The Viewer

Description

Through the Door at the End of the World, its static gone black, is the Other Side: a stage behind the screen your world is on. Out in the dark past the stage's edge, sat, is something so big the dark has its shape: knees like hills, shoulders up in the black, a head you can't see the top of, its hands on the stage's edge with fingers like felled trees, and an eye. It's watched your world since the first picture anyone ever saw. Now it's seen you, and it wants to see you up close.

The Watcher is there before you, at a projector.

Its gaze

Its gaze wanders the stage, a pool of its light drifting toward whoever is out in the open. Stand in it with its eye in sight of you and you're Seen: the edges of everything go white, more and more. Seen right through, it reaches for you.

A painted flat between you and the eye hides you. The stage is dressed with them, each a picture of somewhere from your story. Getting through the first third without ever being seen right through earns Out of Sight.

How it fights

• Lean: its head comes down out of the dark to the stage's edge, the eye right there. That's when to hit it: it takes half as much again.
• Slam: a hand lifted over you (its shadow on the boards first) and brought down. Jump the ring.
• Drum: its fingers along the front of the stage, one after another.
• Grab: it lifts you up in front of its eye ("It's got you. It's looking right at you. (Hit the hand!)"). Hit the hand and it lets go.
• Sweep (from two thirds down): a hand dragged low across the stage, through the scenery. Jump it. The flats it hits, or slams, are smashed to splinters.

With its eye shut, nothing hurts it. Hit a hand and it feels half of it. Fire does nothing.

Stand-ins

Cut-outs of people (a man in a hat, a woman in a coat, an usher), painted plywood on little hinged stands, their backs bare boards and a strut (10 health). They come hopping out of the wings the way scenery is moved across a stage. They don't hurt you: they find you. One that sees you swings its arm up on its split pin and points, and the eye comes straight to you. Knock them over.

His Last Projector

The Watcher runs it from the stage ("His. He'll run it."). Twice he loads it:

• At two thirds: the Omni's Heart in its lamp. Every colour at once, thrown out over the dark into its eye. It reels, blinded: hit it then and it takes double. That earns Every Colour at Once.
• At one third: the Carrier through its gate. Your world, all of it, carried out on the beam onto it. The stand-ins burn, and it gets up. Stood, its gaze is quicker and its hands come more often, the footlights flicker and go out, and it reaches for the projector with both hands from either side. Beat them back. Being there earns It Gets Up.

How to survive it

• Move from flat to flat. Don't stand in its light with the eye in view.
• Knock the stand-ins over before they point.
• Hit the eye when it leans in, and hit it hard while it reels.
• In the last third, guard the projector: hit the hands that reach for it.
• If you fall off the edge, the dark puts you back on the boards ("The dark doesn't keep you. You're back on the boards - it hurt.").

The last show

It can't be killed. At the last it's held: it stops, and its eye goes to the projector. The Watcher threads his first reel and runs it, for it.

Its own picture, on it. It goes still, sits back, and watches itself. The credits roll, you're sent home (the black door is static again), and you're given a record, Thank You for Watching. Seeing it earns the advancement of the same name. Chapter Six is done.

The credits roll to their last line and stop. "...not yet." His hand comes up through them and shuts round you. That's Chapter Seven.