Watcher

Watcher

(Creature)

Type

Outsider

CR

22

Environment

Any (Jandelay)

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Source: Planar Adventures, pg(s). 247

For another meaning of "Watcher", please see Yog-Sothoth.

Watchers are the bizarre, inscrutable curators of Jandelay, the museum of dead worlds.

Appearance

Watchers are black insectile creatures with a single red eye that walk with an almost nauseating grace. Each leg is tipped with talons and prehensile filaments that allow a watcher to perform precision motions. A watcher can keep its main body upright even if all of its legs are occupied, allowing it to attack with all of its legs and preventing it from being tripped. Watchers stand 30 feet tall and weigh six tons.

Despite their enormous size, watchers have an unnerving ability to fade into the background, causing other creatures to ignore them. The Oliphaunt of Jandelay particularly always overlooks watchers, allowing watchers to share its home while staying beneath its notice.

Ecology

Watchers observe the events on worlds on the brink of apocalypse to catalogue them and set up beacons of Jandelay, which ensure that the fragment of the doomed world around the beacon will be transported to Jandelay when the end comes. Rarely, watchers put objects or beings into stasis in order to bring them to Jandelay. Watchers have no desire to accelerate apocalypses, but will take action when extreme measures are taken to prevent them.

Watchers stride the streets of Jandelay and tend to its needs, building edifices upon the interstitial fields. A watcher might spend centuries crafting a single object, only to lose interest immediately after finishing it.

Society

Watchers naturally organise into councils of up to five when faced with a threat or curiosity, led by a designated observer who is empowered by the presence of others. Councils might take awhile to come to a decision, but when they do they pursue it with eerie single-mindedness and efficiency.

Most watchers follow a dualistic faith that venerates an entity known as the First Watcher (which serves the role of preserver) and the Oliphaunt (which serves the role of destroyer), but other strange beliefs vary from watcher to watcher. The First Watcher is bigger than all others and is the only creature capable of creating new watchers. If a First Watcher is slain, another watcher immediately ascends in power to replace it.