The Listening Club TTRPG Special - Episode 4

This year marks 10 years since the very first episode of the Magnus Archives was released. To celebrate, join co-creators Jonathan Sims and Alexander J. Newell for an anniversary livestream on Friday 13th of March at 5pm GMT. There will be special guests, exclusive previews of upcoming Magnus-related projects, and some very exciting announcements. So join us on twitch.tv slash Rusty underscore Quill on Friday 13th of March. Thanks for listening. Prime Video be the best in entertainment. This should be fun. Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista are completely out of the hilarious new action film The Wrecking Crew, inbegreed by Prime. Yeah, I'm pumped. Find the new Game of Thrones series A Night of the Seven Kingdoms, based on the bestseller of George R.R. Martin. Look by the members of HBO Max. So be brave, be just. So what you also seek, Prime Video. Here you look at everything. Abonnement is reduced. Inhoud can advertenties bevatten. 18+. All the rules are of use. Hi everyone, it's Karim. the voice of Simon Fairchild from the Magnus Archives, or the Eternal Tavern Keeper in Chapter and Multiverse. Today, I'm here to tell you about Malevolent, a podcast launched on the RQ network. Malevolent is a weekly horror fiction podcast filled with dark, noir, eldritch horror. Arkham private investigator Arthur Lester wakes up with no memory of who he is or what has happened, only a nameless, eerie voice guiding him through the darkness. Blind, terrified and confused His journey will lead him towards a series of mysteries In the hopes of understanding the truth of what has transpired As cosmic horrors seep into the world Arthur must ask himself whether this entity truly seeks to help him Or are its intentions more... Malevolent Search for Malevolent wherever you listen to your podcasts Or visit www.rustyquill.com Or www.malevolent.ca For more information Have fun See you later. Hello and welcome back to the fourth and final part of The Listening Club, a Magnus Archives tabletop role-playing game. And definitely not an excuse for me, Johnny, to roast all my beloved co-workers. That's definitely not what's happening. And with me, as three times before, is Anusha. Hello. Hello. I'm Anusha, pronouns she, her, and I am playing the wonderful, to-the-point and rather enigmatic Margot. Hello, Ian. Hello, Johnny. Yes, it's Ian Hales here. Hear him. I'm playing the now slightly stressed Stressed to a value of four Of Alphonse Platt Hello Laurie Hello yes it's me Laurie Once, twice, three times An Aladie Jones Both she, her And Pip Hello I am Pip I will be playing the long-lived Immortal, unkillable Barry Knapp Looking forward to the bright future That he has ahead of him Oh bless And I am Jonathan Sims he him your humble games master last time lori do you want to take us through what's happened so far the abridged version i gave it to anusha last time and we got into some granular detail so you'll give it to the fastidious character oh sure my memory is notoriously poor so it'll be the absolute polar opposite we were at june's flat and june is our friend who has gone missing we are at her looking for her she's not there we hear spooky tapes spooky real life question mark versions of sorry not tapes mini discs versions of beloved slash most worst episodes of the armitage library armitage library of the armitage library the well-known horror fiction podcast obviously yes we find an address that we've never seen listed before for i was going to say rusty towers and that's not it for moldy pencil the company who produce armitage library and you know we've done what any reasonable person would we've gone there we've gone there and importantly elodie left a voice note for her sister so that she knows where she is we went in we saw that things were spooky we saw blood on the floor and of course we went upstairs instead of calling the police outside where the signal you tried to call the police you didn't try to leave and call the police But to be fair to Elodie, the door was already locked. OK, well, great. And we are now in a room upstairs full of mannequins and corpseless heads. And we can't get out because the door is locked and no one took the lock picking skill. So that's great. Only if somebody had done that. I can pick locks. I can pick locks. So, yeah, the door's locked. Is it the door directly behind us into this like office space with the headsets locked? Or is it the door downstairs that we've heard being locked? It is the door back to the stairway. Okay. You are in like a large open plan office with a whole bunch of mannequins and some discarded heads. In the corner, you can see a separated little room, which is labelled as recording studio. And there definitely seems to be some movement in there. So the door to the recording studio is one of those