DECONSTRUCTING THE DUNGEON

          Knightmare fans blithely talk about it all the time – the Dungeon, that magical world where all the quests were carried out. Stop and think about it, however, and you will realise that the Knightmare Dungeon has very little in common with the traditional image of a castle dungeon. Instead of rats and beetles, there are dragons and elves. Instead of dark and gloomy cells, there are lavishly decorated palaces inhabited by haughty queens. Instead of a few spots of stagnant water dripping from the walls, there is a fully-operational sewer system. So just how did the dungeons below Knightmare Castle come to be the immense world of monsters and mystery that we all know and love?

          The answer to this, of course, is magic. As we know from the Knightmare books, the dungeons below Dunshelm were once very much like the dungeons below any other castle. However, when the evil Gruagach took residence in Dunshelm, he used his magic to warp and metamorphose the dungeons into his own little playground, where he set up a challenge to test the chivalry of young knights errant. This involved not only increasing the dungeon vastly in size, but also dissolving the boundaries between it and all kinds of other worlds full of faerie creatures and monsters, some of which set up home in the dungeons below Dunshelm.

          And so it was that the Dungeon became a place of magic, transformed by evil sorcery into its own supernatural dimension. Because of the Gruagach’s evil, all the knights who came to answer the Dungeon’s challenge were killed by the evil monsters within it, thus earning Dunshelm its new name of Knightmare Castle. However, when Treguard regained Knightmare Castle from the Gruagach, he turned the challenge on its head, creating a fair test that some knights could survive, if they were made of the right stuff. However, the Dungeon was still controlled by the magic of the Gruagach, even though Treguard was now in charge of it as the Dungeon Master. The magic meant that the Dungeon continued to shift and change itself constantly, confusing those who dared to challenge it with its tricks.

As the magic of the Dungeon began to grow and intensify, it began to need to shut down for several months on end in order for the entire Dungeon to regenerate and reform, like Dr. Who does every so often. Thus the “phases of the Dungeon” developed, demarking the different series of Knightmare that we know today.

As the magic became more and more powerful, the Dungeon swelled so enormously in size that it broke out of Knightmare Castle and into the surrounding woodland, thus extending the Dungeon dimension out into the forest, as Treguard explained at the beginning of series 4: ”The Dungeon which you challenge is constantly growing, and now it has become so great it can no longer be accessed only from this castle.” – Treguard.

By way of the magic ley-lines extending throughout the woods and forests of England, different areas – such as Dunkley Wood, Wolfenden, Grimdale, Witch Haven and Winteria – passed in and out of Dungeon dimensions during different phases. Some Dungeon rooms remained as well, thus setting up two different areas in the Dungeon dimension – the Dungeon and the Greenwood.

When Lord Fear set up residence in the Dungeon, he began to use his own brand of magic to metamorphose parts of it for his own evil purposes, thus reducing the quantity of outside areas that were able to pass within Dungeon dimensions. This culminated in the Dungeon’s final phase, when there were no Greenwood areas left at all in the Dungeon dimension, but plenty of Lord Fear’s techno-magical innovations.

Lord Fear used modern technology to aid his magical manipulation of the Dungeon, by creating puzzles and traps to floor dungeoneers. He also attempted to sculpt the very substance of the Dungeon for his own ends, which began with the inclusion of Mount Fear in level three, moved on to the world of Goth, and finally culminated in the erection of Linghorm and Marblehead in the Mire World. During the Dungeon’s final phase, two of the three levels were completely overwhelmed by techno-magic, and level one was looking distinctly like it was about to go the same way. If there had been another phase, who knows how much Lord Fear’s magic would have obliterated the Gruagach’s from so long ago?

All of this, of course, is complete fantasy, just like the world of Knightmare itself. However, if you’re looking for factual information about the Dungeon, that’s the best explanation I can come up with. If anyone has anything to add to that, or anything they do not agree with, then they should know by now what to do about it…