Personal Description:
Ernest was an impeccably turned out and handsome gentleman 10-15 years ago and little has changed. The years have left him and his suits looking tired and worn.
Ideology/Beliefs:
No man should hold unreciprocated power over another.
The written word is sacred.
Significant People:
Meaningful locations:
The private collection he has curated for years as part of the Columbia University Library.
Treasured Possessions:
A pocket edition of Paine’s – “On the Rights of Man,” in German. There is an inscription from Ernest’s Father on the inside cover.
Key Connection
Traits:
Generous. Fastidious. Curious.
Injuries and Scars:
Weak lungs due to Spanish Flu scars.
Phobias and Manias:
Arcane Tomes, Spells, and Artifacts:
Encounters with Strange Entities:
A man in his early fifties steps of the bus and into the evening air. His gait is not laboured, and the tap-tap-tap of his cane on the stone is almost melodic. Only if you are very close, close enough to smell the old leather and paper of the man, could you notice there is a slight wheeze in his chest. His lungs are tired.
Tiredness. Tiredness is very nearly the perfect word for this man. His clothes would have been close to chic ten years ago; now they are old and fit him like a favourite old slipper. His face is neither warm nor unkind; the face of a man that takes as he finds and judges accordingly. There is a look in his eye of machination, a glimpse of a mind that never stops considering, ruminating. They are young eyes, not tired eyes.
If not tiredness then perhaps well worn. The lungs are well worn, the clothes are well worn, the man himself is well worn.
As he climbs the stairs to an apartment, his steps almost hinting at a skip, the cane taps each railing in turn in a practiced rat-a-tat-tat. An old housewife sweeping a front step, smiles and greats the man warmly.
“Good evening Frauline Davies.”
The man’s natural, rich, German accent tastes strange on his lips, how long as it been since he was last able to let his guard down, since he had last been home. A week, three?
And so we arrive. This is the legal residence of one Ernest Nuemann, our protagonist has a name at last.
Pause a moment to consider the scene. Ernest is stood in the entrance of a single bedroom apartment, somewhere in New York that used to be Somewhere. The room ahead is the main living area, it is not dirty, far from it, but neither is it tidy. Piles of books rise from the brown floor, from every flat surface in the room, clearly following some unknown metric. As Ernest lowers himself into the one free chair in the room. He reflexively pours himself a small bourbon from a dusty bottle on a side table. His head quickly begins to droop and soon he is slumbering.
Tl;dr
Earnest Nuemann is a Librarian curating a semi-private collection at Columbia University. Over the years he has been left largely to his own devices, though occasionally he will be tasked with a specific acquisition or research project. Ernest sleeps in the library backrooms more often than he returns home, this is a matter of convenience more than anything, transporting books is a hassle. He is a fluent English speaker and, since the great war, self-consciously tries to supress his native accent when away from home. He caught the Spanish flu in one of the first waves, early 1918. After a long struggle Ernest survived but his constitution would never be the same.
One long term personal project he has been working on is the acquisition of certain play scripts, often considered to be linked to the occult or even mythical in nature. It is this work that brought him into contact with Anthony Carmichael, Anthony helped him fill in some blanks about the theatre industry.
