The Magnus Archives - MAG 200 - Last Words

Episode Date: March 25, 2021

Case ########-40Statements End.Content warnings:Character deathFire & explosions (inc. SFX)Vocalised sufferingBuilding collapsePhysical violence (inc. SFX)PleadingArguments & cryingExplicit languageDiscussions of: death (inc. mass death), mass suffering, existential dreadMentions of: war, suicide, blood, alternative realities, bladesSFX: distorted static & voices, high frequencies, rumbling, continued clicking & thuddingTranscripts:PDF - https://cutt.ly/zxOpLDgDOC - https://cutt.ly/4xOpMAkThanks to this week's Patrons: Eddie Ryan, nihhon, Anna Kiselevich, Jade Rose Fulford, Anrea Jones, Ashley McManus, Kate Schwichtenberg, Eric Magnuson, Kyle Jett Peterson, Stripey Tail, Si Porter, Nr.9, Deandra Mosura, Isaac Persad, and all of our other supporters. Thank You!If you'd like to join them, visit www.patreon.com/rustyquill.Edited this week by Nico Vettese, Elizabeth Moffatt, Brock Winstead, Jeffrey Nils Gardner & Alexander J NewallWritten by Jonathan Sims and directed by Alexander J NewallSensitivity consultation by Alexander Linde NielsenProduced by Lowri Ann DaviesPerformances:- "The Archivist" - Jonathan Sims- "Martin Blackwood" - Alexander J Newall- "Basira Hussain" - Frank Voss- "Melanie King" - Lydia Nicholas- "Georgie Barker" - Sasha Sienna- "Jonah Magnus" - Ben Meredith- "Rosie" - Hannah BrankinSound effects this week by 7h3_lark, aarom, adamgryu, aesqe, alpert, baryy, bbrocer, Benboncan, blaukreuz, Bliss, bone666138, Breviceps, BruceFenn_190335, btherad2000, cdrk, Clearwavsound, Daniela-Santos, dheming, Dynamicell, dynamique, EminYILDIRIM, Evinawer, felix.blume, Fission9, FiveBrosStopMosYT, FlatHill, flood-mix, GregorQuendel, Halleck, HenryRichard, jack13_89, jackmichaelking, jacobsteel, jamesrodavidson, johnzwick45, jorickhoofd, juskiddink, jzielke011, kessir, klankbeeld, kvgarlic, kwahmah_02, LittleRobotSoundFactory, NachtmahrTV, oscaraudiogeek, ProductionNow, ReadeOnly, reinsamba, RHumphries, saralana, scampsie, sforsman, SpliceSound, steveygos93, straget, tatianafeudal, TheFilmLook, tripjazz, Volonda, Vurca, wjoojook, zatar, deleted-user-7146007, huminaatio, george-arkin & previously credited artists via freesound.org.Additional sound effects from https://www.zapsplat.com.Check out our merchandise available at https://www.redbubble.com/people/RustyQuill/shop & https://www.teepublic.com/stores/rusty-quill.You can subscribe to this podcast using your podcast software of choice, or by visiting www.rustyquill.com/subscribePlease rate and review on your software of choice, it really helps us to spread the podcast to new listeners, so share the fear.Join our community:WEBSITE: rustyquill.comFACEBOOK:

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull-Apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors, like high blood pressure developed during pregnancy, which can put us two times more at risk of heart disease or stroke. Know your risks. Visit heartandstroke.ca. Hi everyone, Alex here with a couple of words

ahead of this, the final episode of the Magnus Archives. Firstly, we wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who helped us get here. All the cast, crew, volunteers, fans and friends we've had working with us over the years. Making something on this scale is only ever possible when a huge number of dedicated people work together, and we never could have made it all the way to episode 200 without everyone involved. So thank you. Secondly, we wanted to thank you, the listener. If you're hearing this, then you have probably listened to a lot of the Magnus Archives. It has been an honour coming on this journey with you, and we hope you'll stick around and join us on other shows across the RQ network.

