Is the VM an autograph or copy?

[Scarecrow]

If the VMS was financed by a patron it certainly broadens who might have been involved in creating it.

True. A lot more possibilities, but then that would have exposed the system and potentially the content to a wider audience, a thing that it seems to me, they tried to avoid in the first place.
And that makes me wonder why a one-shot, why not reuse the system for more things? People tend to have more than one secret in their closets.