The Magnus Archives - The Listening Club TTRPG Special - Episode 2

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

Horror podcast fans Margot (Anusia Battersby), Elodie (Lowri Ann Davies), Barry (Pip Gladwin) and Alphonse (Ian Hayles) try to track down their missing friend. Content Warnings:· misophonia· missing person· mentions of: bloodTranscripts available at https://rustyquill.com/transcripts/the-magnus-protocol/Directed by April SumnerExecutive Producer Alexander J NewallProduced by April SumnerFeaturingJonathan Sims as GMAnusia Battersby as Margot Maria BradleyLowri Ann Davies as Elodie JonesPip Gladwin as Barry KnapIan Hayles as Alphonse PlattVocal Editor – Nico VetteseSFX Editor - Tessa VroomMastering Editor - Catherine RinellaSFX by Soundly and previously credited artistsArt by April SumnerMusic by Sam JonesSupport Rusty Quill directly by joining our new membership platform at members.rustyquill.com or on Patreon at patreon.com/rustyquillCheck out our merchandise available at https://www.redbubble.com/people/RustyQuill/shop and https://www.teepublic.com/stores/rusty-quillSupport Rusty Quill by purchasing from our Affiliates;DriveThruRPG – DriveThruRPG.comJoin our community:WEBSITE: rustyquill.comFACEBOOK: facebook.com/therustyquillX: @therustyquillEMAIL: [e-mail] Listening Club and The Magnus Protocol are created by Rusty Quill Ltd. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share alike 4.0 International Licence.For ad-free episodes, bonus content and the latest news from Rusty Towers, join members.rustyquill.com or our Patreon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi there, this is Kareen, the voice of Simon Fairchild of the Magnus Archives. Today, I wanted to tell you about our adorable collab with U2s. If you've listened to a lot of the Magnus Archives, you may be familiar with the Admiral, Georgie's friendly attention-seeking pet cat. Now available for a strictly limited time, you can purchase your very own plush of this cuddly cat, exclusively from U-2s, available to pre-order at rustyquill.com slash U-2s. The Admiral Plush is nine inches tall and combines both Jonathan Sims and Alexander Jane Yaw's visions of what he might look like.

This interpretation is a perfect orange tabby with a cute, friendly face and a hoodie inspired by Georgie's podcast. What the Ghost. The Admiral is available to pre-order until the 22nd of December, so order soon to avoid missing out. Pre-order by visiting rustyquill.com

slash U-2s. That's RustyQuil.com forward slash Y-O-U-T-O-O-Z. That's Y-O-U-T-O-O-Z. Have fun. See you later. Hello again, everyone. It's your boy, Johnny.

Returning once again to Games Master, the second episode in our short little Magnus Archives role-playing game One Shot. And with me, we have... It's Lorry! It's Lorry! And Lurie, who are you playing in The Listening Club? I am playing Elodie Jones. Anusha, hello, who are you playing?

Hello, Johnny. I am playing Margo Maria Bradley. Hello, Ian. Who are you playing? I am playing the redoubtable Alphonse Platt. And finally, Pip, who you're playing? Hello, I will be playing Barry Knapp. Brilliant. So, to recap all our nonsense last episode, everyone is playing a group of just normal people who gather together occasionally to listen to the horror fiction podcast, The Armitage Library.

You have all come together to listen to episode 100 that has just released. You have just listened to the eponymous narrator, Arthur G. Neville, as he confronts the beast that's been stalking him for all four seasons, a terrifying creature of hair and blood. It travels through drain pipes and sort of snakes up. is basically a sort of a sentient, gory clogged drain. Oh, no. He has apparently killed it forever,

but there was a little postscript that was like, but maybe not. And so you are currently deep in discussion of this episode and indeed the episodes and the arcs that have led up to it. I will say there is usually a fifth member of your group, June, who has not joined you today. What is June like? She's nice, quite organised, she was actually the one who originally gathered the group together and suggested you all meet up, but she's lovely, sort of on the short side, a little bit bubbly, but the bubbliness kind of hides a certain, she's quite stressed a lot of the time, she works very hard, but yeah, she always makes the meetings.

