Ooops! Hell DID bar the way.
FrdNwsm
Member Posts: 1,069
Having put the Yankee Gits and the Mind Slayers in their places, MC and party proceeded to wander down to the fifth level of the Keep.
What's with the Githyanki down here anyway? They never even said a word about their precious Holy Butter Knife. These guys have somehow lost the ability to sense it's presence? Ironically enough, MC hasn't even used it since he had it forged. He'd have given it back if they had asked nicely and not been such dorks about the whole thing.
On the penultimate level, the party faced a number of tests that were administered by a Helmite ghost who proctored, making sure no one used any crib sheets, I guess. They were all pretty silly, actually. An IQ test given by a retarded Imp, fighting a large stream of orcs :yawn:: to prove persistence, and a bizarre black-and-white spirit warrior dream sequence. And they had to whack a fairly weak green dragon.
Lastly there was an odd machine that dispensed small globes, provided that you defeated some weak summoned creatures. Easily accomplished.
MC was a bit puzzled (nothing new for him, unfortunately). The dreaded Watcher's Keep was proving a walk in the park down here at the bottom. Oh well, he now had the three keys needed to go down and say "Hi" to the Imprisoned One. Damn! Maybe he should have baked a cake with a file in it?
What's with the Githyanki down here anyway? They never even said a word about their precious Holy Butter Knife. These guys have somehow lost the ability to sense it's presence? Ironically enough, MC hasn't even used it since he had it forged. He'd have given it back if they had asked nicely and not been such dorks about the whole thing.
On the penultimate level, the party faced a number of tests that were administered by a Helmite ghost who proctored, making sure no one used any crib sheets, I guess. They were all pretty silly, actually. An IQ test given by a retarded Imp, fighting a large stream of orcs :yawn:: to prove persistence, and a bizarre black-and-white spirit warrior dream sequence. And they had to whack a fairly weak green dragon.
Lastly there was an odd machine that dispensed small globes, provided that you defeated some weak summoned creatures. Easily accomplished.
Apparently I totally blew this; you can really milk this scenario for a lot of experience if you keep getting more globes from each pillar. I had no idea, so I just hit each one once. Doh!
MC was a bit puzzled (nothing new for him, unfortunately). The dreaded Watcher's Keep was proving a walk in the park down here at the bottom. Oh well, he now had the three keys needed to go down and say "Hi" to the Imprisoned One. Damn! Maybe he should have baked a cake with a file in it?
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Two keys to go.
Turning the second key summoned forth a lich and some flaming skill friends. Relatives of the Flaming Fists perhaps? In any event, their attacks were all just fire, so MC (100% fire resistant, thank you) totally ignored them and put Mr. Lich back in the grave.
One key to go.
MC was about to turn the last key, when he had a disturbing vision. Pain, defeat, and then endless darkness! Hmm, now what? He steeled his nerves for a second attempt, when yet another vision of disaster occurred. Clearly some God or other was sending warnings. Being of divine descent himself, MC was not about to ignore such things, and decided to pursue the matter further at some future date, when the omens were more propitious. Maybe it was time to go on to Rivendell and help out Elrond.
[Translation: the third group of foes was at least an order of magnitude tougher than the prior two sets. Those guys had been just the warm up acts for the main performance. We got our butts kicked royally. A second attempt produced the same results, despite some changes in tactical plans. I need to revamp my tactics. Three defeats in a row would be depressing to my ego; it would also double MC's reload total. Sheesh! Well, MC WAS getting rather too full of himself anyway; it's helpful to be brought back to the ground every now and then.]
It's also worth noting that that keep can close when you beat it, so if there's anything you still wanted to do in there, you should probably do it before facing the Imprisoned One.
Anyway, I don't know if I've said this, but these are great. Keep it up. I'll be interested to see how you handle the BG2 endgame, and I'll be especially interested to see how a new set of eyes sees TOB-proper.
"Waaaa! They were mean to me! And they took my lollipop!"
Makes me wonder what the heck Helm was thinking of, assuming that he did in fact personally create the place to incarcerate one of his immortal enemies. Considering that these are almost certainly not the original watchers (could Helm REALLY have deliberately recruited such a useless crew??), he certainly should have had the divine foresight to ensure that their replacements would be semi-competent. Subcontract the job out to the Order of the Radiant Heart, maybe?
On the other hand, the Hosts of the Abyss seem gathered to obstruct our way in. Now, you could figure that they are in fact trying to keep us from renewing the seal and hence they are helping Big Neb eventually escape; but in that case they should just go up top and whack the Watchers, at which point there will be no one left to recruit more sucker ... I mean, heroes ... to make more attempts. The seals would then just continue to degrade with time with none being the wiser. Well, OK, maybe there are wards up so that they can't actually go outside of the Keep. Fine.
And, of course, some of the demons were more interested in their petty little Blood War, or escaping from the Keep altogether. And where the heck did the Githyanki and Mindflayers come from, and why? In fact, why are ANY of the non-demonic residents of the Keep living there in the first place? It looks like they snuck in past the Watchers (who apparently just watched them go by; truly a useless bunch!) and infested the place like evil cockroaches. Attracted by the evil aura of Big Neb, perhaps?
