"Will you see me? I am right here...Turn...See me!"
"The Watcher in the Rain" is a Warhammer 40,000 audio drama as part of the "Warhammer Horror" series, written by Alec Worley.
The Administratum world known as "K4" is undergoing a massive evacuation effort due to the threat of a massive and incoming warpstorm that threatens to engulf the planet for centuries (if not a millennia or more). The warpstorm has caused endless rainfall and thus causing massive flooding upon the imperial cities that continues to rise by the second.
The story follows a scribe named Greta and an inquisitorial interrogator named Stefan Crucius as they work together to escape the planet before it is consumed by the rain and the oncoming warpstorm, all while being stalked by a mysterious entity.
The audio drama provides examples of the following:
- Antagonist Title: The titular name of the entity known as "The Watcher in the rain". It gets a Title Drop by one of the crazed inmates in the asylum.
- Arc Words: "Will you see me?/See me"
- Bedlam House: One of the administratum buildings contains an asylum meant to contain adepts who have gone insane from their never-ending and soul crushing duties. Despite several weeks of evacuation, Greta bitterly notes that the crazed adepts were deemed not worth saving, or even worth rehabilitation beforehand. The main characters discover that the inmates were set free, but they are forced go through the asylum in order to reach the cargo bay.
- Black Comedy: In the beginning of the story, a PDF officer becomes increasingly annoyed by an Administratum adept's servitor's constant calculations. It gets to the point where the officer just decides to have one of his men throw the cyborg off the railing, and the servitor continues to calculate when it will impact on the ground.
- Cruel Twist Ending: A twofer:
- After they successfully pilot a shuttle and leave the planet, Greta shoots Crucius when he becomes entranced by the Watcher, and continues to mortally shoot him after he comes back to his senses. Crucius, however, understands why she did it and records a message to be sent to Inquisitor Atrox absolving Greta of her crimes and declaring her innocent...Only for Greta to manically admit that not only was she indeed guilty of the crimes she was accused of, she is guilty of even greater crimes.
- After confessing her crimes, Greta is hailed by an imperial ship. Believing herself rescued, Greta responds to the ship's vox and requests rescue. However, it is revealed that the imperials on the ship have resorted to cannibalism due to spoiled rations, and intend to silently kill her and use her body for food.
- Freudian Excuse: Greta is guilty of sabotaging the Imperium war effort, knowingly causing or participating to the death of hundred thousands of soldiers, even taking pleasure in it. However, she is 100% right when she points out she only is a disposable clog in the Imperium, who functions in the military administration until she breaks, without any form of free will. She acknowledges that she voluntary commits deadly "mistakes" as the only way to exercise freedom and feel power.
- He Who Fights Monsters: In a flashback during his training as an agent of the Inquisition, Crucius was tasked with interrogating a former staff of the Governor's household due to suspicions of treason. After torturing her to death, it is revealed that not only was the woman innocent, but she was Crucius' mother, and that he felt nothing after committing the deed. His mentor, Inquisitor Atrox, explains that in order to fight the enemies of the Imperium, within and without, the agents of the Inquisition cannot afford to be distracted by emotion and morality. They must commit monstrous acts, whatever the cost, without pity or remorse if they are to ensure the Imperium's survival.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Despite initially appearing to be a standard Chaos plot, the dark powers aren't actually the villain of this story. The Watcher ultimately turns out to be a creepy but otherwise harmless entity which merely forces the people it stalks to confront their own moral failings. The true horror of the story comes from humans living under a tyrannical regime as expansive and powerful as the Imperium. Crucius tortured his own mother to death out of blind fanaticism while Greta caused hundreds of deaths purely For the Evulz.
- I'm a Humanitarian: The militarum vessel that Greta sees as her rescuers are revealed to be cannibals. They turned to cannibalism out of desperation because during their ten-week voyage, they discovered that they were given rotten food and some of the crew starved to death. One of the officers laments that what they are doing is wrong, but the captain insists that what they did was necessary to survive. Apparently, most of the crew do not even know that they are being fed human meat, as the captain explains that they will kill Greta (albeit quickly and painlessly) once they board the maintenance craft and secretly bring the bodies of her and Crucius to their ship's kitchens.
