The Fear Mythos/Characters

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The Fears
"It’s kinda like an embodiment of the fear of being discovered.... Only not really, more like a creature which existed prior to the fear but grew as that fear gathered around it.... But it also didn't really exist, more like it potentially existed... But looking at it from a nonlinear perspective, it still had physical presence in The Multiverse all along the various spacetime lines... Ah, screw it. It's all eldritch shit and nonsense."
—I-330, Mephi

The Slender Man

He held out both arms and there was a moment where his arms grew thin and long, like the branches of a tree, and I let myself be entwined in them.

A faceless abomination who represents the fear of strangers and the unknown. Please see: The Slender Man Mythos

The Rake

I saw a thing sitting on me, pale and hairless, kind of humanoid, two big black eyes looking straight at me.

A brutal, savage beast -- yet, it is at least capable of human speech and is likely quite intelligent. It represents the fear of brutality and animals, and originates from a creepypasta story.

The Archangel

There is no escape from the Archangel. I understand that now.

The fear of religion, religious dogma and the things associated around it. This may explain why it is, in fact, the afterlife. A twisted bastardisation of that, but all the same.

The Cold Boy

The boy's face was cracked. It looked like he was made of ice and when I hit him, it created a single crack down the side of his face.

A small child who sings nursery rhymes. Yet, he could freeze your entire body in a few moments -- and that is nothing compared to what he represents... the fear of the cold and of alienating yourself from others, the Cold Boy could lead one to mistake it for something far less threatening.

EAT

There's something in the sea. A thing with ill will. It's coming out of the sea. It's coming out in waves.

An entity of what looks like living water, EAT represents the fear of water and drowning in your obsessions. One drop will infect somebody, causing them to obsess over something, then it will consume and replace all the water in their body and make them into a "Camper."

  • The Artifact: One of EAT's names, "the Epping AquaTarkus," was named for two prog songs. They don't have anything to do with it.
  • Combat Tentacles
  • Genre Savvy: If EAT learns it, it learns it well. Genres included.
  • Hive Mind: "We are The Camper, Rael. EAT is The Camper, and The Camper are EAT."
  • I Have Many Names: Technically speaking, EAT's only universal name is "EAT," and even then, it's often called "the Ichor" or "Salmacis" or "the Hogweed" or some other name instead. But even when it is called "EAT," what that stands for changes depending on who's talking. The Epping AquaTarkus, the Evolutionary Adverse Trigger, the Eternal Answer Tree, Evolution's Angry Twin, to name a few.
    • Perhaps the most common name EAT goes by is "Ichor." It's referred to by that name at least just as much, if not more often, than it is referred to as "EAT." Interestingly, according to at least one Camper in Hidden in the Trees, it actually likes the name EAT.
  • Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge: "I'm a being of knowledge." EAT knows many things humans should not, and in the Rapture Logs, some of this information is shared.
  • Leitmotif: This [dead link] is it.
  • Line-of-Sight Name: Sam in Jordan Eats Normally Now named EAT from essentially random song titles.
  • Murder Water
  • Our Zombies Are Different: The Camper are Type O.
  • Rule Of Ten
  • Theme Naming: Everything's a prog title.

The Plague Doctor

"A...man walked in and then walked out of the warehouse. He wore some sort of overcoat and a mask, with a long beak. Looked it up later on - it was a Venetian costume, Medico Della Peste. The Doctor of Plague. ...Just looking at him on the security footage made me want to wash my hands until they bled."

The fear of disease and contagion - the Plague Doctor wears a beak-nosed mask (if it is a mask) and long coat. Sometimes, his presence will manifest as a mental disorder or hypochondria.

  • Enemy to All Living Things
  • Not a Mask (the mask might actually be his face)
  • Plaguemaster: He spreads disease just by his very presence. As if that wasn't enough, there are also a number of doctors who serve him, intentionally using contaminated surgical equipment or slipping pathogens into their patients' medication...
  • Walking Wasteland

The Wooden Girl

There in the middle of the living room was a woman I had never seen before. She was covered in some sort of wooden armor, with strings all around her. Her face seemed painted on, and she stared straight at me.

A Perverse Puppetmaster, the Wooden Girl is the fear of being controlled. Her body is wrapped in living strings that also manifest within her victims.

The Choir

"The [Choir] are the ones who invented language itself. They have mastered it so well that they can create and edit life merely by speaking words. They prefer to be.. behind your eyes. Hiding in the pit, if you will.”

