what he was being put through

In the absence of official records, a good deal of (it must be said) indecent speculation has arisen concerning what exactly the Scholar suffered at the hands of the Council — in addition, of course, to the Confiscation of the Archives and expulsion from the Conference. We will not dilate upon that here: suffice it to say that at least one contemporary of this Author avers certain knowledge of the Scholar's being threatened with bodily harm; the same Author claims to have traced the origins of the Council to the primeval Office of Inquiry of Egderus' time, whose documented methods involved torture of the most deplorable kind.