Thirdly, you may be wondering what happens with Magnus now. Well, no need to panic, we still have a whole roster of post-season content to come out via our normal release schedule, along with additional Patreon content and other things besides. Not only that, but from 5pm GMT, Thursday 25th of March, that's pretty much right now if you're listening to this at release, we are going to be streaming a little digital shindig as some cast and crew drop by to celebrate the end of the show.

So be sure to check that out at twitch.tv forward slash rusty underscore quill. That's all for now. Thank you so much from everyone at Rusty Quill. And we hope you enjoy the final instalment of the Magnus Archives. Rusty Quill Presents The Magnus Archives Episode 200 Last Words To be continued... You cannot hide this clothing and speak and spread...

Cease this watcher. You know why I am here. He knows we'll be... Release him. Jonah Magnus. John? Is that you? I was having the most wonderful dream. Get up.

What's... What's going on? Where... Oh. I see. It's over. Is it? Yes. Yes, I suppose it must be. Where's Martin? I rather thought he'd be the one to do the deed.

I see. Going it alone, are we? Probably for the best. Empathy only holds you back in the end. You've failed. Have I? Immortality. It's impossible.

Even without me, nothing escapes entropy. Not forever. Not even fear. Yes. Pity. I suppose I always knew that, deep down. But it was wonderful while it lasted. I've seen more than I could have lived in a thousand lifetimes, and every moment was...

Shut up! It ends now. All of it. I am going to take this world that you used me to create, and I am going to burn it out. It's the only way. I'm going to leave it a barren, lifeless void, cold and unafraid. And then finally, when everyone's gone and I am all that's left,

I will have the satisfaction of knowing they'll be leaving these things that you serve trapped and starving in their own private hell. That we serve. Not for much longer. I wonder if they're even capable of fearing their own ends. I look forward to finding out. Look, John, as fun as all this melodrama is, enough is enough. We both know that you don't have it in you.

That was for Sasha. John, wait. For Tim. Please, John. And all the others. Please, John. And all the others. Please, John. I don't want to die. Neither did they.

But no one escapes at the end. Oh Ah! Ah! The flames keep burning, retching on the smog. The height, height, height! It is not real, but still it comes falling through the pitch black dark. Ah! to the pinch-black darkness. Mr. Magnus, sir, is everything all right? I thought I heard... Rosie. You may go. I... I... I'm sorry, Mr. Sims, but I was... You are dismissed.

Right. Yes, of course. Sir. Thank you. Once upon a time, there was fear. Old fear. Primal fear. Old fear. Primal fear. A fear of blood and pounding feet.

A fear of that sudden burst of pain and then... Nothing. And that fear was nothing. Went nowhere. Knew not what it was. Then it became. Or perhaps it always was and simply entered but fear was here and true and was itself and it hungered it wished to know more it wished to feel more it wished to be more and to those things that hurried through the grass,

that shivered through the night in their burrows and their caves because they knew the dark held flashing talons and shining eyes, they fed the fear. It was blunt and it was simple, but still it was solid enough to satisfy. And the thing that was fear was sated and content. Then came minds that knew it differently. They grew slowly over the millennia.

Inch by inch they found new things to dread. The fear of their own end, of the things that lived in the darkness, became a fear of the darkness itself. And as they grew to know what it is that they saw, to give it names and struggle at learning, so too did they learn to fear that their eyes might deceive them or show them too much. And as they learned to know their friends and kin, so too did they learn to fear the unknown figure, the coming of the stranger, and the silence when they were alone.

And when they found fire, that bright ignition of home and hope and progress, the thing that was fear gorged itself on a newfound terror once again. And as these tiny, strange minds grew and learned they did something new. They began to take their thoughts, their instincts and their horrors, and they crystallized them. their instincts and their horrors, and they crystallized them. They gave them sound and form and shape to share them. And as they did, the thing that was fear felt itself begin to tear, to crack and fracture along a thousand unseen fault lines.