The fear of what others say, of what others think about you. The Choir manifests either as a blur in the corner of your eye or as fading shadows on the wall. They change the words people say and will drive their victims to commit suicide.

  • Brown Note: The Archive revealed that they can also create a sound that can rupture people's eardrums, shatter glass, and hemorrhage the victim's brain. Yeah.
  • Living Shadow: Less intrusive then the Nightlanders, but it has been stated to live inside people's shadows.

The Empty City

It is a land of twisted time and distorted sky -- the space between the tick and the tock.

A sentient city representing the fear of being lost, the Empty City likes to...play with its food. Anyone who opens one of its Doors and goes inside will wander the City, never finding a way out, until they die. It also serves as a neutral meeting place for the Fears and their minions.

The Nightlanders

The shadows remain on the wall, not laughing at me. The shadows watch me, curious and sympathetic. I feel as if these are creatures I cannot easily name. Nothing can easily describe them. They know me, and I feel as if I know them. They know my delusions all too well, and they have seen my nightmares. They live nightmares every day, trapped as eternal shadows. All they can do is shift along the walls of our disillusioned daydreams, and pray we follow them down the rabbit hole.

Little is known about these living shadows, the fear of the things in the dark. They may or may not have been previous victims of the Empty City -- if they are, they aren't telling.

  • Fate Worse Than Death: If the "Victim" theory is to be believed, becoming a Nightlander is worse than death.
  • Living Shadow
  • Order Versus Chaos: By all accounts, the Nightlanders detest change. They often engage in poltergeist-esque activities, such as moving furniture around to minimise the changes in an environment. If the Empty-City-Victim theory is correct, this is due to the City being a Mobile Maze; the Nightlanders merely want to make sure they haven't wandered back into it by mistake.
  • Viral Transformation: It is claimed by some that the Nightlanders are actually people who have wandered into the Empty City and escaped incomplete.

The Convocation

The maid waded to the edge where her cloak was and pulled a knife from the folds. Before my terrifide eyes, she traced the blade along her skin, cutting a smooth line across her left brest. The cut widened on it's own and I could only watch in horrifide silence as a bird climbed out and flew into the sky.

This group of feathered fears represents the fear of heights and of being taken away.

The Blind Man

His lips were cracked; they looked almost the same as his skin, except for the firm line between them. A small nose. His skin was drawn tight, and yet loose; quite indescribable. And then there were his eyes, or lack thereof; two dark holes from which no light escaped.

He wanders libraries, always carrying an old book along with him. The fear of getting old and forgetting, if he writes your name is his book, you will forgot your childhood. Your childhood will belong to him.

  • The Adjectival Man
  • Eyeless Face: Depending on the interpretation, he either has no eyes or he has abyss-like pits where his eyes should be.
  • Mind Screw: An intrinsic quality of his powers as portrayed in Closest to the Sun.
  • Transferable Memory: What he can do - he's the master of taking and giving memories.

The Dying Man

"Let me in," he said.

The fear of, well, dying, he unbalances his victims through possession.

  • The Adjectival Man
  • Body Horror: Possession by the Dying Man will eventually lead to disfigurement and necrosis - according to the Archive, this could mean extra limbs or digits, scales, or cancerous growth of skin and muscle cells.
  • Body Surf/Demonic Possession: His modus operandi is to move from one body to another, chemically wrecking whichever body he is inhabiting. He moves on by killing his hosts, hence the name.

The Eye

I'll be seeing you very soon.

The fear of judgment and punishment. Not much is known about it, only that its victims tend to start seeing an eye watching them everywhere they go... and then mysteriously end up dead.

The Manufactured Newborn

Finally, what was left of Maxwell crumpled to the ground, and there above him was a creature of metal and machinery, assembled in a shape not unlike a human fetus, its small arms ending in two long knives. It seemed to float in a nearly invisible sphere, and extending from its stomach was a fleshy and no doubt organic umbilical cord.

The fear of the future, of what is to come, of technology out of control. The Manufactured Newborn is the youngest of the Fears, but still as dangerous. It can appear as a small mechanical toy, slowly building itself bigger and bigger (with inorganic and organic materials), until it's big enough to open a portal to where it's real body lies - a vast tower of clockwork and body parts, machinery a mile high.

The Quiet

"Imagine nothing," he said. "A vast nothingness. A vast and alive nothingness that's spreading. That's overtaking us all."

