The Vast

The Vast
Entity inspired Tarot by Grace Holsten
Aliases	The Falling Titan The Void
Fears	Acrophobia Thalassophobia Bathophobia Apeirophobia Megalophobia Insignificance Casadastraphobia
Manifestations	Voids Falling Outer space Open spaces Deep water Giant creatures Lovecraftian horrors

"Vertigo, agoraphobia, the dread of deep water, of our own insignificance before the universe."
- Gerard Keay, MAG 111

The Vast is one of the Entities. Its domain is our fear of our own insignificance in this universe, of losing yourself in too much space, as well as heights, falling and open spaces.

It commonly manifests as void, vertigo, and falling, as well as anything to do with openness and open spaces. It often appears as huge, unfathomable creatures that are too distant and immense for humans to properly comprehend.

While The Buried also manifests as deep water, it will usually have a focus on crushing, drowning or sinking.

ATTENTION! SPOILERS AHEAD!! This article contains information from later episodes of The Magnus Archives and may contain major spoilers for the setting and plot. Continue at your own risk.

Episodes

Statements

• MAG 4: Page Turner (Ex Altiora)
• MAG 21: Freefall (The Fairchilds)
• MAG 46: Literary Heights (Ex Altiora, Michael Crew)
• MAG 51: High Pressure (Simon Fairchild)
• MAG 75: A Long Way Down (Michael Crew)
• MAG 91: The Coming Storm (Ex Altiora, Michael Crew)
• MAG 106: A Matter Of Perspective (Jan Kilbride)
• MAG 124: Left Hanging (Simon Fairchild)
• MAG 141: Doomed Voyage (Storm, "huge shape")
• MAG 151: Big Picture (Simon Fairchild)
• MAG 174: The Great Beast (Domain, Simon Fairchild)
• MAG 195: Adrift (Domain)
• MAG 198: Precipice (Domain)

Other Appearances

• MAG 17: The Boneturner's Tale (Michael Crew, mentioned)
• MAG 57: Personal Space (Jan Kilbride, The Fairchilds, mentioned)
• MAG 89: Twice as Bright (The Fairchilds, Michael Crew, mentioned)
• MAG 97: We All Ignore the Pit (Jan Kilbride, Jackson Ellis)
• MAG 183: Monument (Possible Partial Domain)
• MAG 184: Like Ants (Possible Partial Domain)

Characters

• Michael Crew: Was struck by lightning and marked with a Lichtenberg figure scar by the Vast from a young age, and was followed and tormented by an aspect of The Spiral that smelled like ozone and looked to have a similar design to the scar. He later used Ex Altiora to bind his tormentor to the book, becoming an avatar of The Vast.
• The Fairchilds: An affiliated group of people connected with The Vast. While not an actual family, they take the names and identities of others.
  • Simon Fairchild
  • Harriet Fairchild
• Jan Kilbride: A victim of the Vast whose unwitting connection to the entity made him powerful enough to be used to stop The Buried's ritual.

Locations

• The Great Beast: Simon Fairchild's domain in the post-Change world. It consists of a huge creature made of people clinging to each other, as it slowly walks over a large area with people living in it, scared of the colossal being casting a shadow over them.
• The Ocean: A domain of the Vast with possible aspects of the Dark and the Lonely. A victim is infinitely drowning in it with an unknown creature swimming around them. When they break the surface they find the ocean goes on forever and allow themselves to drown again.
• The Precipice: A domain of the Vast. The inhabitants climb a rickety, rusted iron ladder until they eventually realize that they do not know which way is up or down.

Artefacts

• Ex Altiora: A Leitner written in Latin that tells the story of a town jumping off a cliff in the face of destruction by an unfathomable creature. Smells of ozone and induces vertigo.
• A strange book of astronomy: An unamed book that Emma Harvey used on Sarah Carpenter in one of several attempts to break her. The book left the reflection's of "uncanny" constellations within her eyes long after she had attempted to used the book to chart the stars. She is described as nearly having been "lost to the cosmos."

Ritual

In the 1800s, Simon Fairchild devised and attempted an ocean-based ritual for The Vast called "The Awful Deep", descending deep underwater with a group of sacrifices in a specially-designed diving bell. The ritual “fizzled“ both because the fear of the deep ocean wasn’t prevalent enough to take advantage of, and a Hunter interrupted it, though Simon admits the whole ritual "wasn’t a very good idea".

He figures that he's at least a century away from being able to try again, as he hopes to attempt something with outer space.

Connections with other Entities

• The Vast and The Flesh have similar trauma related to being insignificant or meaningless.
• The Fairchilds and the Lukas Family have been serving their entity for around two centuries. However, "Fairchild" is apparently an assumed name (the current "Simon Fairchild" stole the identity and wealth of the actual Simon Fairchild in the 1920s), whereas the Lukases marry "spooky singles" and bear children with them.
  • Simon Fairchild has actually been serving The Vast for centuries. He mentions having been an apprentice to the Venetian painter Tintoretto, which would put Simon's birth somewhere in the mid-1500s.

• The Buried is in many ways the opposite of The Vast, as they represent opposing forces of not enough space vs. too much.
  • These entities were proven to be somewhat antithetical to each other, given that the body of a single person touched by The Vast was able to destabilize The Buried's grand ritual.
  • However, it is noted that entities like this that oppose each other directly would struggle without one another, implying that the Vast and the Buried may be closely connected.