York Leech Guild Site
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Overview
The York Leech Guild is the primary subject of investigation and intensive research at a site underneath the York Guildhall. Martha Belquill discovered the collapsed and singed tunnels and currently heads all research and excavation within the site. Work here continues both through cooperation with local authorities and funding from Errol Petrolson, a historian with interests in archaic magic and a magical medical practitioner. Due to its private funding, its discoveries are normally kept secret, with only a few recovered artefacts given to museums and government authorities as per established agreements. Although it is presented as the passion project of Dr Belquill, Errol uses the information to create treatments for his clinic from the recovered notes of magical barber surgeons. The confusion regarding where artefacts and information from the site go has given it a level of infamy among scholars and some locals. However, Dr Belquill has done well to keep these concerns at bay by speaking publicly on the site when she can and garnering interest from local magicians.
History
In the latter half of 2016, Dr Martha Belquill took a trip to York to look over some old legal documents from medieval wizarding guilds. It was meant to be a part of a paper looking into the crossover of magical and Unmagical daily life in a time before the Decree of Magical Confidentiality. The papers were kept in a magically sealed basement made months before the Decree, in preparation for it. Dr Belquill took note of the basement’s strange architecture and requested to see the room’s plans. Several notes on the plans detailed unstable and loose rocks and soil at certain points that the room was built around in order to keep the structure intact. Further investigation yielded rumours of this loose soil actually being hollow tunnels, with the loose remnants being rubble and not rock. She spent months gathering evidence before presenting it to the programme that funded her research. This came alongside a proposal to those in charge of the York Guildhall for a new excavation site within that basement. Her request was denied, and the programme urged her to continue her original research instead. She ignored this suggestion and continued to look into these supposed tunnels. It was around this time, in early 2017, that Errol Petrolson overheard colleagues discussing Dr Belquill’s proposal. He approached Dr Belquill about the potential site and offered to fund the venture.
After further talks and the establishment of appropriate paperwork, the site began excavations in mid-2017. This first dig would unearth the tunnels, made of stone bricks, which held up quite well despite their age—with the main sign of wear being old burn marks from a fire. The entrance tunnel eventually split into three paths. Two at the time had collapsed, while the last one was shorter and opened up to a small room. The room had three beds, all of which were found destroyed and were later reconstructed. Nearby, there was a desk with signs of having been damaged by an explosion. Following this discovery, the tunnel was named the Bedroom Tunnel. The first few months of the excavation would also recover a number of artefacts and documents, most of which went straight to Errol. Dr Belquill had the site shut down after a series of break-ins at the beginning of 2018. This gave Errol the chance to increase security and the York Guildhall the opportunity to change its agreements with the sites so it could receive more information from the digs. In 2019, the site began work again, and Dr Belquill intended to remove the rubble from the middle tunnel, but after a long time with no sign of an end, this effort shifted to the third and final tunnel. By the end of the year, the last of the collapse was cleared for this tunnel. At the end of the tunnel was a room full of antique medical supplies and various tables that seemed to be for surgery.
Though this would be a later observation, the most immediate discovery was the white, humanoid outlines that stained the walls. Notes in this room and the bedroom would come to name this series of tunnels as the place of operation for the York Leech Guild. In early 2020, Errol took the findings from these excavations and opened up a clinic, using the research as the basis for his own form of medical practice. Later that year, the clinic would face backlash and then enter into a lawsuit that eventually got the site shut down again. Today the site is up and running, with connections to Errol left more ambiguous and indirect. Dr Belquill is now the face of this operation and speaks on their discoveries in presentations regarding her own work and the site itself.
Major Finds
Most of what has been found at this site has been stored away and is now likely in the possession of Errol. However, efforts from both local authorities and Dr Belquill have allowed some things to go public. A journal, partially falling apart and barely kept together through magic, along with some notes and letters, is often recognised as the most important pieces recovered from the tunnels. It is in these files that the York Leech Guild is mentioned by name, and its purpose and research within the tunnels are discussed. It revealed that the Guild was a collection of magical medical practitioners who came together to push forward the field of barber surgery as they believed it to be the future of medicine. Their notes are actually based on Unmagical medical readings of the time and simply adjust or add on to rituals, preparations, and treatments. This final point has led to debate over whether these practices were originally from magical society and then written about by Unmagical doctors, or if they were invented by Unmagicals and then improved by magical doctors. Those arguing for the former add that the books of the time were likely the best compilations of these practices. Dr Belquill herself believes the latter is true and has gone further to say that these doctors may have actually worked alongside Unmagicals in those tunnels. Although evidence for this is, for the most part, kept private.
These notes, like many of the finds, are in the possession of Dr Belquill, but there are a few that have made their way to local historians. The most famous among these is a pair of surgical scissors, rusted and extremely fragile, with a beautiful white gem at the point where the blades cross. Due to the damage to the scissors, tests with them have been halted for fear that they may break. The gem, however, has been removed on occasion for testing. Initial tests came back with mixed results regarding any magical properties of the gem. Sometimes those involved would find magic very clearly focused through it, others found it to outright block magic, and a few saw that it would take the magic and return it in ways completely opposite to what was cast. When tests began on how light affected it, it became immediately clear what was happening with the gem. The inside of it had various points where very small balls made of a reflective material had been magically added. When put under moonlight, it would glow, and the inside of the gem would reflect the light within itself to create a rune. The rune displayed would then change depending on the amount of time it had spent in the moonlight and the phase of the moon. It seems that these tools were specially made to fit with the constellation and moon phase models of barber surgeons, in order to intensify the energy they believed it gave their medical practices.