So we've just finished listening. You know, the Armitage Library was produced by mouldy pencil productions, it's distributed under, etc, etc. Gosh, quite a lot of food for thought in that one. Hey, Elodie is getting her, well, her laptop is already out with the spreadsheet up so that she can start logging some details to, like, cross-reference for episodes. Which episode do you think it was a really good payoff for? Oh, 37. Mm-hmm.

I mean, it's the episode that he first encounters the Drain Clog Monster, right? They call it Mr. Clot. Oh, God, do they? Must be. Yeah. It's pretty gross. It's a pretty gross podcast. Oh. Good for them.

I just don't know why. They just don't kill it, right? Because it's obviously not dead, is it? No, it's very much not dead. So Alphonse is just doodling away on a pad, making strange shapes with his inkwell. But, you know, we need to get the payoff. I mean, that was somewhat of a payoff.

But obviously, you know, there's going to be another season, right? So we can't be killing it now because they're going to need it in season five. It's going to make a comeback, obviously. What I can't tell is whether this is meant to be the big bad of the entire thing or whether there's something else hidden beneath. And the way they keep killing it off

and bringing it back, killing it off. It's like, it's getting too obvious now, you know? Exactly. I get it. It's an immortal amoeba. Barry will return from... I'm picturing us in a cafe. I was also picturing cafe.

Yeah, maybe like a 50s diner-style booth. Oh, sweet. Barry is returning from a counter with a tray, with everyone's drink orders on it. And we'll sort of put that down and start handing him over to people. I think Mar goes on to something there, actually, because... It's not. Like, it's a big, a big hairy sort of blood monster, right?

But, like, who's behind the creature, is what I'm wondering? Because there's got to be more to it than that. Like, where's it from? Did somebody, like, it's summoned, right? Somebody has to have summoned it. Exactly. There have been so many hints that there's something beyond it. Exactly, right?

That's my point, exactly. Puppetting it? I don't know. Interesting that you were talking about someone being behind it. Elgy's going to turn her laptop around so everyone can see the screen and start a presentation. So I was cross-referencing all of the prime-numbered episode. the other day, and the monster, or at least this person... Bing-dong! The little email chime, and it looks like you've had an email from June.

Oh! It's Ray, upcoming meet. Oh, great. The latest message just reads, Need to see you now, urgent, quick. It's been sent to all of you. Elie's laptop is where you can see it, but if you check your phones, you have all received this message.

Hmm. That's strange. I mean, it isn't like her to miss a meeting. I'll immediately just text back Like, where are you? Question mark Yeah, you can send that message A few minutes past, there's no immediate response Sit and wait

Gonna try and ringer Yeah, yeah, good call Which actually not in trouble Hi, this is June Sorry, I'm really very busy at the moment If you leave a message, I'll get back to you as soon as possible Thanks

Hi June, this is Margot We just got your email we just got your messages. Is everything all right? Over. That's kind of how she always ends messages whenever she leaves some shoes. Even in text.

Over. It's kind of become a little bit of a joke between her and June. There's no location on this email, right? No. It looks like all the other emails that she has sent, which she normally sends from her computer.

Do any of you know June other than through the listening club? How old is she, and what kind of work does she do? Mid-30s. She does like, audio stuff. She works a lot with corporate clients doing voiceover editing for adverts. I think she's probably done an ad, right, for the accountancy firm that Elodie works for.

Yeah. So in which case, Elodie will probably have been over to her house once or twice because she has a little home studio. You do know where she lives. It's near. It's near. It's a short bus ride away. I mean, that is not like her. My laptop's got plenty of charge. We can just do this on the bus if we want to like hop over there. Yeah, let's. I think that's a good shout. Yeah, I think we should do that. Can we get these to go? Yeah, I'll get them in. I'll put them all back on the tray and take him over to the cabin. Get them all transferred into Alphonters has already drained his black coffee. The brister is like, yeah, okay.

