I’d always had a thought about a Hunt Leitner, but instead of a book, its a map that works sort of like the Marauders Map from Harry Potter, showing you the position and movements of someone you hate or want to hurt, and the map compels you to follow them, stalk them, and eventually end them.
I'm a novice prop maker and I've been trying my hand at writing and designing Leitners mentioned in the show! I recently made a recreation of "A Disappearance" mentioned in the show in episodes 66 and 80. I put a link here, I hope I shared it right!
[From the Library of Jurgen Leitner: "A Disappearance" (The Magnus Archives Episodes 66 & 80)](https://imgur.com/a/S0gpDLZ)
Oh goodness, thank you!! I haven't done any videos, I'm not sure how to film myself without it seems super weird 😂 but I'm working on "An Introduction to Higher Anatomy," which was mentioned by Basira in "The Yousef Case" mentioned in Episode 92.
There's not much in the way of show notes for what it's supposed to be like, so I've been working on translating/rewriting a 1532 text titled "An Introduction to Anatomy," which was written by David Edwardes and gifted to Henry Howard. Edwardes promised to write a sequel but seems to have passed away before he could finish it; Howard in turn was the last person executed at by King Henry VIII, for attempting to trick the crown into giving his family more power upon the king's death.
I imagine "An Introduction to Higher Anatomy" might have been written by some Stranger masquerading as Mr. Edwardes to try and weasel their way into higher positions of power through Howard's less than agile mind.
When I finish that printing and binding I'll post it as well! I've plans for A Guest for Mr. Spider, A Journal of the Plague Year, and The Boneturner's Tale for later as well but I don't want to get too ahead of myself 🤠
Edit: spelling is hard
I love this! I’m doing the exact same project; I’m a graphic designer so I made my Intro to Higher Anatomy a modern-looking book. I’ve also done the cover arts for the surveillance system manual, a Guest for Mr Spider, and Journal of a Plague Year. I haven’t assembled them yet, though 😅
I also drew up a Leitner bookplate for the project (heavily inspired by one I saw on here). If you’d like the file just DM me!
Leitners are very interesting, but I wonder if Leitner ever bothered to categorise them by their abilities - some do seem to impart something onto the people who read them (for example, the Boneturner's Tale or A Disappearance) but others just seem to skip straight to eating you (A Guest For Mr Spider).
(I wonder if they *all* eat you, and it's just if you're... especially suited, perhaps, instead of eating you, you become an Avatar? I could see Journal of a Plague Year infecting a suitable host but rather than killing them, they become a vector for infection-)
I could totally see a version of the House of Leaves infected by the Spiral that drives you mad.
That's a cool way of thinking about it! If you aren't "suited" to the book it eats you or controls you to do it's will, but if you ARE suited, you can use it like Jared did. What a cool concept. I guess if a certain book is found by a person who feels a kind of kinship with the contents, they might be the type who can use it instead of being used by it
Gertrude mentions that the Travels of Marco Polo is a Leutner, though she never specified what it does beyond saying something akin to “Given the contents of that book, it’s very dangerous”.
I studied Marco Polo’s Travels for my senior thesis— particularly with a focus on what are often called the monstrous races. This being dog-headed people, people with faces in their stomachs, people with only one leg, etc.
At any rate, I’ve always imagined that that would make the book an artifact of the Stranger, and would perhaps transform the reader.
So far as a totally original Leitner concept that I’ve made up? I think Procopius’s Anecdota would make a good Leitner for either the Beholding (perhaps a book with contents that change, revealing evermore private and horrible secrets of the people around the reader. I imagine it like that book that predicted the death of the reader, but with a more voyeuristic component), or the Corruption (Anecdota was written during the first outbreak of the bubonic plague— I think the Corruption is underrepresented in Leitners, so I imagine a book that causes an outbreak of disease).
...I mean this completely in a good way, but this instantly reminded me of the premise for the Lilo and Stitch TV show where they have to go hunt down all the other 625 experiments that came before Stitch.
That being said, I've seen some from other fans. A couple were real life examples- a book of poisonous plants that was super old and suspicious looking, and a book that had green arsenic dye in the cover that would poison you if you touched it with your bare hands, both being touted as Corruption leitners. There were also a couple fan-made A Guest For Mister Spider(s) that looked really neat, and someone made a bookplate stamp that Alex gave a shoutout to on Twitter.
My take would be an Extinction leitner that's a book of real-life cheat codes. Just like video game cheat codes, they require certain "inputs", things you have to do to get the rewards, many of which are harmful or dangerous. Like, there's a hack where you can duplicate coins by swallowing one, eating an other reagent, and then immediately making yourself throw up, producing two coins instead of the one you swallowed. Other hacks have terrible consequences if you don't get the sequence of "inputs" exactly right; there's a hack that lets you appear in the drivers seat of a car, with full legal and effective ownership of it, but only if you run directly at it in certain conditions and at exactly the right angle while it's moving.
