#on the one hand i'm extrapolating so much i'll be shocked if any of this is right

[lostwords-found]

Oh god. Okay. SO. The Protocol red string board is going places and I am chewing drywall.

Note: I've been working on this post for a few days and nothing in here involves episode 27--I don't talk about episodes before they're out for everyone, so no worries about patreon spoilers.

Quick recap of some suspicions about Protocolverse I've written about previously:

1. I think this universe runs on a kind of balance of good & bad luck (or suffering and happiness), and that it's possible--under certain circumstances--to pawn the bad stuff off on other people and keep the good that arises to balance it out. I suspect a big piece of Protocol's overarching plot is going to be about the different ways people go about trying to come out ahead in that bargain.

2. I think some alchemists figured out how to attach bad luck and/or other similarly abstract ills into physical form.

3. I think they were trying to use this to cast out bad luck to other worlds (including that of Archives) and get good luck back. I think this is how the Fears got to Archives in the first place.

4. I think the books and coin in the tomb from MAG 23 got there this way, probably with the involvement of Protocolverse Albertus Magnus. The year on the coin -- 1279 -- is the year before Albertus Magnus died.

We'll come back to that stuff in a bit.

There's an apparently minor detail that was nagging at me recently: in TMAGP 22 Hans Berger specifically mentions having switched to silver wires in his experiments, and this change enabling his breakthroughs. It's through these silver wires, implanted directly into Herr Schmidt's brain, that he later receives the desperate telegraph signals that appear to be from a previously unheard part of Schmidt's brain.

By itself, that wouldn't ping any alarms. Silver wires are in fact what Berger used in real life; silver's highly conductive so if you're trying to read electrical impulses from the brain, probably a good choice of material. But the writing is very deliberate about mentioning them, and coming only three episodes after another historical letter about a scientist also working with silver -- Newton's tree in TMAGP 19 was a fantastical variant of a Tree of Diana, dendritic silver -- Berger's wires start feeling like maybe they're not just there for accuracy.

If, as it appears from Newton's work, consuming silver in certain forms can cause a new kind of consciousness to arise--and also, uh, turn you into a tree--what might implanting silver wires in a human brain do? Is the silver contacting or awakening something that was already there, or is it putting something there? Was that desperate OUT OUT OUT message really from half of Herr Schmidt's mind--or from something in the wire itself that was trying to get out?

That would be weird though. I mean--what, Protocolverse silver's inherently evil or something? But then I got back to thinking about alchemists trying to transmute things into precious metals. Gold's the one we mostly think of, but silver was also of interest. Which in real life is where you got stuff like the tree of Diana--alchemists thought that was a precursor to the philosopher's stone.

So... then I start thinking, if I was right in my other post that alchemists were figuring out how to put evil / misfortune / suffering into a physical form that could be used to transfer it somewhere else, what if silver was involved in that? What if they were either turning misfortune into silver, or trapping it in silver that already existed?

What if they did that, meaning to send it away, and some of that silver made its way into use?

Then I started looking some stuff up.

Did you know silver used to be mined in the Black Forest, in Germany? One mine there had a name meaning "Blessing of God." That mine dates back to the 1200s--Albertus Magnus's lifetime.

Did you know that starting in the 1600s, the G strings on high quality violins were typically wrapped in silver wire?

Do you know why movies are called the silver screen? In the 1920s, literal silver was used to make cinema screens. This fell out of favor as other cheaper designs were worked out, BUT in the 2000s silver has come back into use a bit because it works well for 3D movies. I would not be surprised at all if the screen that Tom went to see Voyeur on had silver in it.

Did you know that in the early 90s there was a specific plant in the UK that manufactured CDs covered with a layer of silver? This later turned out to cause some problems as the silver reacted with sulfur (oh hai, another alchemically significant substance!) and slowly degraded the discs. In real life these CDs were manufactured up through 1993. Per TMAGP 10, Mr Bonzo made his debut in '96 (the interview is from 2021 and is the 25th anniversary of Mr Bonzo's first appearance). The two times Mr Bonzo has appeared in person he's been summoned by playing a CD of his theme song. I wonder where and when those CDs were manufactured...

Did you notice the caterer Lady Mowbray hired in TMAGP 15 mentions that his company did silver service events? Betcha that particular feast was served on literal silver platters.

...I'm starting to think it's a really good thing ink5oul didn't end up tattooing Gwen with that silver spoon.

