The Craftsman

The Craftsman
Aliases	The Porter
Physical description
Species	Human
Gender	Male

The Craftsman is introduced in The Room Three, but there are small hints to his existence in previous games. In The Room Three, he takes the protagonist to Grey Holm, where he claims to need the players help. This is a ruse; he wants to trap the protagonist's soul in order to open a portal, presumably to the Null Planet. He is known to have interacted with a number of parties interested in the Null, deemed his "apprentices". He may have had a part in the death of A.S. He imprisoned Margret Cox (The Mystical Maggie) in a tarot card-reading machine, which is kept in Grey Holm. He also imprisoned Simon Grayson, a.k.a The Great Khan in a paper theatre in the library of Grey Holm. In some of his private notes, he says that the Null seems to be guiding his hand to create boxes. He is the mind behind Talisman, and created the safe from the original Room, along with a number of other apparatus throughout the series.

Appearances

• The Room Three
• The Room VR: A Dark Matter

Design

The Craftsman is an elderly man as shown by his wrinkly and saggy skin. He has pointy ears and a long, crooked nose. He is completely bald but does have faint eyebrows. Blue veins can be seen under his scalp. He wears a bandanna tucked into a white shirt as well as an eyepiece around his neck. He also wears a green tunic over his shirt and a denim coat, along with brown gloves, regular trousers and shoes. He very rarely appears in person and can mostly be seen in apparitions of teal smoke.

Personality

The Craftsman appears to be helpful to his victims but in reality is an extremely manipulative person and has gone to extremely severe lengths to get what he wants. He seeks complete and sole control of the Null and will imprison those who he deems has too much control over it. He has no moral qualms with using people to advance his own agenda and has imprisoned hundreds of souls to that end. Even when appearing to help his victims he writes with cynicism and riddles, praising only himself. He is not above fear, however, and spent his final moments cowering before the Null's tendrils. In private, he questions his control over his creations, asking "Who pulls the strings of the puppetmaster?"

History

Note: The chronology of these events is largely in theory as it is unclear when exactly they occurred in relation to each other.

At one point in his life, The Craftsman learned of the Null and began pursuing knowledge and control of it. He titled himself The Craftsman and began approaching other individuals who knew of the Null in order to use them as stepping stones towards his own agenda. He took on countless disguises to infiltrate groups or organizations that were near to artifacts of the Null and intercept them before they could be found. This includes an Egyptian excavation site where he posed as a porter and discovered a Null Temple.

The Craftsman continued using people for his own purposes, including A.S. and Margaret Cox and several others. Maggie grew too powerful, however, so The Craftsman imprisoned her in a fortune-telling machine. At some point he made a breakthrough in his search for the source of the Null but needed to use a brilliant soul as a power source for his portal. Soon after, he became aware of the player's journey to Grey Holm and intercepted them on the train, using the Null to take them there instead. He largely remained hidden away, communicating with the player solely through notes and guiding them through the different buildings on the island. As the player repeatedly succeeded, he began to believe he had found the power source he needed. This altercation ends differently depending on the player's actions. In the game’s main ending, the Imprisoned ending, The Craftsman successfully traps the player's soul and uses it to power his portal; whether or not it led to the source of the Null as he had hoped is unclear. In two alternate endings, Escape and Release, Grey Holm is destroyed, but The Craftsman survives. The Escape ending shows a journal entry from the protagonist, expressing their newfound ability to move on from their experiences, and the Craftsman is not referenced. However, upon achieving the Release ending, the player receives a letter from the Craftsman admitting his own lack of trustworthiness but begging for their aid.

The Craftsman is not seen again until The Room VR: A Dark Matter, where he appears again as the game's antagonist. At this time he has captured hundreds of souls to power his machines and intends to make The Detective his next victim. He tricks The Detective via notes into collecting three souls that The Craftsman had trapped, using all four to power one of his portals. Not long after, however, The Craftsman meets his doom when The Hedgewitch assists The Detective in bringing The Craftsman back to the Null Temple he had investigated long ago, where he is subsequently swallowed by The Null's tendrils. After this, his soul is trapped in an artefact, which is used by The Detective to free the souls The Craftsman had trapped over the years.

Abilities

The Craftsman can build any number of apparatus related to the Null and has given such devices away on multiple occasions. He is socially adept and can easily manipulate those affected by the Null to his will. He is calculating but not clever enough to solve any puzzle the Null throws at him, as he often cheats his way out using mechanisms and the souls of his victims.

Relationships

A.S.

Every soul is unique, and so must be every trap that snares it... For AS [sic], his box full of demons. Knowledge. Power. Sight beyond sight. All lies. All just bait in the trap. -The Craftsman

The Craftsman fostered A.S.'s initial research into The Null and looked back on him condescendingly after his death. He wrote about A.S. as if he knew the man better than A.S. knew himself. It is theorized that The Craftsman was directly involved with A.S.'s death.

Margaret Cox

Maggy Cox was a charlatan, and there is no such thing as a spirit medium. -The Craftsman

The Craftsman fed Maggy several lies to start her investigations into the Null but became angry when she grew too powerful for his comfort. To keep her in line, he imprisoned her soul in a fortune-telling dummy. This made her resentful enough to assist the player in thwarting The Craftsman's plans, even at the cost of her life.

The Player

The Craftsman debilitated about whether or not to use the player, as summoning them would use the last of his power, but labeled it a necessary risk. He expressed relief when he came to believe that the player fulfilled his requirements after all, and showed the player minimal respect and condescending gratitude throughout their interactions. It is unknown how The Craftsman feels about the player if his plans are thwarted. The player seems to be indifferent towards The Craftsman unless he begs for his help in the game's third ending.

The Archaeologist and The Reverend

The Craftsman regarded these men as fools and looked back on them condescendingly. They blindly believed his lies and accepted his help until their souls were captured by him. It is unknown how they felt about him after their souls were freed by The Detective.

The Hedgewitch

The Hedgewitch proved to be the only one of his victims who was not tricked by his lies. She hid this knowledge from him, and so he regarded her the same as he regarded the rest of his victims until his demise. She despised him and called him a fool on several occasions.

Gallery

Trivia

• When The Craftsman created the fortune-telling machine to imprison Maggy, he misspelled her name as Maggie. Since he is seen properly spelling her name as Maggy in one of his notes, proving that both he and the developers knew the correct spelling of her name, it can be presumed that this misspelling was done on purpose to insult her.
• The Craftsman, like most other characters in the game, is rendered through Full Motion Video (FMV) rather than 3D modeling. In The Room Three, he is played by Mark Hamilton, the game's design director and co-founder of Fireproof Games. Mark was required to wear a silicone mask in order to play the character; the bandanna that The Craftsman wears is likely there to hide the edges of the mask.