren't deliberately hidden, but simply were at the ends of rows of bookshelves, sometimes blocked by the shelves, sometimes merely behind oddments stacked or leaned against the outer wall of the building: the one on the first floor closest to the workrooms was behind part of the Library's supply of ink, contained in neatly stacked amphorae. The doorways were sealed with blocks much smaller than the rest of the building, as they were expected to be opened at some point.
Primordial also found a couple of weak spots in upper sections of walls and in roof. It was clear to him that the foreign works building was a late addition to the complex, the walls it shared with the two adjacent buildings were not designed to take the loads of two different roofs. The real weakness was were it met the natural science and history building: not only was that wall under a double load, the builders apparently ran into some difficulty at the corner where it met the math building. On the one hand, the Baron was sure that with a telekinetic push in just the right direction, he could get a section of the foreign works building's roof and upper wall to fall outward onto the roof of the natural science building – and possibly not even bring that roof down – but on the other hand, that corner was under tremendous strain and might collapse from any other major disturbance.
The second engineering problem was at the other end of the natural science building where it met the tragedies and comedies. There, the shared wall was more than strong enough to take the load on it, but the section of wall between the two roofs had settled slightly due to its odd shape. Knocking it out without dumping any part of the roofs to the floor wasn't as easy, but it wouldn't take the full power of the Fist of Yog Sothoth. Primodial wanted a bit more time to study that problem before he could confidently say he could tackle it. Still, any port in a storm.
Interleaved with looking at the architecture, the Baron continued his search for evidence of his Mythos. Hints in his notes turned into suggestions: whatever there was on this Earth was not in the European northlands, but somehow connected to the Mediterranean. Further reading – and some suggestions from his admirers – limited the choices to North Africa: here in Alexandria, Cyrene, and Carthage. Primordial ruled out the last as a possible source: there were no records from after the Romans razed and rebuilt the city, and the Library possessed few from before then.
Searching books from the two remaining cities for information took nearly the entire rest of the afternoon: there were literally thousands of scrolls to look at, and even with assistants and willing volunteers, the Baron was deluged with information. It got so bad that he had to give up photographing everything except what seemed the most vital to his quest. Nevertheless, what he found confirmed Sandy's earlier puzzling about the Mouseion's animals: there were excellent trade routes stretching almost to the Cape of Good Hope.
Finally, just before seven in the evening, the pieces fell into place, and a book all but fell into Primordial's hands. An assistant brought him some sort of travelogue, describing places and customs in central Africa. The Baron had just gotten started recording the first chapter of the first book – there were thirteen volumes – when Zethos informed him it was time for dinner. Despite just the taste he'd gotten of the book, Primordial was certain there were coded messages in it meant for those who understood higher realities, but not for the limited scopes of feeble human minds. If that wasn't what he sought, it was clearly the place to start again in the morning.
