Deviation Actions
Description
It was said originally to be a collaboratory work between monstrous races, a treaty of land boundaries of sorts between warring civilizations. It was claimed it was written on the flayed skin of a creature that could not be killed. One that could look like anything, everything and most chillingly, nothing. It was said that the hide it was written on could never truly die, that it was indestructible. Indeed there were reports that its edges, though tattered and stained by uncountable years. Seemed to shift and change their outline ever so slightly if watched closely.
He was visibly startled. In all my years serving his Eminence I had never seen him lose his composure before. The air of the meeting had subtly shifted. The German was now in control of the proceedings and worse, everyone there sensed it. Just as the Holy Father had stiffened in his chair Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs von Ribbentrop relaxed back into his own. His hawk face revealed a slight but detectable smirk of both self-satisfaction and confirmation of his information. Had this been a sinful game of cards, the Pope would’ve just revealed his hand.
“I see you know of it.” von Ribbentrop continued, “Herr Himmler feels it to be of immense importance to the people of Germany’s history and self-identity.” He cooed, his manner almost incidental, as though he’d asked for the most trivial of requests. “These gentlemen, of the Ahnenerbe’s departments, Herr Müller of the of Urgeschichte, Herr Weiß of the Alte Geschichte, and finally Herr Dietrich of the Ueberprüfung der sogenannten Geheimwissenschaften are the foremost experts in the world to evaluate the items provenance and pedigree.”
The meeting till this point had been very conventional, a summit between Pius XII and The German Foreign Affairs Minister to negotiate and define the overall settlement between the Vatican and the Reich government. The Germans had alluded that the forces of the Reich would, in fact, continue to recognize the Vatican's autonomy and even perhaps restrain Mussolini’s appalling encroachment in exchange for Pius XII instructing the German bishops to refrain from political criticism of the German government. No definite terms had been agreed to, vague promises and oaths of future summits as one would expect.
It was as the meeting was concluding, as papers were being gathered, and individuals rising from their chairs to make the customary congratulatory compliments and formal goodbyes that Herr von Ribbentrop had almost casually referred to one final piece of business, as though it had almost slipped his mind: the release of an item from the archives to this representative body. The ruse had worked perfectly, His Holiness had been caught completely by surprise, and his manner betrayed everything. As he gaped the men from the Ahnenerbes eyes narrowed, sizing up the Pope as though he were a laboratory specimen of theirs. Von Ribbentrop, taking in everything, continued “Yes I believe it is catalogued as item number 01, vault 6, index MAPPA 01, under the MUNDI cartography collection, It is, I’m certain an easy enough task for your Eminence to retrieve it for us.”
I was only somewhat aware of the secret archives processes and procedures but I did know its catalogue was one of its most secure records. There are, it has been whispered, relics, documents, and secrets that must never leave, must never pass before the eyes of the faithful. For if they did, they could destroy Holy Mother Church the world over.
How could this bureaucrat know this information? Catalogue number? Vault assignment? Had this new German government infiltrated into the church to its very core? Where there spies, perhaps assassins lingering in the very walls of the Vatican itself?
“Such a small indulgence really, for which Der Führer would be eternally grateful, and consider as both a gesture of friendship as well as adequate recompense for the “difficulties” the church may have presented the party in the past.” Pius was visibly distressed. I did not know what this “item” in question was but several things were immediately clear: That this thing requested by the German was by NO MEANS as trivial as he had made it seem, that it did in fact exist, that the Pope knew of it, and had confirmed this by his mannerisms, and that this “request” was many things, but was by no means a “request”.
My mind was now racing but I struggled to mask my confusion and simply observe and attempt to interperate what was transpiring before me. Naturally, my Latin was fluent. “MAPPA? MUNDI Cartography? It was a map? A map of the world? What about this could be so special? The archives held some of the oldest, most prestigious maps in the world, but none where so important as this exchange made them seem, or so I’d thought.
It was well known the German government had, upon the regime change began to heavily investigate its own origins. Indeed, to form its own recycled theology from Pagan evils and misteachings, it did make sense that they may request a map to aid in this research but the unmitigated gall of this man! To presume not only that the Pope would release an item from the archive, but would do so immediately, this instant, like an underling to a foreign government that was clearly threatening him to do so!
