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Professor Schnackenburg's mistake


Hialmar

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I dedicate this story to GiganticBeast, who asked for something similar to this:

 

Professor Schnackenburg's mistake

Chapter One

He remembered how Ms. Giraud had presented him to his former tutor, Assistant Professor Smith, in the past: "Mr. Schnackenburg – B.A., archaeology student and expert in the occult." They had both watched one of the Indiana Jones films recently, and Josephine ... Ms. Giraud ... already had a sense of humour he had found himself appreciating.

Ms. Giraud! Jet black hair, intelligent gaze, great sense of humour. In Schnackenburg's opinion, she had thrown away her excellent talent for archaeology, when she settled for a purely administrative post at the Department for Archaeology. On the basis of the quality of her Masters thesis, she could have been one of the great names in the field, if she had published a PhD thesis. Nor could he understand her preferences, when it came to men. She had never married, and none of her affairs seemed to last or lead to anything enduring, but Schnackenburg had been invited to uncomfortable dinners with her so many times, encountering a string of her several boyfriends: A marine, a builder, a policeman, a sailor. Even a professional bodybuilder once. Not the typical consort to bring to formal university dinners. What was Josephine supposed to speak about with any latest fling? Not strontium analysis of fossil teeth, that's for sure. Hell! Some of these men had upper arms as wide as his legs!

It was good for his career, that he had generally hid his personal interest in the occult: It wouldn't have been good for his reputation, if his membership in The Order of the Rosary Cube and Calix Gradalis had been publicly known. Who would trust the scientific rigour of someone, who spent hours in weird meditations? Though the meditation practices had been useful in order to reach heightened awareness, his scholarly sense of critical evaluation had always kept him suspicious of the baseless legends about sunken continents. We now know about plate tectonics: There is no place in real pre-history for sunken continents like Atlantis, or Lemuria in the Indian Ocean, or Mu in the Pacific.

After his PhD, he had specialised in two fields: Mesolithic Europe and deciphering unknown scripts, and he now read Linear A, Indus Valley script and Easter Island script fluently. He had never thought, that these two fields would ever converge. The Doggerbank excavation changed all that. Even if he didn't dive himself, he was responsible for the entire project, and he gave the divers – some of them his postgraduate students – careful instructions how to avoid any damage to the finds. When Brock McGurgan, a good-looking blond Canadian student of his, returned to the surface with the tablets and the bronze sword, Schnackenburg understood, that something sensational was going on. It had now been three years since the Doggerbank excavation. He could still remember the scent of the salt sea and seaweed, and he could remember how the hair on his forearms turned into goosebumps when he saw the greenish-gold hints of bronze. He could still remember the sight of the broad-shouldered MacGurgan taking the diving suit off.

Doggerland had been a lowland island (but not a continent) that actually was flooded and drowned in the North Sea between Scotland and Norway during the Stone Age, leaving Dogger Bank under the sea level. The hunter-gatherers of Doggerland were not expected to have known farming or metalwork, nor to have any script or alphabet. A bronze sword and stone tablets written with some sort of text turned all expectations on their head. It had now been three years.

MacGurgan had assisted him in cleaning the stone tablets, and the lad felt like a son to him. Schnackenburg looked forward to read MacGurgan's PhD, which was soon expected to reach completion: Bronze technology in Doggerland Culture: A revaluation of the Atlantic period. MacGurgan's enthusiasm and cheerfulness lightened up hard work on pollen analysis or dendrochronology. Outside campus, Schnackenburg had once seen another side of MacGurgan, which was hard to reconcile with Schnackenburg's general impression of his student: A drunkard had knocked over MacGurgan's beer by mistake, and the student had over-reacted and beaten the culprit several times. It felt like a block of ice in his gut, when Schnackenburg recollected the image of MacGurgan's undoubtly handsome face disfigured in a grimace of unbridled wrath, his ice blue eyes burning. It was like he didn't know the promising young man he thought he knew so well.