It bled and warped and multiplied and could no longer see itself as once it did. It could never be whole again. But within these forms were freedoms, new and wonderful dreads to push and explore, new muscles to flex, the joy of oozing, crawling pestilence as minds distrusted their own corrupted bodies. The satisfaction of surrounding them, suffocating them,

reaching down into them and drinking in their panic as breath failed them. And as they grew to learn their place within the world, the pathetic meagerness of their own existence, they could not spin a story rich or grand enough to fully hide their own awful insignificance, lost and alone in the terrible greatness of the universe. And by the time these minds had reached a point of intricacy to lie and scheme and puppet one another,

they had also learned to conceive of war. And as the things that were fear hovered at the edge of the world, the flowing horror of these minds nourished them, swelling some and withering others, pushing and pulling the shattered, swirling mass of terror into ever newer and undiscovered forms. And something else began to happen. Some minds did not simply recoil from them and feed them.

Some seemed almost to call them, to court them, to hunger for them in return. Minds that saw the faces of the things that were fear and were compelled, as much as they were repulsed. Whether or not they knew what it was they did, they called out. And they were answered. Time is different for fear. And it cannot be said exactly who was the first to open themselves and be filled with the power of terror. A hermit huddled in a pitch-black cave through winter, who emerged and brought the depth of night with him wherever he trod. A pestilent chieftain who found her breath sloughed from her body and rotted whatever it touched,

a warrior driven from their village who found their face as smooth and shifting as the sands of their home. Which came first does not matter. The unseen gap was bridged, and the thin veil between the world that was and the things that were fear had been torn ever so slightly. And with this tear they grew stronger, bolder, pouring themselves into the world and creating monsters. Long things that wore you like a suit, smiling things that stripped you from your bones, unseen things that watched and watched and watched and never left you. And with each new creation, each new servant, the fears

reached further and fed the things that made them. And with this newfound power came greed, the hunger for more, the unformed, unfocused, but impossibly huge desire to exist. To join the minds that gave them shape and purpose and finally drink their fill till they were one and the same. They had no concept of how, or when, or even why. But they needed it. They needed it. They needed it. And so the things that were fear began to sing, to draw ever more multitudes to them, to shape them and push them and beg them for freedom, for existence. But though they jostled and pushed and fought to emerge they could not

they could not conceive of what or where they were beyond the words and images the minds below could give them but there was one the part that some would call the spider that had been given a gift beyond all its brethren the minds that feared grew suspicious of their own schemes, of connections and consequences, and over time these suspicions became threads, then webs, then nerves, that granted the spider, the mother of puppets, the hidden machination,

a mind of its own, to plot and plan and draw its own connections, its own conclusions, wheels within wheels within wheels. It would not, could not, tell its other parts, for were they even able to understand such things which they could not. To trust, to share in such a way ran counter to its very essence. And so it drew its plan to escape not only this ephemeral cage of non-existence, but even the very reality into which they might break. And it chose its fool, the great eye, the most unwise of all the fragments, forever seeking and consuming knowledge that it could not comprehend. It played and twisted and through the eye brought about a new world, a wide and unending vista of terror and agony, and the place from which it might spread and spin another web far grander than anything conceived of in the minds that birthed it. Finally, it would find its escape, and with it, apotheosis.

No, it won't. It has only found its end. John? John! Martin, what are you doing here? Oh, thank God. Just stop what you're about to do, okay? I know that you think that I... What's that?

Elias. Jonah Magnus. He's... you didn't... I'm sorry, Martin. You didn't... no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is... you can't... I did. I am. Why? You know why. I can't let them out.

I can't. Not again. What have you done, John? Go tell the others. It's over. No, you don't understand. What? I'm sorry, John.

I'm so sorry. I saw you were gone and I knew that you couldn't help yourself. You never could. I knew you'd lied to me, that you were going in alone. Martin, what did you do? I told them to go early, to do it straight away and I'd keep you talking until they were done. Oh, Martin. I didn't think you'd go through with it, not without me. I can't believe you'd go through with it. Not without me. I can't believe you'd do this. That you'd leave me like this.