“Of course Der Führer would consider it a personal favor. He has been so very generous to the Church in the past, and would like to continue to do so. He dearly hopes Germany and The Catholic Church can both continue to exist…peacefully”
He WAS threatening violence, against the entire faith. It was clear. If I’d held out doubt before it was gone. This man was not requesting anything.
“Robert”, Pius said to me through dry lips, his face suddenly ashen, “Telephone the library, tell Seniore Mercati I will be arriving with a guest to retrieve an item.” He then reached beneath his robes and from under his cowl produced an ancient looking key on a chain around his neck. Having attended him personally for most of his life and all of his papacy to this moment I had never seen it before. And I never saw it again. He bade me never speak of what transpired that day. And I never have. I never knew what precisely was removed from the Vatican's archives that day, but its relinquishment left his Holiness a changed man.
--From the personal diary of
Robert Leiber, 11 March, 1939
Jesuit priest and Professor for Church History at the Gregorian University, Rome.
Private secretary and closest advisor to Pope Pius XII
He sat back in his apartment, drained. Still reeling from the exchange. What had he done? What would they do with it? What COULD they do with it? If the stories were true no one had ever uncovered its secrets, interpreted its oldest markings. Could these men? He’d had to give it up, the Reich Minister had spoken in veiled inferences but his meaning had been plain: “surrender the map now or the Church will suffer both in Germany, here in Italy and indeed across the whole of our reach.” Yes, it was right. He’d had no choice after all. How many lives had just been saved? Still, the release of the thing, if it were ever decoded, understood, publicized…what would such a thing mean to the world?
Seniore Mercati, the Head Archivist, had met them at the Library entrance, he was absolutely incredulous, had he thought Leiber had lied? Was this an unbelievable ruse? No, the order had indeed come from the Holy Father himself. The SS officer had looked positively indignant when the old man insisted he would remain outside and wait. He’d led Pius into the archive then, key in hand, turning this way and that through hallways and rooms with the experience only a lifetime of work within this maze could accomplish. As they walked the Pope had pondered the key in his hand. Bequeathed from Pope to Pope from time immemorial. Some claimed it was the key to the lock from the box Paul himself had brought to Peter and James with the donation to the poor. It now secured a treasure far more enormous, dangerous, and sought after.
Surprisingly, this was no vault sealed since antiquity, but one that had been opened as recently as 1868 when Pius IX had been given the map through a clandestine meeting from the Spanish Dominicans who had held it in secret since their Inquisitions disbandment in 1834. “Returning it to the church” was a more appropriate term, since the map had been in, then taken from, and returned again to the church’s possession many times over the last 2,000 years. He sighed grimly at the notion that he himself was about to allow it back into the world again.
As they progressed the walls, vaulting and masonry became musty, wetter, and more ancient. He mused on the Popes before him who had taken this walk. Not necessarily for the map, for the vault in question was for the most forbidden artifacts, the most shameful, the most damaging, the ones that could disprove much if not all of the sacred doctrines and dogmas simply by existing. Legend had it that the last Pope who had truly and fully inspected and inventoried the vault had been young John XII in the late tenth century. It was whispered that what he’d learned from the items placed in this vault destroyed his Christian faith utterly and had turned him into a delirious hedonist on par with a Caligula or Nero. He’d promptly taken to raping pilgrim girls, converting the Lateran Palace into a whorehouse, stealing church offerings to fun lavish orgiastic parties, praising pagan gods, placing whores on the Papal throne and toasting devils, murdering or mangling all who opposed him.
He knew the lore, as with Emperors, Kings and even upstart Presidents there are legends and secrets which are passed down for both posterity and security.
What was known of its origin was largely wrung from sorcerers, witches, cabbalists and demonic devotees who possessed it by means of the rack and whip, by hook and hot irons.
It was said to have come from a place called “Pnakotus” in a far off land. Whether this Pnakotus was a land itself, city or archive of sorts the stories conflicted. It was agreed by all that it existed before the flood, before man, before the time when Holy Scripture taught there was even a world to exist in.
