The Spy Glass made its first appearance in Season 5 of
Knightmare along with numerous other changes. Kathryn of Season 5 Team 1 was the first
dungeoneer to use the device having acquired one from
Julius Scaramonger. The spy glass beared resemblence to a
magnifying glass and was mistaken by some
teams as such.
To use this device the dungeoneer had to hold it up to the eye shield. Upon doing so the advisors would be presented with a short view of
Lord Fear in his current abode communicating with his henchmen and plotting traps for the dungeoneer. Luckily for Lord Fear his seat doubled as a commode so he was never caught in embarrasing situations, except when
Sylvester Hands was being berated.
During this spying hints to future puzzles like
causeway codes could be obtained or
passwords a.k.a
daywords for the level. This also gave opportunity to add additional plot lines and story to the quests giving the realm of the dungeon a feeling of continuity and depth.
Whilst these sessions allowed for the viewers and team to watch the humorous goings on of Lord Fear played by the talented
Mark Knight it did have the negative consequence of slowing down the progress of the quest. Although not to the same degree as obstacles such as the
wall monsters of earlier seasons.
Once the sequence neared an end Lord Fear would typically detect that somebody was spying upon him and begin to take action. In later Seasons he had automated security to prevent spying such as fireballs that would appear. In addition he would occasionally end such sessions with a communications blackout, although this did not prevent the advisors still assisting their dungeoneer.
In order to prevent being killed the dungeoneer would be instructed to drop the spy glass, sometimes they did so a little too eagerly thus potentialy missing some vital final piece of information.
The glass could usually be used within the room in which it was obtained so did not need to be carried as a
clue object except in occasional circumstances. This meant that the dungeoneer could still choose two other objects from clue tables to take with them. Sometimes the spyglass would appear on its own or be acquired through trade and even be used by the characters encountered within the dungeon. Often upon witnessing the events in the spy glass any members of the powers that be present with the dungeoneer would be rather disturbed and run off.
Sidriss once used the spy glass herself and ended up being frozen by Lord Fear thus developing a small side quest for the team.
The spy glass remained in Knightmare until the end and even returned in the
Knightmare VR pilot albeit in the new form of a
spying orb. Once again it was used to spy upon the opposition the new CGI version of Lord Fear.
Provided By:
Forester, 2006-04-22 04:57:51