Archives in Podcasts: Worlds Beyond Number: The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One, Chapter 4

SPOILER Warning: Episode 53 of The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One, "The Queen of Swords" as well as the entire podcast, just to be on the safe side!

And so we come to the penultimate episode of Book 1 of The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One. The archival themes and settings have been scarce through the remaining chunk of episodes, but I can always count on the Citadel to provide some exquisitely morally dubious recordkeeping to carry me through to the end. So, without further ado, let's talk about the archives in the Court of Reverie.

What you need to know before we get into the nitty gritty of it all is that after the Battle of Twelve Brooks Suvi (Aabria Iyengar) was not so much arrested by the Citadel for treason, but strongly encouraged to return by her adoptive mother, Steel, who then put into motion plans to "clean up" the situation. Eursulon (Lou Wilson) and Ame (Erika Ishii) snuck back into the Citadel to rescue Suvi, but found there were a few loose threads preventing them from getting out of Dodge. One of those loose threads being the mystery surrounding Stars of the Southern Sky, a book Suvi brought to Ame and Grandmother Wren in Episode 1 at Steel's insistence. Turns out, it isn't a book found in the Citadel's library, but a project from the Court of Reverie, a place within the Citadel focused on illusion magic. The party decides to split up with Ame and Eursulon headed to Reverie to figure out why this project ended up in the Citadel's secret archives.

Official Art for The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One, Book Four. Art by Karla Ortiz @kortizart

I want to start with the GM's, Brennan Lee Mulligan's, description of the Court of Reverie because, like so many of his narratives, Brennan finds a way to inspire awe and unease with every new section of the Citadel the trio visit.

Astride their gallithopter, Eursulon and Ame wheel through the skies heading upwards, towards one of the many courts of the Citadel, Reverie.

You approach a large platform neighborhood, something strange about this one, everything about it seems ephemeral. You realize it is made of muslin and canvas, its buildings separated like the pages of storybooks, pop-up structures. All the buildings appear to be made of origami folded paper. And as you look, everything appears to seem almost like optical illusions. The trees seem two dimensional, but always present their broadest face to you as you move, these glass ornament trees. You see roads lined with swans that swim in rivers, but the rivers are not of water, they are of painted paper mache, and the swans move along them two-dimensionally like art, and yet you can hear the sound of rushing water.

As you move swiftly through the Court of Reverie, having gotten the location of the library where this information was kept, you arrive in a small cul-de-sac with various bookshops, even though you realize that the shops have neither registered nor payment at them, but simply in how they are constructed. They are adorable townhome places, gilded letters in the front with various numbers on them that as you look at them, you suddenly feel agog because you're seeing numbers that you can't remember. What are these symbols? They meet, they’re somewhere in between one and ten. But they're not two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine, which ones are they? It is a confusing place to be and you look down, not even recognizing what was written down in Iulia's notes, but at least being able to match it to one of the bookshops that has been closed for the night.

Yup, equal parts whimsical and uncanny valley, which makes sense for a court focused primarily on the manipulation of reality. According to the Player's Handbook, the School of Illusion in D&D is all about magic that "dazzles the senses, befuddles the mind, and tricks even the wisest folk." It's a type of magic that walks the line between benign entertainment and mind-shattering devastation depending on the wizard wielding such power.

It makes sense, then, that Reverie - a word that means to be pleasantly lost in thought, as though in a daydream - would house the archives of probable war crimes committed by the Citadel in a place where the literal environment is untrustworthy. What better way to prevent people from discovering your secrets than to ensconce them in a place where nothing can be presumed to be real?

If we want to get real philosophical, which I do on occasion, maintaining an archives in an illusory environment could also be perceived as commentary on archives in general. Archival collections contain records and materials that document historical events, but collections, no matter how thorough your research and acquisition of materials, always contain gaps. We can never know the whole Truth, so the idea that archives store everything and in doing so maintain historical Truth is an illusion born of human error, ego, and misinformation.

Brennan goes on to describe a guardian stalking the floors of the bookshop:

The shadows cover you both. As you cast the spell, Ame, Detect Magic, the guardian within swivels. You just notice the auras moving. You can’t see a face or a body or anything, but there is something guarding this place, which is in some ways an indication that you are in the right place. The information you seek would not be left unattended if it is as important as it seems.

You wait, hidden in shadows on that Stealth check. You look out, illusion magic, powerful, Temori. Why can't you see this Temori? You realize that there is an Invisibility Temori patrolling this space.

For context, a Temori is the physical manifestation of a spell created by wizards of the Citadel. They represent the mass production and homogenization of magic practiced within the institution and utilized within the Khemsarazan Empire. But they're also really cool and this one is no exception. It's the best idea for security, especially for a place that has to look unassuming enough to not warrant security in the first place.

Once Ame and Eursulon enter the bookshop and sneak past the Temori, we get a look at the archives proper:

Both of you, slink up the stairs carefully. Witch and Wild One, here in the heart of the Citadel. You arrive here in this, you realize not a library, it's an archive. These matters are resolved. One guardian set to look over them for these are those missions of the Citadel which have been put to bed, marked as done. You arrive upstairs.

Just because materials are in the archives doesn't mean the collection stops being active. Processed collections can undergo additional accessioning - adding new materials - or be deaccessioned - removed from archival holdings - depending on institutional demands, user needs, or societal pressures. In the case of the Citadel's mustache-twirling archives, materials only appear to be stored there once a mission or task has been completed.

