History Characters / TheMagnusArchivesPowersAndServants

* KickTheSonOfABitch: Returned to her spiteful fundamentalist parents only when they were on their deathbeds to tell them about her following of the Dark so they would die fearing it.

!!Michael Shelley/Helen Richardson, The Distortion

->'''Voiced by:''' Luke Booys[=/=]Imogen Harris

* AmbiguousSituation: Perhaps befitting a minion of the Spiral: how much of the Distortion is Micheal Shelly/Helen Richardson, and how much is an alien monster wearing the faces of the dead? Jon is able to confirm that Micheal and Helen are genuinely different beings, but also that the original Helen and Micheal are "gone", and any attempts to clarify how much and what remains gets lost in the twists of the Spiral.

* ExactWords: As the Distortion is built on confusion, Michael[[spoiler: /Helen]] cannot directly lie, but also can never be fully truthful. [[spoiler:What finally seals Helen's fate is her letting a lie slip out of panic, letting the Eye finally find her.]]

* TheLastOfHisKind: Temporarily, at least. Michael does mention that the Spiral has many avatars and monsters just like the other Powers, but Gertrude's disruption of the Great Twisting ritual meant that the vast majority of them died and were banished from the world, respectively. At the time that the show takes place, most creatures of the Spiral hadn't found their way back into reality, leaving Michael, and later Helen, as the Spiral's only major active agent.

* RealityWarper: Michael is able to make a [[TheLonelyDoor door]] appear that leads to an EndlessCorridor.

* {{Transhuman}}: One statement involves a (possible) transhuman experiment GoneHorriblyWrong.

* OutOfFocus: A curious example; the Buried does show up in the story a good deal thanks to the presence of the Coffin, but unlike the other Powers it doesn't have a recurring human avatar of its own (Breekon and Hope are servants of the Stranger who got stuck lugging the Coffin around) so the aims and motivations of people who might follow or serve such an entity are far less explored. Notably, it's the only Power on this very wiki to have just one 'character' entry.

* SerialKiller: The first we see of The Dark is through its servant Robert Montauk, who is one of the most prolific serial killers in the United Kingdom.

* PredecessorVillain: In a way, he's largely responsible for the entire series. According to [[spoiler: Jonah Magnus]], Rayner was the one who told Robert Smirke about the Powers. Smirke's study lead him to create the rituals as part of his attempts to control and contain them, and he brought confidants into his inner circle as part of these efforts, who would later become servants of the powers themselves, including, of course, [[spoiler: Jonah.]]

* TokenGoodTeammate: Agnes Montague, arguably. She saves the life of a statement giver in Episode 59, and seems to genuinely care for Jack Barnabas in Episode 67.

** Noteably carried over into it's Avatars; while we hear about a few old Flesh Avatars, the two most prominent ones are both relatively young men who've only been servants of the Flesh for a few decades, compared to the other powers who often have Avatars who've served for centuries.

[[folder:Michael/Helen]]

* InsignificantLittleBluePlanet

** How anthropomorphic they really are is left up in the air, and most of the characteristics ascribed to them seem to be entirely projection on the part of their worshippers. Their cults usually end up running into the obvious problem with worshipping an EldritchAbomination: it's so far beyond human comprehension that there's no way to tell what it actually ''wants,'' or if it wants anything at all.

* ReligionOfEvil: A few of the Powers, such as the Desolation and the Lonely, have an organized faction of worshippers that treat their allegiance to their Power very much like a religious faith.

* VillainOfAnotherStory: After Jane Prentiss's climactic siege of the Institute, John remains as a silent, looming figure associted with the Corruption that, unlike the Flesh Hive, does not seem to be able to die on a permanent basis. However, his final appearance [[spoiler:has him taken out of the picture for good and he doesn't reappear in the Corruption's domain after the Change.]]

* KillItThroughItsStomach: He is informed by Lito, a Corruption avatar, that [[spoiler:there is no "ant queen" ruling the tunnels. Unfazed by this, he decides to continue looking for a weak point, reasoning that if the colony has no brain, surely it has a heart he can kill instead.]]

* WouldHurtAChild: None of the Powers have any actual moral compunction about this, but [[spoiler: ep. 173 reveals the Eye finds children's fears to be relatively boring and gives the Dark the "Night Street" domain so it can play around and experiment with children's fear of darkness and monsters until they grow up into something more interesting.]]

The leader of the People's Church of the Divine Host, a {{cult}} serving as a front for worshippers of the Dark.

* SinisterMinister: The priest of a darkness-worshipping cult.

