The Magnus Archives · Rusty Quill

RQ Network Feed Drop - Push the Roll with Ross Bryant: The Butterfly Factory Part 1 with Brennan Lee Mulligan

February 11, 2026·56 min·4 clips
Brennan Lee Mulligan reveals his character is a CIA art dealer funding abstract expressionism as a Cold War weapon against populist art.
The feed begins with business. Billy Hindle announces a Magnus anniversary live show at Crossed Wires in Sheffield, with Jonathan Sims and Alexander J. Newell appearing on the 5th of July. Then Kareem steps in and sets up Push the Roll with Ross Bryant as improvised comedy-horror actual play built around Call of Cthulhu and dark comedy. The sampler changes rooms fast. A nervous laugh nudges the table into play, where teasing and unease sit close together. Then the dust takes over. The bookstore feels airless before any threat appears: dust, old paper, tight shelves, the sense of walking farther in than planned. Used poems lean in uneven piles. The subjects move from history to architecture to art to spirituality, with the occult waiting farther back. A hand turns the rack. The chosen paperback is cheap and weathered, titled The Butterfly Factory, with beauty, pain, performance, and something watchful pressed into the cover. It will not quite settle. A young woman looks caught between dance and agony, while the black paint behind her keeps almost becoming a face, then slipping away again. The scene refuses to make that certain, which is what makes it work. The cover keeps pulling until the bookstore gives way to night and story. The closing promo returns to books, with a future Library of Jürgen Leitner novel where Hugh Franklin and Sebastian Everett face eerie aisles, arcane ambitions, and old traps. The library sounds hungry. The best part is the handoff from network announcement to shared dread, where one cheap book quietly opens the door.

As heard by us

A sharp comic-horror opener that leans on atmosphere, banter, and a slow slide into unease.

The episode folds a Rusty Quill anniversary note into a handoff to Push the Roll with Ross Bryan, an improvised Call of Cthulhu comedy-horror actual-play from the creators of 8th Slade Nobody.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A recent Rusty Quill feed drop that turns into improvised comedy-horror tabletop in part one of The Butterfly Factory.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →
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