"And The End is the fear of death."
"Simple, but always there."
- Jonathan Sims and Gerard Keay, MAG 111
The End is one of the oldest and by far the most passive of the Entities. Its sphere of influence includes death and the fear of death, as well as the cruel and unstoppable end of things. The End frequently manifests through the dead and common imagery surrounding death and has particularly close ties to dreams.
It is noted by Oliver Banks that The End will be the last entity to remain when all other entities are gone, and will itself eventually die.[1]
| 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 11: Dreamer (Antonio Blake/Oliver Banks)
- MAG 29: Cheating Death (Death)
- MAG 43: Section 31 (Suicide case)
- MAG 62: First Edition (Catalogue of the Trapped Dead)
- MAG 64: Burial Rites (Death)
- MAG 70: Book Of The Dead
- MAG 94: Dead Woman Walking (Jane Doe, Georgie Barker)
- MAG 113: Breathing Room (Justin Gough)
- MAG 121: Far Away (Oliver Banks)
- MAG 155: Cost of Living (Tova McHugh)
- MAG 168: Roots (Domain, Oliver Banks)
- MAG 180: Moving On (Domain)
Other Appearances[]
- MAG 32: Hive (Possibly, Oliver Banks)
- MAG 42: Grifter's Bone (Partially, Oliver Banks)
- MAG 111: Family Business (Catalogue of the Trapped Dead)
- MAG 146: Threshold (Partially, unseen extracted statement)
- MAG 154: Bloody Mary (Catalogue of the Trapped Dead)
- MAG 189: Peers (Partially, Georgie Barker)
- MAG 190: Scavengers (Partially, Georgie Barker)
- MAG 191: What We Lose (Partially, Georgie Barker)
Characters[]
- Oliver Banks: Also known as "Antonio Blake", "Dr. Thomas Pritchard" or his title "The Coroner." In his dreams, he sees people who are close to death marked by dark tendrils wrapped around them in a manner matching their eventual fate. Later he began to see these tendrils while awake, and in his attempts to escape far from anyone whose deaths he could foresee, found that the tendrils would adjust to make him responsible for deaths.
- Death: Aspects of the End that seek out the dying in their final moments. They can be challenged to a game to avoid death, and if they lose, then the victor takes their place. It is believed that there are multiple instances of these beings, rather than having only a single creature like some other entities have.
- An unnamed monk who served as Death until losing to Nathanial Thorp at a game of Faro.[2]
- Nathaniel Thorp: A soldier in the Revolutionary War, who was shot and mortally wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill. He found himself confronted by Death and gambled his life on a game of Faro. He won through the use of cheating and took the role of Death for nearly 200 years until being beaten at a game of roulette.
- A mummy found in an ancient undiscovered tomb in Eastern Egypt, which had won at a game of dice. It had been sealed inside its sarcophagus for its inability to die, and futilely attempted to kill itself upon its release by stabbing itself in the heart.[3]
- "Jane Doe": An unnamed medical school cadaver that reanimated and whispered to anyone who approached "The moment that you die will feel exactly the same as this one." Anyone who heard this phrase was affected by an overwhelming revelation about death and laid down in a permanent, catatonic state.
- Georgie Barker: Survived an encounter with "Jane Doe" by covering her ears, lessening the phrase's effect. Instead of going catatonic, she can no longer feel fear.
- Justin Gough: A man who suffered carbon monoxide poisoning and died, only to reanimate shortly after speaking of terrible visions and a debt incurred. He could enter a sleeping state in which he could kill other sleeping people through carbon monoxide poisoning.
- Tova McHugh: A woman who, after a near-death experience, gained the ability to steal the life of others in order to extend her own life. The more loved and influential McHugh's victims were, the more time there was before McHugh needed to take another life.
- A man who was found in his home still alive after suffering multiple gunshots wounds to the face. He attempted to shoot himself again and again but failed to die, eventually being taken away by paramedics and being officially reported dead. He may have been another Death as indicated by the presence of numerous domino sets in his home.[4]
- An unnamed woman who wakes up in a freshly-dug grave every year on her birthday.
- Dr. Margaret Tellison: A physician who used the Catalogue of the Trapped Dead to trap spirits or ghosts for financial gain. Killed by Mary Keay in 1955.
- Mary Keay: Mary Keay was not a dedicated follower of the End but did dabble in its power. Her most notable use of it was her use of the Catalogue of the Trapped Dead to become an undead entity.
Artefacts[]
- Catalogue of the Trapped Dead: A book whose pages are made from the flensed skin of dead people, with each page inscribed with the final moments of the person whose skin they were made from. Reading a page allows one to summon their ghost, and Mary Keay found a way to bind herself to the book and allow her ghost to appear at will.
- Book of the Dead: A book dating back to a time when Latin was the written language that adds a new page whenever it is read describing the death of the reader in means, location, and time. Any attempt to circumvent this described death causes the page to rewrite itself, with the new death always occurring sooner than the old one.
- Death's Game Pieces: The game pieces used by Death to play for the life of marked targets, which they leave behind if the target wins. Known instances include chess pieces, dominoes, and several dice.[3] These pieces are always made entirely of bone when they are provided by Death, though it is unknown if they maintain any supernatural properties.
Locations[]
- The Corpse Roots: Oliver Banks' domain in the post-Change world, a land covered with black tendrils. As people are forced to walk along the roots, they know they will die when they reach the end of their root, but they are unable to stop moving forward.
Ritual[]
The End has no known ritual, which Peter Lukas theorizes is because everyone dies eventually, and thus the End has no need to remake the world.
Connections to other Entities[]
- The End seems to have no major connections to the other entities as it will consume everything at some point.
- The Web sends Oliver Banks to visit Jonathan Sims.
- The End frequently manifest in war due to the large amount of deaths and so interacts with The Slaughter.