Okay. This all seems like there's maybe a theme here, but let's take a step back. Some materials have just been used for a lot of things throughout history; it could be coincidence. IF the above is actually on the mark--IF these were all intentional majorly-plot-relevant inclusions of Things Wot Involve Silver--where else would we expect to see this cropping up in the story? Because the topic of silver has barely been raised directly at all; I'm extrapolating wildly here, mostly on the basis of a couple episodes.

Well, here's a thought: silver was used in everyday currency for a long, long time. If there was a bunch of Evil Silver floating around surely someone would have stuck it into some money at some point. "Ill fortune" in the most literal possible sense, or whole new meaning to the phrase "bad penny" -- there are various bad jokes there that more or less write themselves. Though whoever was doing this would have had to to mark the bad money somehow so that they could avoid it...

Hey, um, remember how the OIAR's offices are in the building that housed the Royal Mint for like 150 years?

Actually, while we're on that subject, here's a funny little tidbit: Before it moved to Royal Mint Court, the Royal Mint was in the Tower of London for several centuries--its first home after being centralized. Wanna guess what year the Royal Mint was established in the Tower of London? Go on. Guess.

1279.

The same. Fucking. Year. As was on that coin waaaaaay back in MAG 23. Which was a thing I had noticed a while back when looking at the Germany eps, but I hadn't been considering a "what if some metals can be Bad" angle at that point and had just written it off as an odd coincidence.

Which I mean, it's probably still just a weird coincidence, I'm building this entire elaborate framework out of assumptions on top of assumptions on top of -- hang the fuck on, let me look something up real quick, I've gotta be misremembering--

I'm not misremembering! Isaac Newton was the Master of the Royal Mint for the last 30 years of his life.

Cool. Okay. So that's--hm. I think I'm genuinely starting to convince myself none of this is a coincidence.

Then I start poking through Wikipedia, and you wanna know some other interesting things? One, Newton himself apparently saw his work in economics as a continuation of his alchemical work. And two, during his tenure at the Royal Mint, he put limits on how much gold people were allowed to exchange for silver, and this led to a silver shortage. Because apparently, when other countries imported goods to them, the British paid for those goods in silver coins. When they exported goods to other countries, though?

They would only take payment in gold.

And there it is--there's the exact outsourcing scheme I was looking for. Stick all your suffering and pain and misfortune into your money, use that money to pay other countries, and get only the good stuff back. That... sounds really believable for the British Empire, honestly.

So I really think I might have some decent guesses on the historical stuff at play here. That only goes just so far though, because these days, silver doesn't really get used in coinage much.

Know where it does get used? Circuits. Electronics.

Computers.

If I'm right, whatever machinery the Mint used to store the intangible evils of the world in physical coinage for exportation, I would guess the OIAR is now using to instill all of those evils into FR3-D1 instead. One all-containing artifact of misfortune.

What the endgame is there, what the government gets out of it, I'm still not 100% sure--but I can't help thinking about Jonah's line in MAG 160 that Jon is not the Archivist but the Archive. That he is the record of fear, the physical embodiment of it.

There's people wanting to outsource absolutely fucking everything to AI these days, I guess.

SO THAT'S BEEN MY WEEK this is what my brain does when I have to drive all the way across the US alone, apparently. How are you all?

[erabundus]

his first instinct is rage.

jumping  to  emotion.  how  filthy.  how  embarrassing.  in  that  moment,  he  knows  not  whether  he  loathes  himself  or  the  human  more.  outwardly,  the  balladeer  has  gone  very  still  —  his  arm  still  extends  in  that  grandiose  gesture,  the  grin  he  wears  now  a  hollow  display  of  pointed  teeth.  this  flavor  of  wrath  simmering  just  beneath  his  skin  is  one  they  should  both  be  familiar  with.  when  last  it  was  invoked,  kunikuzushi  hunted  cyno  down  like  a  WOUNDED  ANIMAL.  even  now,  the  compulsion  to  give  in  (  to  rip  and  tear  and  ruin  )  itches  at  every  nerve  ending  in  his  body.  it  would  be  so  easy.  one  quick  shock  would  see  him  writhing  in  agony  —  a  mere  taste  of  his  power.  a  reminder  of  what  divine  forces  he  mocks  so  easily.  (  wouldn't  his  screams  sound  like  the  sweetest  music?  )  it  truly  is  just  the  nature  of  mortals  to  fester  with  hubris  —  like  an  infection,  woven  into  the  very  fabric of their souls  and  left  to  spread.  surely  this  is  why  beings  of  a  much  higher  power  are  a  necessity.  to  remind  them  what  it  means  to  be  HUMBLED.

