The Dark

The Dark
Entity inspired Tarot by Grace Holsten
Aliases	Mr Pitch The Forever Blind
Fears	Darkness (scotophobia) What lies within the dark The unknown
Manifestations	Dark water Blindness Coldness A creature within the dark

"That's an old one, and one of the deepest. I mean, who isn't a little bit afraid of the dark? Of what might be in it?"
- Gerard Keay, MAG 111

The Dark is one of the Entities. It is the primal fear of the dark and the unknowns regarding what lurks within it. It, along with The Hunt and The End, is said to be one of the oldest Entities.

It often manifests as dark/sticky/brackish water, as well as coldness and blindness. The Dark has a large following in the form of The People's Church of the Divine Host, also connected with Outer Bay Shipping and Ny-Ålesund.

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

Note: Because many entities frighten their victims at night or in the dark, episodes that take place at night or reference darkness are not listed as related to The Dark unless the episode specifically centers around an intense fear or love of the dark.

Statements

• MAG 9: A Father's Love (The Montauks, People's Church, The Still and Lightless Beast)
• MAG 25: Growing Dark (Natalie Ennis)
• MAG 52: Exceptional Risk (The Montauks, The Still and Lightless Beast)
• MAG 63: The End of the Tunnel
• MAG 73: Police Lights (Maxwell Rayner, Callum Brodie, People's Church)
• MAG 86: Tucked In
• MAG 98: Lights Out (The Sandman)
• MAG 100: I Guess You Had To Be There (Partially, "John Smith's" statement)
• MAG 109: Nightfall (Julia Montauk, People's Church)
• MAG 135: Dark Matter (Manuela Dominguez, Dark Star, The Daedalus)
• MAG 140: The Movement of the Heavens (Maxwell Rayner)
• MAG 143: Heart of Darkness (Manuela Dominguez, Maxwell Rayner, People's Church)
• MAG 173: Night Night (Callum Brodie, domain)

Other Appearances

• MAG 35: Old Passages (Possibly; one of the unseen passages)
• MAG 51: High Pressure (Dark wardrobe, mentioned)
• MAG 53: Crusader (Possibly; those who sing the night)
• MAG 183: Monument (Possibly; The Void domain)
• MAG 200: Last Words (mentioned)

Characters

• The People's Church of the Divine Host: A religious organization dedicated to the Dark.
  • Maxwell Rayner: The leader of the Church of the Divine Host and the Dark's most well-known avatar. After being drowned in a pool used in rituals of the Dark in the 1700s, he gained the ability to transfer himself into someone else's body, with his hosts having distinctive milky white eyes. His most recent (And possibly final) death occurred during a police raid that caught him in the process of transferring to a new body.
  • Manuela Dominguez: A high-ranking member of the Church of the Divine Host, as well as a brilliant scientist. She created the Dark Sun used in the Dark's ritual.
  • Linette Montauk: A member of the church who split from the group for unknown reasons, only to be killed shortly thereafter to silence her.
  • Robert Montauk: Husband of Linette Montauk. When she was killed, he was given the task of feeding the Still and Lightless Beast under the belief that she could still be saved. When he learned she was gone, he began hunting the Church's members to use as fuel to banish it.
  • Vardaan Darvish: The leader of a cell operating under the guise of DNK Systems in Manchester. He understood the Dark better than most but was killed by Julia Montauk when he attacked her.
  • Natalie Ennis: A new member of the church, though one of no small influence within its ranks.
• Outer Bay Shipping: A shell company associated with the People's Church.
• The Sandman: A humanoid figure that curdles light into darkness and has a continuous stream of black sand pouring from his mouth. He plunges his victims into utter darkness, which serves as his "sack" to take them away. One can escape this fate by permanently blinding themselves with the sand he carries with him.
• The Still And Lightless Beast: A monster of the Dark connected to the Church of the Divine Host. Maxwell Rayner sent it to kill Linette Montauk when she split from the organization, and it was later banished by her husband, Robert Montauk. When it recovered, it returned to Rayner's side and killed the man who had banished it. It was killed as part of the Extinguished Sun ritual.
• Those Who Sing The Night: A historical predecessor organization to the People's Church of the Divine Host, which destroyed an ancient archive aligned with The Eye.
• Shadow figures that are invisible to the naked eye but appear in photographs and brief bursts of light. These beings can affect and kill people by interacting with their shadows, which have correlating effects on them.
• A formless shadow entity with numerous feelers. It has a sense of sadism, moving closer to its victims only when they don't cover themselves in a blanket. The blanket offers no innate security, and when they grow complacent and stop fearing the creature, it reveals the truth and attacks.
• Callum Brodie: The ruler of Night Street, a domain of the Dark after The Change.

