The Projectionist

Behind the Stalls' screen is the Watcher's Vault: his archive, steel shelving going up into the dark, cans of film and boxes of tape on every shelf, and old television sets among them, some still on. The Last Ticket you came in on admitted one. It wasn't you.

The Watch

At the far end of the nave is his desk, his chair, and in front of it a wall of sets, thirty-seven across and sixteen high, all showing one picture.

On the wall, the stacks, and in them something tall with a light for a face.

The keeps

Three keeps open off the nave behind round steel doors. Use a door or its wheel and the wheel turns, the bolts draw back one after another ("The wheel turns. Somewhere in the door, bolts draw back, one after another."), and the door swings in. On a plinth in each is what he kept:

• The Omni's Heart: every colour at once, turning in rings of its own light. "What made the Omni more than a gun." See the Omni.
• What's Left of the Carrier: a knot of it, still beating, static coming off it like heat. Take it and its static pours out, and every Tuned near you is loose for a few seconds. See the Carrier.
• His First Reel, in a glass case: a dented film can. On the lid, in his hand: THE OTHER SIDE. FIRST. DO NOT RUN.

Taking all three earns What He Kept.

The Tuned

Standing in the aisles of the stacks: people from the neck down (a cardigan, a shirt done up to the collar, slippers), and where the head should be an old television set, its screen bowed out, static on it. The ones who watched too long; he keeps them in his Vault so they won't watch anything else (24 health each).

• They only move while you're looking at them. Look at one and it comes for you in jerks, like a picture with frames missing, your face on its screen. Look away and it stops dead, however it was standing, and stays like that.
• Close, and watched, it takes your head in both hands and tunes you: it hurts, the static comes in at the edges of your eyes, the colour goes out of things, and you can hardly move.
• Flash an Usher's Lamp at one and its screen whites out: it can't move for four seconds, watched or not.
• In the dark, or in the Projectionist's light, they move whether you're looking or not.

Some of them drop a Vacuum Tube (three times in ten). Two of them, with glass, iron and redstone, make two Old Sets of your own that switch on and off.

The Projectionist

Bring all three of his things to the Watch and every set on the wall goes to it, and it steps down out of them. Twice the height of a man and thin, in a long coat that's all film, frames on frames of it, hanging to the floor and moving; its hands long and grey; one arm ending in a crank; and for a head a cinema's projector, its housing black and dented, its two reels turning on top, its lens a white light you can't look into. It runs the show, for the ones on the other side.

How it fights

• Beam: its lens's light swept across the Watch. It burns, and while you're in it the Tuned can move whether you look at them or not.
• Reruns: the old ones, projected onto the air, grey and flickering, doing again the one thing everyone remembers. Where each will strike shows on the floor first.
  • The Hollow Saint: its shadow beam, straight through where you were standing.
  • The Gardener: a ring of thorns out from under your feet.
  • The Deaf King: both fists down, and the ring of it out over the floor. Jump it.
  • The Carrier: its beam, down out of nothing onto where you're standing.
• Lash: a strip of its film round you, holding you ("Its film's round you. You can't move.").
• Splice: a jump cut, and it's behind you.
• Reels: each third gone, it changes its reels. Hit it then: it takes half as much again.
• Crank (from two thirds down): it cranks itself, and everything it does is twice as fast for a while.
• Intermission (the last third): the lights go out, every set and every bulb, and there's only its lens. "Please remain seated."

Fire doesn't hurt it, and nothing hurts it mid-splice or before it's all the way out of the picture.

How to survive it

• Keep the Tuned in front of you, and in sight, when you can. In its beam and in the intermission they come anyway.
• Watch the floor for where a rerun will land.
• Save your hardest hits for its reel changes.
• Bring an Usher's Lamp for the Tuned.

Its end

Dead, the picture burns through from the middle, as film does stuck in the gate, and what's left of it is its lens. Burning it through earns The Final Reel.

The Projectionist's Lens: hold it and every hostile thing near you shows through the walls, outlined in its light.

Then the Watcher runs his first reel. The projector on his desk clatters into life:

A dark so big it has a shape, sat, and an eye in it opening, turning to look at you. Then the Door at the End of the World, its static gone black. Seeing it earns What He Kept Out. What's on the other side is the Viewer.