Schnackenburg dismissed the memory, and turned his recollection to the hard work and great assistance of MacGurgan in the work on the Doggerland Tablets, as they were now known. Schnackenburg had spent hours upon hours with the tablets. No key to the code. No Rosetta stone. Sometimes, in late hours after worktime it had felt like the tablets spoke to him with ghostlike hollow voices: Howlings of forgotten wraiths and souls adoring long-forgotten unnameable gods.

He had checked the results again and again, and forwarded the PDF to MacGurgan, who anyhow wouldn't understand the real-life implication of the translation. Double checked. Triple checked. Was it really possible? Was it decipherable? Could it really mean, what he thought that it meant? "Archaeology professor and expert in the occult". His profession and his hidden hobby merged. The silence of the night hours turned into the sound of his pulse in his ears. Hissing. Throbbing. The city outside the window, lit windows in high rise buildings. Strewn with stars. The weight of millennia resting on his shoulders. Still some scent of seaweed, which didn't seem to go away from the tablets.

* * *

Brock MacGurgan worked late. He had a deadline on his PhD, and his assistance concerning the Doggerland Tablets took up a lot of his thoughts. Wouldn't it be amazing if Professor Schnackenburg really broke the code of the tablets? What if they were close to the solution? And the sword... There was something with the sword, that spoke to MacGurgan on a deep level. Heroes. Fights. Combat. Victory. Old myths of stormgods battling reptilian elder gods. Old myths of solar heroes protecting mankind. The sort of texts one would expect to find in ancient civilisations. He had seen the Professor staring at the tablets so many times, enchanted by the impossible finds. Similar to the way he himself became more and more deeply enchanted by the sword. Fights. Heroes. With hands covered in gloves, he had taken the sword out of its glass showcase. It now laid unprotected on his writing desk. Bronze sword. Fights. Heroes. Sword of Anghra-Lemur. Wait? Where did that word come from? He wasn't the poetical type of person who invented things, even if he had been an avid reader of sword-and-sorcery novels as a teenager, and watched the children's programme He-Man in primary school. ...Sword of Anghra-Lemur... Stop hallucinating. Stop imagining things. Probably best to stop working late. He needed some coffee. A ping in his computer. Better check it later. After the coffee. Brock MacGurgan took his baseball jacket and walked in the direction of the espresso machine.

* * *

Schnackenburg trembled. The translation must have turned his rational faculties into a mess. It couldn't be possible. But if it was? His instincts as a trained occultist screamed at him. To avoid the unhallowed relics of unnameable powers. To run. To put the tablets and the sword under lock and key. Or to use it. Use it to prove himself to Ms. Giraud... Josephine. The powers of sunken Doggerland... The powers of Anghra-Lemur! The powers of Kortoth-Gnaah, war god of Anghra-Lemur!

When he reached the glass showcase he stared in disbelief. Empty? But the only two having access to the sword were himself and MacGurgan? Frowning, he walked in the direction of MacGurgan's study. A bookshelf with standard works in archaeology. The Bell Beaker Phenomenon. Renfrew. Mallory. Svante Pääbo. Souvenirs from diving expeditions hang on the wall, beside a diploma from a Junior Men's Physique competition. A single task light was lit over the writing desk. The stump of a cigar was lying in an ashtray. MacGurgan's computer was working. The sword was there, but not MacGurgan. Schnackenburg felt as in a fever dream. He picked up the sword, and walked up the spiral stairs.

* * *

He really needed that espresso. MacGurgan returned to his study. He had to check that e-mail. He opened it. A PDF. A breakthrough. A hypothetical translation:

Quote

Hear me, o war god of Anghra-Lemur!

He froze in his position. His blond hair tingled as of fear. He swallowed. He had imagined the word Anghra-Lemur before the e-mail arrived. An atmosphere of unreality lowered itself. Unconsciously and involuntarily he continued:

Quote

And hear me all powers of might and prowess!

Since, Lo! bygone days it is foretold, that as the islands of Anghra-Lemur will sink,

the powers of might and prowess will be forgotten,

but, when the Sword of Kortoth-Gnaah returns to the islands of men,

so will the powers return, powers of might and endurance,

powers of strength and thews, 

to be bestowed upon the chosen one,

the vessel of Kortoth-Gnaah and all warriors of Anghra-Lemur...

