So Based Off Of Your Eyes Series Where You Give Someone A Magnus Archives Entity Based Off Of A D20 Roll,

So based off of your eyes series where you give someone a magnus archives entity based off of a d20 roll, I drew this picture of myself as an avatar of the stranger. I started with just a picture of myself doing the head tilt and smiling creepily, then drew it in pencil. I then added the hat, suit, makeup, hair colour, eye colour and background based off of what I thought would make it creepier. What do you think of it?

OH THAT'S SO UNSETTLING I LOVE IT

YOU NAILED THE CREEPY UNCANNY VALLEY EXPRESSION

THAT'S SOMETHING I WOULD HATE TO ENCOUNTER IN A DARK ALLEY

TERRIFIC!

You know what, I'm up for this let's go! For the Union of Celtic Republics!

sick of “scottish independence” this and “irish reunification” that

theres 3 of us and 1 of england

i say we just kick the english out the uk

Dear Neil, Are you human?

And also, in my book report (that's gonna be on Good Omens), may i call you by your private name? My teacher peobably won't approve because that would be implying we're friends, but if you say we're friends she'll have to accept it.

Sincerely, another person who's life you've changed

I'm honestly good with anyone out there with who is writing a book report calling me Neil. Because if you're reading my Tumblr, I'm sure we're friends. Unless you're hate-reading it, in which case I'm sure we shall be friends one day.

"the magnus protocol had a whole ARG beforehand? what?"

yes! it did!

"oh so I need to have participated in this whole big thing to actually understand the podcast?"

not at all! from the official post-mortem put out by RQ, "while the ARG was not something that was necessary to participate in to understand the magnus protocol, it was designed to contain a wealth of background story and context that would enrich any player's listening experience."

"a wealth of background context that would enrich my listening experience 👀👀👀 how can I learn about this?"

SO glad you asked. sadly, many of the materials made for the arg have been taken down since the game ended 😔 (ex., the official OIAR, magnus institute, and bonzoland websites. though @strangehauntsuk is still up!), so we're a bit low on primary sources, but in terms of learning about what happened:

for a starting point, I would really recommend this video by @pinkelotjeart

it's super accessible, it was made in real time as the game progressed and follows the solving and revelation of clues as they happened, it hits all the major points of the mystery and moments of community insanity while eliding some of the nitty gritty puzzle grinding, 10/10 would recommend.

here's the official summary put out by RQ, and I'd recommend reading through this once you've already gotten a basic handle on the flow of the story and the basic connections between major clues and events. it's got some fun behind-the-scenes info and lays out the thought process behind the puzzles in simple terms

here's the full masterdoc of all puzzles and resolutions put together in the statement remains discord server. masterdoc my absolute BELOVED, masterdoc my bethrothed, masterdoc my soul mate. I'd recommend this as a second port of call after the above video as it either contains all details about the puzzles or links to other expanded docs that do.

here's the narrative summary doc that lays out all the plot and lore discovered in three pages of plain prose. if you just want to get to the good bits as fast as you can and get blasted directly in the face by contextless lore bombs, this is the doc for you. if you don't want to start with the video, I'd say this is another good entry point.

once you've got the lay of the land, some of the game materials that I found particularly interesting include:

the in-universe east germany expat usenet forum, with all content translated into english. most of it is irrelevant space filler with occasional extremely sus lore, but I still found it fun to read through. love to soak in some fictional forum drama.

chdb.xlsx, the spreadsheet of the names of all the children the protocol 'verse magnus institute was studying/experimenting on. EDIT: here is a version of the sheet without any annotations and with all of the names in their original order, kudos to @theboombutton for catching that the commonly shared copy had the order swapped around.

klaus.xls, a (very corrupted) spreadsheet with what looks like the classifications of a bunch of old OIAR cases.

EDIT: have a few more saved materials from the game that I forgot to include.

an in-universe audio ad to apply to the OIAR that ran before archives episodes and kicked off the whole game.

an in-universe video ad to apply to the OIAR, this one is an official upload that's still up from the game itself. you can subscribe to the OIAR's official youtube channel today, if you so chose.

the robo-voicemail greeting from the OIAR's phone line.

once you start poking around in these documents, you'll find a bunch of links to others with further information, the materials I've included here just contain what I feel to be the most relevant details to getting a broad feel for the whole game. once again, huge shout out to the statement remains server, I was barely in there as the ARG was in progress and only ducked my head in every so often to find links like these. true mvps of the fandom.

You thought you could just hide this in the tags huh @the-dumb-smart-friend

You caused this 🫡

From this post.

[1st image ID: two furbies are sitting on the desk before a 1995 computer monitor. One says "Jon, this is NOT what I was expecting when you said you found 'bodies' for us." The other one says "Well... at least we can blink now?" Jonah laughs at them from the monitor. End ID.]

[2nd image ID: a screenshot of a tag from user "the-dumb-smart-friend" says: "#I think it would be funny if they uploaded their consciousnesses to like #furbies or something." End ID.]

I admit, I don't know what came over me when I was painting this... but here is a crazy watercolour abstract Doctor Who painting from yours truly.

I really need to brush up on my circular gallifreyan.