Brennan continues:

Arriving upstairs, Eursulon, your scent leads you to a corner of the room. With a 26, Ame, you behold an upper story to this place with a series of marble side tables, small circular side tables, a little bit larger, almost like a cocktail table that drinks would be placed upon. You see upon them, there are hovering bubbles made of soap, sort of hanging in the air and within them are objects, many of them scrolls, some folded paper with different crayon drawn, like different painted drawings on each side. You see that there are a number of other objects throughout. You see there is a festooned wand of twirling ribbons in one and you see a scintillating set of crystal keys floating in space. At the far end, you see all these wondrous treasures kind of floating here on these tables, each one of them on a table that is then tagged with a list of arcane illusory numbers, gibberish numbers essentially, that mark it for a number of different project uses, the different Citadel projects have used them. On that 26 you also arrive at a thick ledger book in the corner with the exact description of the number that Iulia gave you.

The book outlines a project in which a cipher would be created. Stars of the Southern Sky, a book only in disguise, but actually simply an object capable of carrying magic. An accompanying object was created to go along with it as a side vessel to the project, a scroll with a number of drawings of a creature from spirit known as a Garran. And as you affirm and see the attached scroll case, the origin of the scent issues forth. A powerful illusion mimicking Eioghorain’s scent.

That's a lot to take in, I know, but stick with me. Obviously, this isn't where the Citadel is storing their administrative records. God knows what labyrinthine structure was concocted to keep schedules, name cloaks, and cumulative GPAs hidden. This is where they put the "Are we the baddies?" records and artifacts because, as Brennan says in the Fireside Chat for the episode:

One of the things I've tried to do with the Citadel is depict how enormous institutions with incredible resources have incredible security but it can't be perfect. Right? Like, food's gotta get in. The big thing that was protecting this record is that you never in a million years would've known to look for it....The jumbled up numbers. The illusory numbers. Yes, there's an invisible stalker Tamori, that's pretty good for something that no one should ever come to look for. And ultimately the Citadel has to do this weird thing where, "Hey, we need secrecy" and it's like "Right, but we need to know what we've done." In a hundred years it might be all different wizards. They have to have some way of knowing what we're capable of doing. And the only way to do that is to keep a record somewhere.

It's the ultimate fault of empires and imperial institutions. They always retain evidence of their wrongdoings because they have a compulsory need to remember all of their wrongdoings in case they need to do MORE wrongdoings. I also think it isn't out of the question to factor in ego, especially with the Citadel and how the wizards view other forms of magic from witches, spirits, sorcerers, etc. They already have a gallery of trapped spirits, some of whom are very powerful, which is an impressive feat in and of itself. On top of that, they also have a place where they keep a record of all the shady shit they've done, like how they got one over on the former and current Witch of the World's Heart, a station of tremendous power within Umora. Even if the archives is secret, those in the know have a self-congratulatory sanctum of the great or subtle workings of wizards from which to pull.

Of course, that's just me speculating. We don't know if everything featured in the archives was successful, just that they're resolved matters that can be reviewed and reused or repurposed in the future. It would be fascinating to know if the Citadel has a special place for failed projects versus successful ones and how they're preserved, if they are at all. For that matter, how do they preserve the materials they currently have? Do the soap bubble alarms keep the projects in suspended animation? What's the oldest project in the archives? How many people even know about its existence? Who's bringing drinks into the room and why are they allowed back in?

Brennan previously mentioned the items within the archives having tags with gibberish numbers on them, which shows that the Citadel has a system for cataloging, and the ledger Ame reads from essentially functions as a finding aid with a description of the project and its usage included in the document. What's missing in all of this is whether or not there's an archivist or a team of archivists who maintain the space. If the Citadel has gone as far as creating an archives for these specific projects, it stands to reason that someone would have to be in charge of it for the sake of streamlining the acquisition and processing of resolved projects while tracking usage for administrative purposes and general paranoia. At the very least they archmages would probably want someone in place to take the fall if anything goes sideways. Allow me to offer some possible wizards for the job based on archival terminology:

The Wizard Schema

The Wizard Seal

The Wizard Series

The Wizard Shred

The Wizard Slow

The Wizard Solo

The Wizard Stacks

The Wizard System

Not the most exciting group of wizards, I know, but any one of them could probably do the job. Truly, just having any archivist would be an upgrade but I'm not in charge of the story. Fine, Brennan, let your players infiltrate a secret archives at night with only one invisible guardian. Sure, Brennan, let Ame rip pages out of the finding aid/ledger so she can...wait, what?!

Erika Ishii I think I'm going to... take the pages.

[Pages rip out of the book]

Brennan Lee Mulligan You grab ‘em. Feels good to steal.

Erika Ishii Yeah.

Ya know what? I'm gonna give Erika/Ame that one because they're dealing with a lot and they just found out they were cursed by someone just because they existed and it was part of a larger conspiracy leading towards their possible death so...let the witch have the pages. It's not the first time anyone's stolen something from the archives and it won't be the last. And, sure, let Eursulon take a bunch of dream keys, as a treat. I'm the last person who's going to defend the Citadel or raise my hackles about theft from imperial holdings.

In all honesty, the world of Umora has been one of my favorite to learn about over the last few years. I love the characters, I love the setting, I love the different ways magic works, and I'm excited to get back into the thick of it whenever the team decides it's time to venture into Book 2. I don't know if we'll ever get any meaningful looks at more of the Citadel now that our main trio are all personae non gratae, but you never know. Brennan's devious that way, so I look forward to overanalyzing whatever tidbits I get about more archives, especially in the Citadel. Because, as Erika puts it in the Fireside Chat:

Erika: Thank God that wizards are good at paperwork.

As a side note: World's Beyond Number wrapped a successful Kickstarter campaign for a graphic novel of the prologue Children's Adventure, which is exciting because if the trend continues, then I might get some actual artwork for the Kasov Collection, the Library of Stars, and the Reverie Archives to examine in the distant future!!

Yay for me, Sam, specifically.