| “ | We talk about light and dark being opposites, but they are no more opposites than a gaudy paint is the opposite of the wall upon which is sits. Without light, there is darkness. But without darkness, there is nothing. We sit, upon our tiny spinning ball of dirt, desperately building our own tiny suns, our own illuminating shelters from the truth of existence, clustering around them like insects, never realizing that they rob us of the revelations that come… in the dark. That our wretched eyes bind us to this grotesque world in which we live. | „ |
| ~ Manuela's beliefs regarding the Dark. |
| “ | In my most wretched hours, I wonder – perhaps it was us. Perhaps we simply lacked faith. We weren’t worthy. The world wasn’t worthy. But – no. We were ready. We had earned our dark rapture. And we were robbed. | „ |
| ~ Manuela on the failure of the Extinguished Sun ritual. |
Manuela Dominguez is a major antagonist of Season 4 of the Rusty Quill horror podcast The Magnus Archives.
She was a scientist who as a young woman developed a fixation for the concept of darkness, believing it purer than light. This led her to become a high-ranking member of the People's Church of the Divine Host, a cult worshipping the godlike embodiment of the Dark. Serving as the right-hand of the group's leader Maxwell Rayner, she was responsible for creating the "Dark Star", an artifact meant to help bring about the ritual of the "Extinguished Sun", which would bring the Dark into the world and cast everything into permanent night.
She was voiced by Layla Mannings.
Personality[]
| “ | “But Manuela,” they would say, “All life comes from light. The energy that sustains us is drawn from the Sun, from its warm, beautiful radiance.” And I tell them to look again at ‘life,’ at the pain and suffering and misery that it brings with it. The nature that light gives us is corrupt and base, tearing itself into pieces, spinning to its own sick destruction. The life that is given to us by the stars, by the Sun, can barely sustain itself for a century. | „ |
| ~ Manula beliefs regarding life. |
Manuela was perhaps one of the most zealous worshipers of the Dark besides Maxwell himself. She strongly believed that Dark was the true and natural state of the universe, and believed light to be an intruder, pathetically imitating the Dark. She despised the light and all that came with it, believing that the life that it brought was nothing more than a heretical illusion that ultimately meant nothing, and emphasizing the flaws with conscious existence in her philosophy. Although she feared the literal Dark, she did not see this a taking away from her faith.
Manuela's fanaticism seemed to have been born of her parents, who were similarly fanatical, only seemingly more hypocritically so, and for a more traditional and less nihilistic religion. Ironically, Manuela's fall to the Dark was initially inspired by a desire to leave religion altogether and learn how the world really functioned through science, which led her to finding her own "true" religion, which she believed was more valid than all others. She held nothing but contempt for those who did not share her views and showed no remorse for the death and torment she wrought, seeing humans as deserving it due to being creatures of light.
Due to her years studying science, Manuela was a skilled physicist. Despite this, she was entirely willing to abandon science for the sake of her faith.
Biography[]
Early Life[]
| “ | My parents… were very religious, fueled with a zealotry and zeal that only now I am beginning to truly understand. They believed in the immanence of Christ, descending and purging the Earth of all the inequities and sin that they saw in the world. I was brought up to believe in the light of God, his radiant, illuminating presence, and the promise that he was coming to banish the darkness forever. It didn’t save them, of course, and when they lay there dying, I saw in their faces the fear that they had always denied, the confidence in their own salvation fading with each step closer to the end. | „ |
| ~ Manuela on her parents. |
Manuela was born into a religious family, to a pair of apparently hypocritical parents who deeply feared the "unnatural". Hoping to distance herself from them, Manuela pursued a career in science, which they were against. Nevertheless, she was eventually successful in becoming a physicist, and cut of contact with them.
Manuela began studying dark matter, and in doing so, began to believe that dark was the natural state of the universe. Around this time, she met Maxwell Rayner, who explained to her his philosophy regarding the Dark, and his desire to cast the world into eternal night. Manuela loved what he said, and gave him her undying devotion, swearing to do whatever she could to help this ritual come about.
Sometime, Manuela's parents were on their deathbed, and she returned to her childhood home to see them one last time. However, instead of comforting them, Manuela gloated about her own religion which she believed would keep her from death and taunted her parents for their faith not saving them. She then left them to die and never returned home.
Second-In-Command of the People's Church of the Divine Host[]
| “ | That’s all I really came here to say. To let you know that we had succeeded. And to make your boss an offer on behalf of Maxwell. I suppose there is also an element of provocation here as well. Even with the loss of Darvish, we will still be victorious. We have watched you, Gertrude. I suppose you’re used to that. But we know what you’re capable of. So consider this a challenge: I would love nothing more than to see you destroyed by the radiance of the dark sun we have created. So by all means do your worst. Or prostrate yourself, both of you, before the Forever Blind, and perhaps you might be spared. Maxwell and I await your decision with keen interest. | „ |
| ~ Manuela to Gertrude Robinson. |
Due to her background as a physicist, Maxwell tasked Manuela with creating the "Dark Star", an artifact of darkness that would serve as a counterpart to the sun in their ritual. In order to create this, Manuela was sent to the Daedelus, a space station owned by Maxwell, as well as Simon Fairchild and the Lukas Family. She brought with her a nyctophobe trapped in a small box, who she used as a battery of fear in her experiments. She kept this person secret from Jan Kilbride, who was her only crewmate, and although she seemed to act friendly to Jan, she looked down on him for his perceived gullibility. Eventually, she was successful in creating the "Dark Star" and returned to Earth, where she brought it to Maxwell.
