The First Monk

Lore & Background

The monks of the Forbidden Land are a small, silent order who maintain the boundary between the living world and the sealed-away land of the colossi. Among them, the First Monk holds a position of clear seniority. He is the one who steps forward when Wander and Mono are brought before the gates, the one who speaks in a measured, almost liturgical cadence, and the one who hands down the terms of the task. His authority is absolute within the group; the other monks defer to his words and move in concert with his gestures.

What the player sees in the opening is a figure of solemn duty, a keeper of an ancient rite. The colossi are presented as obstacles, and the monks as custodians of a sacred protocol. But the deeper truth, one the game reveals in its final act, is that the monks are not guardians of a boundary for Wander's protection. They are instruments. The entire framework of the quest—the sixteen targets, the promise of resurrection, the sealed land—is a construction designed to channel Wander's violence toward a specific, ancient purpose. The First Monk, for all his gravitas, is a mouthpiece for that purpose.

This recontextualization is what makes the character so unsettling in retrospect. Every courteous nod, every patient explanation, every moment of apparent concern for Mono's fate takes on a cold, calculated quality. The First Monk does not change his face or his tone across the game; that is precisely the horror. He is the same man at the gates as he is at the end, and the player is left to realize that the kindness was never real.

In Their Own Story

The dust had not yet settled from the last colossus's fall when the First Monk turned his face toward the ruins. The other monks had already gathered in a loose semicircle, their hoods catching the pale wind that rolled off the dead giant's bones. The First Monk did not look at the bones. He looked at Wander, who stood at the edge of the clearing with the sword still in his hand, the blade dark with a red that was not quite blood.

"You have fulfilled the rite," the First Monk said. His voice carried the same flat, ceremonial calm it had at the gates, as though he were reciting a passage from a text rather than addressing a boy who had just killed sixteen living things. "The debt is paid."

Wander did not move. Behind him, Mono's body lay where it had been laid, unchanged, as it had been unchanged all along.

The First Monk's hood shifted, and for a moment—just a moment—the shape beneath it did not look like a man's face. It looked like a mouth. A very old mouth, opening in a landscape that had no sky.

Reader's Guide

The First Monk is the leader of the hooded monks and the character who sets Wander's entire quest in motion.

He is visually the most distinguished of the monk group: the tallest, draped in the most layered and ornate robes, with a long white beard visible beneath a deep hood. His silhouette reads as a priest or abbot, and his posture is always upright, still, and commanding. The other monks are shorter, more uniform, and defer to his position.

His relationship to Wander is that of quest-giver and, later, something far more sinister. At the gates, he speaks to Wander with a calm, almost gentle authority, explaining the task and the promise of Mono's return. He never raises his voice. He never draws a weapon. He simply states the terms and steps back.

What he wants—or rather, what he serves—becomes clear only in the final act. The monks are not independent actors. They are bound to Dormin, and the entire structure of the quest is a mechanism to drive Wander into slaying the colossi for Dormin's purposes. The First Monk is the face of that mechanism.

He does not change across the story. His tone, his composure, his ceremonial language remain identical from the first scene to the last. That stasis is the point. The player's complicity is built into the design: you accepted his terms, you followed his instructions, and by the end you realize the man who smiled at you at the gates was never smiling at all.

Did You Know?

• The First Monk is the only monk who speaks directly to Wander and Mono at the opening, establishing him as the clear authority within the group.
• He never engages in combat or physical action at any point in the game; his power is entirely rhetorical and positional.
• His visual design—taller frame, more layered robes, longer beard—deliberately echoes medieval depictions of abbots or high priests, reinforcing his role as a spiritual authority figure.
• The revelation that the monks serve Dormin reframes every prior interaction with the First Monk, turning his calm courtesy into a kind of patient, inhuman patience.