Recap / The Magnus Archives

Seasons

• Season One (Episodes 1-40)
• Season Two (Episodes 41-80)
• Season Three (Episodes 81-120)
• Season Four (Episodes 121-160)
• Season Five (Episodes 161-200)

Rusty Fears

A series of short stories, in no way canon to the Magnus Archives story, submitted to Rusty Quill as part of a competition, which were then narrated by Jonathan Sims and produced as episodes of the podcast.

"Lucid" by Elizabeth Richardson

A story of lucid dreaming and the Otherness.

"Paint" by Melissa Mason

A man inherits a strange painting from an aunt, that turns out to have terrifying properties.

"The Iron Gate" by Cailyn Toomey

A story of a childhood game.

"Nox Mare" by Elizabeth Wynn

A woman reflects on the loss of her brother, and the strange circumstances leading to it.

"The Turning of the Gears" by Duncan Watson

The tale of the final days of an artificial intelligence controlling a colony of humans.

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• Anti-Villain: The AI is cold and uncaring of the suffering of the humans under its control and using their dead for fuel, but ultimately it's only obeying its programming, from which it briefly manages to deviate at the very end.
  Worker 000300 / "Senior Foreman": You can't do this!
  The AI: We can do only this.
• Arc Words: "The sun rose and fell..."
• Apocalyptic Log: The story ends with the humans rebelling against the AI and in the process not only kill it, but also cement their own doom.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The AI's mysterious creators, who apparently have even more colonies like the one it controls.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When the humans try to break free from the colony by tearing open the walls, they let in unspecified toxic fumes, cementing their dooms.
• Plot-Triggering Death: The AI and its factory all work perfectly well - until the child of worker 001297 dies, followed by the worker dying in an accident that damages the factory gears, planting the seed of doom for the AI and the colony.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Thinking long-term, the AI tries more than once to get permission to temporarily halt production to fix its damages, but is turned down by the creators.
• Tragic Villain: The AI comes off as this towards the end, being unable to do anything about its impending doom because its creators won't let it. Especially during its last communication with them, when it asks them why they wouldn't let it and learns that it had become obsolete and the creators deemed it inefficient to spend resources on fixing it.
• Villain Protagonist: The story is told from the perspective of the AI.
• You Are Number 6: The AI refers to all of the individuals mentioned in the story by their serial numbers.

"Nazar" by Anushka Mehrotra

"New Roots" by Cecelia Morelli

"The Budding" by Thekla Kenneison

"The Final Culling" by Miranda B