| Архивы Магнуса | |||||||||||
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| Размещено | Джонатан Симс | ||||||||||
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| Архивы Магнуса | ||
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| Презентация | ||
| Размещено | Джонатан Симс | |
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| ATTENTION! SPOILERS AHEAD!! This article contains information from later episodes of The Magnus Archives and may contain major spoilers for the setting and plot. Continue at your own risk. |
Contents
Origins and Nature
In MAG 200 it is revealed there was originally one entity, implied to be (or least survive as) The Hunt. This entity existed before humans, and fed on animal fears.
As humans evolved and began to develop language and complex thoughts, they began to tear it apart into smaller and more specific fears, causing the current multiple entities to exist. As these new entities grew and fought among each other, they felt the urge to enter our world and «become one with the minds below». They received the opportunity to do this with the first avatars, who opened the first connection between their realm and ours. And from that they gained the ability to influence our world.
Most entities are near mindless, unable to conceptualize time or themselves and motivated purely by their desire to feed on fear and enter our world. The two exceptions are The Web and The End, who are at least sentient enough to make complex long term plans to escape this universe and to destroy reality, respectively.
Manifestations
Animals
Artefacts
Locations
People can slip into a form of extra-dimensional space when influenced by a Fear. These spaces do not function under regular logic and the passage of time can also be distorted. These spaces can be delineated by a threshold or simply manifest spontaneously around a person. Escape can be achieved by physically exiting the manifestation, or by a change in the person’s mental or emotional state. Examples include:
People
Some humans can become attached to an Entity and become empowered by it, gaining supernatural abilities related to their patron but losing some or all of their humanity in the process. They are referred to as avatars. Avatars usually have mentalities reflective of their patron.
Avatars retain their agency but become physically dependent on their patron, suffering withdrawal effects, including death, if they go too long without feeding the entity that empowers them.
A death is required for someone to become a fully realized avatar but it can be literal or metaphysical in nature. Fledgling avatars can still have powers, but fully realized avatars are significantly more powerful. Eventually, most avatars will become unable to die or be harmed by conventional means, requiring something specific to their nature, or a Hunter, to kill them.
Other
Some beings, such as the NotThem, vampires, etc, possess human qualities but it is unclear if they were ever human. Sometimes they consist in part of a human, such as The Distortion after it was combined with Michael Shelley. Sometimes they appear completely inhuman, like The Still And Lightless Beast and The Lichtenberg Figure.
Rituals
Most entities have their own ‘ritual’, a symbolic act that, if completed, will allow the entity to merge with reality, changing the fabric of the world as it exerts its will and nature upon that reality. These rituals have the potential to bring other closely-tied entities along with it. It requires centuries for each Entity to build up the power needed for its ritual, and if it is stopped, it cannot try again until it rebuilds that power base. No ritual had ever succeeded as of MAG 159.
In MAG 160, Jonah Magnus reveals why: The entities are too closely connected to be summoned individually; they cannot be fully separated from each other due to overlap and opposing binaries. For example, the line between the Spiral and the Stranger can be blurred, and a world with only the Buried cannot exist because the Buried needs the contrast of open spaces to exist. A ritual attempting to summon a single entity will inevitably collapse under its weight. The only way to successfully complete a ritual is to summon every entity at once.
Jonah Magnus devises such a ritual using Jonathan Sims as a lynchpin. After being marked by every entity in his role as Archivist, he is made to recite an incantation to «open the door» and summon every entity at once. The reason an Archivist is needed for the ritual is that the Archivist functions as a living archive, not only recording events but embodying them. The power of events that involve the Archivist being marked by each of the Entities is enough to summon them, while also not splitting them up.
Smirke’s List
Robert Smirke categorised all the disparate entities into 14 main categories. Each Entity is comprised of a variety of smaller terrors, some direct, some abstract, and some tend to bleed over between one Entity and the next. Whilst fears do change and are subject to place, time, and culture, they are thought to have remained fairly stable since the industrial revolution, though an entity’s power fluctuates with the world’s fear of their domain. Each entity has a variety of names, though Smirke’s names are generally the most commonly used.
These classifications are much like colours, infinite fears that can be grouped into a few categories — each entity can be separated to some degree, but the fears bleed/feed into one another around the edges, and within each entity are different shades of the same hue. This also works to explain why some entities oppose one another, their colours «clash» like red and green or blue and orange.
“Like colours, but if colours hated me.”
— Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of The Magnus Institute, London, MAG 111
Timeline
| ATTENTION! SPOILERS AHEAD!! This article contains information from later episodes of The Magnus Archives and may contain major spoilers for the setting and plot. Continue at your own risk. |
This timeline is a comprehensive list of events, as best as they can be organised. Where events are contradictory, they are noted.
See Timeline/Episodes for a simplified timeline of episodes.