Yeah, sorry, mate. Or maybe get a marker for June. Does the barista here like you? You know what? I'm going to ask for a role. It's going to be a level four challenge. It's an intellect challenge. Is there any way I can help? I actually did write down that Margo is a barista. Oh, okay, yeah.

Do you have any sort of a skill? that might assist. I've got performance. A combination of performance and barista solidarity, lower that to a 9. Great, okay. Oh, gosh.

I don't know if a natural 20 is a thing in this game, but I've rolled a full... Oh, yeah, absolutely. The baristas are all really nice to you because you're pretty sure the manager is into you. She's always just behind the counter,

like just not giving you the eye, obviously, but maybe just giving you the eye. The Bristair almost rolls his eyes when you ask for them all to be put into takeout cups and then gives a sort of look over to the manager who is staring at him steely-faced. You can get all your coffees to go. Cheers. You hop on the bus. It's the number 42 going to Didsbury, just dropping in that little local flavour that

it's very important, I think, for authenticity purposes. And yeah, two pounds each, it's B-network, it's pretty good. And 15 minutes later, you are stood in front. of, so June has a flat, it's a three-story building, with a front door, with four doorbells on it. I mean, obviously, Ella D would remember which one it is, because she's very organised. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know it's the third one down, yeah. Buzz. Well, there is no immediate response.

I'll buzz a different flat, a neighbour. What do you doing? Well, it's so... Hello, hi. So sorry to intrude on your day. I'm trying to get hold of June. I'm a little bit worried about her. and she's not answering her door. June, your neighbour, your upstairs neighbour? The one who always asked you to keep the music down

because she's recording. Oh, yeah. She does? No, but could I come in? I've got a package for her. Thank you. Actually, wait, hang on. I'm going to ask you, I like package.

I am going to ask you to roll. You need a six, level two. That's a 12. 12, yeah. Great. And, yeah, that's a 12. The door buzzes, and you can head on inside. She's the second floor.

Great. Straight up. So, yeah, head up. It's a pretty new build house, so it's got quite a sturdy fire door on the front. No windows, nothing like that. Just the little number three on it. Knocking? No response to a knock.

Hmm. And the door is shut, right? It's closed, yeah. Well... All sort of look inquisitively at Margot. So I know I didn't select it specifically as a skill, Jonathan. But can I try and pick the lock, please? Oh, you didn't take lock, pecking, did you?

No, I picked pickpocketing, but I think it would still be vague. You too big pickpocketing, whether. Vaguely within her bailiwick. All right, all right. Well, it is, I'll be nice. It's an internal lock. It's a very standard Yale. So it'll be a level four, so you need a 12.

It'll be on speed. Do you want to spend any of your speed to boost it? Yeah, I think I will. So if you spend three points of your speed pool, you can lower that to a third. 6. Oh, I got exactly a 12. God damn it, I didn't need to lower it. Hey, okay. What are you using? Describe yourself lockpicking. It looks like the kind of thing that would be used on stage for like lock picking tricks, but it is very, very functional as a standard lock picking kit at the same time.

That was a success. You have successfully locked the door. Did we not, did we not, did no one before I... You can unlock it again, I'm here. Is that not 101 of lockpicking is... Yeah, no, it wasn't locked. It wasn't locked before you started. To be marginally less cruel, you spend a while tinkering with it,

and then you realise it is unlocked. Whether you tell other people this, or whether you are like, I've done it, that's up to you. That's up to Margot. She doesn't say a thing. She's kind of embarrassed. As far as anyone else is concerned, Margot has just successfully done a master bit of lock picking.

