i personally would say it connects very well with ravencroft being atleast the henchmen, if not master... hear me out, oh and spoilers for puzzle box
meridith was not first mentioned in her "reveal" but rather on a newspaper, where the recommendations to avoid a mysterious blackout sickness were as follows
"keep dry, travel as much as possible, and read often"
we also know some important information about spelleaters from the requisitions form: how they are made, a sub-standard use of the yellow crypt, not a virus but this "blackout virus" could be what allows them to "capture" people and later turn them into spelleaters and that they are some kind of hivemind or can communicate through [redacted]
going back to meridith's advice however doesn't entirely make sense for biological warfare, "keep dry" would likely have little to no effect on drugs used but if you instead used something like the yellow crypt itself which relies on burning people it could be rather important but to our knowledge there's only 2 people that know and can replicate the crypt
"travel as much as possible" is, however not a big surprise, higher chance of catching blackout but "read often" is also important, we have something pretty close to clear that reading/knowledge is pretty important to spell eaters being the picture from hush (if that is a spelleater, it doesn't appear as warped) but spelleaters being some kind of a hivemind and likely intelligent could be rather useful especially if the "head" of the hivemind would be someone like ravencroft, the whole gain as much knowledge as you can to "create a true democracy of the learned" was sorta his whole shtick wasn't it, if you can have god knows how many links to so many minds then what exactly could you *not* learn
but lastly "how could you become the head of a hivemind" im thinking that he potentially used the crypt, or knowledge he gained from how the crypt works on himself, he has already made "backups" of his memory, protection from the worst of the effects, and seems to be perfectly willing to nearly kill himself to learn more (even got himself burned for that purpose) and at the end stated "or you will laugh at what i become" (not word for word, probobly)
either way, hopefully i explained that whole theory, though there's probably more i could of added, really think hes gonna be the master, he has a motive and a means to accomplish it