Contents
Prehistoric [ ]
Pre Human Evolution
The original fear entity formed, feeding off animalistic fears of predation
The first humans evolve. Over the subsequent millennia, they split the original entity into multiple smaller entities.
Unknown prehistoric period
The first avatar opens a door between the realm of the entities and earth.
Before 1700 [ ]
ca 1527-1590 A heretical sculptor is bisected during the Reformation. (MAG 196) Unknown date between 1533-1594 Simon Fairchild is an apprentice to the painter Tintoretto. He becomes fascinated with the skies he paints and is claimed by The Vast. (MAG 151) 1592 Christopher is dragged through the streets of Norwich by a horse, presumably after finding the book that would later detail his demise. (MAG 70) 1642–1651 A writer of anonymous letters is deemed a traitor in the English Civil War. (MAG 196)
Father Edwin Burroughs begins his work as exorcist for the Diocese of Oxford (MAG 19).
January Christof Rudenko delivers a package to his upstairs neighbour, Toby Carlisle, learning his name (MAG 18). Grant Walker loses his job at Deloitte and moves in with his brother Stephen (MAG 75). October Stephen and Grant Walker are locked out of their house. Stephen breaks his arm and Grant is forced to confront his fear of ladders. During this, they encounter Michael Crew, who watches them for a while (MAG 75). November Jessica McEwen is taken by the Anglerfish in Old Fishmarket Close (MAG 1).
19th July Bertrand Miller dies in Ivy Meadows Care Home (MAG 36). Late July Ivy Meadows Care Home closes down. Most of the workforce is undocumented and many of the surviving occupants go missing (MAG 36). August Nicole and Josh Baxter, morticians at Baxter and Gordon Funeral Directors, are called out to recover the corpse of Bertrand Miller from John Amherst, the «new Director» of Ivy Meadows Care Home. The corpse is found covered in strange, weeping, yellow rashes (MAG 36). Diego Molina is arrested at the scene of an arson near Clapham by PC Basira Hussain and PC John Spencer. When cuffing Molina, Hussain is burned by the metal of the cuffs. Spencer is later found scalded to death in a bathtub, after trying to burn the (suspected Leitner) book Molina had on him at the time of the arson. This is the first occasion PC Hussain has to sign a Section 31 form (MAG 43). 4th September Nicole Baxter returns to Ivy Meadows Care Home and finds the entire population of the care home infected. Two unknown individuals (an old Mancunian man and a young woman with a scar on her face) confront her, convince her to flee and set the building alight (MAG 36). 7th November Lisa Carmel hosts a meeting in Murder Club, a club for discussing true crime. The meeting is interrupted by a masked intruder. The members of the club kill the intruder. Over the next two weeks the members hunt and kill each other. The only survivor is Ananya Kaleka, who is arrested and dies in her cell a few months later (MAG 112). 23rd December Gerard Keay and another unknown man (presumed to be Diego Molina, see MAG 43) are brought into St. Thomas Hospital in London for severe burns sustained near St. Mary’s Church. Lesere Saraki witnesses Gerard kill the other man, before returning to his hospital bed (MAG 12). 27th December Gerard Keay is released from St Thomas Hospital under the care of his mother, Mary Keay. (MAG 12).
Before March 14 News break that Neil Lagorio is dead. Dexter Banks and almost a hundred actors are taken by a giant spider during the filming of Widow’s Weave (MAG 110). May Andre Ramao, having bought a Chinese urn from Mikaele Salesa, begins inexplicably losing items, with no record of them ever having existed. He becomes progressively more obsessed with the urn, until he falls asleep in front of it, when all the items are returned. After fleeing pale, filthy hands pushing themselves out of the urn, Andre’s husband disappears (MAG 38). Shortly after 1st June Annabelle Cane visits Neil Lagorio. This is the last day Alison Killala sees Neil alive. Alison begins watching the original cuts of Neil’s movies (MAG 136). Roughly 1st November Alison Killala finishes watching the original cuts of Neil Lagorio’s movies and sees Neil dead (MAG 136). 10th November Dominic Swain purchases Ex Altiora (MAG 4). 11th November Dominic Swain finds Mary Keay to explain its strange properties. Later, Gerard Keay purchases the book for £5000 and burns it (MAG 4). 19th November Nicole Baxter gives her statement (MAG 36). 1st December Alison Killala makes her statement and delivers the original cuts of the movies of Neil Lagorio to the Magnus Institute (MAG 136). Circa 2012 Justin Gough has a vision during a near death experience in which he makes a deal to come back to life. He becomes a serial killer who kills victims in their dreams via the direct manifestation of carbon monoxide in their blood. Adelard Dekker follows him and scrambles his brain with a metal skewer (MAG 113). Circa 2012 Gertrude Robinson destroys Mary Keay’s pages and Gerard Keay joins her work «for a few years» before his eventual death in 2014. (MAG 111)