I have a fair number of headscratchers about this game..

[tyranius]

First of all, I'd like to thank Frictional Games for this excellent game. The only game to truly scare me.

Well, I have a few doubts about the story, but since I have a fair number of headscratchers I won't present them all from the get-go. I'll present one, wait for a definitive answer before presenting the other. Now on to the first one:

Alexander locked Willhelm and some other guys in the Wine Cellar and also served them poisoned wine. What I want to know is, when exactly did he do this? Was Daniel already in the castle?

Also, did the poisoned wine simply kill the men or did it turn them into the Grunts? If so, how did Alexander make them submit to his will? And if not, where are the bodies?

[Fomzo]

Some things are better to be left mysterious...

[anthonydraco]

There are remains on the floor in the wine cellar. Those are some of the men you're looking for.

But I think some of them turn into Grunts. Alex said he could 'make more.' That said, the wine definitely did something to them, if you play the game again you'll hear voices or notes saying that a few of them have bones bursting out of his chest.

[LuckyBlackCatXIII]

First head scratcher: Since Wilhelm served Alexander from 1702-1704 (from what I remember from the "Remember" document) I think it's safe to say Daniel was not around at the time. I'd say Alexander did this around the last year of his services

Second head scratcher: It's heavily implied that Wilhelm and his men were transformed into monsters via Alexander's wine. Aside from the flash back and note that we find in the hidden study in the first library, there's also a loading screen that mentions this:

"The servants avoided him, yet he knew they were there. They all smelled
of spiced wine, a mystic scent permeated by clove and sage."

Also I think that FG mentioned in the commentary parts of the game that the gatherer's are basically bodies inhabited by beings from Alexander's world so...somehow he can control them I guess!

Hope that helps!

[Hunter of Shadows]

The wine is revealed(by FG, dunno where) to be spiked by a potion that acts as a summoning for eldritch entities from Alexander's realm, the entities try to twist the human bodies into forms they are more used to, of course this can only be done so much, thus why Alexander had to reinforce their bodies with robes/nails to keep the gatherers from falling to pieces

[tyranius]

Thanks for the anwers. But if Willhelm and his men ARE the grunts, where were they when Daniel was there in Brennenburg? Daniel was in pretty much all parts of the castle (when he was walking around with Alexander), where could the grunts be hiding then?

Also, Daniel talks about servants on his journal. Apparently normal people. Where are they in the castle? Murdered by the grunts?

[Hunter of Shadows]

In his journal the servants ARE the grunts and brutes, but they hide under cloaks and stuff

[LuckyBlackCatXIII]

What Hunter said, Alexander most likely concealed them under clothes so as not to frighten Danie along with making them carry around clove and sage too (to cover the smell of walking corpses and what not. Would explain why they avoided him.

So ergo Daniel was around them/ordering them at times during his whole stay there but was just unaware of their true looks.

[tyranius]

Wow, that's really creepy. To think that the ones who were serving Daniel during his stay were the very monsters hunting him throughout the game. Daniel even mentioned in one of his notes, that the servants were strangely silent. Now he knows why!


Another headscratcher:

Why did Daniel hide the Machine Room key (the one behind the portrait in his room)?

[LuckyBlackCatXIII]

You know that's one thing that has always confounded me too!

The best thing I can come up with is that he didn't want more gatherers to be able to come up from the prisons so he sabotaged the elevator then hid the machine room key so no one could fix it while he did his whole 'self-inflicted-amnesia' bit?

Pretty weak ideas but it's all I got. I'd like to see what others might have come up with!