Smiler · Underwanderer Archive

Testimony

“I saw two eyes and a smile in the smoke, way down there, almost where you can’t see anymore. I blinked and it was a stretch closer, damn it.”

The Smiler is a figure of smoke with two eyes and a smile. It appears far off, at the edge of what is visible, and approaches when nobody is looking. The silhouette is blurred, though the eyes and the smile can always be made out.

At the far end of the corridor, 20 m away

How to recognize it

In long corridors and huge rooms it can be seen from afar, with no way to tell whether it moves. First come two white dots, at the height of a person’s eyes. The smile can be made out only when it is already close, and it looks like a gap the smoke leaves that seems to look at you, not like a painted face.

Behavior

Only one Smiler is known at a time. It appears between 24 and 48 meters from the survivor, out of everyone’s sight and at a point that can be reached on foot, and it withdraws if the whole group moves more than 96 m away.

It stalks at a distance of 11 to 14 meters. When it decides to close in, it doesn’t walk. It moves in jumps of seven tenths of a second, at about 6 m/s, with pauses of a second. It only advances if no nearby survivor is watching it. It perceives at 30 meters and within a cone of about 70 degrees, and if you look at it, it stops. It ends up planting itself two and a half meters away.

Body and sound

It is smoke with volume, not a flat silhouette. It breathes with a low hum, murmurs now and then and hisses as it moves, and it can be heard up to about 20 meters. The details of how it sounds are in Smiler: Smoke Body, Face and Sound and How Creatures Sound, and what it lets you see before it arrives is in Traces and Visible Signs.

Waves and trail

While it moves it leaves a trail of fading silhouettes. Sometimes a full wave comes down the corridor.

Wave in the corridor, 1.6 s after the first warning

Trail of silhouettes in motion, in a great hall

How to survive

Don’t run. When you lose sight of it, move.
Once you know it has seen you, hold your gaze and back away toward somewhere with an exit.
In a group, make sure someone is always watching it.
Within a meter and a half, the scream is unavoidable.

What people say

The archive confirms the scream, which arrives without damage. Some say there are runs in which it doesn’t stop at the scream and kills, at one point three meters or less, with direct sight and a quarter second of contact. They say that afterward it doesn’t come back for the same person for eight seconds. About what happens to whoever falls, each account says something different, and nobody has come back with proof of the lethal version.

There is also talk of a Smiler with no fixed form, a front of smoke that spreads across floor, ceiling and cracks, described in Smiler: The Smoke Front, and of a more modest version, the Gaze, in Smiler: The Gaze.

Relatives

It shares a trade with the Skinstealer, the Children and the Adult Faceling, creatures you keep watch on so they don’t reach you. Compare it with the rest in the Field Guide.

Case file images

Sub-entries

E-022 · EntitiesSmiler: The Smoke FrontAccounts of a Smiler that doesn’t walk but spreads like smoke across floor, ceiling and cracks, and always ends up withdrawing.E-023 · EntitiesSmiler: The GazeThe Smiler behavior that has actually been observed: it stalks at the edge of sight and moves only when no survivor is looking at it.E-021 · EntitiesSmiler: Smoke Body, Face and SoundWhat you see and hear of the Smiler up close. A volume of smoke, two eyes, a smile that breathes and whispers that come from nowhere.

Mentioned in

L-001 · LevelsLevel 0: yellow officesEndless offices of damp carpet and humming fluorescents. Every wanderer wakes here, and nobody leaves by the way they came in.E-026 · EntitiesWatcherAn adult sitting in an office chair, back turned, who slowly turns their head to follow you. It does nothing else.O-014 · ObjectsHand-Crank FlashlightThe only light that never fully runs out, because you can always stop and wind it. But lit, it gives you away at almost forty meters.E-016 · EntitiesSkinstealerIt imitates a survivor: a believable name, a pose, an object in hand. It lives alongside you as one of your own, it is avoided by looking at it, and it never speaks.E-005 · EntitiesAdult FacelingThe adult faceling, an office worker standing motionless at their post, watching. Its only trace is a floor note.E-013 · EntitiesLegacy RecordsThree names the archive keeps from another era: Lurker, Crawler and Shadow. Nobody has seen them in the current Level 0.P-007 · PhenomenaThe PulseThe place seems to keep its own rhythm of calm, stalking, peak and lull. Wanderers call it the Pulse.E-009 · EntitiesProwler, Grille and StalkerThree stalking creatures that make no noise. One charges, one hangs from the ceiling, and the third has barely been seen.E-008 · EntitiesProwlerA silhouette that goes back and forth along the same stretch of corridor. It doesn’t chase you, but if it sees you on its patrol it lunges at you.E-002 · EntitiesHow Creatures SoundAlmost no creature in Level 0 makes a noise, so silence is the warning, and what makes no sound is usually what is closest.E-017 · EntitiesSkinstealer: Behavior, Measurements and VoiceThe Skinstealer’s thirteen phases of behavior, from wandering to the grab, with its field measurements and the ten voices it has been heard to make.E-024 · EntitiesField Guide: CreaturesHow to recognize each Level 0 creature, what it does if it reaches you, and what to do before you find out.