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Research Meeting [attn: Joey]
#1
Kali is a busy woman. It's not easy to be the head of your own drug empire while simultaneously investigating the arrival of ancient vampires, protecting the Masquerade, making regular appearances at Elysium and taking on new hires. And in the midst of all this, there's also taking the time out to look good. That's important. Still, she somehow finds time to do it all and even a few other things in between, because she's a modern woman and as the great philosopher Beyonce said, "Who run the world? Girls."

Or walking decades-dead bodies that used to be girls, anyway.

Case in point: despite all of that, the Ravnos has managed to make time in order to take her latest acqusition to be investigated. Not her new employee...no, in this case we're talking about a ring. A ring, specifically, that was until recently on the hand of a vampire and appears to be damaging to the undead. It was easy for Kali to do a quick Google search and find the name an appropriate person involved with antiquities at UC Denver. Once established she made a phone call to find out if he had any office hours after sundown and, if not, she uses the lure of being a private collector who has come across an item that she's come across that she would like to have translated. She's willing to pay handsomely.

And thus, she finds herself at the offices of one of the Associate Professors. Kali loves to dress provocatively but she is surprisingly skillful at looking professional. When you spend decades travelling with a con man you pick up a think or two. She's dressed in a middle-to-high end suit, her red hair pulled back into a neat ponytail and sensible shoes with just a tiny bit of heel. The skirt is within professional guidelines but skirting the short edge, to give her a subtle sex appeal. The glasses, for the record, are purely for effect of course. She heads in with a side satchel bag, the ring carried in a ZipLoc bag as she walks into the meeting with intent to find out exactly what she can about the item--including, hopefully, the translation on the inside.

And if it's Masquerade breaching...well, that's what the gun at the small of her back, under the coat, is for.
"The anger of a good man is not a problem. Good men have too many rules."
"Good men don't need rules. And today's not the day to find out why I have so many."
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#2
There is the stereotype of the bespectacled academic for a reason.

Dr. Arnold Lincoln Perkins may be that reason.

Just look at him there. Looking up from his coffee and paper stacks at the commotion around the cluttered hall of offices in the nondescript campus building housing the archaeological studies track of the Department of Anthropology.

Because someone coming to visit is a commotion.

Those spectacles that sit on the thin fifty-something-year-old man's face fill for a moment with only the whites and irises of his eyes as the woman he most likely doesn't know as Kali approaches his office.

How she'd ended up here was a reference of a reference of an antiquities professor via the history apartment, though the look on the good Doctor's face seems to think it's divine intervention by one of the forgotten pantheons whose ruins he studies. She'd called again, but maybe he hadn't believed she'd actually show up.

He stands to greet her, introducing himself in voice with wavering heft. "Dr. Perkins. Please call me Arnold. It's a pleasure. What can I help you with? I understand you believe you've found a Linear B inscription?" This seems to excite him even more.
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#3
Kali graces the good Doctor Perkins with a polite, mostly-professional smile. It's the kind of friendly expression that a woman who is wonderously unaware of her effect on men might have.

"Arnold, of course." She smiles and extends a hand in offering, her movements leaning toward demure. She's painting a picture for Perkins, and that picture includes one where he is in control of the situation. Men in control are likely to underestimate the women they're dealing with. That means none of the assertive, confident swagger she usually portrays. She's not quite cold but there's a bit of detachment beneath the demure visage, as if to hint the idea, if he were so inclined to believe so, of the Librarian by Day, Dominatrix by Night. Another cookie-cutter men's fantasy, exploited with a couple of touches around the edge of her personality.

"Joan Holloway. Lovely to make your acquaintance." Her grip, if she takes his hand, matches the demeanor. Professional and plient, with the slightest bit of steel in it.

"I'm very glad I could make contact with you. Yes, this item that I came across is, as far as I've been told, in Linear B. It's not a language I know unfortunately. I was wondering what you might be able to translate it, and what you could tell me about the ring itself."

She sets the satchel bad on the desk and slips her hand inside, coming out with the ZipLock bag. She seems apologetic as she hands it over in that. "This was how it came into my hands, and I wanted to give whoever takes the first real look at it to get it in the same condition I did."
"The anger of a good man is not a problem. Good men have too many rules."
"Good men don't need rules. And today's not the day to find out why I have so many."
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#4
"Oh, why thank you, do you have any practice in studying ancient artifacts?" Her explanation for the zip-lock bag causes him to smile fully in thanks, with a great many nods, yes, yes, of course, of course, now let me see it, please, following as he takes the bag.
He examines the ring inside for a few moments before finally opening it. The end of a pen enters and finds the ring, pulling it out in the manner a homicide detective might handle a shell casing at a crime scene.

"I can tell you that the artifact isn't Mycenaean. Not even truly Greek," turning it curiously on a fresh sheet of paper he pulls from a nearby printer and places on his desk, prodding it from one angle to the other with the blunt end of the pen.