And then we have the Helmite Ghost, whose role is truly without purpose. He sets us tests to prove that we are worthy to proceed? Ridiculous! He'd be a lot better off testing us to make sure were are actually going to renew the seals, and NOT in fact intending to set Big Neb free! If we aren't competent, and get whacked by demons, then the entire question of our worthiness has been answered fully. Instead he poses challenges that any competent group of adventurers half our level could meet. Helm probably gave him this position as a retirement bonus or as a reward for political patronage. You know, like being appointed ambassador to Mali or something.
Info about the Watchers will be revealed later. Some things will make more sense, while others will make much less.
WK level 1: This is the living quarters for the former caretakers of the keep. At some point they died. No idea why. Most of the monsters here are their undead spirits, though, or guardians they presumably put in place.
WK level 2: I have no explanation for why this level is here. It really doesn't seem to make much sense.
WK level 3: Okay, I don't know why any of the levels except the first and 5th are here, but this one has demons because it serves as a sort of dimensional trap. They get pulled in, and then they can't get out.
WK level 4: The mind flayers and the githyanki were summoned by Carson, using the Machine of Lum the Mad. Accidentally, probably. Presumably most of the other things also got summoned that way.
WK level 5: This one's definitely a test for the faithful, combined with a big magical seal to prevent people getting to the Imprisoned One. Everything on this level can be assumed to be part of that in some way. Of course, as you point out, the tests don't actually test anything particularly important, so I'm not sure what Helm was thinking.
Honestly, there's a lot about WK that doesn't make much sense. It's really all a flimsy excuse to have a giant dungeon. Which, in fairness, one could say about most video game plots, but WK seems especially flimsy in places.
The future comment will include something @FrdNwsm should know about demons and how they get to the Prime.
As @Jarrakul said, the 3rd level is a dimensional trap. I think the idea was to prevent anyone from Gating, Windwalking or passing through the ethereal straight down to level 5. Now instead, they get trapped here.
I also think that it was originally just a maze, with extremely hard-to-read directions. After all, it's only because of Yakman's Journal we have any idea how to navigate the maze. The wild magic and dead magic zones weren't there either since they were non-existent prior to the Time of Troubles, when a momentary collapse of the Weave caused all of the existing wild/dead magic zones. This is exactly the type of area that would have attracted wild magic like a magnet.
Level 4 is the only remaining enigma. MoLtM was not there originally, it was built by Lum the Mad, obviously. The machine has somehow swallowed the former method of opening the portal.
This level makes the least sense. How is there Illithid architecture here if they were only summoned by Carston? Which was like 5-10 years or so prior to BG2-events. And where did that Gith-spelljammer come from? This lapse in logic will be answered when you get down to the seal-level. There's indeed something fishy going on. Helm may be a god, but even gods can't see the future. Especially since considering that Helm was a mortal before being raised to godhood. Achieving divinity doesn't really improve your intelligence, does it?
I don't think any of the demons, devils or other planar travelers on level 3 actually know what's imprisoned in the keep. Nobody seems to know what exactly what is buried down below. It could've been the Tarrasque just as well.
This whole miniature Blood War that is going on in level 3 is because of adventurers common stupidity. Using magic in wild magic zones produces unpredictable results such as Gate-spells. When you bring in 1 big-ass demon, it usually starts summoning more demons. When the adventurers panic and try to counter by summoning devils, you have an all out war in your hands. With both sides summoning more of their kind.
Level 2: There used to be 4 mages who worked together to run the level, with the chromatic demon being a tool used to go between levels 2 and 3. Keep the demon trapped, use it as a tool, have the four specialists as the gate keepers. Sadly, they listened to the demon's lies and ended up killing each other.
Level 3: A wild magic area and a place where demons and devils get teleported in and stuck. A mini cage for little Nebs, so to speak.
Level 4: The only reason why all of those creatures are there is because of the Machine of Lum the Mad. It looked to me like it was originally used as a storage area/basement before the place fell into ruin. Lum made his machine, a mad mage got stuck inside of it, and the place got overrun with randomness since then.
Level 5: The final seal. That's about it.
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I get the impression that in its heyday, the defenders of Watchers Keep were able to teleport between levels and go where they needed to be. Artifacts and McGuffins were kept in level 4. Level 1 was a big library. Level 2 was the power generator. Level 3 was another mini prison.
Then the priests got old and died. The mages killed each other. The place sat there for awhile, with the wards holding up and nobody really being needed. When the wards started to fail, Helm told his followers to fix it, but they got cold feet. So they trick Charname into doing their job for them.
Basically, the designers said "let's make a big weird-ass dungeon that gets more dangerous the deeper you go". Period.
Drat you all! I have already started exploring Rivendell; now you are tempting me to go back to WK and try once more to get to the bottom of things (literally).
It tells you in the underdark illithid area that they can shape the stone with their brains. That's how they made the big brain bowl thing.
They were nesting, let's face it, the underdark place wasn't that full of home comforts either. Maybe they have a very commendable "oh bugger, look where we are, lets make the most of it" attitude.
Durlags Tower was superb as lore/story, in BG2 even Irenicus dungeon doesn't fit so well.
You can imagine Durlag calling in blacksmiths/trap makers after the doplegangers.
Irenicus, with his magics, not so convinced he'd go down the "industrial revolution" path with all the steam stuff/ironwork/pipes ect.