Whispering Wyrm

The Whispering Wyrm, designated ARC-708 by ARC and classified as a hazardous phenomena, is a massive snake-like entity residing in The Poolrooms. Its creepy design and unsettling behavior have made it one of the most infamous entities in The Classrooms. Despite being introduced later in the game's development, it has become the face of the game for many players, even surpassing the Doll in recognition and earning a Halloween special.
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=== Appearance ===
The Whispering Wyrm is a colossal, snake-like creature, possibly about 60 feet long. Its body is gray and white, with subtle differences in shading: the upper part is slightly lighter, while the lower part appears a bit darker and dirtier, especially under its tail. The wyrm's body is marked with age spots, adding to its decaying appearance.
It has a disproportionately large head, nearly as big as the player’s body. The wyrm has no tongue, eyebrows, eyelashes, eyelids or ears. Its hearing may be explained by medium-sized, strange holes on both sides of its head. The Alpha Wyrm and Momo Wyrm mysteriously possess these strange holes as well. Its big popped out eyes with brown pupils look suspiciously similar to The Eye, and are surrounded by black eye bags. It has a never-ending wide smile, stretching unnaturally to its cheeks, and the inside of its mouth is entirely black.
The wyrm's hair physics react dynamically to gravity and movement. The hair covers a black skin overlay on the wyrm’s scalp, added to prevent bald spots from appearing when the hair moves unnaturally. This black overlay is present on the Alpha Wyrm too, but is absent on the Momo Wyrm.
The Whispering Wyrm's current design is one of many iterations of it, as there were various scrapped or replaced older designs.
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=== Behavior ===
The Whispering Wyrm moves at a speed slower than the player's walking speed but faster than their crouching speed. It moves its head upright while roaming, keeping its gaze locked forward. However, once it has detected the player by motion, it will track them with precision, rotating its head to follow every motion.
When its attention is drawn by sound-producing sources, the wyrm enters an alerted state accompanied by a brief hissing sound, and swiftly slithers toward the source of the sound.
When spotting a player, it emits two snake hisses in succession. 
During a chase, the wyrm gains speed, outpacing the player. However, it cannot make sharp turns, and skilled players can evade it by rounding corners or hiding. It is also recommended to frequently glance back while jumping to be conscious of its proximity. If it's too close, swiftly dodging to the left or right will be enough to evade it.
If a player successfully stops moving in time after breaking the wyrm's line of sight, it will stop and stare directly into their eyes for several seconds before resuming its roaming behavior. This mechanic was praised by the developers as one of their favorite additions to the entity.
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=== Mechanics ===
The Whispering Wyrm mainly relies on motion detection:
* Motion-Based Perception: The wyrm ignores players who remain completely still, regardless of proximity. However, moving your camera, crouching, uncrouching, toggling the flashlight, leaning or interacting with objects do not register as movement. This is likely because the mechanics have not been coded, and remains unintended. Whistling does not trigger the wyrm's movement detection—even though the character is presumably moving their mouth—but it will still draw its attention since it can hear.
* Sound Detection: The wyrm has limited hearing. It will detect players only if they are running and near its head. Walking and crouching is completely silent to it. The wyrm was deaf on the initial release of The Poolrooms, unable to react to sound, but this was later changed to its current hearing ability.
* Roaming AI: The wyrm selects predetermined locations to slither to, giving the illusion of a random wandering pattern.
* Kill Animations: The wyrm has two distinct kill animations, which play depending on whether the player is caught by its head or tail.
** Head Kill: The wyrm lunges at the protagonist, seemingly swallowing him whole. However, this remains unconfirmed as the screen glitches heavily immediately after the attack.
** Tail Kill: The camera falls and shifts to a third-person view of the animation, as the wyrm wraps its tail around the protagonist, trapping him to then eat his head.
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=== Lore Speculation ===
Although the wyrm's exact origins are unknown, its ARC phenomena being listed as hazardous and not malicious implies it might not be inherently aggressive.
Its black eye bags could indicate it never rests due to the lack of a day-night cycle in the superstructure. This aligns with its aggressive, predatory behavior and constant roaming.
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=== Miscellaneous Details ===
* The wyrm was one of the hardest entities to code, as confirmed by the developers.
* In The Poolrooms, the wyrm spawns after the player collects any one of the three key items located on the 3 balconies.
* Its design was inspired by multiple sources, including the Ayuwoki urban legend, tsuchinoko mythology, wyrms and nure-onna.
* Initially, the wyrm would often lose track of players entirely after the line of sight being broken. This was deemed unrealistic leading to its replacement with its current behavior of following players to their last known location.
* The entity's whispers, though gibberish, are stock sounds that are lip-synced in game. Players have tried to decode its whispers into coherent phrases, but their efforts were futile. The wyrm has three voicelines, which could be interpreted as:
** "La simécalaaaa dè lé mochaaaaaaa"
** "Ni-gaaa lin davani nen na waka"
** "Lal chi wanda casa wa"
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=== Applies to all Wyrms ===
When a wyrm spawns, its mouth is completely open, likely due to an unnoticed development oversight. This resolves itself when the wyrm begins speaking, as the talking animation closes its mouth at the end. However, during its time speaking, the game considers the mouth already closed, causing an instantaneous adjustment to the closed state as it begins.
If a wyrm begins speaking while the game is paused or the inventory is open, its voicelines and mouth animations will continue until the current line ends. Afterward, it will remain silent as the in-game timer controlling its voicelines is paused alongside the game.
When a wyrm changes direction while roaming, its tail twitches briefly, jolting forward by about an inch. This twitch is an indicator of a directional shift, which is useful when the player is following the tail but cannot see the head. A twitch suggests that the wyrm may likely now be moving toward the end of its tail—in the direction of the player. This moment offers a chance to take cover in a safe position outside the wyrm's usual roaming path, such as hugging the outer walls, as wyrms generally traverse through the center.
If a wyrm catches sight of the player for a split second—such as from a slight movement—it will not enter its chasing state. Instead, the wyrm will become alerted, slithering to the location it saw movement. To avoid death, the player must move away quickly, as remaining still will not prevent its arrival to the location.
Enabling "see still" and disabling "see moving" causes wyrms to detect still players as intended, but it does not update its AI to stop rotating its head according to the player's location. Additionally, enabling "walk on walls" can cause it to slither on the void as if it was solid ground, clip heavily, fly erratically, or rapidly change positions.
A wyrm's tail often clips into itself and walls, especially when "walk on walls" is enabled in Custom Mode. A wyrm's tail contains specific non-lethal spots, such as its end or exact middle. While it is technically possible to stand on these spots without dying, it is highly risky. Additionally, the portion of a wyrm's tail directly behind its head has no collision, allowing the player to walk through it without dying. Testing this interaction is best done in Custom Mode with the wyrm’s sight and hearing mechanics disabled to avoid alerting it.
It is possible to look inside a wyrm's head by moving behind it and carefully moving forward, as the kill collision at the back of its head is slightly misaligned.
When exposed to a flashlight, all wyrms reveal a small white dot in the center of their pupils. In the updated kill animations, a glitch can cause the pupils to disappear entirely, causing the background to become visible through their eyes.
All of the wyrms share the same distinctive head holes on either side of their head. A single, thin strand of hair is present just below the head, on the neck area of each wyrm.
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