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The Magnus Protocol 44 - Back to Basic (Patreon)

Published:
2025-07-22 15:00:13
Edited:
2025-07-31 09:37:24
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

CAT3RAC2175-26031987-12062024prescience (computing) -/- equilibrium

Incident Elements:·   psychological manipulation·   abuse·   imprisonment·   implied sexual coersion

Note: This episode features a significant amount of German language. Translation is available in the transcript.

Transcripts available at https://rustyquill.com/transcripts/the-magnus-protocol/

You can find a complete list of our Kickstarter backers https://rustyquill.com/the-magnus-protocol-supporter-wall/

Created by Jonathan Sims and Alexander J Newall  Directed by Alexander J NewallWritten by Alexander J NewallScript Edited with additional material by Jonathan Sims

Executive Producers April Sumner, Alexander J Newall, Jonathan Sims, Dani McDonough, Linn Ci, and Samantha F.G. Hamilton Associate Producers Jordan L. Hawk, Taylor Michaels, Nicole Perlman, Cetius d’Raven, and Megan Nice Produced by April Sumner

Featuring (in order of appearance) Billie Hindle as Alice DyerRobert Vernon as Heinrich UnheilmichClaudia Woodhouse as Klara VogelAnusia Battersby as Gwen BouchardSarah Lambie as Lena Kelley

Dialogue Editor – Lowri Ann DaviesSound Designer – Tessa VroomMastering Editor - Catherine Rinella

Music by Sam Jones (orchestral mix by Jake Jackson) Art by April Sumner  

SFX from Soundly and Additional SFX Voices by Sebastian Hutter and Katarina Ebneter

Freesound: TSP-Talk, dbspin, kiefspoon, kyles, rodinvoil, vancer, Yuval, toefur, blaukreuz, delaxgray, LiMati, DeqstersLab, Voltrod, ahill86, fthrll, giddster, Gilgiuliani, waweee, SpliceSound, Kinoton, sidequesting

Check out our merchandise available at https://www.redbubble.com/people/RustyQuill/shop and https://www.teepublic.com/stores/rusty-quill

Support Rusty Quill by purchasing from our Affiliates;DriveThruRPG – DriveThruRPG.com

Join our community:WEBSITE: rustyquill.comFACEBOOK: facebook.com/therustyquillX: @therustyquillEMAIL: mail@rustyquill.com 

The Magnus Protocol is a derivative product of the Magnus Archives, created by Rusty Quill Ltd. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share alike 4.0 International Licence. 

Comments

josh

🪑

Pennywise

Perfect thing to finish my work day 😁

Erica

Four semesters of German don't fail me now

Reynard Du Maurier

Gwen: «but what’s the job??» Lena: «Ignore, Isolate, Ibuprofen…ignite, at worst case scenario» This was DENSE.

Pennywise

Gonna wait for paragraph guy for that translation

Amari Vega

Huh. Death Pain Helplessness And Wrongness Certainly broader than the previous Fears.

Lux

I love how Lina basically said “they are screwed”

RedDedZombie

Content warning: ⚠️ Deutsch ⚠️

RedDedZombie

Well that’s a fascinating bit of lore - SPOILERS a computer program that maybe predicts death or maybe causes death?? Is Fr3-D1 somehow causing the events? It’s like book of the death got digitalised!

AlmavivaConte

The name of the episode is "Back to Basic," or "Back to Basics?" Post title is the latter, but it sounds like Jonathan said the former in the episode open.

Lord-LemonHead

The translation is in the transcript this time

Victoria Lisbon

My guess is this world is built like a cage for the fears. Four distinct pillars instead of 14, alchemical instead of anthological. By balancing four fears they don’t risk fracturing into new obscure ones, or them getting as entangled with each other. Symbols over written word being pieces of the fears makes their powers more maleable. A symbol can be recognized in any language.

Pennywise

Thank the Eldritch gods

Valerie Kaplan

I’m thinking Basic, as a BASIC reference, given that we’re talking about computer programming here.

