“It came running at me with my own face and stopped a meter and a half away, just standing there. Then it turned around and took off without touching me.”
The Skinstealer of Level 0 is a contained version of the mimic described in Skinstealer. It shows up looking like any survivor, with a believable name and the body of an average-height adult. Its behavior phases, with figures, are in Skinstealer: Behavior, Measurements and Voice. This entry covers what wanderers have seen of its movement and its scare.
How it appears
You never see it arrive. It spawns between 24 and 72 meters away, always outside your line of sight, and withdraws if everyone nearby has moved more than 96 m away. There is one per survivor, and no more than four at a time have been counted in all of Level 0. It prefers ordinary corridors and rooms, somewhat less the very large spaces, and almost never the odd zones.
What it does
In Level 0 it does not grab or strike. It only stages a performance. First it stalks you, keeping its distance, walking as you walk and crouching when you crouch. Then it reveals itself with the unmasked scream and breaks into a run toward you. At a meter and a half it stops and flees. Those who have lived it agree that the dread is the same as if it had caught you.
How it moves
- It doesn’t get stuck against a wall, trying to go through where there is no way through, because it finds another route.
- When it follows you down a long corridor, it sometimes cuts around the bend instead of walking it.
- Its body is somewhat narrower than yours and lets it squeeze through gaps you wouldn’t fit through with a backpack.
- It doesn’t hang fixed at 25 m, and if it decides to stalk you, it ends up closing in.
How to survive
- Don’t drive it off by running. The chase is exactly what it wants.
- Keep your eyes on it and back toward a door you can close.
- Check your group by asking for names and waiting for the answer.
- When it reveals itself, wait for the stop. There is no guarantee, but so far it has always happened.
What is said
On what it does when you aren’t looking, every testimony says something different. The archive collects them as they came in.
- It freezes the moment you look at it head-on.
- It follows you in parallel, on the other side of the doors.
- It appears at the end of a very long corridor, more than eighty meters away, and stays there.
- It repeats your gestures three to six seconds late, like a mirror that arrives behind schedule.
- It waits behind a door you don’t remember leaving ajar.
- It imitates spoken voices and leaves written sentences. None of this has been verified.
Certain details also remain unexplained. Its head doesn’t always follow your gaze, and its feet don’t fit the floor when the figure reveals itself.
You can compare its behavior with that of other Level 0 creatures in the Field Guide, and with the rhythm of appearances set by the Pulse. For an ambient noise that resembles it without being a creature, see Footstep Echo.