Hayden Montag

Hayden Montag
Location
Region:	Savage Coast
Zone:	Solomon Island
Location:	Innsmouth Academy
Background Information
Species:	Human
NPC Information
NPC Type:	Mission

Hayden Montag is the headmaster of Innsmouth Academy and an occult scholar with no tact. Placed in power by the Illuminati, he teaches all students and the school is officially unaligned.

He is one of the few survivors still holed up at the Academy.

At a young age, he read a Yazidi death curse from a book, and in doing so killed his mother and 11 others.

Missions

Initiated

• The Breakfast Cult
• Science and the Arts
• The Faculty
• To Sir, With Love

Dialogue

Yourself

Do you read? It's a fading art. In this modern world, offer an occultist an irreplaceable manuscript, and they will claim they are waiting for the movie. All the scholarly aspect has gone out of forbidden knowledge. The studiousness, the drive. And yet in the end, even the written word could not sustain my mind. I had plumbed the depths of ancient texts, scaled the heights of correspondence with the great minds of our age, and understanding had reached an awful stalemate within me. The epiphany struck. Epiphany, and acquittal on all counts of manslaughter. Children. I put to you that children are the...perfect transmitters of knowledge. The perfect receivers. Vessels of malleable power and bottomless potential. In hindsight, my initial attempts at teaching were crude. There were restraining orders, other pesky legalities regarding abduction of minors. That is why the Illuminati brought me here. To those awaiting valuable lessons towards their future enlightened success.

The students

You should be aware of the urgency with which we nurture our young talents. The eldest oral traditions describe recorded history as the Fourth Great Age of Mankind. An age that is closing. I could not hazard a guess if another age will follow. As a pentaphobic, I would like no part of it. But the children of today will guide the transference of tomorrow. Across the world, prodigies are manifesting powers earlier and stronger than ever before. Carter was psychokinetic at birth. Her parents quickly learned to avoid metal nursery furniture. Exposure to the island and its...checkered magical history has only amplified her abilities. From the age of twelve, she could shift laboratory animals into other dimensions. I intended to work with her on protecting them from explosive decompression at the point of return. But those lessons have been on hiatus since a regrettable zoo outing last year.

Innsmouth Academy

Perhaps I appear blase to the human tragedy that surrounds us. I am, largely. I believe one should focus on their strong subjects...empathy was never truly one of mine. Thusly, I must protect the Academy and its occupants the only way I can appreciate: analytically. Analytically, I predicted an event like this sooner. This was never a simple fishing community. Well-suited to the Illuminated Order's love of ciphers and symbology, the island...is a triangle. A meeting of three lines of power. The ambition of mortal magic, the hunger of the Hell Dimensions...and something beyond the scope of understanding. An old and deep power, older than aeons. Most sources choose not to name it, lest in the naming it gains strength. You are aware that members of some cultures fear a photograph can steal their soul? They are, of course, correct. Well. To record this power is to take the first faltering step towards succumbing to it. Utterly. In my life, I have always striven to maintain a clear delineation between obsession and madness.

The secret world

Our hidden world is a sequence of disastrous events. All connected. Echoing back to creation, and forward until the death rattle of the universe. It is unfortunate, for academic purposes, that those with the time and means to draw these connections are invariably rendered insane. Having once...explored the troubled minds of patients at McLean, Danvers, Arkham, I advise you against questioning the living for explanation. Look to the dead. Their knowledge is no longer compromised by horror or shame. They are a library, a morbid encyclopedia of the acts that brought us here. To our modern world, and to humanity's place in it. A half-way house on the evolutionary scale, between Neanderthals and something quite different, quite terrible. Something changed. Not like you are changing, probably not. But try a little background reading with the dead. They will not lie to you, unless they see an escape from torment or enslavement in it, I suppose.

The Illuminati

You may wonder why the Illuminati invested in an open institution like the Academy. It is a mirror to their brotherhood, exclusive but not elitist. I was self-taught when they first came to me, as a young offender, and ushered me firmly behind the curtain of secrecy. They are...patrons of enlightenment. They appreciate that "forbidden knowledge" is a contradiction in terms. What is recorded is meant to be known. Those who call them uncultured are clearly unaware that in lost Alexandria, Illuminati ordered their servants to transcribe even while they burned alive. The Illuminati are businesspeople who saw an opportunity and moved to fill it. For too long we have clambered, wheezing, up the spiral staircase to an era where nothing is true and everything is permitted. They have installed escalators, so all might carpe diem, carpe annum, carpe aeon. Carpe out of the hands of stuffy curators without ambition.

ARG

@dontgetcarter @zombiedanny Take it EZ D, you'll get in 2 D-EEP ;P THx for taking me up there btw, sorry I had to skedaddle, don't want Montag to blow fuse Tweet published on 29 Nov.

@dontgetcarter Seems like EAP liked his puzzles, huh?Still not clear on what his connection is to the Academy. Montag would now, but not going there... :-/ Tweet published on 5 Dec.

Trivia

• The voice actor for Hayden Montag is Jeffrey Combs

Media

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