Elodie is very uncomfortable over this. I'm not sure if we're breaking into her house. It's fine. And you're the one they heard on the Anticom. They come straight to you. Oh, God, Alfonso, you're right. Oh, God. It's fine.

Look, we're checking up on a friend, that's all. Stride into the flat. You push the door open. Inside, it is quiet. The lights are not on, and it's still daytime, but the curtains and the blinds have been drawn. There's a certain gloom, a certain dinge inside. the main hallway of the apartment.

It's quite narrow. Elodie, as the investigator, you notice that June's keys are still in the little bowl. So it doesn't look like she's left. So Elodie's been here before. Has anyone else visited June before? I think maybe once, like to inquire about some audio stuff. You know that there's standard bedroom, bathroom, living room, kitchen, combination room, and a spare bedroom that June uses as a recording studio.

All the doors are currently shut. June? June, it's listening club. Hello? No response. I think I'd start knocking on the doors. No response? Just going to grab a handle and open.

Which of the three doors do you go for, Ian? One, two or three? Right, because I don't know what they are. I'm going to go for two. You open it. Small bit pokey bathroom. Chow cubicle, toilet, pretty standard. You don't immediately see anything out of the ordinary.

Also, June's not in there. No, no tune. Is there a particular place where she'd keep her laptop, where she would have sent the email from? She usually works in her recording studio, it kind of doubles up as an office. Sure. I think I'd check there then. Opening the door to the recording studio, it is slightly darker in here than the other rooms because she has a pair of thick soundproofing curtains over the window that are currently pulled closed.

The light is currently turned off, so the only light is currently spilling in from the hallway. and it illuminates an unlit desk and a large sort of high-backed office chair that is currently turned away from you with a pair of headphones sort of just kind of hanging off the side. I feel like I need to check if there's anything in this office chair. Are you turning the lights on first or are you rotating the office chair first? So I put the torch on my phone and I kind of pull the sleeves of my very big jacket over my hands so I'm like putting fingerprints on as little as possible. and I go up and I kind of like I don't push it or anything I just kind of look around the edge of the chair

very very slowly There is nobody there You do notice in the torchlight It takes you a second to recognise them They are Sony mini-disc players Which you recognise as the iconic media storage device Used in the Armitage library All the horrible ghost stories are all recorded

onto Sony minidisc I might come into the room like after Bargo, and immediately just kind of almost offhandly pick one of these up and just at random and press play. Yep. It's kind of garbled audio nonsense, as far as you can tell. It's a bit unpleasant to listen to. How many are there?

Twelve sort of small portable ones and two slightly larger units that will be used for recording. I take a photograph of them and can. Consider gathering them up, but I'd want to check other rooms for June 1st. As you're looking around, Barry, have you turned the light on? Yeah, I think I will do now that we're sort of both in the room looking at these mini-displayers, I'll flick the light on, yeah. You notice that the light is slightly reflecting off one of the inner ear cups of the pair of headphones dangling over the end.

They're the sort of big, thick, wired headphones, your sort of old-school audio file style. And you will notice, if you look closely, that the left. earcup on the inside. It's shiny with a slightly viscous dark liquid. I'll pick the headphones up by the connecting band and lift, turn the angle and see if any of whatever this is drips out. There's not enough for it to drip. Okay. It's hard to tell what it is. Could be blood. Could be anything that's not blood. Good to narrow it down. Everything in the world could be blood or not blood, Johnny. I'll very tentatively just reach out and dab it with a finger and then bring it to the light. I'm very inquisitive and I'd like to know what it is. It's red. You think it might be

blood? I'll sort of put them down on the desk. I'm going to take a photo of it. Meanwhile, Elodie, where are you and Alphonse looking? I will have a look through the kitchen living room area and I'm basically looking for signs of where she might be, did she leave in a hurry and potentially in the back of my mind being like, do we need to call the police or something? Bedroom is a lot more chaotic than you dissociate with June, but not in a suspicious sort of way. You just think that this is maybe the room where she keeps all her chaos. Elodie has a cupboard where she keeps her chaos. No one's allowed to see in there.

