The Armitage Marginalia

What it is

Over thirty years as librarian of Miskatonic University, Dr. Henry Armitage filled the margins of the library's Latin copy of the Necronomicon with pencilled notes. Some are cross-references to other volumes. Some are translations of difficult passages. A few are warnings.

What the notes contain

The marginalia are known to include:

- A list of passages Armitage believed had been deliberately mistranslated by Olaus Wormius, with his own corrections.
- Dates beside several incantations, which appear to record when he tested whether a passage was "active" by reading it in an empty room.
- A running count, kept on the back flyleaf, of the number of times the volume was found open on the reading table when no one had signed it out.

Why they are restricted

After Armitage's death the university concluded that the notes were more dangerous than the text they annotate. The Necronomicon is obscure, contradictory and hard to use. Armitage's notes make it clear, practical and ordered. The library now keeps the volume with the marginal pages sealed under glassine.

Using this in stories

The marginalia are a good source of hooks: a single legible line, a date that matches an unexplained event, or a correction that changes what a famous passage means. Anyone who has read the notes in full should pay for it, as the charter requires.