Potential/cannonical fluff for origin of the Archivist class

[Cirrylius]

So my favorite character was a largely self-taught,ridiculous, gestalt acanetcetera//archivist/factotum, but I guess I have never considered specifically how the archivist class could... be puzzled out in the first place, in the absence of a mentor, with the obvious exception of "vaguely spooky books"? Is there an origin story for the class, or examples of self taught NPCs published?

I have my own back story, of course, and it's not like it's currently under fire or anything, but I'm curious now after all this time if there's any actual published stuff I wasn't aware of.

My Google-fu is not strong

[Malphegor]

Since Archivists are basically 'Wizard but Divine', there's a decent chance the first Archivist was from some Wizard/Cleric multiclass trying to apply Wizard techniques to Clerical studies. who then taught their apprentice these methods without teaching the arcane side.

They are in Heroes of Horror though, and their whole thing is knowing dark secrets, so maybe it was an evil wizard.

[daremetoidareyo]

Considering that shugenja, ranger, druid, paladin and cleric spells are all open, it strikes me that an archivist is an animist. They crack into the code of latent spiritual energy and hack it. Sometimes it's appeasing plant spirits, sometimes it's specialized prayer, etc.

[Psyren]

Just because they don't get their powers from deities doesn't mean a deity couldn't have been the original source of the technique. I imagine the first Bards had divine origin too, coming about when music itself was invented - learning from the likes of Lillends, who in turn learned from a musical or artistic deity, for example. The first Archivists could easily have been along similar lines.

[DMVerdandi]

Snip
There is none stated. But one you could use is clairaudience or epiphany as a possible source of divine knowledge.

If the writings are prophetic and inspired, there is no need for a teacher, or rather the teacher is the source itself.
The scribing process could be one of solitary contemplation