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The Watcher is generally considered to be the only known
ancient evil. Here is his flavour text:
"Imprisoned by
Connacht during the Wind Age, the Watcher only escaped by
tearing off his left arm at the elbow, like a wolf
chewing through his leg to escape a snare."
This shows that the Watcher is indeed ancient as he was
alive in the Wind Age and was fighting Connacht, the Light
hero of that age. We are given more info on the Watcher in
the Journal entry
for Silvermines...
"The old stories
all tell that when Balor freed The Watcher from his
prison under the Cloudspine, one arm was left trapped in
his prison of solid rock."
...and the Deceiver's
Myth 2 flavour text:
"The Watcher had
been the second or third most powerful sorcerer in living
memory"
This is backed up
when we hear of the avatara Mazzarin and his defeat by the
Watcher in Alric's flavour texts:
" Of all the
avatara in the Four Ages there is no doubt that Mazzarin
was the most powerful and his death the most salient
victory of the Dark during the Wind Age."
" ... the seventh
wave of Thrall stumbled and climbed over the slippery,
piled dead and Mazzarin saw The Watcher with them and at
last knew the number of his days."
The
Dissapearing Shade
An un-used STLI clip
in the artsound.gor file (which presumably would have a
corresponding sound) says "What the hell - where did he go?"
on the TFL level: "The Watcher". Originally it was thought
that this was said when the Watcher was killed but in fact
it happens when the first shade teleports. Teleports? Yes,
the first shade was supposed to teleport out before he dies
and then reappear where the second shade (Mazzarin)
currently appears. It is still possible to trigger the
teleportation routine. If you can get to the second shade
without killing the first, the first one will vanish as the
second appears. A
Mythmaster film
demonstrates this, but there's still no "where did he go"
played
Thanks go to Forrest for correcting me on this one.
But
is the Watcher Dead?
After the berserks
destroy the Watcher in the TFL level The
Watcher, we
never see him again. Is this proof of his death?
DarkSword
has this to say about it:
Somehow when the
watchers body was turned to stone it became sort of a
'shell', since the fallen knew that he wasn't dead and
could be freed by simply breaking the stone encasement
around it, they 'allowed' the 100 volunteers to 'try' to
reach the watcher and shatter his entrapment. Probably
the fallen lords could have cared less whether the light
made it to the Watcher or not, but I imagine they'd
rather sacrifice light units when the watcher escapes his
stone trap (i.e. when the zerks shatter his body it blows
up and may kill a few of your men)... anyway the point is
the watchers stone body was just a lure and in any event
the fallen knew the watcher would survive, and decided
they might as well kill a few zerks on the
side.
So, did the arrows not have the desired effect? Was the
Head merely deceiving Alric and the legion all along?
Probably
The
Arm
A long while ago,
ThorulfR
made a remarkable discovery.
In the Watcher's unit
description
"...the Watcher
only escaped by tearing off his left arm at the
elbow..."
And sure enough,
every time we see the Watcher's arm, it is indeed a left
one.
However, the Watcher
himself is missing the right one.
This discrepancy
sparked a series of discussions at the Asylum which produced
two points of opinion. The first; that the Watcher still
lives and that the one we kill is a fake, was met with the
second; that the Watcher is truly dead and the artwork was
only a mistake.
To find an answer to
this riddle, Forrest Cameranesi decided to go to the source
and ask Bungie themselves. Read the response he got
here
But he wasn't going
to leave it at that so he followed it up with a more direct
email to three big men at Bungie. See what Doug Zartman had
to say here
Based on the first
message, I came up with a theory of my own:
The arm found by the
Legion in Silvermines was actually not the Watcher's but a
decoy set by the Fallen to lure Alric to Silvermines and
then to stall them with the Watcher. However, the decoy
failed and the Watcher was killed thus allowing the Legion
to continue North and escape the pursuing
Soulblighter.
I take the second
message as simply a decoy to cause nothing but confusion and
as a promotion for the Total Codex, the latest Bungie
release at that time.
What
do you think?
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