It was said originally to be a collaboratory work between monstrous races, a treaty of land boundaries of sorts between warring civilizations. It was claimed it was written on the flayed skin of a creature that could not be killed. One that could look like anything, everything and most chillingly, nothing. It was said that the hide it was written on could never truly die, that it was indestructible. Indeed there were reports that its edges, though tattered and stained by uncountable years. Seemed to shift and change their outline ever so slightly if watched closely.
What had become of these races no one could say. Indeed it was difficult to discern the maps original markings for through the millennia it had been overlaid countless times by innumerable cultures with entries important to them at the given time, but now equally baffling.
The known continents were represented, yet greatly disjointed from what was known of their topography and coastlines. Additionally, entire regions and subcontinents wholly unknown were present, though long since vanished from the world. Curiously, all this was clearly on this map long before man had known anything certain about the world or its shape.
Great cities represented in profusion were shown where now there were none. Indeed many were shown to be in the most barren, unlivable regions on earth. Had these civilizations, of men not of Adam’s seed, been swallowed one by one in cataclysms? Had the Almighty struck them down en masse as he had Sodom? No one could say. It showed cities and civilizations that were myth even to the ancients. Commorium, Uzuldaroum, Sarnath and Gorinium were all represented in the first lands of Hyperborea. Urrusan and Hypos still flourished in the now-wastes of Africa. Karath and Motu still ruled in Lemuria and Mu as well as their colonies in Atlantis and Antillia. Dwaraka held the whole of what would become Asia under its sway. All were gone now, all the fabled golden lands of the cultures that would come later.
Its known (or semi-known) history ran thusly:
It had been kept by priests in the Ziggurat of the holy city of Kish from recorded memory. Even by that time it had bonded itself through centuries of contact to the primitive weaved textile in which it had been wrapped in and later stitched to. The priests claimed it had come from the first men, who themselves had been given it by the gods. Through wars and concessions it found its way into the hands of the earliest Pharaohs. Its crude papyrus sheathing and hieroglyphic inscription showed it had clearly been in the royal library of a Pharaoh named Nephren, though no record of his rule exists. It seemed this Nephren had kept it primarily to track the recurring instances and movements of a strangely angled jewel which was so dear to him it was part of his royal crest. Only a reference in the time of Sneferu, founder of the 4th Dynasty speaking of” cleansing the two lands of the terrible evil of Nephren” gives any outside testimony to this Pharaohs rule.
It was held by the many royal dynasties until the great prophet Moses took possession of it. Having been raised in Pharaoh’s house as a Prince of Egypt he had been privy to the deepest secrets of the Priesthood. Upon being called by God he began the Exodus of the Hebrews. At this point it was said he demanded it of Pharaoh Ramses II. Some Cabbalists claimed the tenth plague of Egypt was actually called down by Pharaoh initially refusing this demand. At this point it was, it was rumored, placed within the Ark itself beside the Ten Commandments. It resided there, in the Holy of Holies until the temples destruction in 586 B.C. Whereas the Ark was lost, the map was not, smuggled out of the city by Jewish magicians intent on its safekeeping.
It would disappear from history and be passed down from Jewish sorcerers, foreign mystics and heretical sects for the next thousand years, disguised originally as a scroll of Torah.
It first found its way into Christian hands in 415 A.D. After Bishop Cyril of Alexandria ordered all Jews to be stripped of all possessions and banished from Alexandria, allowing their goods to be pillaged by the remaining citizenry. It was said the maps story was first tortured from its keeper, a Jewish mystic in the city by Cyril himself. It was discovered among Cyril’s possessions by his successor Pope Dioscorus I. He had taken it with him (as a bribe it was claimed by some) the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. He was nonetheless deposed and his articles seized. It was said the map was used as proof of his heresy. The map was then added to the archives of Constantinople where it would remain for a further 700 years.
The Pope and his guide began descending an ancient staircase. Cobwebs hung heavy to the ceiling and the air grew chill. The Pope barely noticed, he was lost in thought…
At this point the maps history had become subject to conjecture, still the evidence of its proposed journey was undeniable.