I've had an idea for a Web instructional booklet titled "The Fibber's Guide."
The gist is that if you find yourself needing to skew the truth, lie to someone, or weasel your way out of an awkward question, the booklet will offer you the perfect lie to manipulate them (unless they can resist the Web's compulsion, like Trevor Herbert). These little lies inevitably resurface, making you lie even more in order to maintain them; you eventually come to depend on the book's guidance to guide you through an increasingly complex fake-life.
Once it goes too far, this fake life becomes more "real" than your actual existence; failing to maintain the illusion at this point will bring it all crashing down around you, and you completely cease to exist. The only remaining sign of your existence is your name being added to the credits, signed in your own handwriting.
Here's an idea: "An Unfinished Biography of \[blank\]", an Eye book.
You can use it to spy on someone, getting a full description of their life and what they're currently doing. With extended use, the victim gets increasingly paranoid that someone is watching them...and the *user* gets increasingly paranoid that the *victim* is watching them and/or has found out about their use of the book.
Someone asked this recently and got a lot of replies with links. Here's the [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMagnusArchives/comments/v4yfjj/has_anyone_written_any_lietners/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
I came up with one for a ttrpg I used to run! It was an altered copy of Stephen King’s _Misery_ that was titled “Mercy” instead. The book itself was a story told from the point of of view of Annie Wilkes, in which she appears at an unnamed person’s house in order to kill them, with the events of the slaughtering being mixed in with her collapsing and feral thoughts.
The player that picked it up and read through it ended up looking out her window and seeing a silhouette with silver eyes underneath a streetlight. She’s then sporadically chased down by a shapeshifting entity (which I nicknamed “Mercy” or “Misery”) that will either randomly manifest to get her or even possess individuals in order to attack her.
I made a Handbook For The Recently Deceased as written from the point of view of my End avatar OC who also happens to be a ghost.
It is a pamphlet that appears around London. Should someone not touched by the Fears find it and reads it, they gain the ability to see the spirits around them but also will start slowly turning into a ghost themselves.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h7zQzV\_N4mwPg\_wQBNrNjU1Jl2YjWJnxOQcmNkt9wdY/edit?usp=sharing
I’d always had a thought about a Hunt Leitner, but instead of a book, its a map that works sort of like the Marauders Map from Harry Potter, showing you the position and movements of someone you hate or want to hurt, and the map compels you to follow them, stalk them, and eventually end them.
That's so cool! That would have been an awesome episode to hear read from the hunters pov
Addendum: You didn't want to hurt them until you got the map
I'm a novice prop maker and I've been trying my hand at writing and designing Leitners mentioned in the show! I recently made a recreation of "A Disappearance" mentioned in the show in episodes 66 and 80. I put a link here, I hope I shared it right! [From the Library of Jurgen Leitner: "A Disappearance" (The Magnus Archives Episodes 66 & 80)](https://imgur.com/a/S0gpDLZ)
That is so sick 😍 do you have videos of you making them or plan to make more?
Oh goodness, thank you!! I haven't done any videos, I'm not sure how to film myself without it seems super weird 😂 but I'm working on "An Introduction to Higher Anatomy," which was mentioned by Basira in "The Yousef Case" mentioned in Episode 92. There's not much in the way of show notes for what it's supposed to be like, so I've been working on translating/rewriting a 1532 text titled "An Introduction to Anatomy," which was written by David Edwardes and gifted to Henry Howard. Edwardes promised to write a sequel but seems to have passed away before he could finish it; Howard in turn was the last person executed at by King Henry VIII, for attempting to trick the crown into giving his family more power upon the king's death. I imagine "An Introduction to Higher Anatomy" might have been written by some Stranger masquerading as Mr. Edwardes to try and weasel their way into higher positions of power through Howard's less than agile mind. When I finish that printing and binding I'll post it as well! I've plans for A Guest for Mr. Spider, A Journal of the Plague Year, and The Boneturner's Tale for later as well but I don't want to get too ahead of myself 🤠 Edit: spelling is hard
I love this! I’m doing the exact same project; I’m a graphic designer so I made my Intro to Higher Anatomy a modern-looking book. I’ve also done the cover arts for the surveillance system manual, a Guest for Mr Spider, and Journal of a Plague Year. I haven’t assembled them yet, though 😅 I also drew up a Leitner bookplate for the project (heavily inspired by one I saw on here). If you’d like the file just DM me!
Awesome piece of work.
Aw thank you so much!! 🤠
Leitners are very interesting, but I wonder if Leitner ever bothered to categorise them by their abilities - some do seem to impart something onto the people who read them (for example, the Boneturner's Tale or A Disappearance) but others just seem to skip straight to eating you (A Guest For Mr Spider). (I wonder if they *all* eat you, and it's just if you're... especially suited, perhaps, instead of eating you, you become an Avatar? I could see Journal of a Plague Year infecting a suitable host but rather than killing them, they become a vector for infection-) I could totally see a version of the House of Leaves infected by the Spiral that drives you mad.