like wooden doors with a long, thin bit of frosted glass in it. so you can see like shadows shifting the other side of the frosted glass but not really details i'm thinking of the room that we're now in i'm just thinking about the door that's locked behind us how much glass is in that door that one has six small glass square panels you could easily break any of them but none of them are really big enough for well certainly not big enough for barry to fit through damn as a 50 year old bouncer barry's gonna struggle yeah oh absolutely i know it's not necessarily going to help but at least in order to up the tension here and the pressure of the situation i'm going to haul off and just start kicking the door that just locked behind us we got to get out of here okay i will give you a might roll you'd need an 18 do you have anything that might reduce that i have an edge in might so i will spend two to lower it to a 15 barry is mighty and i believe in him margo reaches into her massive tote bag to go for her lock picking kit sees what's going on and gradually lowers it back into the bag because this is far more entertaining. That is, that's a 19. Okay. The door breaks off its hinges and swings out. As it does, the movement in the recording studio stops abruptly as though its attention has been got by something. What are you doing? The protector has overridden the inquisitive at this point, I think. And Barry is like, come on, we have to go. Okay, so who's first out? I mean, I was trying to get out. Elodie's running out, trying to call the police again on her phone repeatedly. Yeah, there's no signal. Margot's taking photos so she'd be last out. Yeah, you can get down. The front door is also locked. Are the rest of you staying in the office? I'm going for the recording door. Oh, you're heading to the recording studio. Okay. Who's running down to try and get out the front door? Who's heading towards the recording studio? Sounds like me and Elodie are going downstairs. I didn't catch one. I'm taking photos for evidence. Hanging back a little bit towards where the desks and heads are. In between the two, I'm sure. Yeah, she's kind of wondering if she could maybe disguise herself as one of the heads on the desks if push comes to shove. Use a bit of trickery. Okay the door to the recording studio swings open slowly and emerging from it is quite a normal guy You recognise him Like, he's wearing a suit that he wears in most of his, like, publicity photos, and it is Arthur Gene Evel, the writer-producer. I mean, looking at the mannequins, looks like he does pretty much everything on the podcast. I just got this. Really? You just got this? Sorry, initially, didn't you? Now I'm hearing it in full over and over. I'm like, oh, yeah. Yeah, there may be a small, a small aspect of me creating a monster out of my dear friend and collaborator. Arthur steps out. Hi, I'm Arthur. Good to see you. Thanks for joining me. Beautiful. You can see behind him in the booth, unmoving, it looks like Jim. Oh no. Her head is sort of lulled to the side and you can see the large red mark on one side of her head. as Arthur starts to come towards you. He's talking very affably. Hey, great to see you. Thanks so much for coming by. It's always good to meet a listener. As he is talking, his tongue starts to unspool and lengthen and sort of snake. It doesn't seem to be in any way affecting his ability to speak and it is starting to sort of lash out in various directions. Always good to meet people who support us through listening, through subscribing, having their fear drained out their ears. What the? Just, you know, if you want to have a seat, that'll be a lot easier. Yeah. I'm going to give you all two stress. Oh, I'm actually taking stress now. No. Should we hold off because we're downstairs trying to get out the front door? Yeah, you don't get the stress just yet. Just yet. Yeah, that's coming. Oh, I expect to have it at some stage. So, Ian, you are now impaired by stress. Yes. Which means it costs you one extra point from any pool to add effort to a roll. OK. So what are you doing? I'm going to look and see if there's anything that I can use to batter his tongue away. A file, a laptop, anything that is office-y. You could probably grab a mannequin limb. Yeah, well. I mean, as far as limbs go, it's not particularly elegant. It's got nothing on yours. No. Anyway, yeah, I'm going to take it and use it as a club. So that will be a might roll. I'm going to say you probably need a 15. Do you have anything that might help? Artifact affinity? No, that's like for really artifact-y things, isn't it? You know what? I might say that the heads count as artifacts. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'm going for a head instead. Blodging him with a skull. I'm going to pick up a head and scorn it at him. All right, brilliant. I like the idea that he picks up an arm and is like, no, this isn't right, and then picks up a desecrated human head. These limbs are far too elegant. There's no heft in American arms. You're kind of right. I'd say it's probably a speed roll then rather than might if you're lobbing ahead. OK. That will be 15 lowered to 12. Do you want to spend some pool points to lower it to a nine? I'm only here once. Why not? Let's do it. That will cost you four from your pool because you're impaired. You're like... Yeah. Head one. You need a nine. I failed. I got a five on that. Jeez. Oh, no. You toss it and it sort of lands at his feet and he picks it up and the tongue sort of loops round and starts to probe the indentation where the ear was and he's like, taking the story from that one already. I'm looking for something fresh. OK, how near is this tongue to me at this point? Right now, let's say two metres away. Can Margot take out a pack of cards that she always carries with her? and I want to try and give this tongue as many little paper cuts as I can get away with. Just like... She's throwing them. No, she's standing by the tongue. She goes up to it. She's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like you're repeatedly swiping a credit card. She's shuffling them, but like along his tongue. I love that Anusha's mind isn't like, okay, I want to try and cut the tongue. Would I have a knife? Ah. Severed. She's got lockpicking tools. we can go to those as well. No, this is way funnier. I just thought the element of surprise would... It's not what any of us were expecting, I'll be honest, Anusha. No, no. All right, that'll be a speed roll. Same as in, you need a 15. Actually, hold on, do you have a set of playing cards anywhere nearby? You know what, Johnny, it's funny you should say that. I always keep a pack of cards right near my desk. Draw a card. If you get a face or an ace, you manage to give them a little paper cut. If it's a joker, you slice the tip off. To be clear to our listeners at home, this is absolutely not a mechanic in Monty Cook's The Magnus Archives RPG. So shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. And? Queen of Diamonds. Brilliant. Are you holding them or throwing the card? I think holding them like that and just going like, as much as she can. Okay, so it lashes out. You can almost feel a wet tongue lapping around your ear when you swing your hand up. She hasn't taken her headphones off. It's a big, meaty tongue. It's going to knock her away. Your headphones provide no protection for this. The blanket did nothing. With a quick flick of the wrist, a nasty lung of red springs up on the tongue and it sort of whips back for a second. And Arthur Smiles is like, ow, that kind of hurt. But thanks anyway for listening. But it does give you a few moments of reprieve. Oh, incidentally, downstairs at the front door, that is locked and bolted. What are you up to? I think Barry probably has tried to kick the door a couple times. You want to try kicking the door again? Yeah, go for it. It's a little bit meatier than the one upstairs, so it'll be 21. I've got a might edge just to lower the spend. Okay, so you can spend two to lower it to 18. Yeah, I mean, the odds aren't great. Let's go for it. No, 16. Very close. That's a stubbed toe and a point of stress there, mate. Yeah, I think Barrow will give this door a couple of heavy kicks. And then turning, see that Alphonse and Margot have not followed us downstairs. Like, oh, shit. And then start heading back up, hearing something's going on up there. Elodie is grabbing you. You don't have to. Obviously, you're stronger than her. But the garage, the garage. I'm going off by myself, even if you don't follow me. I'm going to run to try and find us an exit. Go for it. I will run upstairs, though. So I'm going to go right, is it? or left, whichever way towards where you said the garage would be. So you open the door to the garage, and as you do, you are hit by a wall of smell and rot, as you can see that in the garage where there should be... Yeah, Anusha's shaking her head, because I think you've got two to the killer. Yeah, where you'd expect there to be vehicles, there is instead a pile of bodies of people, mostly wearing, like, Armitage Library merchandise, all of which have mangled ears as though something has like gone in and like slurped out their brains oh no for the legal department i just want to make it clear i am not accusing anyone at rusty quill of being a serial killer that's not what this is this is just we're all having fun here no one is murdering any fans that is not happening and i just want to say that up top just in case like the mini disc people are listening. Johnny is still okay to sponsor. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. He is not an accomplice to murder. What a weird thing to say. Yeah, Elodie is going to throw up. Oh, by the way, take a couple of points of stress because it's pretty grim, I'd say. Yeah and try and make yourself look is there a way out through this room There is the big rolling garage door It is currently padlocked to the floor in two places They look like comparatively heavy-duty padlocks, but not impossible to break. Screw this, she's shutting the door and she's going to run away, but feel free to cut to someone else. So, upstairs, the tongue's retreated for a second. Alphonse, are you taking this opportunity to do anything? Yeah. Is Arthur between me and the door to where June is? Yes. Well, I mean, currently, if you took a direct route, you would probably have to go past him, but you could go around the outside of the room to try and reach it. Yeah. Let's sort of cat-and-mouse it, see if I can get to June. All right. So I'm going to ask for a speed defence roll to avoid his, like... To avoid his wildly flailing tongue. I would say you probably need a 12. Do you have any skills that might help? No. Not at all. Do you want to spend four points of speed to try and lower the difficulty? Why the hell not? So you need a nine. You got this. Okey-cokey. Let's see if this works. That's a nine! That's a nine! At one point the tongue wraps itself around your leg but you notice that to do so it's gone over like an open drawer and you slam the drawer quickly causing it to spasm and withdraw. Nice. And then, yeah, you make it to the little recording booth. June, unfortunately, is quite clearly dead. Bollocks. Oh! She's had all her head in and shlorped out through her ear. Oh, no. It looks like this is where Arthur does most of his feeding. There's, like, caked-on blood and skull and bits of cerebrospinal fluid just all about. It's all over the mixing desk as well. Oh, that's disgusting. The sound quality from that's going to be terrible, to be honest with you. It's pretty gross. To be fair, it would make sense of the sound quality of most of those recordings. When we listened to them raw, they were pretty bad. Anusha, what's Margot doing? Would a lockpicking kit contain a full-on blade or a pocket knife of some kind? If you want to have a pocket knife, I will probably allow you to have a pocket knife. I think I'm going to go for the knife. Are you using the pocket knife to try and defend yourself from the lashing tongue? or are you trying to actually charge the creature and stab it up a bunch? I'm trying to actually charge him and bring the knife down the tongue as much as I can, down the centre of it. Okay, all right. It's not going to be easy. Okay. So I'm going to say it's a speed roll, base difficulty 15 probably. Okay. Do you have anything that might help? Discerning motive to see what he's going to do next. I will say that you can correctly discern his motive of wanting to drink all your fear and brain juices out through your ear that is his motive I think this might just be a straight roll unless you want to spend some speed to boost it yeah I'll spend three on my speed brings it down to a 12 cool I will roll that now that is a 10 that does not make it well I'm afraid you charge at him but you don't get the tongue the tongue seems to see what you're doing and sort of twist and squirm away from the blade. I will say that you reach Arthur himself and you can plunge the little pocket knife into his chest, but nothing happens. Okay. There's not even any blood. Oh, that's unsettling. Meanwhile, Barry, if you're running back upstairs, you are arriving to the scene of... Alphonse is over by the recording booth going like, Oh, no! Margot is right up next to Arthur having stabbed him. But Arthur doesn't seem to have really noticed. He's still smiling and being like, thanks so much for the contribution of this knife to my chest. I couldn't have this knife in my chest without you. Elodie, who knows where Elodie is? I know. Having a little breakdown somewhere. Just trying to call the police. I'm afraid there is no signal. It's not just there's bad signal, there is zero signal. You reckon that someone's treated this building to prevent signal escaping. Seeing that Margot is, like, closed in and tried to stab him, I'll haul off and punch him in right in the face. extremely hard if possible all right tackle him so it's a might roll i will say that would be a 15 but you are protector of margo so that will lower it to a 12 do you have anything else that might lower it not necessarily perception intimidation are the only ones that sort of sound vaguely relevant okay i would allow you intimidation if rather than like actually trying to like hurt arthur you are trying to just like establish yourself as the threat so i think it's less of a running in and punching him, and more closing and shoving him so I can get between him and Margot. Sure. And I think more out of instinct, he goes, Oi, mate, you're