 The translation went on and on. The ancient Doggerlendings must have been a warrior culture, similar to the ancient Irish, the ancient Welsh and the Vikings. And they called their island or islands Anghra-Lemur. And the sword... MacGurgan looked for the sword.

The sword was gone!

MacGurgan had to calm down. What would he do? What would Professor Schnackenburg say? What would happen to his career? He had left the sword unsupervised. And it was gone! He lit a cigar to calm his nerves. No ancient item that could be harmed by the smoke anyhow. He tried to relax, and sat with his faded blue denim jeans in a wide manspread, his trainers resting on the floor. Deep breath. Some cigar smoke. Some espresso. The doors were locked. No one could enter. 

It was then he heard it. The impossible chanting sound from the spiral staircase leading to the tower room used for honorary social occasions. What in hell was going on? MacGurgan's worry began to turn into irritation. An intruder? Here? His archeological find? He rose from the chair. All his 6 feet 1 inches. He was still wearing his baseball jacket. Some nutcase had to be disarmed and handed over to the police. And Brock MacGurgan was just the right person to do it.

* * *

The dome gave the tower room a certain atmosphere, and the starry wisdom of the night sky looked down through the circular glass window over his head, but Schnackenburg was deeply in trance while he recited the more than 7000 year old enchantment, invoking preternatural forces which had been left slumbering for millennia. The scent of incense and the flickering light of the wax candles created a mood very far from the sherry imbibing receptions usually held in the tower room. Flickering light. Whisps of incense smoke. Shadows and starlight weavering into something unsettling and unspeakable.

"Ye powers of blood and fang! Ye powers of brawn and brutality! Ye nameless ancestors of ancestor-warriors! Ye swordsmen who do not shun the name 'barbarian'! Servants of Kortoth-Gnaah, open ye the gates for the bloodstained war god of Anghra-Lemur, prepare the chosen vessel for divine power, let the ancient powers bestow their gift of prowess and might, as it was foretold! May the sinking of Anghra-Lemur be undone! May the white cliffs of Anghra-Lemur rise over the northen waves! May the last remnant of Atlantis return! May the last remnant of Lemuria the Ancient rise! May the unnameable powers assist me! I invoke Dagon!"

One part of Schnackenburg was fully immersed in the powerful invocation. Something happened. The shadows in the room were more dense now. He could sense invisible eyes watching him. The stars shone intensely through the tower window, but not the stars of our time, but the bright night sky of an bygone, lost and forgotten age, far exceeding the 7000 years, that had gone since the sea level rose over Doggerland. Over Anghra-Lemur.

Another part of Schnackenburg was silently screaming to him to stop. The dangers, if the invocation really worked, were unforeseeable, and only an insane man would try the attempt to force the elder powers. The cadences of primordial hymns and invocations of another aeon drowned any silent protest in his soul. Primordial hymns reaching out to creatures unknown to modern man.

The third part of Schnackenburg's mind was ecstatically excited: He should prove himself to Josephine! He would intimidate any potential boyfriend she may have going for the moment. he would far, far exceed the prowess he secretly admired in young MacGurgan. He would become something beyond human limitations! He would... 

His pulse murmured and throbbed in his head. Something else throbbed inside his trousers. Arcane power began to tingle in his palms, as he stretched out his hands over the bronze sword on the table before him. Power streaming into the blade, renewing it, empowering it.

* * *

MacGurgan couldn't believe his eyes. Professor Schnackenburg performed some sort of occult ritual in the tower room, and there was an eerie feeling spreading, more and more intensely. The cigar dangled in his mouth. The baseball jacket couldn't hide his fit – but not extravagantly big – chest. The rubber soles of his trainers caused a squeaking sound on the highly polished marble floor. He braced himself to do something, but the murmuring and droning sound of the witches' rune lullied himself into a trance-like state, and the translation, that had burned into his mind when he had read it on the computer screen, rose from the depths of his memory, as the forgotten creatures of Anghra-Lemur were rising from the maritime depths and the dark abyss of time. Soon, he and Schnackenburg were chanting in unison, and there was nothing MacGurgan could do to stop it.