Anastasia Desert

Gosh I love Heinrich even more now! What an adorable terrifying monster

Anastasia Desert

And we finally have the the explanation for DPHW!!!! And a lot of important lore for Klaus!!

Anastasia Desert

Also 20 bucks say that "the system can only trend upwards" thing will be a significant factor in the eventual tmagp finale 👀

Anastasia Desert

Hm, I don't think the _world_ is built like a cage. It's people who try to build this cage - the ones who enacted last Protocols, OIAR, etc. Unlike TMA universe, it feels like here more people are aware of the Dread powers, that there's some systemized knowledge around it (see alchemy), and so we see more actors who choose to do something with this information. We have 'bad' actors, who try to use the powers for their own gain (the Institute, most likely), and we have 'good' actors, who try to keep things in control (the Protocol)

Anastasia Desert

In tma, people were trying to do Rituals for a given Entity, but they all failed, and in the end it was the Ritual for all Entities that was successful. I think we might have similar logic in tmagp too. OIAR tries to prevent the increase of a singular Dread element, because it would cause "horrible things" - but I can bet these horrible things are not actually world-endingly horrible, just like the Unknowing from tma. And what OIAR actually ends up doing is empowering _all_ elements of the Dread - and, well, it's not that far away from the Ritual for all Entities, is it?

Simon Ritter

I think I owe Bonzo’s No 1 Fan on Tumblr an apology.

Aaron Irvin

So competition versus stasis. Archive all the Fears were loosed and sought to outdo one another, and thereby kept each other in check. Protocol Dread is unified and must be kept in stasis, balanced, so as to avoid change and alteration, again the negative Philosopher Stone in the OIAR logo. Alchemy angle: Three PRIMES (body, mind, spirit) that are affected by Four Elements (DPHW). If one of the Elements goes out of whack, it begins to affect the Primes, thus physical alterations, mental degradation, alteration of virtues and emotions and relationships. The nature of the OIAR reports indicates which Prime is being affected by which ELEMENT, creating the DPHW chart.

Aaron Irvin

It is almost as if the OIAR itself has taken the place of the Avatars from Archives. Our protagonists are once again actively working for the "bad guys"

MarlaBothBothIsGood

SISTEEEEEMA SISTEEEEMA *nerdy me going back to relisten to everything with the system in mind*

Valerie Kaplan

So, this being an alchemical system, how might one map DPHW to the four classical elements? Doesn’t matter whether there’s any actual connection or not, or whether it really makes any sense at all, I GUARANTEE someone in their world has confidently stated their preferred mapping, and probably multiple alchemists have argued about it; heck, we still consider there to be seven colors in the rainbow because Newton was determined to map them to the alchemical metals, planets, and days of the week.

Aster’s Spiralling Again

Ah yes, finally a reason to know German, additionally, I shall immediately be drawing the new system, and making some more bracelets based off of it, because the worms in my brain told me to

Aster’s Spiralling Again

TMAGP is moving much quicker than TMA in terms of actual information and I can only hope this means some inter dimensional shenanigans or more time to see the connections between the two universes we’ve seen so far >:3

James Rule

The OAIR managed to accomplish what Leitner never could, balance. All it costs is constant escalation at the direction of a magical and possibly insane AI.

Ransack0894

That “translation available in the transcript” note is taunting me while I wait impatiently for the public release of the episode and transcript

Cold Exile

Finally joined the patreon, thanks for all the great stories you make ❤️ my love to all the staff at Rusty Towers

fatal_drum

They created the Torment Nexus

Valerie Kaplan

I’m gonna go with… hmm… Death and Pain are the more physical of the four, so I’m gonna map that to “wet” and more psychological ones can be “dry”. And Death and Wrongness are more existential, so… I wanna say that’s “cold”? So that makes Death = water, Pain = air, Helplessness = fire, Wrongness = earth. Feel free to debate this!