barred. Nice. Lovely, lovely, lovely. So that will be a nine. Do you have any might pool left to spend? I do. I have eight left, so I'm going to spend two of those to take it down to a six. Yeah, treat yourself. Eleven. Success. Yep. Hand on the shoulder. You're barred. Immediately his attention snaps away from Margot to you. and you can feel his tongue sort of starting to wrap its way round you. I'll stay and just be sort of struggling with him in this moment. Okay. Alphonse, what are you doing? I'm going to have a quick look at the mixing desk. You said it's still turned on? Yes, it is. Lots of wires, I'm guessing. Are the wires going in? Yeah, quite a few wires. Headphones, wires, inputs, outputs, all sorts. Bunch of microphones as well. In sort of mad panic, I'm just going to start pulling the wires out of the desk just because I thought, well, this is his lair. It must be set up for something. Let's see if I can mess it up somehow. Maybe an intellect roll. What are your skills? Occultism, astronomy, physics, discerning motive. Yeah, I'll give you occultism to lower it to a 12. Okey-cokey. All right, here we go. It is a 17. A 17. Hurrah. Okay. Most of the desk is, like, low-key covered in a little bit of gore. One of the microphones attached to a long cable seems oddly clean. Not so much that it's been cleaned, but that it seems to stand slightly apart from everything else. You get the impression that this might be the microphone he used to use to record his episodes. And there's something in your head, some sort of thematic connection between speech and hearing and the microphone. You don't know exactly how, but you think that microphone might be important somehow. Cut to Elodie. How are you trying to escape? I would like to use my once per game ability just because. I want to use it. I'm clearing some stress, so I've had a little sick. You've had a little sick. I've had a little sit down and a cry. Got some stress out. Yeah, you've just got to let it go, you know? You have got to let it go. You're actually feeling all right. And do you know why? Why? Because I never say die and I am going to find a way out of this building. So I am looking for staff entrances. I'm like going through like reception. Are there keys at reception? Is there a phone at reception? OK, there is a big set of keys under the reception desk. Oh, God, I have to go into the garage. There are about 30-odd keys on the key ring, and what I'm going to say is, depending on how long the business upstairs takes, basically, if Arthur kills everyone really quickly, I'm going to ask you to roll a d20 to see how many of the keys you've got through before he reaches you. The key to the second padlock is literally the last one you try. You better hope that they keep him busy quite a while upstairs. Okay. She grabs the key, she takes a breath, she wraps something around her face and goes into that garage. margot what are you doing currently barry is wrapped up in a tongue alphonse is looking at a microphone like hmm i wonder what are you doing i like to take the knife from his chest and step upwards into like the root of his tongue from underneath Okay yeah yeah yeah Speed test probably level five I think You need a 15 Do you have anything to lower it Um... Is there any advantage to be gained from the fact that I'm sort of grappling with him right now? There is actually, so that'll lower it to a 12. Nice. And can I spend some of my speed points, some of my pool? You can. Do you have any speed edge at all? I've got five left. I haven't got an edge. So that'll take three of your remaining five to lower it to a nine. Unfortunately, you're not trying to be strong here. You're trying to be fast. That's fine. I have loads of might and intellect left. Okay. That is a seven. That's not enough, I'm afraid. Oh, no. As you go for it, unfortunately, you go a little bit low and you hit him in the throat. And he does not really notice. Does Alphonse have anything he wants to try and do? Ian is thinking there's only a couple of things you can do with a microphone. Mic drop, mic drop. Mic drop. Is there a speaker in the room? Hmm. There's probably a monitor speaker in the recording room. A monitor, yeah. I'm wondering if I should try and provoke a feedback loop. In fact, yeah, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to try and provoke a feedback loop using that microphone next to the monitor. Just shove it into the monitor. You know what? I'm just going to say, yeah, you shove the microphone to the monitor and you turn it up and the feedback loop starts. Mm-hmm. How loud are you making it? Ah, as loud as I can stand. I'm going to say this is the climactic decision of this adventure, Ian. How many points of stress damage are you going to do to yourself and everyone in this room in terms of feedback volume? Right, remind me how much stress