The Physhbowl

The Web

9 min read

Entity inspired Tarot by Grace Holsten

“Spiders and control. Your will not being your own."
"Yeah. Being manipulated or puppeted. The worry you’re caught in a trap you can’t see.”
- Jonathan Sims and Gerard Keay, MAG 111

The Web is one of The Entities. It is the fear of being controlled or trapped without knowing it, and your will not being your own, of being manipulated. It manifests as spiders, webs and web-like patterns, marionettes (puppets controlled by strings), and addictions.

Aliases

  • The Spider
  • The Great Spider
  • The Mother of Puppets
  • The Mother
  • The Spinner of Schemes
  • The Story Spinner
  • The Hidden Machination

Fears

  • Arachnophobia
  • Fear of Being Controlled

Manifestations

  • Webs
  • Web patterns
  • Weaving
  • Marionette
  • Spiders
  • Addiction
  • Tape Recorders

Episodes

As with The Eye, every episode indirectly involves The Web (via the tape recorder the episode is recorded on). This list is limited to when the contents of the statement itself concern The Web.

Statements

Other Appearances

Characters

Artefacts

  • The Web Table: A table with a hypnotic pattern design with a small, removable box in the middle of it. Used by Adelard Dekker to bind the NotThem. Was often carried and delivered by Breekon & Hope.
  • Web Lighter: An anchor of The Web’s power in the form of a Zippo lighter with a cobweb design. It was used to entice John into leaving to smoke a cigarette, allowing for events to happen in his absence.
  • A Guest for Mr. Spider: A children’s book that enthrals the reader and leads them to a door where they are taken by a large, spider-like creature.
  • Tape Recorders: Tape recorders materialise and turn themselves on while around the staff of the Magnus Institute mainly Jonathan Sims and Martin Blackwood, recording statements and other important events. While the source and purpose of the tapes is originally unknown, it is later revealed that Annabelle Cane was using them to spy on The Magnus Institute, and that they played a crucial role in The Web’s escape through the Gap in Reality.
  • “A thrumming silk-wrapped object:” An artefact of unknown abilities used by Breekon and Hope to torture an unspecified woman.
  • Original cuts of Neil Lagorio films: The specific effects of watching the cuts are unknown. Lagorio’s care aid was trapped for five months after being made to watch them.

Locations

  • 105 Hill Top Road: A stronghold of The Web. Formerly owned by Raymond Fielding, the house has a tree in the backyard and at one point served as a teenage half way house. It was unknowingly built on top of a “crack” in the universe, which had continually widened over countless centuries before finally becoming a true Gap in Reality. The house was later destroyed by Agnes Montague and the land seemingly touched by The Desolation.
  • Domain in the post-Change world: A large theatre with many stages, in which victims are forced on stage and have their bodies manipulated by hooks and pulleys controlled by a large spider lurking above. Victims are forced to relive events that spurred on or aggravated substance use that they had since recovered from, then made to consume tiny spiders in the form of the previously-used substance. This process repeats indefinitely.
  • Upton House(MAG 181 - Ignorance): Though it was a mostly neutral location due to the inability for the entities to effect it, it was noted that Annabelle Cane resided there, “spinning her webs.”

Ritual

There (MAG 200 - Last Words) is no record of a ritual for The Web. Peter Lukas speculates that it prefers the world as it is, where it can manipulate people against each other. It appears to actively dislike the post-Change world.

In MAG 197 - Connected, it is revealed that The Web knows a successful ritual would ultimately lead to The Entities’ deaths by starvation, because no new humans would be born in the post-Change world and the End would ultimately claim all life. In MAG 200, John explains that The Web purposefully orchestrated the Mass Ritual over centuries so it could spread into multiple new dimensions and realities.

Connection to other Entities

  • The Web claims It is the only fully self-aware Entity, able to think and plan. Over millennia, people’s fears of plots and unintended consequences that fed The Web became metaphysical nerves, creating a vast intelligence that it used to hatch a grand plan to escape into countless new realities. Since The Web is (allegedly) the only intelligent entity, many of the actions it takes against agents of other entities end up being part of a larger plan rather than a sign of animosity. It should be noted that The Web is heavily associated with opportunistic lying and this information was delivered while It still had something to gain from manipulating Its audience.
  • Throughout the series, The Web has continually interfered with the plans of The Eye and its agents, including revealing Jane Prentiss, compelling Oliver Banks to wake John from his coma, directing John to the statement that lead his encounter with Jared Hopworth, and John’s first encounter with The Web through A Guest for Mr. Spider.
    • After a lighter with a web design was delivered to John, there have been multiple scenes where he feels a compulsion to smoke a cigarettes, despite having quit smoking. This is seen both when John steps out for a cigarette after his encounter with Jurgen Leitner, allowing Elias to kill Leitner, and when he later shares a cigarette with Georgie Barker after sharing his intentions to quit again, which ultimately allows Annabelle’s plan to succeed.
      • Addiction and relapse is a tool that has been employed by The Web on multiple occasions.
  • The Desolation and The Web have been shown to have an antagonistic relationship, possibly based on the fact that The Web uses personal attachments and motivations to manipulate people, where The Desolation destroys those same attachments with the intent to cause harm.
  • The Web seems to have a limited, neutral relationship with The Corruption. In her statement, Jane Prentiss mentioned having seen spiders and cobwebs near the attic that contained the “wasp nest” she was drawn to and noted the distinction between the spiders and the hive. Also, in probably the least devious and complex of its actions, spiders aligned with the web really love to eat worms from Jane Prentiss’ Flesh Hive.

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