Scott Hanning

So beautifully written and researched. How appropriate that: *Fr3-D1 originated in an evil totalitarian state (East Germany), and was meant to find dissidents before they could express their disloyalty and get out of hand *Klara was one of Heinrich's child followers who terrorized other children, then she grew up to be a Stasi agent (East German secret police) who terrorized her fellow adults *The Dread system can only increase in power, never decrease. Like in TMA (or in real life, for that matter) it's another evil self-sustaining system that traps everyone, whether or not they want to be or are even aware of it The transcript is essential. Loved the references to little slices of East German life, like the Handelsorganisation, the state-owned retail company which was essentially your only choice for buying food, clothes, whatever (and in very limited supply), unless you wanted to risk the illegal black market. Which is why Karin Müller was going to be arrested, before her unfortunate meat grinder accident. And don't you love that "meat grinder" in German is literally a "flesh wolf" (Fleischwolf)!

nihachupd

MY POOKIE BEAR HEINRICH

nihachupd

My 12 years of german failed me

Anastasia Desert

You do know the transcript files are attached at the bottom of the pstreon post, right? I remember it took me a while to notice at first

Ransack0894

!!!!! thanks! (I actually came here from the early release Spotify feed to complain and didn’t think to check the Patreon show notes; the show notes on Spotify only seem to have the link to the website page with transcripts for publicly released episodes)

Ransack0894

I shouldn’t comment just to complain when I’m enjoying the show so much so I will add that I liked this episode and Lena is a real gem in this one

Tor Walker

Klara is about to revisit a nutcracker nightmare perhaps.

niborniac

I know everyone's trying their best, but I'm not gonna lie.. As a native German speaker, Heinrich's German can be pretty hard to understand 😭

niborniac

My 30 years of living in Germany failed me

Sparrowo

odd that they didn't get a native german speaker to voice him, but maybe they just couldn't find one with the right voice

Diddy

As a native German I can hear that neither Klara nor Heinrich speak it as their first language, but it's well enough for me to understand. ^^ (Fun fact: the murmur in the background is genuine) It's just... some minor grammatical things, which a German wouldn't do when switching between English and German (i.e. iM Prenzlauer Berg) or some words nobody uses (schwarzwohnen, einstielen). The poem is quite alright. It's absurdly difficult to rhyme in another language. Loved that Heinrich still remembers Muckeefuck. X3 My mom drank it when she was a child. (It doesn't contain caffeine so kids used to drink it. It's quite horrible.) Anyway, it's fun to listen to. ^^ ♡

Scott Hanning

Or it’s more like the government in the TMP universe, unlike in TMA, is aware of the supernatural and is taking active steps to manage the situation, to the extent anyone can. I think DPHW is similar to Smirke’s 14* in that it’s a human-created taxonomy that attempts to explain the inexplicable. Both taxonomies are useful but inherently flawed. Also, anyone want to bet on whether we’ll meet any former “Response Department” employees? Lena said they used to try to lower the amount of Dread, without apparent success.

ellebajay

i can’t believe the lore implications!!!!!!

fromgloriousjupiter

DEATH PAIN HELPLESSNESS WRONGNESS LADIES AND GENTLETHEMS!

Valerie Kaplan

Although if I flip the wet/dry axis, then I get Death = earth, Pain = fire, Helplessness = air, Wrongness = water, which is MUCH more fitting on an individual level… The question is just how to rationalize it on a SYSTEMIC level when “body stuff = wet” just makes sense, that’s your moist horror right there.

Reynard Du Maurier

Just had to revisit Salesa’s statement in season 3, where the dude was caught elbow deep in the «magic meatgrinder». Haunting.

ara

well good i'm glad heimrich got to have some fun

Emma Penberthy

The new system is so interesting and very broad… I’m wondering how the transfer of smirkes 14 into this dimension integrates, if it does at all. Will they stay as the major fear entities they are or will they kind of integrate and become sub genres under these “dread” categories ?

Pedro I

So thats what DPHW means

ShinyPenUnlimited

Smirke always wanted balance… I suppose Klaus is kind of like this worlds smirke. A guy from the past who designed things to create balance in fear, which now are important.

ShinyPenUnlimited

To be fair leitner was end of season 2 as well wasn’t he?

cypie

So... Why did Lena tell Qwen to bring cash to the meeting?