- Jerkass Has a Point: The PDF officer at the beginning is very strict and harsh, ordering one Administratum adept's servitor thrown off a high point for being non-essential, but he does point out that the evacuation shuttles are already crammed up, and there needs to be enough space to allow everyone to safely evacuate. Not to mention that they are on a tight schedule, and they cannot afford delays.
- Karmic Death: Greta's atrocities started because of an accidental misfiling of spoiled food rations that killed about a hundred militarum guardsmen due to starvation, with the rest resorting to cannibalism out of desperation. When her ship is found by a militarum vessel, it is revealed that most of the crew have resorted to cannibalism due a munitorum adept giving them rotten food for their ten week voyage. The high ranking militarum officers discuss their plans on killing her and using her as food. What makes this extra karmic was that during her motive rant, she mockingly mused how poetic it was that the imperium was eating itself when she confessed that she made another purposeful misfiling of food to another militarum regiment, unaware that she'll be eaten by the people who belong to said imperium.
- Leave Him to Me!: When a PDF trooper reports his suspicions of Greta to Interrogator Crucius, the latter chastises the former for allowing a suspected heretic to escape and declares that he will personally find and bring her back for interrogation, despite the trooper's offer that the PDF can search for her instead and his warning that Crucius risks being stranded due to the fact that the last of the evacuation shuttles will take-off in less than an hour. Crucius persists to personally capture her, and when he does, circumstances prevent him from returning to the shuttles in time.
- Locked Up and Left Behind: The Imperium, being the same cold dictature as always, didn't bother to evacuate the asylum inmates, or neither just let them out of the building to let them flee by their own means. And even without knowing the existence of the Watcher, the Imperium's authorities were very aware the inmates would die in the flood, and abandon them anyway because they didn't see the utility to waste space and resources to save them. No matter if they became insane at least partly because they gave their lives to the Administratum, so to the Imperium.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Said word-for-word when the Watcher makes Crucius realize what a monster the inquisition has made him, and he becomes incredibly remorseful for having tortured his mother in the past as part of his test, tearfully begging her to forgive him.
- Red Herring: From the start of the story, Crucius is lead to believe that Greta is a heretic and that she is part of a chaos cult. The ending reveals that whilst she is indeed a villainous character, she acted on her own accord and she is not in league with the cults of the ruinous powers.
- Rule of Symbolism: The Watcher is essentially a manifestation of a person's guilt, and its demands for the people it's stalking to look at it is akin to figuratively looking at a mirror and confronting their crimes and guilt to realize what they truly are. Further adding to the symbolism is that when it speaks to Greta and Crucius, it speaks to them in a female and male voice respectively. Considering that in the Warhammer 40.000 universe, if sufficiently sentient beings experience the same sensation, concept, faith, or feeling, it could turn into a god inside the Warp, and that K4 is being engulfed by a Warpstorm, it is justifiable in-universe too.
- Sanity Slippage:
- Obviously the asylum inmates. According to Greta, they became insane because of the monotony of their work and the very strict rules that the Administratum forced over them.
- Discused by Greta, who feared to become one of them, if she continueed spending her life at the service of the Administratum. And maybe experimented by her, because her indirect mass killings was her way to cope with her life, it could easily be theorized she turned psychotic, just in another form than the inmates.
- Soul-Crushing Desk Job: As Greta explains to Crucius, she worked for the Officio Tactica for most of her life, and grew to deeply despise it. She describes how she she had to do the same paper work everyday for every year of her life. No one was allowed to speak to each other except for silent prayers to try and keep their sanity as they worked in dimly lit offices and having to bear the endless scratching of quills. Greta muses that she always thought that one day she would lose her sanity and be another inmate in the asylum.
- Sudden Lack of Signal: When the transport ships leave without them, Crucius attempts to contact the transports to return for them, but he hears only static. Greta bitterly notes that the warpstorm is close enough to the planet that it is interfering with the communication systems.
