| The Night Walker | |
|---|---|
| |
| First Appearance | Comic 42 |
| Species | Nanotech |
| Gender | n/a |
The Night Walker is a synthetic denizen of the forest in the habitat that also contains Alice's cottage.
Appearance and Behaviour[]
The Night Walker is a giant humanoid figure standing hundreds of feet high. From a distance, it appears to be composed of smoke or some other cloud of particles. It is almost completely featureless except two glowing areas in its 'head' that appear like eyes.
In Comic 47, Alice explains that the Night Walker is made up of countless Nanotech machines that, during daylight hours, hide under leaves in the forest. At night, these cluster together into the giant figure of the Night Walker, which then proceeds to walk, seemingly aimlessly through the forest, gazing at the Moon.
Alice tells Gavia and Ardent that its behaviour towards them was uncharacteristic. Although the Night Walker is generally harmless, Alice was concerned that it had detected the Nanotech that gives Gavia her special powers and may have been attempting to extract them from her to add to its own body mass. She notes that such a forcible extraction would probably prove fatal to Gavia.
Origins[]
Nothing is known about the Night Walker's origin. In Comic 49, Alice notes that the Night Walker is an ancient relic of a previous type of Nanotech to that which gives Gavia her abilities. Alice is uncertain about whether the Night Walker is intelligent. Whilst it demonstrates intelligence-like behaviour, she acknowledges that this may be a programming error leading to some form of collective 'emergent behaviour' that mimics intelligence.
Alice states that the Night Walker has been in existence for 'millennia'. She speculates that whatever purpose for which it was created, time may have rendered it moot, leaving it wandering, "Awaiting a signal that will never come".
Appearances in the Comic[]
Reaching for Gavia
The Night Walker first appears in Comic 42. In Comic 43 is scares Ardent and Gavia into running away when it abruptly reaches towards them. It is named by Alice in Comic 47 when she also explains to her young charges some of what she knows about its nature.
In Comic 125 it catches up with Gavia, and while she sleeps it takes her, assimilates her nanotech, changes in form to a bird (a loon of the genus Gavia) fires a laser at the moon, leaving a visible crater, and disintegrates. Gavia isn't killed by this encounter, but is left in a coma.