He knew it was still stored in an oiled leather map case bearing the crest of the “Admiral of the Ocean Seas”. However Columbus’s own writings (deemed heretical and suppressed) report that he did not possess it on his first historic voyage. Rather it was found in the decimated village of heathen Indians. Columbus had appointed Diego de Arana, the cousin of his Córdoba mistress, as governor of the settlement of Fort La Navidad in Hispaniola and left for Spain and a hero’s welcome. Upon return to the settlement he and his crew discovered the fort burned and all within murdered by the Taino tribe on the island. The retaliatory strike was brutal and complete. It was there, in a village of primitives that he found it in a shrine. Shockingly, the map bore unmistakable European markings. How in God’s name had this relic arrived in the New World before him?
The Pope chuckled slightly at this juncture. Columbus must have been proud indeed for he never revealed he had been in some way beaten to the New World. He never learned how this had been possible but restricted Papal records, correlated with official and secret histories provided the answers.
A transcribed letter, the original said to be a note with the map itself from the Knight Pons Rigaud, Templar Master of Apulia to Pope Alexander III told of its journey from Constantinople. It had been looted from the restricted section of the Imperial Library during the shameful Crusades sacking of that city in 1204. The robber knights, attempting to book passage to the Holy Land were arrested in Apulia with the map in tow. It was to be promptly sent to the Paris temple by order of Grand Master De Plessis for examination. It was afterward learned through interrogation that it had been smuggled out in the midnight dash for freedom by the order on 12 October 1307 by treasure ship from La Rochelle.
Arriving in Scotland it remained in Templar keeping until the now “formally disbanded” order participated in the Battle of Bannockburn, drawing Inquisitor attention. Once again they fled, using the map, following old Viking tales and island hopping methods to arrive in the New World fully 100 years before Spain. Establishing colonies that had left some tangible traces such as bobby trapped treasure pits and even a European tower on New England’s coast they had apparently pushed further into the continents interior. It appears however that a general uprising of native Indian nations spelled their doom. A Runestone in Minnesota spoke of an advance teams destruction by what must have been The Oneota Mississippian tribe. It is assumed these explorers had the map with them which fell into the savages hands. Why they kept the map when the armor, swords and accoutrements of the knights must have seemed nothing short of magical themselves is unknown. But kept it was.
It then passed to the migrating Athapaskan tribe on its way south to become the Aztec. As splinter groups penetrated deeper into the interior they became the Amazonian Yanomami and finally the Taíno. All the while, the map held as a sacred object.
In 1500, while Columbus was hauled back to Spain in chains for his terrible handling of the New Spain colony his map now fell to his usurper Francisco de Bobadilla. It remained forgotten in the library of the Governors of the Indies as a curiosity until the coming of the Inquisition to New Spain in 1535. The Franciscan High Inquisitor Juan de Zumarraga, inventorying the library of then-governor Antonio de Mendoza, then came across and immediately seized it. It would remain in the Inquisitors Palace in Mexico City under lock and key for another 300 years.
It left the Americas for the Old World in 1821. When the Mexican War for Independence was clearly lost by the Spanish Forces a mad scramble was made to empty Mexico City not only of its ruling class’s wealth, but its most damning secrets as well. The map, lumped in with haphazardly collected documents of inquisitorial cruelty was hastily loaded onto a diplomatic vessel for immediate departure by Royalists to Spain. While the ship would arrive, its contents would not.
As the near-disabled ship lurched into port at Punta de la Orchilla the ragged survivors told an astounding tale. Only three days at sea they were attacked…by a monster. It had sped effortlessly just below the surface and quickly destroyed each of the four warships serving as escort. As the passengers of the treasure shipped braced themselves the monster now bore down on them. But to the amazement of all the monster had slowed, came along side and surfaced. It was made of iron. It was a blasphemous machine in the form of a creature, the Devils own handiwork. Adding to the horror the machine put forth a deafening human voice from nowhere and demanded immediate surrender, which was promptly obeyed. It then began to spew forth armed men in strange uniforms. The Master of this abomination, a dark, dashing young man (as the Devil often is) introduced himself as “Prince Dakkar”. In exchange for the lives of those onboard he demanded all records in the ships hold transferred to his “vessel” at once, he’d shown no interest whatsoever in the astounding riches onboard. Once the transfer was complete the “Prince” and his men returned to their vessel, which was apparently a man-made ship of fantastic design and disappeared beneath the sea. Hulio, the looted ships second mate swore in testimony that the prince, while below decks inspecting the documents, had been referred to by one of his crew as “Nemo”.