The fear of nothing. The Silent Void and Screaming Darkness. The Hole in All Things. The Quiet claims us all.

The Smiling Man

He smiled at me and his smile was wider than his face, and he had so many teeth, so many goddamn teeth.

The fear of stalking and stalkers, the Smiling Man was given a "body" by an online group that were trying to create a Fear. It has straggly red hair and a smile wider than its face. While it has eyes, you cannot look at them, they are so wrong. Before it takes its victims, it delivers a bouquet of flowers to them.

The Intrusion

Thousands of bugs from hundreds of species crawled about the walls and floor. They crawled up her bed in a grotesque mob, a sea of limbs and carapaces.

The fear of insects, of swarms and hives and being invaded inside.

  • Body Horror: The Intrusion's MO is to crawl inside of people and lay eggs within their bodies. When the eggs hatch, the newborn bugs will then proceed to eat their way out.
  • Hive Mind
  • Orifice Invasion: What they do to Jess here, which is apparently there standard modus operandi.

The Black Dog

"It moves like a ninja of the apocalypse, and its eyes burn your mind to look at. We thought it was just a regular dog, but no. It tore us apart. Our plans shattered apart. Hell, it left a lot of us with nothing but minor injuries. That’s what scares us the most. What the hell is it trying to do, y’know?”

The fear of being found and your secrets being discovered. The Rapture interpretation depicts it as the fear of the feral unknown, and the fear of Body Horror.

The Unnamed Child

"Oh, right... well, this kid was pretty creepy... Sorta looked like what you expect a homeless kid to look like, but... I don't know... wrong. Like that one abstract painting where the woman's face is melting over her arm or whatever. Sort of like that, but not. It is hard to describe. She didn't say anything, and I didn't get a name or anything."

The fear commitment, responsibility, and the loss of a loved one. She appears as a little girl, and her victims slowly become more and more obsessed with caring for her, often at the expense of everything else in their lives. Then one day, she vanishes, leaving her victims lost, without purpose or hope.

  • Adult Fear: Losing a child. Her victims end up spending the rest of their lives desperately searching for her.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: Her victims can end up seeming like this
  • Creepy Child: How those not being targeted tend to see her. Her victims don't notice the creepiness though.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: Those few victims who do end up finding the Child after she disappears are rewarded by her whispering something in their ear. It is the only time she ever speaks, and everyone she whispers to becomes broken and mad. Theories vary from it being some grand truth humans were not meant to know, to her True Name, to simply the sound of her voice being what causes the insanity.
  • Silent Antagonist
  • The Unfavorite: If the victim has any kids of his or her own, then those kids will likely be neglected as the Child becomes more and more important to the parent
  • The Voiceless

The Mother of Snakes

You begin to cry and claw at yourself, and curse your existence. You beg for a salvation that will never come. That's when you see her. The Mother. The Salvation. The Lady of the Scales. Her scales, her love, her shining light glancing off her fangs as she smiles at me from the darkness. Her beautiful evil. Her every move is one of love, of mercy. Your blood runs cold, just like hers. She tells you everything you ever want to hear.

The Mother of Snakes isn't just the fear of snakes, but the fear of what you are, what you were, and what you might become. Those who hate themselves and look into the mirror will see her and if they accept her, she will make them into her Lilim, whom she gifts with scales, fangs, and the ability to travel through mirrors.

Human Antagonists

Charlotte

A young girl estimated to be around 12 years of age. She is one of the Wooden Girl's more devoted servants.

The Jester

A mysterious, seemingly immortal man who serves the Wooden Girl. He is easily distinguished by his black hoodie and clown mask.

  • Axe Crazy: This trope does not even begin to describe him.
  • Chaotic Evil: As a number of ARG players once learned the hard way, it's impossible to predict what the Jester will do, but it will more than likely involve grievous bodily harm.
  • Complete Monster: Those who played The Puppets Game quickly learned that there are no lines that Jester will not cross.
  • Expy: Out of Game, he's been noted to have a similar personality to the Joker. His mask has also been compared to a certain other Joker.
  • Legacy Character: The Archive proposes this as a possible explanation for his longevity, though they admit that it's unclear whether he's multiple people or just one immortal one.
  • Monster Clown

The Witch of Gatlinburg

A woman who lives in the mountains near Gatlinburg, Tennessee. She is distinguished by her cloak of black feathers and her unique mask, which is made from the skull of a large and unknown species of bird. She serves the Convocation.