Locations

• The Daedalus: A space station constructed in cooperation with servants of The Vast and The Lonely.
• Ny-Ålesund: The northernmost town in the world, and thus the one with the longest nights. It was a key location in the Extinguished Sun ritual.
• Night Street: Callum Brodie's domain in the ruined world, it takes the form of a sprawling, dark suburban neighborhood full of monsters. It's used for the torment of children, to develop them into adults with more complex fears for The Eye to consume.

Artefacts

• The Dark Star: Also known as the black sun, it is a miniature star that shines with darkness rather than light, created by Manuela Dominguez for the Extinguished Sun ritual. As a powerful item of the Dark, it would kill all who looked upon it if they were not sufficiently protected by an Entity. It survived the collapse of the ritual, only to be destroyed by Jonathan Sims.
• Dark wardrobe: A new oak wardrobe that light is apparently unable to penetrate.

Ritual

The Dark has one known ritual: The Extinguished Sun. The ritual involved a week of night and horror with hundreds of sacrifices in a central location and at a number of secondary supporting locations. The ceremony began with the sacrifice of a creature of the Dark so that the worshippers could drink its blood and be baptized in the waters it touched, and would end with the unveiling of a sun of darkness during a solar eclipse in a location near to the North Pole and its months-long nights.

• March 2015 is the most recent execution of this ritual and the only one that is known for certain. The Black Star used in the ritual was created by Manuela Dominguez on board the space station Daedalus in July 2014. The primary location of the ritual was Ny-Ålesund, with secondary locations in Russia, Alaska, and Hither Green. The creature sacrificed was The Still and Lightless Beast, and Maxwell Rayner used its claws to cut into his chest and release the darkness within his body. The ritual ultimately failed without any outside interference.
• A solar eclipse occurred in Ny-Ålesund 300 years prior to the known execution of the ritual, which may be presumed to have been the date of the last attempt. It is likely the specifics of the ritual differed given the difficulty in manufacturing a Black Star for the 2015 ritual and the fact that the creature of the Dark would have had to been killed for it to function, assuming such things even happened in the previous version.

The Extinguished Sun is the only ritual known for certain to predate Smirke's list, as it was a conversation he had with Maxwell Rayner regarding it that inspired him to put them to paper. As such, it may be the only ritual of The Dark to exist.

Connections to other Entities

• The Eye: The Dark and The Eye currently have an antagonistic relationship.
  • The use of a closed eye as a symbol is directly opposing The Eye's symbol of an open one.
  • An ancient archive suspected to be a predecessor of the Magnus Institute was destroyed by "those who sing the night".
  • Maxwell Rayner and Jonah Magnus were once friends but became enemies due to their opposing work in support of their patrons.
  • The People's Church of The Divine Host has been watching The Magnus Institute since they disrupted The Unknowing.
  • Manuela Dominguez and Maxwell Rayner offered Elias Bouchard safety from their ritual if he abandoned his patron.
• The Lonely and The Vast: These entities have been known to work together, possibly due to their overlapping spheres of influence
  • All three entities have a long history of followers.
    • Both the Dark and The Lonely have religious followings, with Evan Lukas' family being described as religious, and The Dark has The People's Church of the Divine Host. Additionally, the descriptions of locations (particularly churches) changing to other locations appear to be connected to both The Lonely and The Dark.
  • The Lukas Family and the Fairchild teamed up with Outer Bay Shipping to send their avatars and victims to space aboard the Daedalus.