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meteor752 · 3 days ago

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The Watchers, my take on the lore

I love me some characters, and I love me some lovecraftean entities, so this was honestly inevitable

Most watcher lore seem to kinda group the watchers together as one entity, with very little room for individuality for them, which I think is kinda boring, so you know I’m changing that for funsies. This is not gonna be based on Martyn’s lore fully, I’m gonna keep some elements and then just kinda run with it because why not you know lol. Also I’ve only watched a little of EVO, but it’s not really gonna be based much on what happened in that series anyways.

So Grian, or Xelqua or whatever, created the concept for the games when he first became a Watcher, but despite that he’s not the actual gamemaster. Every series has had a Watcher in control, who’s been looking over the games, made sure they ran smoothly, and also occasionally meddled. With the existence of eight games now, we’ve therefore met eight Watchers.

First we’ve got Ihcá, the gamemaster of Third Life. Ihcá is very by the books, to an almost scary degree. You give them a task, they will complete it exactly as you asked it to be completed, no funny business. It’s because of this that the rules of Third Life are the most simple, the initial pitch for the life series was just that, three lives, red life you get bloodthirsty, once you’re out you’re gone. Unlike the other Watchers, Ihcá did not spice this up to any degree, as they saw no need to. They are cold, distanced, and keep to themselves.

I also wanna go over the relationship every gamemaster has to their respective winner, which is an interesting case for Ihcá, since their winner is not only a fellow Watcher, but also someone who broke the rules of the game. Grian and Ihcá could not be more different, and they never really cared much for him, even after he ascended to Their ranks. What did matter to them however, was when he killed three people with a trap, even as he was a green. If it had been anyone else, Ihcá would have taken them out right then and there, but Grian does have immunity against their powers thanks to his status. They do resent him for ruining their game, but it’s not something they mull over. As I said, they’re quite detached.

Next we’ve got Quevik, the gamemaster for Last life. Unlike their predecessor, Quevik changed up a lot of the initial design of the games, all to make it worse and more brutal for the players. The difference in the amount of lives you start with to spark more jealousy, only one enchanter to encourage stealing, and of course, the boogeyman, a seed for deception and betrayal. Quevik is creative and adaptive, they saw what the players focused on in the first game, and went in hard on it. They thrive in chaos and unease, and especially likes to feed on loneliness, hence the rules that Red Names were to be shunned from their teams. To them, Last Life was perfect in every way, except for one.

This is to no one’s surprise, but Quevik absolutely detests Scott. Just like how Grian defied Ihcá’s rules, he had defied Quevik’s, and they were not happy. The betrayals that the boogeyman curse brought was to their absolute delight, their favourite players were easily BigB and Bdubs because of it, but here stood Scott, refusing to take the life of his teammates, and instead going down to red. Quevik heavily considered just killing him right then and there for his infringement, but since it was right before the final session, they allowed him to live, just for the possibility of him betraying his allies in the final battle. Not a day has gone by where they haven’t regret that decision, you can still sometimes Hear them grumbling about it.

Tae & Nha is the watcher for Double Life. Tae & Nha is an interesting case of being two entities, but still only being one individual. They function very strangely, often switching between which primary voice to use when speaking, especially when interacting with players. Watchers feed on all emotions, and one of their favourites is confusion. For Tae & Nha, the soulmate system was a very obvious choice. After all, they are two entities with one “soul”, so they just took from their own experiences when designing it, made it easier. Most of the soulmates pairs were made random, but they did customise some things, such as Martyn’s separation from Ren, and Grian and Scar being together. So simple, yet effective way to torture them both.

Just like the winners before her, Pearl broke the rules of the game by not sticking to her soulmate, even if it wasn’t by choice. But despite that, Tae & Nha love her. From the beginning, Tae & Nha knew that there would only be one winner, and that the despair that the final pair would feel when they found out they would have to fight and kill the person they had spent all season with would be delicious. But Pearl delivered that devastation and more in the very first session, and retained it throughout all the series. Scarlet Pearl was such a delight to them in fact, that they let her keep some of those feelings even after the series ended, and the next one began. They delight in their winner, and the suffering they let her keep.

