How to Build a Watcher
How Gortash hijacked the Gondian Auto-Guard project to create his Steel Watchers is remarkable and horrible, and somebody ought to tell it. Might as well be me. The original design for the Auto-Guards outwardly resembled the eventual Watchers, but an Auto-Guard was designed to be piloted by a (small) individual in a cockpit in the torso. When Gortash, through some scheme involving fraud and blackmail, took over the Dock Foundry, he scrapped those plans and announced that the Steel Watch would be entirely remote-controlled from a central hub. We had no idea that this remote control would involve both Myrkulite necromancy and illithid psionics. As finally worked out (under duress) by Zanner Toobin, fitting out of a Steel Watcher requires the following steps: - A zombie is decapitated and has its brain removed. - The brain is 'tadpoled' and put in a brain jar where it becomes parrt of the Absolute hive mind. - The tadpoled brain retains its psionic connection to its undead body. - The undead, headless body is wired into the torso of a Steel Watcherr. - The Absolute elder brain sends psionic orders to a jarred brain. - The jarred brain passes on the order to its connected Steel Watcher. All of this telepathic traffic is coordinated through the Neurocitor in the Control Centre. But I hope to do something about that.