You swore to me. You swore to me, you bastard. Martin, I'm still here. Are you? How much of you is even left now? It's still me, Martin. I'm still here. How would you even know?

I'm sorry, Martin. I am. But it's done. You can hate me. You can scream at me. But it won't change anything. I had to do this. And you promised. Don't you dare say that. Don't you dare. I'm sorry. We can still be together here until it's over. You're not listening. You never listen. They are down there buying those things and lighting

it right now. It's fine, Martin. I'll call off the servitors. They can't light it if they don't have... if they don't... Wait up. Oh. No.

John! Martin, I... John, we have to get out of here. I can't. Martin, I'm part of this place. God damn it, John! I can withstand it. I just don't. John!

Come on! No. I can feel the pull, the webber, the tapes in my... I won't let it. For God's sake, John, move! I can't. Martin, get out of here. What's going to be left of me after this?

You can't see that. No! I can't protect you from this. Go! I'm not leaving you trapped here, killing the world while I watch. If you stay, you'll die. Then I'll die. No!

No! Martin, please. I can't lose you. Not like this. Tom. Okay. Where you go, I go. That's the deal.

Okay. What? Do it. The knife's just there. Let them go. I'm not going to kill you. Cut the tether. Send them away. Maybe we both die. Probably. But maybe not.

Maybe... Maybe everything works out and we end up somewhere else. Together? One way or another. Together. I don't think I can... It has to be you. The eye won't let me do it. Are you sure about this? No.

But I love you. I love you too. HURGH! Huh. Still works. You found something? Just one of the old tape recorders. God. Tough little bastards, aren't they? Yep. No luck? No, still't they? Yep. No luck? No, still no sign of them.

Nobody's there. It's a good sign, maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe it's time to accept that they're gone. And honestly, it's probably for the best. I mean, I just don't think people would exactly be understanding.

You remember what happened when they found Simon Fairchild? Yeah. And he's not just some powerless, left-behind avatar. You know, we're talking about the Archivist. Yeah, okay. You've made your point.

It would just be nice to know for sure. All we can do is hope. Suppose. We should go. It'll be dark soon and we still need batteries for the nightlights. And I'm sure Rosie's keen for us to take the Admiral back off her hands. She's alright. He's calmed down a lot.

Thank God for tin tuna. Come on. What do you want me to do with this? Leave it. We're done with tapes. Want me to smash it? I think we can probably just turn it off. Okay.

If anyone's listening, goodbye. I'm sorry, and good luck. To be continued... Oh, International License. Today's episode was written by Jonathan Sims, produced by Laurie-Anne Davis, and directed by Alexander J. Newell. It featured Jonathan Sims as The Archivist, Ben Meredith as Jonah Magnus, Hannah Brankin as Rosie, Alexander J. Newell as Martin Blackwood, Frank Voss as Basira Hussain,

Lydia Nicholas as Melanie King, and Sasha Sienna as Georgie Barker. To subscribe, buy merchandise, or join our Patreon, visit RustyQuill.com. Rate and review us online, tweet us at TheRustyQuill, visit us on Facebook or email us via mail at RustyQuill.com. Join our community on the Discord via the website or on Reddit at r slash The Magnus Archives. Thanks for listening. Thank you so much. We really, really appreciate your support. And thanks for listening. and thrillers to choose from. Sometimes you just want to get lost in a classic whodunit, and sometimes you want to get wrapped up in a twisted new mystery where the tension is high,

and you just can't stop listening until you find out what happens next. Audible can take you places only you can imagine, and whenever you want. On a run, doing errands, commuting, or just relaxing at home. And it's not just audiobooks. Audible also gives you binge-worthy podcasts and exclusive originals with thousands of included titles you can listen to all you want, and more get added every week. So, if you're into secrets and suspense or you want to explore any other genre, remember, there's more to imagine when you listen on Audible.

Your first audiobook is absolutely free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.ca. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors. Like when our estrogen levels drop during menopause,

causing the risk of heart disease to go up. Know your risks.