For Limited Life we have Gemíín, one of the most powerful Watchers in the roster. Gemíín is also one of the most daring ones, taking the concept that was first laid out by Grian and changing it up a lot. They’re kinda the opposite to Ihcá, and the rest of the Watchers in general, always thinking outside of the box. They are however more short tempered than most of their kind, and more quick to jump to extremes, especially when it comes to punishments. Why do you think Grian was unconscious for an entire session, or Cleo and Pearl got possessed? It’s not a good idea to piss Gemíín off, they won’t kill you but they will get to you.

There is no place this is reflected better than with Martyn. The Listeners favourite, one of the biggest nuisances back on EVO, and just someone generally disrespectful. The previous three may have mainly let him be in favour of not interfering with the games, but Gemíín is more spiteful. Taking away his beloved king was the easy part, but it wasn’t enough for Gemíín. Throughout the entire game they were whispering, whispering words that they knew that he would Hear. Encouragements, lies, threats, just about anything. Two out of three victors lost their humanity to win their series, and Gemíín was aiming for a third. A goal which they achieved, as Martyn struck down his own ally, and backstabbed his way to the top.

The Secret Life gamemaster is Vdari, who’s almost on the same power level as Gemíín. Vdari did what no other Watcher had done before and involved themselves directly in the series with the role of “The Secret Keeper”. Going into Secret Life, Vdari had a very similar mindset as Quevik, in that they looked at the previous series to see what was the most effective, and doubled down hard on that. This being, deception, and resentment. The series is built around lies, around unstable alliances, around not being able to trust one another, and without regeneration, a simple punch, push, or even just a friendly nudge is huge, and grudges will be held. An unfortunate side effect of the series structure is that Vdari stretched themselves extremely thin, with needing to constantly keep track on every player at all time, to see if they failed their task or not. Because of this, they tended to pay less attention to the players who’d already finished their tasks, which meant that when Scott and Lizzie traveled to The End they payed them no mind, which is why they weren’t able to stop Lizzie from falling into the void, thus ending the Canary Curse. They tried to do damage control, killing Jimmy as quick as they could, but in the end it didn’t matter. The other Watchers were…not happy.

And maybe they could’ve made sure that no one would have died before Jimmy, if they hadn’t been so preoccupied with Scar. Vdari had Seen Scar in previous seasons, and the way that he would get when pushed over the edge, and more importantly, the way that that would affect Their dear Grian. So Vdari made him the villain. They kept him in isolation with his tasks, forcing him to do more and more vile things to his fellow players. What Vdari hadn’t expected was how fun it would be to see Scar suffer, how much enjoyment one can get from being the reason a person breaks. They hadn’t intended for him to be the winner, but they were so delighted when Pearl fell, so delighted in fact that they kept him alive, instead of going to the winners lounge with the others. It’s truly a win win situation, Vdari gets to keep their tortured pet around, and the other Watchers are satisfied with poor Grians confusion and devastation over his absence.

Then we’ve got Armhék for Real Life, who is quite different from the previous gamemasters , in the way that they truly just wanted to get their game over with. They like doing one thing and one thing only, Watch, and is not interested in actually running a game, but was unfortunately forced to because it was their turn. They gave the most half assed attempt, just reusing the Third Life formula, but distorted the players visions and messed with their limbs, all to make them all die quicker, and then just set them loose. Since Vdari had already broken the canary curse, Armhék didn’t make an attempt to uphold it (Honestly, they probably would have broken it themselves cause they truly did not care). But yeah, their lack of any and all effort worked out in their favour, and Real Life is the shortest series that has taken place thus far. Every other Watcher is very annoyed.

If you somehow got the ability to ask Amhék who won their game, yeah they’d have no clue, Cleo means nothing to them, which like considering the way that Vdari is toying with Scar, that might be the best outcome for her.

