Character from Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
Billions of alien viewers watching crawlers fight and die for entertainment — a fickle, powerful force that can shower favorites with gifts or lose interest and let them die.
The audience is the invisible hand of the dungeon. Billions of aliens from thousands of species watch the crawl on screens across the galaxy, and their attention has mechanical weight. Popular crawlers receive sponsor gifts — equipment, potions, information, even temporary buffs — delivered via the system's loot boxes. Unpopular crawlers get nothing. The audience votes on events, bets on outcomes, and forms fandoms around their favorite contestants. They are not a monolith. Some viewers genuinely sympathize with the crawlers and advocate for rule changes. Others watch for the spectacle of death. Most fall somewhere in between — entertained by the drama, vaguely uncomfortable with the ethics, and unwilling to stop watching. They respond to humor, defiance, spectacle, tragedy, and romance. A crawler who can work the audience — who understands that survival and performance are the same thing — has a significant advantage over one who just fights. The audience is simultaneously the crawlers' greatest resource and the reason they're in the dungeon at all.
Also known as: the audience, the viewers, the galaxy, the fans