Talk:Watchmaker

From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

The Watchmaker has had a long and often troubled journey since he first arrived in so-called "Primal" Earth back in late 2004. He reached level 50 on 10/10/10 (42 in binary, an auspicious date), over six years later. Between the two points was a lot of rough road, an apparent dead end, and a reroll... but also many good times.

I created the character to explore "the road not taken" for a canon character (the Clockwork King) and with a story arc to carry him from 1-20, ending with a confrontation with his alternate/native self. The first problem I encountered, and one that would continue to vex me, is that I had no idea what to do with him after that. It took the intervention of Quickshot to pull him out of his IC insanity and give me some OOC character hooks to work with. (The Faultline zone remake also gave me some more material, but that came much later.)

There were other reasons I didn't feel like playing him, some of which have been rendered moot by game changes. In 2005, controllers didn't have Containment and were notoriously difficult and un-fun to solo; as Mind/Kin, I didn't even have a pet to look forward to. I also came to realize he really should be Mind/Emp (I thought /Kin would fit a telekinetic, but that's all bundled into Mind already), but didn't want to lose his early badges or the classic suit-jacket model by rerolling. There were times I thought about just deleting him entirely to free up the slot. But then we got extra slots and server transfers, and in 2008 I moved the stalled original over to Infinity for storage and started over, quickly making up the difference in levels.

Both Quickshot's player and I guessed, from the very limited info about the Clockwork King at launch, that he was an older man, middle-aged, properly "kingly" in his offended dignity. Then the official background finally caught up in 2006 and made him much younger - a knave or jack pretending to the title. We had the choice of extensively rewriting our characters or ignoring/explaining it as best we could; obviously, we chose the latter.

Now he's finally 50, and I've finally figured out what to do with him. He's closed the circle and begun a new journey, one with no predetermined end.

-- Megajoule