"The stone looks like obsidian or maybe black quartz. The setting is silver. Hand hammered. I mean, it's obvious it's silver, for some reason the maker decided to mark it with the crescent moon, though. Looks like someone dug it out of the ground with a set of pliers," shaking his head in annoyance, though in no way is it directed at the charming and, let's face it, slightly intimidating redhead before him.

"Wait..." As if a memory is worming its way free of the dusty library in his mind. But it's not. Only the tassel of a bookmark, and he turns to the computer screen to his left, typing furiously to find the right page.

"Yes. Constantinople. During the Plague of Justinian the First. In 1541-1542 it killed more than 40% of the city. A quarter of the Eastern Mediterranean. Maybe twenty-five million casualties," he says, now admiring the ring, like some context has been added.

"How do I know, you ask?" Even if she hasn't, he seems very pleased with himself, and turns it over again, now picking it up in his hands.

"I'll tell you. Justinian was one of the plague's near-victims, but survived it. The officials that stayed in the city received rings such as this, though very few with this particular stone. No, stones like this? Black quartz? They were reserved for his personal physicians, gifts along with lands and great estates for helping him weather his sickness at their own personal risk."

"Silver, you see, was thought to be a metal of purity. Today we know it has antibacterial properties. The symbolism is that the wearer had held back the plague," indicating with the pen, again, how it clutches the black polished stone.

He is only now getting to the inscription.

"That someone would inscribe it with Linear B is even more startling. A true mystery," an almost campy effect added to his voice for the next part, "Let's see if translating it can shed some light on that mystery."

He sets to work, having already set books aside in case the woman actually had shown up, and begins copying the inscription and breaking them down into numbers, then syllables, then translating again from the ancient Greek tongue. It takes a while for him to finish. Perhaps 15 or 20 minutes.

"Lest the grand sire return and find the children wanting," shaking his head. "Hmm... That can't be right. They're using a word for ancestor, yes, of great age, but in relation to the siring, almost as if by an animal. Lineage, but not man. The language was originally used between palaces, it's believed, to keep track of exchanges by scribes. And the dialect. It's a hodge-podge. What would it even be doing on a 6th Century artifact?"
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#5
Kali moves around the desk to watch the professor work from his side, a look of interest on her face as she absorbs the knowledge. It's not feigned interest, either...the Ravnos is very honestly curious for all the details that Doctor Perkins can provide, as they may give some insight into exactly what they're dealing with.

"Justinian," she says, repeating the name thoughtfully. Something for her to look into later. She did not, in fact, ask how he knows about the information but the extra insight he lets slip as he indulges his self-congratulatory need to impress is certainly not unwelcome. Kali peers at the thing through her fake glasses, eyeing it with a new level of respect. She doesn't normally have much value for antiquities; she's a woman who has learned to leave the past exactly where it is and move forward. However, this is also a situation that directly impacts her own future and if there's any term you can use to describe the drug lord, it's 'adaptable.'

Lest the grand sire return and find the children wanting, the professor says, and Kali keeps her expression as one of interest as she lets several Romany swear words that aren't fit to print run through her mind. Her brow furrows when he starts doing exactly what he ought not to...question incongruities. Damn it, she really doesn't want a death on her hands.

So she does what she does best...when faced with a dead end road, she leaps the track and creates her own path with misdirection. An effort of expending her will[power point] allows her to subtly alter a couple of facets of the writing, adding a faint line here and there coming off of other characters via the Ravnos power of illusion. She can't be sure, but she hopes that the additions render the whole thing gibberish.

"Er...professor..." She puts a hand on his shoulder and leans in, hoping that fragrance she applied earlier distracts Perkins enough that he might consider missing things to have been plausible. "I don't mean to be contrary...but are you sure those are the appropriate characters? I think you might be missing something in the transcription you did..."

She reaches across him to point out the new additions to the ring, which makes it differ fron the version he put on paper. She has some other tricks up her sleeve, but hopefully this will do the trick.
"The anger of a good man is not a problem. Good men have too many rules."
"Good men don't need rules. And today's not the day to find out why I have so many."
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#6
"We... We have..." The professor seems first perturbed and then entirely flabbergasted by the change when he looks down from the woman, whose closeness on his side of the desk had drawn his attention, and then back to the artifact.

"We see so few... So few artifacts and examples." And he brings it up to his eyes again, pulling on a pair of glasses and looking through, then over, then through them again.

"I'm... I'm sorry, but I can't make out much more," looking down and referencing the numbers on own scratch paper, he looks back, eyes screwed up and further confused. "It seems there's more. The dialect, yes... I could be translating it wrong, but..." Turning it to the light again, "It seems most of it has been worn away. It's possible they used a different writing style for such an odd medium. I would say, perhaps, this is some prank left by another academic of the antiquities."

He very begrudgingly returns the ring to the zip-lock bag she'd brought it in, sliding it away. "I'll continue consulting my notes, but I will say it seems to be little more than gibberish."

A scientific man of the humanities is confronted with a dead end, and it seems to have knocked him entirely off kilter. He begins scribbling away on the notepad again. "May I ask how it came into your possession?"
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