slowly,  slowly  fingers  curl.  his  arm  drops;  fists  balled  uselessly  at  his  sides.  a  laugh  spills  from  his  lips  —  one  that  could  easily  be  mistaken  for  an  exhale.  ❝  i  see.  ❞   kunikuzushi  says.  his  voice  is  soft  —  and  while  that  on  its  own  is  clearly  disingenuous,  the  true  question  is  what  it  means  to  CONCEAL.  ❝  you  must  think  you're  awfully  clever ...  did  you  really  manage  to  extrapolate  that  much  from  a  simple  metaphor?  ❞  he  shakes  his  head,  kasa  chiming  gently  from  the  movement.  ❝  too  bad  —  you've  got  me  all  wrong.  your  first  mistake  was  assuming  my  ASPIRATIONS  started  and  stopped  at  being  a  pawn.  ❞  even  so,  it's  a  forgivable  assumption  to  make.  kunikuzushi  is  well  aware  that  he's  being  used  —  had  that  not  been  the  reason  why  he  JOINED  the  fatui  to  begin  with?  (  to  be  their  weapon,  their  tool,  until  that  purpose  grew  stale.  )  and  after  he  had  even  gone through the  effort to explain  using  and  being  used  by  others  was  simply  how  this  world  worked.

❝  i'm  not  going  to  settle  for  taking  back  what's  rightfully  mine.  ❞  the  balladeer  speaks  slowly,  taking  care  to  enunciate  each  word  —  as  if  he  means  to  sear  them  into  the  human's  mind,  syllable  by  syllable.  ❝  there  are  over  four  hundred  years  of  accumulated  interest  i'm  owed  as  well ...  i'm  going  to  take  EVERYTHING.  ❞  this  world  will  be  his  to  twist  and  warp  as  he  pleases,  a  piece  of  malleable  clay  in  the  hands  of  a  true  god.  every  day  that  passes  is  another  day  closer  to  the  moment  cyno  wakes  to  a  new  era  —  one  entirely  of  kunikuzushi's  creation.  

❝  as  far  as  the  fatui  are  concerned ...  do  you  really  think  i'm  not  well  aware  of  that?  ❞   it's  almost  amusing  how  he  thinks  it's  a  revelation  worthy  of  shaking  his  entire  worldview.   ❝  i'm  using  them  just  as  much  as  they're  using  me ...  but  in  the  end,  i'll  still  be  the  one  who  ascends  to  godhood.  ❞

the  balladeer  smiles  placidly,  even  as  his  eyes  remain  flat  and  expressionless.  ❝  let's  not  kid  ourselves  here,  ❞  voice  drops  to  an  amused  purr,  ❝  you  don't  actually  care  about  any  of  that  at  all ...  you're  just  saying  whatever  you  can  to  PROVOKE  ME  into  putting  you  out  of  your  misery.  ❞   how  pathetic.  ❝  it's  not  going  to  work.  i'm  not  going  to  give  you  the  satisfaction.  ❞

yet  when  his  fists  uncurl,  his  nails  are  stained  with  blood.

His explanation was INTIMATE, almost overly so. Cyno had never been anything if not perceptive, exceedingly adroit in piecing together the most wayward of clues to form a more complete narrative. Just the barest slip of tongue had clued him into a surprising - almost scandalous proposition; it seemed that the Balladeer didn't quite live up to the emotionally detached persona he seemed so incessantly partial to.

What a refreshing, albeit useless revelation. Had they met under more cordial circumstances, Cyno might have made a point of teasing him on those grounds.

He laughed weakly, shoulders trembling, head ducked with sheer incredulity. Fate would operate solely on her own terms, subsisting upon a plane of reality that could only be deemed thoroughly irrational by those who lived mortal lives. Equal sin was fated to meet equal judgement - or so he'd always thought. But that rhetoric had been quelled alongside the spirit that had once indwelt within him, the ensuing silence within him vacuous as a forgotten sepulchre.

"That won't be necessary." Cyno finally murmured, one hand reaching up absentmindedly to brush over the modified terminal still encased in gauze. "It seems you're quite familiar with the process. It's what happened to YOU, I surmise. Deemed entirely UNSUITABLE for your original purpose and thus bereaved of it, left to seek out whoever might take you in as a CHARITY case and justifying it to your pride by branding it as some kind of arbitrary partnership."

"Yet, it seems that all you're set upon is trying to claw your way back into the approval of the one who discarded you to begin with."

A sharp click of his tongue. "Are you fulfilled? Bitterly seeking your original purpose day by day? Trying to convince yourself that you might shake off the emblem of FAILURE if only you subject yourself to the whims of those who would manipulate and deceive you under the guise of collaboration?"