As the final preparations were made for the ritual, Manuela made a statement to the Magnus Institute, a paranormal investigative agency run by an old friend of Maxwell's. There, she told the archivist, Gertrude Robinson, of the Church's plans and gloated about the power of the Dark.
Now close to fully prepared for the ritual, Manuela went with Maxwell and the bulk of the cult to Ny-Ålesund, a town owned by the Church and the northernmost human settlement in the world. There, they began the ritual to put out the sun and bring about eternal night, Manuela leading alongside Maxwell and orchestrating the sacrifices. The ritual was briefly successful, and the Dark came into the world, but left shortly thereafter, having killed half of the cult.
With the ritual being a failure, Manuela remained in Ny-Ålesund by herself while the rest of the cult returned to Britain. There, she protected the Dark Sun, hoping the someday bring the ritual back into fruition. After staying on her own for about 4 years, her hiding place was approached by Jonathan Sims and Basira Hussain, agents of the Magnus Institute. Jon forced her to tell him about the fall of the Church and then went to see the "Dark Star", which destroyed itself upon him looking at it. Seeing her creation destroyed, Manuela tried to flee but was caught inside of the Distortion, a reality-warping ally of the Institute, who left her trapped inside of infinite corridors for the rest of her natural life.
Powers and Abilities[]
| “ | Only myself, Maxwell, and Natalie could even look upon it. It will annihilate you both in an instant. | „ |
| ~ Manuela on the power of her creation. |
Besides Maxwell himself, Manuela seemed to be the most powerful human servant of the Dark. Using a mix of her scientific knowledge and the power of the Dark, she was able to create the "Dark Star", an almost impossibly powerful artifact that gave off darkness like a sun gave of light, and that could only exist when she changed reality slightly. As one of the most committed members of the People's Church, she was one of the only people who could look upon it.
Quotes[]
| “ | It didn’t save them, of course, and when they lay there dying, I saw in their faces the fear that they had always denied, the confidence in their own salvation fading with each step closer to the end. For a long time, I hoped that they had been right about their beliefs. I remembered in my heart that deep down they were vicious, spiteful people who used their faith to hurt others, and I fondly imagined them discovering themselves in an afterlife other than the one they had assumed as their destination. But I no longer think of such things. | „ |
| ~ Manuela describing the death of her parents. |
| “ | Did you know that the oldest single thing on Earth given life by the light is the Great Basin bristlecone pine tree? Five thousand years, some of them have been alive. Five millennia. That’s it. That’s all. Even the longest lived of the Sun’s children can barely make it a few thousand years. Compare this to the uncountable eternity of darkness, stretching back far beyond when the sickness of an illuminated universe was thrown into existence. If the words of my parents hold any truth, then God is the true monster, and “let there be light” the most evil words ever spoken. | „ |
| ~ Manuela stating her distaste for life. |
| “ | Dark energy. Dark matter. Dark radiation. The true holy trinity. Almost the entirety of reality is made of them, shaped by them, moved by them, and yet they remain entirely impervious to the light. They resist all attempts to measure and expose them, visible only in their effect upon the world, their nature guessed at, seeping through the holes in our knowledge of the cosmos. All of those things that are believed to be ‘existence’ – matter, energy, radiation – all of them are utterly dwarfed by their dark counterparts. Which leads to an inevitable question: if the fundamental building blocks are so predominantly the dark parts, is it not the light-twisted versions of them that are the deviation, the pale reflection. Perhaps it should be matter and light mater. | „ |
| ~ Manuela on dark matter. |
| “ | Maxwell plunged its claws into his chest, freeing the darkness within him, and we waited. And we sang. And we exalted in divine stillness. The darkness was beyond anything that could be imagined, and even in my wildest experiments in the void of space, I could not have believed such a peace was possible, as I felt in the quiet whimpering terror of that place. | „ |
| ~ Manuela describing the sacrifice of the Still and Lightless Beast. |
| “ | But we got so close. We touched it. There is another world, a world of still and quiet darkness, where no heat touches, and death cannot find you. You might wander beneath that empty sky of void forever, and never see a light to guide your way. No left, no right. No up or down. Only forward, into the crowded, shivering gloom. For that night is not empty, far from it. Things move there, the sound of shuffling. Scuttling. Crawling. A scream. The fall of gentle stagnant raindrops that chills you as you try desperately to know if that is the sound of the storm… or something out there. | „ |
| ~ Manuela describing the world of the Dark. |