"I invoke Cthulhu! Intervene in dread! I invoke Shub-Niggurath, the goat with the thousand young! Spread the air of revel and ecstacy! I invoke Yog-Sothoth, who is the Key and is the Gate! Open the gulfs of time and space! Cause the powers of ancient Anghra-Lemur to return! May, on the chosen vessel, the powers descend: The powers of Kortoth-Gnaah, war god of Anghra-Lemur!"

MacGurgan was out of his mind now. He had a big lump in his throat. He felt very cold and very hot. His pulse was rising. Earlier in the evening he had been absorbed in wordless reverie over the Doggerland sword. It has spoken to him. It had allured to him. Beckoned to him. The sword of Kortoth-Gnaah.

Schackenburg was unaware of MacGurgan's presence.

"Kortoth-Gnaah!

Kortoth-Gnaah!

Kortoth-Gnaah!"

Schnackenburg was close to the brink of it now. The men of Anghra-Lemur would walk the earth again, and he would be the one who bestowed it to them: The ancient power of the war god. He couldn't imagine how it would feel, how...

"Kortoth-Gnaah!

Kortoth-Gnaah!

Kortoth-Gnaah!"

... how the power of supernaturally endowed stone age warriors would course in his veins, how...

"Kortoth-Gnaah!

Kortoth-Gnaah!

Kortoth-Gnaah!"

The next moment, McGurgan snapped the sword away from the table, outside his tutor's physical reach. MacGurgan swallowed. When he came into physical contact with the cold and heavy bronze he could feel a tingling feeling spreading from it into his body. The hair on his head and arms bristled intensely. His eyes widened. He couldn't believe it! He couldn't...

"Kortoth-Gnaah!

KORTOTH-GNAAH!

KORTOTH-GNAAH!"

He bellowed the name of the war god, eagerly lifted his sword above his head, and the next second the power of the ancient gods streamed into him. Immaterial thunder bolts rushed through the window in the ceiling. Engulfed him. Absorbed him and formed him anew. Transmuted him.

* * *

Schnackenburg had been too immersed in the chanting, to react in time to MacGurgans unforeseen action. Staring in disbelief, he could see MacGurgan surrounded by supernatural power beyond imagination, and a cold feeling of fear paralysed Schnackenburg, when he realised, that the chosen vessel was someone else. Remorse, envy and admiration competed within himself when he watched his favourite student become something more than human. Exhausted and destitute of any remaining mental strength, he fell to the floor.

* * *

MacGurgan couldn't believe it, but the being wasn't entirely Brock MacGurgan any longer, even if they still shared some memories and personality traits. His quads and hamstrings were filled by power from the forgotten Gulf of N'kai. Strength of thousand war gods, thousand thunder gods and thousand solar heroes was poured into his brawn, as if he had been a vessel, and this eager and willing vessel received the blessings, moaning and grunting as his brawn engorged all over his body: Veins spread, his biceps and triceps underwent undreamed hypertrophy, his trapezius deserved the description godlike, and he still expanded in every direction, now far exceeding the height of 6 feet 7 inches. He roared. He bellowed. He demonstrated his superiority to the mere human being who once had been his tutor. He watched the feeble creature: It wasn't worthy to worship him.

He became immersed in visions of bygone Anghra-Lemur: Powerful men clad in hides strode over lowland plains proving their valour to each other in combat, and brutal hunters wrestled sabre-toothed cats and mammoths with their bare hands. Some of the same men were bestowed the strength of the gods, by the means once known in Lemuria and Atlantis. The power still accumulated within him. Filling him. Empowering him. Fire-mist descended. Fire-mist enveloped him. Fire-mist penetrated, filled and charged him. He became fire-mist. The immaterial flames of the elder gods reached into his soul, crushed his childhood memories into fragments, but out of the fragments and out of the collective memory of Doggerland, it formed something anew: No subcutaneous fat remained. His now bulging presence was cut and defined beyond imagination. Straps of leather materialised over his shoulders, and formed an X over his V-shaped torso. A leather jockstrap and some furs covering his glutes materialised out of thin air, and he realised that he was wearing pre-historical boots. A belt around his narrow waist carried a bronze buckle with the ancient seal of Kortoth-Gnaah. The thunderbolts increased in intensity. Physical heftiness filled him and became him. In the forge of the divine armourer aggression, dominance and lust melted into one, and he could feel his dick throb inside his leather jockstrap. The god of the barbarians walked the earth anew. The power was his. The might and the force. Brawn beyond comprehension. Mindless orgasmic bliss enrapt him when he felt his physical prowess, and he didn't know for how long he had been entranced.