She was clearly working on some stuff around the podcast. She's got a whole bunch of old transcripts with bits highlighted and circled. This is clearly where she does a lot of the work that she brings to the listening club. You're an investigator, so I'm going to say, you do notice that on a couple of the more recent transcripts that she's been going through, she has quite heavily circled the public address of mouldy pencil productions. Alphonse, looking through the kitchen and living room, you can't see anything immediately like, there's no body, there's no splatter of gore. It looks like the food in the fridge is fresh. It looks like she was here until pretty recently. Okay.

although none of the appliances show any use of immediate use you know if the kettle's not warm anything like that on the small coffee table in the living room is an open letter that just reads Dear June thank you for getting in touch we really appreciate it please find what you requested enclosed AGM I'm gonna look in the envelope

Is there anything enclosed in there is there No it's a slightly bigger envelope Than you would expect from a like an A5 letter Uh huh But whatever was in it in there. It's not in the envelope or on the table currently. Yeah, that gang. Her? She's got

a letter from Arthur. She's got writing to him. Oh. She's been like highlighting Moldy Pencil Productions address as well. I'm actually quite impressed with the level of... Sorry, anyway, I think maybe I'm just going to give them a call.

Like, is there a phone number for Moldy? I'm going to Google to look for a phone number for Moldy Pencil Productions. Elodie, they have an email address. They have social media handles. They don't have a public-facing phone number, from what you can see. I will say you can send whatever email you like. You will receive what seems like an automated holding email,

and if you get a response, you would not expect to be getting a response within the next few days. One of my skills is tracking. Can I argue that I could find an illegal website or something? Absolutely. Could you make me an intellectual role? I'd say you probably need a 9, but I'll low that to a 6 because of your tracking. Great.

13. They don't have anything immediate in like their public-facing stuff, but there's all sorts of official documentation that you have to file to be a company. That is stored various places that if you know where to look, you can find it. And you can indeed find a phone number that is the official phone number that has been given to various regulatory bodies. and official organisations for mouldy pencil productions. I mean, she's calling that. I'm just calling Moldy Pencil Productions.

Just so everyone knows what she's doing. Good, I'm going to check this laptop. This number is not in service. This number's not in service. Great, there's a laptop. Incidentally, your research is into Moldy Pencil. They have a lot of behind-the-scenes photos. They apparently have about 12 people working for them,

all of which have like a really nice. sunny profile about how much they just love listening and microphones. From the page, it looks like they've got quite a nice little office space. You can open up the laptop. There is a password screen. Do you want to take a crack at what the password might be? Yeah. Give me a pitch of four passwords Margot might try.

Okay. Does the password have to be a particular length? No. I think she would try Testing, Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3 As in typing out Yeah. No.

Not mouldy pencil, mouldy pen, because that would throw people off. Nope, not Maldi pen. This is my password, kind of upper and lowercase to... Nope. And I think she'd try... I love llamas, 27. June does love llamas, but that's not the password. I'll give you an intellect role.

You only need a nine. Do you have any skills that might help? I mean, I've got an intellect edge of one. Yep, you can lower it to a six for two points if you want. I've got discerning motive. Isn't this also lockpicking, but just electronic? Yeah. You know what?

I was going to give you discerning motive, but Ian ruined it by trying to get lock pecking. So for being cheeky, no, you don't have a skill. I will let you spend two intellect points. I wasn't even cheeky. That wasn't on me. No, but Ian was cheeky on your behalf. As a team? collective punishment, as expressly forbidden by the Geneva Convention.

I'll spend two instead of three, because I have my edge. So you need a six. And that is a 17. Nice. 17, perfect. It's Armitage, but the A is a four. Oh, okay. A lot of her stuff is to do with work.