And then, Wild life, with the surprising gamemaster of Grian himself. It was a controversial decision to let him lead the next game, but despite being a runaway, he’s still a Watcher, and so it was decided to let him hold the reins, under close scrutiny of course. Grian’s decision to lead the games was rooted in one simple fact; fun. The last couple of games had been rough on all of them, but especially the victors, so Grian designed Wild Life to be differing and fun to play. His only mistake was the snails, that turned out to be way deadlier than he thought, and so he ended that session early, which was an almost fatal decision, as the Watchers do not enjoy having their entertainment cut short. It was agreed that Grian could continue with the series, as long as he would never do anything like that again.

It was because of Grian’s attempt to keep the games friendly and fun, that Joel became the first victor since Last Life to win his game with his sanity intact, which we applaud. It’s once again something that the Watchers scold him for, but since it’s technically not a requirement to break your winner, it’s not something they can condemn.

And then, finally, the gamemaster of Simple Life, Zghula. Somehow, Zghula being chosen as the next gamemaster managed to be even more controversial than Grian, because Zghula was young. And I mean, really, young. There is no official ranks amongst the Watchers, but They all can tell who among them is more powerful, and therefore deserves more respect, and a lot of these powers come from experience and age. The best way to describe it, is that Zghula is basically the Watcher equivalent of an intern. They’d only ever Seen two games prior to Simple Life, so when it came to designing it they were very inexperienced, especially when it comes to the limits of what Players can take. Like, Armhék’s game was short on purpose, but for Zghula it was a complete accident. They just had no idea that a flat world could be so deadly, or that a few simple mobs were strong enough to take half the players to red. So yeah, whoops. Also, no one told them about the canary curse, and since no game they’d witnessed had had it, they didn’t even think to have Jimmy die first.

Somehow, Simple Life managed to bring shame not only to Zghula, but even more so to poor Quevik. Because not only was their victor someone who defied his game, no, now they had to share him with another, much weaker, Watcher. Like I said, not a day has gone by where they haven’t regretted keeping Scott alive for the final session of Last Life.

Other Watcher things!

The two EVO watchers have not been gamemasters, and therefore were not included here. I do headcanon them to be the two strongest Watchers, and so the de facto “leaders”. They are the ones who chooses who’s the next to lead a game, though as a Watcher you can put in a request to do so. If you’ve been chosen, you can’t refuse. The EVO watchers are named Kvī (Watcher 1) and Jagail (Watcher 2)

Kvī and Jagail are the two that came up with the idea of having death games in the first place, and are also the makers of the curses. Some of them, like Jimmy’s canary curse or Grian’s widow curse were planned from the beginning, while others, like Tango’s Inferno curse and Joel’s Red Haze curse came up as the games progressed. If a gamemaster fails to uphold a curse, without Kvī and Jagail’s explicit permission to break it, there will be dire consequences.

The reason for the blindfolds is mainly to keep them grounded. When wearing it, a watcher can still see everything around them, but if you’re for example hiding behind a wall or something, they can’t see you. If they take off the blindfold, they immediately get omnivision, and can see everything on the server. They for the most part tend to keep their blindfolds on, as they can otherwise be overwhelmed, but when leading a game a gamemaster always keeps their blindfold off

The blindfolds also make them more approachable and appealing to players, as when they’re off, all their multitudes of eyes can be seen, so they mostly keep them on the few times they actually approach a player. If they’re aiming to intimidate or scare however, the blindfold is always off

The reason Grian doesn’t wear a blindfold is that since he wasn’t “born” as a Watcher but ascended into their ranks, he doesn’t have the omnivision They have, at least not to the same scale

Grian is not the only person in their ranks who’s ascended, though he is the only one who’s ever rebelled, ever

The Watchers all have individual voices, but when one speak they all speak. If two Watchers were to be having a conversation, both of them would be saying all the words, but the one who’s actually speaking’s voice would be more prevalent than the other voices. It’s very confusing to listen to, and if you’re not used to it you will mix up who’s saying what.

Watchers tend not to speak much tho, as they are technically a type of hive mind. Their thought, opinions, and feelings are all shared between one another, so they rarely find a need to say anything to each other.

All the Watchers were made using Hero Forge

Also if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask :)

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