you can actually expend. There are four levels of health. Each of them four stress points. The last level is dead. so you can take up to 12 stress damage before you are dead. God, like somebody heroic would go to 11. We've already taken stress. It seems appropriate for me to turn it up to 11. Yeah, it does. Well, some of us have taken a good three stress already so we'd be Virgion dead at that point. Yes, that will kill everyone, don't you worry. No, no, my 11, my 11. Oh, all right, yeah, okay, so how many points of stress is that? I'm currently on six, so it's five points of stress. Oh, I thought you meant like adding 11. Okay. I'm not that stupid. I don't want to die, die. Okay, perfect. Can everyone make me a level three might roll to resist or potentially gain extra stress? Me too? No. I mean, you're hearing something horrible going on up there, but you're busy. Yeah. I would like to expend three points of my might. Yep. So that will lower it to a six for you. I got a six. Perfect. I spent two because I have the Might Edge. And again, as it seems to have been the theme so far, there was no need to have done that as I've rolled another nat 20. Brilliant. And Ian, are you...? I'm spending and rolling. And I got to 10, which is excellent. OK, marvellous. So, yeah, you all will take the five stress damage from this impossibly loud feedback. Barry, you can feel the tongue sort of convulse and writhe and spasm as it tries to constrict and get into your ear, but, like, the whole of Arthur now is shaking like a horrible waveform. With the sort of highest possible roll, can I monopolise on this moment of him being slightly impaired by this noise? Because I'm almost, like, face-to-face with him as we're kind of struggling. I want to try and reach up. I want to grab the tongue as close to its base as I can. I want to pull it out of his mouth if I can. Absolutely. Yet you grab the tongue, through it perfectly clearly, Arthur says. Thanks for listening and see you next time. And you pull it out and he just sort of pops in like a gooey, viscous collection of like, it's like liquid noise. It's pretty gross. Yeah, you are all incapacitated. I'm going to be very, very generous and say Alphonse is able to turn the feedback back down before any further damage is done. You will all have a little bit of deafness from this, except for Elodie, who about two minutes later pulls up the garage and legs it. Abandons us. Not bothering to check on any of you. How dare you? She's shut behind her, the garage is open! And run. You hear nothing except her. I will assume about four hours later the police will arrive. One assumes called by Elodie? Yes. And you'll be taken and your hearing will be treated. Officially, Arthur is listed as a weird serial killer. You get like a little story in the paper and a lot of hate online for getting the podcast cancelled. If we're headcanoning this, Elodie still has all those mini-discs, so we can just release our own version. Yeah, we can have our own podcasts. With the super graphic real stories, right? The Barry Archives. The Barry Archives. Why does the Barry Archives ring a bell? I don't know. I don't want to know. Who knows? And yeah, thank you very much for playing The Listening Club. I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope you all enjoyed listening to it at home. Standard disclaimers, that was not really representative of what a normal at-home session of the Magnus Archives tabletop role-playing game is actually like. That was very much me using the system as just kind of a very loose framework to have some podcast nonsense around. We all have a lot of fun here, but Rusty Cool is actually really cool and does not endorse shoving your tongue in anyone's ears to drink their fear in their brain. That's not something Rusty Cool has ever done, will ever do, and this is just me making fun of my friends. Thank you all for listening. Bye-bye! The Magnus Protocol is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 4.0 International License. To subscribe, view associated materials, 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. Thanks for listening. from the creator of the award-winning show Hai Nai. Three Catholic priests trapped in a remote Ontario mansion by a strange blizzard must find a way to exorcise a demon before it escapes into the world. Unfortunately for them, the demon is a true believer and therefore inoculated against Catholicism. Dominus is inspired by The Exorcist and Conclave films, as well as Catholic horror media and the lived experience of Catholicism in the Global South. The pilot episode of Dominus is available now. Listen by searching Dominus wherever you get your podcasts. To support future episodes of Dominus, they are running a Kickstarter, which you can find at www.rustyquill.com forward slash fundraiser. Have fun and enjoy the episode.