They turned an abrupt, almost invisible corner in this gloom and proceeded down a steep, greatly worn staircase. Pius frowned inwardly as they passed heretical murals rotting on the walls. They were in heathen territory now, areas deep below the Vatican that Christianity itself had usurped from other gods in those early days when cross and cudgel were carried by bishops and monks in the streets of Rome suppressing the "other truths". But did not the very item he now went to collect perhaps lend credence, even justification to those long ago rival faiths that were removed with steel, stones and fire in the early days?
Finally, the maps tale had ended (or so all had thought with it safely back in the Church’s control) with the interrogation of a man named Cyrus Smith. Smith, a Captain in the Union Army during the American Civil War, was found in possession of an armored strongbox, it contained the map.
In 1866 a Spanish fleet withdrawing from patrolling the South American coastline in retaliation for Peru's refusal to pay an indemnity, vacated the Chincha Islands and returned to Spain via the Philippines, completing a circumnavigation of the globe in order to do so. While at sea it had encountered, and forcibly boarded the British ship DUNCAN. While searching the Spaniards uncovered the box, which had clearly been in a battle or explosion of some sort. Suspecting looters they questioned Smith. He told a fantastic story. He and his five companions had escaped a Confederate prison camp during the Siege of Richmond in 1865 by means of a balloon. A massive storm blew them across the country and far out to sea. They had finally crash-landed on a cliff-bound, volcanic island they named “Lincoln” after their President. It was there they discovered (or where discovered by) the same “Prince Dakkar”, now much older and freely going by the pseudonym “Captain Nemo”. As he lay dying, he related his life story and how he had used the map to locate this unknown island, a sliver of vanished Lemuria, to use as his base of operations. Nemo ordered Smith to retrieve the strongbox from his personal study, saying the map “could not end with him”. As the island's central volcano erupted, beginning the islands disintegration Smith struggled to acquire the box amid electrical fires and explosions on the doomed submarine. The ship was scuttled, serving as Nemo’s tomb.
Just when all had seemed lost the DUNCAN had appeared and rescued the castaways, setting sail for Europe. The clergy aboard the Spanish fleet, recognizing the Spanish inquisitorial seals on the map case from several centuries earlier, again confiscated the map and returned it to Spain to an underground sect of former Inquisitors who held it in secret until its delivery to Pius IX during the First Vatican Council.
Finally the vault, with its unassuming little lock and crumbling wax seal. Pius opened its rusted aperture and stalked in directly to the strongbox, deliberately staring straight ahead, he had no wish to gaze on the other relics within this shameful room.
Upon surfacing and presenting it the officer smirked in satisfaction, his “scholarly” associates crowding close. Both Pius and Seniore Mercati started, then winced at the absolute contempt and lack of solemnity the Minister displayed as he brandished a service dagger from nowhere and slashed the Librorum Prohibitorum corded seal placed on the chest 70 years earlier. Pulling it from Columbus’s own map case he unfolded it and let the now ecstatic scholars look over his shoulder. “Ja, das ist es” one barely whispered. “Die Hohle Erde Tor präsent sein müssen”. “muß es sofort decodiert warden!” another declared.
“Kontakt Berlin” von Ribbentrop declared to an aide who had produced a pad and paper, “Informieren den Neu-Schwabenland-Umfrage haben wir es.”
The officer dropped map case and map unceremoniously back into the strongbox and shut the lid. “Der Führer will be most appreciative” he said in an unmistakably mocking tone.
And with that, the map reentered the world yet again. Pius could only pray it would yet again be returned, or better yet, destroyed in the now certain war to come.