Doctor Beakman

A doctor who runs an institution known as "Shady Lawn." He is a sadistic and demented psychiatrist who works for the Plague Doctor.

The Bloggers

Jordan Dooling

British teenager, American accent. Goes by the name DJay32. Has been running Jordan Eats Normally Now since he was twelve. Currently investigating what happened to Samantha Grant.

Tropes associated with Jordan:

Tav Lowe

A 25-year-old who started brighter than a spoon to post his poetry. Weird things started to happen around him, however, and he began to realize he was something called a "receiver." When he met Agnes Day, a runner who told him he was a receiver, he quickly became involved with her struggle against something called the Cold Boy.

Tropes associated with Tav:

  • Blessed with Suck: Being a receiver is not nice. The only power is that you are "tuned in" to the same frequency as the Slender Man (or other Fears) and can hear weird shit.
  • Punny Name: Not Tav, but rather Agnes Day ("Agnes Dei" is Latin for "Lamb of God") and her dog Opus ("Opus Dei" means "Work of God"). Immediately lampshaded by him.
  • Sleepwalking: Being a receiver doesn't shut off even when he's asleep - causing some of the weirder posts to happen when he's not even conscious.
  • Victory-Guided Amnesia: At first, it seems like this, but then it's averted. He remembers, but then slowly starts to forget the time he was away.

Peter Rivers

Member of an organization that is heavily involved with the Fears. Runs the blog Still Remains Within.

Tropes associated with Peter:

Unreliable Narrator

Joey Steward

Somewhat timid 19-year old who started a blog called Eccentrically Bored basically to pass the time. He quickly gets caught in the crossfire between the Slender Man and the Archangel. Currently, he is working for Slender Man and calling himself "Steward". He now runs the blog Hidden in the Trees.

Tropes associated with Joey:

  • Face Heel Turn
  • A Man Is Not a Virgin: Implied to be one of the sources of his insecurities. He mentions his virginity briefly early on, and then, if his interactions with Crystal are any indication, somehow managed to remain one even after spending nearly a month living with her.
  • Freak-Out: Something similar in his withdrawal from the pills. He has a rather more extreme one when he realises what the Archangel is.
  • Meaningful Name
  • The Teetotaler: Amusingly, he gets drunk once, has a nasty hangover, and then resolves never to touch alcohol again.
  • Through the Eyes of Madness: During his episode with the mysterious pills (particular during his withdrawal), things get rather... surreal.

Martin Behaim

A young man trapped in a house without doors or windows (they are all bricked up). Started the blog Ontological because of the note that read "Write or the Shadowmen will come."

Tropes associated with Martin:

James Hunter

Male father who lost his family to the Rake. He now hunts it and records his travels on his blog.

Tropes associated with James

Bill 'Garth' Hogarth

A court bailiff, Garth began making audio recordings of sounds around his house at night. Garth blogged the results of his nightly recordings at Moonlit Whispers, only to discover that what he had been recording was the Rake.

Knight

A Runner who met a man claiming to be God who gave him a knife with the supposed power to kill Fears. Blog here.

Kobalos

Just a regular teen who is haunted by some fears. He meets another person who is haunted and quickly befriends that person. He runs the blog Oedipus House of Death

Tropes associated With Kobalos

Jeanette Cotton

A tomboyish teenage girl who finds herself drawn into confrontation with a certain smiling gentleman. She writes The Jeanette Experience.

Penny Balisong

Author of Runneth Over. She's part of the group that supposedly gave the Smiling Man form. She's not exactly stable. Has recently joined up with Jeanette, her sister, and Tara.

  • Blind Seer: What she likes to think of herself as. It's still unclear as to how much of a seer she really is. Though she is definitely blind.
  • Eye Scream: According to her, her eyes were burned from their sockets by the Smiling Man.
  • Handicapped Badass: Manages to kill a proxy with a shotgun without being able to see him.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: So far, all we really know about Penny's real name is that it is six letters long.
  • Troll: Has been known on occasion to troll Jeanette.

Locomotive Breath

Real name: Archibald Donald Sullivan, Junior. Author of In The Shuffling Madness. An old man who maintains a collaborative archive of collected information on the Fears, until his study of them draws their attention and he is forced to become a Runner.

Amy

Author of Something Generic. She promises, she's not important. Ignore the hell out of her.

Back to The Fear Mythos
  1. ↑ then immediately lampshades it
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