You are very clearly breaking quite a few NDAs looking through her laptop, but a lot of her recent internet searches, there's a lot of her recent internet searches, there's a lot to do with Moldy pencil productions. A lot of address searches and trying to find out a location. It seems like she doesn't think that their official address is their real address. She's searching a lot of stuff about audio distortions, audio, strange thing, aspects of the audio, sit like on various message boards, seeing if anyone else has come across anything. And she recently downloaded what seems to be a sort of audio cleanup program, like a custom piece of audio cleanup software.

I'm going to choose one and I'm going to give it a listen. That's just listening to it, like straight off the minidisc. I'm showing my age here by asking how mini-discs work. Okay, so minidisks, they're like... Is it like a record where you can take it out, flip it over, you've got a... No, they're like little CD cartridges that you used to slot into a player. So more like a cassette tape. Like imagine a cassette tape, but there's a CD in it?

Oh, no, no, nothing like a cassette tape. Nothing like cassette tape. I wouldn't draw that parallel at all. Of course. Completely different. Cosette tapes, you can turn around and have a difference, so it's not that. They are digital rather than analogue, but they are digital physical media. I thought I might have some here, but I can't find them.

For those listeners who weren't around, the next big audio storage tech after CDs was minidisks, which were these like little sort of CD cassette things. Oh, okay. That were very much pitched as the next big. thing and they are a fun little bit of obsolete technology. In terms of using them, they are similar to a tape or a CD, but they are digital media, so you can't really, you can't like wind them like you can with a tape. Okay. I think she'd go through and listen to all of them. They're all a bit garbled, but you do notice one of the larger sort of player recorder units

does have a cable coming off it, which has been plugged into what looks like a USB adapter. I'd like to plug in the USB to the laptop and see what comes up. It looks like it's taking the audio from the minidisc and converting it into a file that can be fed into the various audio programs on the laptop. Okay, I'd like to try and retrace the steps that June is taking here and see what programs she has, see what I can feed into what. Yeah, the most recently used program, it's called Open Ear, a custom program designed to sort of de-scramble and de-noise audio. Currently, you can do it, and it definitely looks like it has done something to the audio track off the minidisc. Whatever it is coming out of the headphones, though. I'm staying far away from the headphones, but I'm turning the volume on the laptop up to where I could just about hear what's coming out of the headphones, and I'm pressing play.

So I can just about hear if it's garbled or not. It's definitely not garbled. There are definitely words, and something slightly weird about the way the words sound. but you can't make it out. Okay, I press stop and I call the others in. Come in? I'm holding this envelope, but I'm coming in. When everyone's there, I explain about the headphones that, according to Barry, have blood on them.

I explain about this process that June has been going through trying to clear up some audio on these discs. There are coherent words coming out of the tracks that are able to be listened to and made sense of, but I'm very concerned that if I listen to them too closely or too loudly, and I can, kind of just gesture at the headphones as a case in point. That could be blood, this could be bad. I don't know how to proceed at this point. Does anyone have ideas? She might just be hurt, right?

Like, it's suspicious, but... I feel like something in this might have... I kind of flick my own headphone to... Right. What, like in the show? Yeah, like in that one episode? Yeah, no, I know the one you mean. It's a good one, but at least...

24, yeah, yeah, it's great. Uh-huh. Yeah, there was an episode where there was a... that basically reached out of the receiver of a phone into your ear and like squudged your brain. Maybe not that exactly, but... Yeah, Alphonse goes over and puts the headphones on. Is it still playing?

They're covered in blood. Oh, well, that's unhygienic. They're not covered in blood. There is a little bit of blood on them. Alphonse has put the headphones on. It's a bit... Oh, that's awful. Yeah, I'll try to warn you as you go over.

Oh, nasty. And we will find out what Alphonse is. Next episode. Thank you all very much for joining us for this most second episode of the Listening Club Magnus Archives' tabletop role-playing game. We will see you next week.

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