* HiddenDepths: For all that Arthur is an evil, sadistic, petty man - and as Gertrude said, a lazy fool - his crisis of faith does give him a certain amount of introspection which leaves him with one of the most accurate and insightful views on the Entities in the series, coming to realize that they understand humans as little as humans understand them, and the importance of feeling over logic and understanding and trying to categorize them. He also apparently regrets treating Agnes soley as a messiah, rather than getting to know her as a person. His tone when talking to her almost sounds like an absent father who wishes he had been more involved in his child's life.

* {{Hypocrite}}: Desolation acolytes are sadists, but apparently not masochists. Eugene's fate at the hands of Gertrude, richly deserved, horrifies him, even though his cult's whole schtick is doing equal or worse to innocents.

* InsistentTerminology: Apparently before Diego became an avatar, when he first started feeling a connection with the Desolation he identified it with the ancient Sumerian demon Asag, who boiled fish alive in rivers from how ugly it was. He continued to refer to the Lightless Flame as Asag long after he was transformed by it, even though that imagry didn't really fit with the rest of the cult's faith which was far more focused on fire, and Asag had a lot of conenction to disease, which Arthur Nolan at least felt was too close to the Corruption.

** The Stranger, being a polar opposite of the Beholding, also has some natural defense against it. The Not-Them, one of its servants, had Jon fooled for an entire ''year'', which makes sense: the Stranger's schtick is looking close enough to human that even people who are looking at it won't notice (though as Martin points out in Episode 118 ("The Masquerade"), Elias seems to have seen through the ruse all along).

* SinisterSurveillance: The Eye's schtick, and a primary ability of its followers. Elias has the ability to remotely view multiple people at once, and also to view past events. [[spoiler:Jon can see into the dreams of those who give him statements. And, now that he's started hunting, he can watch his victims while they're awake too.]] [[spoiler:Heads of the Magnus Institute, including Elias and James Wright (both of whom were really Jonah Magnus) have been said to be able to see through any eye, even ones in paintings]].

* WomenAreWiser: The most overtly feminine of the Powers is also the one that comes closest to being self-aware.

[[folder:Peter Lucas]]
!!Peter Lucas

->'''Voiced By:''' Alastair Stewart

Scion of the wealthy Lucas family, who have been servants of the Lonely for several hundred years. Peter Lucas is also an associate of Elias Bouchard, and becomes thee Magnus Institute's director in his absence at the end of season 3.

An archival assistant at the Magnus Institute. Having always been a bit of a loner, Martin is groomed by Peter Lucas into becoming an avatar of the Lonely throughout season 4.

* HistoricalDomainCharactwr: Indirectly. As Simon himself notes, his original identity was not one that history would have recorded, but he was apprenticed to famed painter [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintoretto Tintoretto]].

* OutOfFocus: A curious example; the Buried does show up in the story a good deal thanks to the presence of the Coffin, but unlike the other Powers it doesn't have a recurring human avatar of its own (Breekon and Hope are servants of the Stranger who got stuck lugging the Coffin around) so the aims and motivations of people who might follow or serve such an entity are far less explored.

* AffablyEvil: Similarly to Peter Lukas, Simon is outwardly quite cheery and pleasant, but he is gleefully evil and far more likely to make outright threats.

* OutOfFocus: A curious example; the Buried does show up in the story a good deal, thanks to the Coffin, but unlike the other Powers it doesn't have a recurring human avatar, so the aims and motivations of people who might follow or serve such an entity are fare less explored.

A recurring position in service to the Eye, tasked with being an archive of all the Eye's knowledge. For the current Archivist, Jonathan Sims, as well as the previous Archivists, Gertrude Robinson and Angus Stacey, see [[Characters/TheMagnusArchives the main page]] under Head Archivists]]

* EldritchLocation: Smirke's dreams were haunted by strange and horrible places, which he believed to be the truest representations of the Entities.

* BadPowersBadPeople: “You feed them, and they feed you". The longer one serves the Powers (becoming stronger in the process), the more alienated from humanity one becomes.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Emma Harvey]]
!!Emma Harvey
!!!First Mentioned: MAG 154

A former archival assistant who worked under Gertrude Robinson of the Magnus Institute. She was beset of a burning curiosity that caused her to sacrifice her coworkers to the Dread Powers just to learn what would happen, all the while pretending to be their friend and keeping her true motives hidden. This led to her gaining the attention of the Web.

For her folder, see [[Characters/TheMagnusArchives the main page]] under The Magnus Institute Gertrude's Assistants.