When he returned to any awareness of his surroundings, he watched the mortal on the floor. With a smirk, he performed a double biceps, watching the mortal on the floor. It moaned, spasmed, and a wet stain formed on its leg-clothes.

Someone else entered the tower room. The dark silhouette of a woman against the light from the hallway. The mortal looked in her direction.

"Josephine? What are you doing here?"

"I was returning some files, when I heard thunder from the tower. I..."

The female mortal fell silent. The vessel of Kortoth-Gnaah watched her in silence. Then he flexed his biceps again, thrust his hips in a suggestive way, and a current of power crossed the room, connecting the groin of the being and the groin of the female. She moaned loudly, and fell to the floor with a smile, unaware of her surroundings.

The being didn't deign to behold any of the mortals, and left the town room. It was on a mission. It would let Anghra-Lemur rise again, and some selected few in this monstrous city of concrete, steel and glass were going to be transformed into warriors of the elder days. When it roamed the streets, it could absent-mindedly hear shouts in panic and rushing steps disappearing. It could hear transport vessels crash into each other, but it was of no concern. It needed the raw material suitable to become warriors of Anghra-Lemur. It found a night-open gym and a leather bar on the same street. It had found its raw material. Soon, the power of Kortoth-Gnaah would enrapt and transform them into suitable servants of Kortoth-Gnaah, war god Anghra-Lemur. The present world was doomed. The elder days would reappear in frenzy, mindless violence and voluptious pleasure.

 

You will find Chapter Two here:

https://muscle-growth.org/topic/13095-professor-schnackenburgs-mistake-chapter-two/

Edited by Hialmar
just a few stylistic changes, spelling, link
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VERY NICE! impressive! I didn't expect something like this! Thank you!! DAMN that's good! I second the cheers demanding another chapter :P

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For you, GB. And on your advice, Arpeejay and mrnonsense76.

https://muscle-growth.org/topic/13095-professor-schnackenburgs-mistake-chapter-two/

Initially, my thought was to leave chapter one as a stand-alone short story. See what you made me do? :P

Bye the way, I noticed some inconsistencies in my story. Would you prefer the awakened war god to be named Kortoth-Gnaah or Korgoth-Gnaah? Good-sounding Lovecraftian names are hard to coin. Do anyone remember Clark Ashton Smith's monster god Hziulquoigmnzhah, who lives on planet Saturn?

Edited by Hialmar
added question
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  • 1 month later...
On 2017-08-12 at 5:41 PM, Hialmar said:

Bye the way, I noticed some inconsistencies in my story. Would you prefer the awakened war god to be named Kortoth-Gnaah or Korgoth-Gnaah? Good-sounding Lovecraftian names are hard to coin. Do anyone remember Clark Ashton Smith's monster god Hziulquoigmnzhah, who lives on planet Saturn?

I eventually settled for Kortoth-Gnaah. I noticed afterwards, that there exist a sword-and-sorcery parody called 'Korgoth the Brabarian', and I didn't want my story to become mixed up with that one. Furthermore, the choice Kortoth-Gnaah would sound analogous to Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth, which serves the purpose of allusion.

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  • 2 years later...

At last, I finished this story last night, with the installment of the concluding tenth chapter

May the authors of the American Pulp Age live merrily in whatever afterlife that suits them, and may the living find useful ways to approach personal quirks of them -- warts and all. Their writing lives, and bring wonder and excitement to innumerable readers.

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  • 2 years later...

I mention a book by Svante Pääbo standing on a bookshelf in this story, and, considering that Pääbo receive the Nobel Prize tomorrow, I will give the thread a bump. Recent readers might not have noticed this story.

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