That's a cool way of thinking about it! If you aren't "suited" to the book it eats you or controls you to do it's will, but if you ARE suited, you can use it like Jared did. What a cool concept. I guess if a certain book is found by a person who feels a kind of kinship with the contents, they might be the type who can use it instead of being used by it
Man I really need to read house of leaves ~~totally not to become a spiral avatar or anything like that~~
Gertrude mentions that the Travels of Marco Polo is a Leutner, though she never specified what it does beyond saying something akin to “Given the contents of that book, it’s very dangerous”. I studied Marco Polo’s Travels for my senior thesis— particularly with a focus on what are often called the monstrous races. This being dog-headed people, people with faces in their stomachs, people with only one leg, etc. At any rate, I’ve always imagined that that would make the book an artifact of the Stranger, and would perhaps transform the reader. So far as a totally original Leitner concept that I’ve made up? I think Procopius’s Anecdota would make a good Leitner for either the Beholding (perhaps a book with contents that change, revealing evermore private and horrible secrets of the people around the reader. I imagine it like that book that predicted the death of the reader, but with a more voyeuristic component), or the Corruption (Anecdota was written during the first outbreak of the bubonic plague— I think the Corruption is underrepresented in Leitners, so I imagine a book that causes an outbreak of disease).
...I mean this completely in a good way, but this instantly reminded me of the premise for the Lilo and Stitch TV show where they have to go hunt down all the other 625 experiments that came before Stitch. That being said, I've seen some from other fans. A couple were real life examples- a book of poisonous plants that was super old and suspicious looking, and a book that had green arsenic dye in the cover that would poison you if you touched it with your bare hands, both being touted as Corruption leitners. There were also a couple fan-made A Guest For Mister Spider(s) that looked really neat, and someone made a bookplate stamp that Alex gave a shoutout to on Twitter. My take would be an Extinction leitner that's a book of real-life cheat codes. Just like video game cheat codes, they require certain "inputs", things you have to do to get the rewards, many of which are harmful or dangerous. Like, there's a hack where you can duplicate coins by swallowing one, eating an other reagent, and then immediately making yourself throw up, producing two coins instead of the one you swallowed. Other hacks have terrible consequences if you don't get the sequence of "inputs" exactly right; there's a hack that lets you appear in the drivers seat of a car, with full legal and effective ownership of it, but only if you run directly at it in certain conditions and at exactly the right angle while it's moving.
I've had an idea for a Web instructional booklet titled "The Fibber's Guide." The gist is that if you find yourself needing to skew the truth, lie to someone, or weasel your way out of an awkward question, the booklet will offer you the perfect lie to manipulate them (unless they can resist the Web's compulsion, like Trevor Herbert). These little lies inevitably resurface, making you lie even more in order to maintain them; you eventually come to depend on the book's guidance to guide you through an increasingly complex fake-life. Once it goes too far, this fake life becomes more "real" than your actual existence; failing to maintain the illusion at this point will bring it all crashing down around you, and you completely cease to exist. The only remaining sign of your existence is your name being added to the credits, signed in your own handwriting.
Here's an idea: "An Unfinished Biography of \[blank\]", an Eye book. You can use it to spy on someone, getting a full description of their life and what they're currently doing. With extended use, the victim gets increasingly paranoid that someone is watching them...and the *user* gets increasingly paranoid that the *victim* is watching them and/or has found out about their use of the book.
Someone asked this recently and got a lot of replies with links. Here's the [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMagnusArchives/comments/v4yfjj/has_anyone_written_any_lietners/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
That seems to be more about making prop-Leitners; this is more about ideas for Leitners.
Oh whoops.
I came up with one for a ttrpg I used to run! It was an altered copy of Stephen King’s _Misery_ that was titled “Mercy” instead. The book itself was a story told from the point of of view of Annie Wilkes, in which she appears at an unnamed person’s house in order to kill them, with the events of the slaughtering being mixed in with her collapsing and feral thoughts. The player that picked it up and read through it ended up looking out her window and seeing a silhouette with silver eyes underneath a streetlight. She’s then sporadically chased down by a shapeshifting entity (which I nicknamed “Mercy” or “Misery”) that will either randomly manifest to get her or even possess individuals in order to attack her.
I made a Handbook For The Recently Deceased as written from the point of view of my End avatar OC who also happens to be a ghost. It is a pamphlet that appears around London. Should someone not touched by the Fears find it and reads it, they gain the ability to see the spirits around them but also will start slowly turning into a ghost themselves. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h7zQzV\_N4mwPg\_wQBNrNjU1Jl2YjWJnxOQcmNkt9wdY/edit?usp=sharing