[SPOILERS] The Legend. Story of Grimrock.

[Kurn]

M.M, I am with you in the assumption that they did not have a fully formulated back-story. Just several good plot ideas. We seem to be doing a good job of filling in any gaps.

I do not think the king would require manipulation. Any responsible monarch would be interested in an evidently ancient and to some degree active magical mountain fortress within their realm. And since his best knights failed to return from the depths and there are no further volunteers, throwing down the meanest and toughest criminals he can find seems like a sound policy from a medieval viewpoint.
Yearly pardons to a trial by combat (Which means a trial before the will of the God by whose grace he is ruling) make him look benevolent and merciful as well. Those are important values for medieval monarchs.

[Cygon]

I'm with the "race of mechanical beings" idea:

At the beginning of the game, we learn that the undying one could not talk to other prisoners that were sent to Grimrock. Distance seems to also be a factor, as the mental communication thingy only starts to work outside of dreams when you enter the prison.

Thus, I would assume nobody on the outside knew anything about the undying one.

The spinning cogs and the text puzzling itself together are another clue to something mechanical (in contrast to the imprisoned otherworldly being idea which might have resorted images and voices)

When you pick up the weapon of power, the scrolls in the room explain that it is one of the weapons that have been used to defeat the _race_of_cubes_. This indicates that there was an ancient war between the "cubes" and the "designers". Why they defeated other cubes but not this one remains unexplained. It could be that the undying one is special, it could be that they didn't want to commit genocide or it could be something else -- like something bad happening when the last cube ceases to exist.

Without that knowledge, the purpose of Grimrock is also hard to guess. If the undying one was a special cube that the designers could not defeat, Grimrock could have been a proving grounds that tests anyone entering, only letting a warrior with the strength that the designers estimated was required to kill the undying one pass. On the other hand, if the designers didn't want to commit genocide or the last remaining cube must not be destroyed for some reason, Grimrock as a prison and as a timeless fortress (with self-rearming traps and undead guardians) becomes more logical.

Whatever background story the developers had in mind, I find it interesting enough that I would want to play a second game or an add-on just to learn more. A race of mechanical or technomagical beings would be refreshing, because us hobby heroes have probably already slain any kind of corrupted god, world devourer, powerful being from different plane, hell prince or ancient spirit imaginable

[Jirodyne]

One of the earlier thoughts were that the legionairs were undead warriors working for the designers. But what if they were living knights working for the king? What if the king didn't know of the cube, but knew the traps, and everything else. He promises freedom, but we have been to through it all and there is no way out. So what if he lied? Everyone going in is to die, and never be free. The legionairs are only so deep, and never seen after floor 5ish? So what if he doesn't know about the temple and the rest of it? Since he doesn't know about the rest of the dungeon, he doesn't know about the cube as well. Or even if he does know all about it, what if he doesn't know the cube is sentinel? And so doesn't know it was waiting for someone to come and free it.

there is... however... One thing I never understood..... The things to repair it... are not only in the same dungeon... but just 1 floor below it?! They couldn't scatter the parts around the world, destroy them, or even just scattered them around the floors? 10 floors to go through. I would have liked it if there was some super hard secret areas behind a locked door in every floor you could not access at first. Then hard to kill guardians scattered all through-out the dungeons had to be killed for them to drop the keys needed for the doors, tho they don't tell you which key goes for which locked area. So could kill a boss in floor 1, and it's the key for floor 10. Anyways, behind each door enemies 3 times stronger than the rest of the dungeon, annoying complicated puzzles, and 6 times harder bosses. Do it all, and get a piece of the cube you need to repair it. 'For the portal to let you free'.

[Snowmoon]

There was this theory i had, which someone elaborated on the Steam forums is abit surreal and farfetched.

I had thought the whole event was a hallucination in the players mind.

I mean think about it. they were all thrown naked into a dungeon with no hope to escape, no food to eat, with only snails and bugs.
They might have even been drugged. When they did woke up, it could've been days and they are starting to go mad.
Every puzzles they attempted continued to gnaw at their sanity. What was actually monsters such as skeletal guards are
actually other condemned prisoners. The party members all hallucinated that they were all monsters that needs to be killed.

Grimrock is actually a sort of mental institution for the criminally insane, where society just casts them in for whatever reason.
A couple of them has actually banded up and formed a society and managed to eke out a living (this is evidenced by a temple in this complex).
So yea, our heroes, in their madness and hallucination thought of them instead as monsters and killed them all.

Very wild story lol, and of course it does not fit well into the ending.
I just thought it'd be something a lil different then the standard RPG storytelling style tho lol

[devonathan]

Made an account just to talk about the ending. Just beat the game and I have to say... wow what an incredible experience.

Anyway back to the story. I have a theory after finishing the game about the origin of the cube. Someone mentioned in this thread that the cube could possibly be an otherworldly being. I think this is entirely possible. Remember the Globe of Tetharion? The item description says "None of the lands engraved on the globe seem familiar. Is it a map of another world?"

What if the designers found a way to this world Tetharion? And on this world they found a being of unimaginable power and energy. The designers brought the being back used it as an energy source (thus creating the cube) to power their society (Grimrock could have been a great city long ago), essentially imprisoning the being. Over time the being trapped in the cube became twisted and evil causing the the designers to shut it down, turn Grimrock into a dungeon and create a device that could disable the cube if it were ever reactivated again.

What if the crimes forgotten - but never forgiven where crimes committed against the being?

Anyway time to start the game over on hard mode!

[juho]

Anyway back to the story. I have a theory after finishing the game about the origin of the cube. Someone mentioned in this thread that the cube could possibly be an otherworldly being. I think this is entirely possible. Remember the Globe of Tetharion? The item description says "None of the lands engraved on the globe seem familiar. Is it a map of another world?"

Looks like you're onto something.

[Neikun]

^
I know after I read that post I took down a note for the Legends of the Northern Realms Project.
Perhaps you would like to join on board as a writer, Devonathan? o:

[Herder Refungaling]

Well, the Undying One states that his people built the dungeon of Grimrock so clearly he is not unique in his race. However, it seems likely that they were once creatures with limbs but then due to some event/occurrence had to 'upload' their conscience into cubes. But one major factor people forget is that in the in-game description of the weapon of power it reads "A long time ago, these weapons were used to stop and imprison the cubes." This tells three things, there were/are lots of cubes, there was a battle between the cubes and those that created the weapon of power, there were multiple weapons of power. I think it likely that the cubes were once a normal race that built the passages of Grimrock for an unknown reason, they needed or chose to become the mechanical cubes (probably to achieve eternal life, I mean look at the name),the Goromorgs used the weapons of power to imprison the cubes (we know of two, one in Grimrock, one imprisoned on the Isle of Nex that, eventually, was buried under the sands), the Goromorgs took the passages of Grimrock and placed traps and riddles, monsters and puzzles between the cube and the world. The Goromorgs are seen to be the guardians of Grimrock but the cube had a twisted magic around him, this slowly turned the Goromorgs into the Cthulhu fan club we know today, it also made the crabs, spiders, flies, snails, whatever the scavengers were before, turn into horrors, it caused the mushrooms to come alive and the humans stationed there by the King in order to help the Goromorgs keep the cube in.