Chương 1: 1-Digital Investigations

NOTICE! This story is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.! WARNING! The following work contains mature themes, foul language, and disturbing textual descriptions. This work is intended for a 18+ audience and is not for those under the age of 18.

The subject matter includes depictions of the effects of: Abuse, Depression, Terminal illness, Stockholm Syndrome, Narcissism, Murder Corporate Corruption, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and serious crimes that are not condoned in this writing. The story also contains "digital gore" (AKA fragmentation), but does not show or depict actual, bodily gore. At no point does the story show any graphic depictions of sexual content. Reader discretion is advised. {ESTABLISHING REMOTE CONNECTION… DONE} {REMOTE CONNECTION ESTABLISHED} {SEARCHING FOR "warden_files. mp4"... DONE} {OPENING FILE…} {BEGIN VIDEO} If you have been online recently, you've probably seen a resurgence in interest for the third installment of the Forgotten Tomes series, Lethe. Lethe was originally released 25 years ago on PC, but was later ported a year later to console systems. Recently, it got a remaster, developed by Lennox Games that was released on October 1st of 2025. Younger players now have a chance to play it.

Many from the 2000s have sunk hundreds, if not thousands of hours in, getting lost in its world (and jank) which they will experience as well.. For its time, Lethe was quite possibly one of the biggest open-world, Western RPGs known for its unique worldbuilding, world map, characters, and quests, but also its bugs. Grandview, the developer of Lethe, always had trouble optimizing their games for their glitches and bugs. And Lethe had a lot of them.

Lethe nowadays is best known for its weird AI that is "quirky" in its own right and its borderline comedic bugs/glitches which the remaster devs at Lennox Games have kept in as they too found them hilarious. To name a few, there is the "zomin glitch" (an in-game drug that boosts speed) where players dart off at the speed of light, causing lag, and causing their character's death from falling too great of a height.

The "bowl key" glitch (or sometimes called "portal bowl") where people have sequence-breaked the game and did 10 minute speedruns to the final boss Amulius. The "Magnificent Adorer", a weird elf that is a companion to the player character that usually dies very easily. Many amusingly have taken her to Mount Sven, the tallest place in the game, and trick the AI to go down the mountain as a bowling ball against high-level mobs.

The results are surprisingly effective, and became one of the most popular memes of the '00s. And most infamously are the Elmiran guards, known to be almost omnipresent as they always seem to know of the crimes committed by a player. They are persistent, ruthless, and the remaster made them seem almost nigh invincible. However, there is one among them that is special, or rather infamous due to their odd behavior many online call "The Warden".

An NPC so odd and unusual, that it has caught the attention of investigators, like myself, to understand this anomalous entity. I'm John Bielik, your host and guide to weird, internet mysteries on Digital Investigations. In this digital investigation, we are exploring this unusual NPC that has caused quite a stir online. Before we begin, a word from our- EDITOR'S NOTE: {SKIPPING 2 MINUTES, 41 SECONDS OF SELF-PROMOTION AND ADVERTISING…} {The product is a scam, you're welcome. … Oops! Sorry, I should have introduced myself. I'm what you can consider the "editor" of this script. Well, more like editing the details John conveniently left out during this script. So, you can call me your actual guide against this guy, who has made a living off sensationalizing internet horror stories with over 1, 500, 000 subscribers. … Uh… Why am I letting you see the script so early despite me "editing" it? It's kind of complicated… … Fine. Our friend here decided to do a story on someone a lot more powerful than he can comprehend. Someone that has been watching him for a while. All through a community poll… Dude loves the limelight, and the money… … I think it's best if you read this before I say anything about the "subject" of his newest video. So uhh… RESUME!} The guards of Lethe, properly called the Elmiran guards (or more affectionately called the Lethe guards) are rather easy to spot with their blackened plate armor, and Roman-styled helmets.

Their gear is actually very good for mid-game, and can carry a player at least until the final boss with "special" enchantments (and potion glitch spamming). I myself have- EDITOR'S NOTE: {SKIPPING SELF-REFERENTIAL STORY…} {This lasts for 49 seconds. I'll filter this out} DLC-wise, it is out-competed by the Chilled Armor Set and Jackorenthian weapon sets. The guards are in all the game's settlements, and the remaster had them as wandering NPCs.

This was probably the remaster's own little awareness of the Lethe guard meme that they wanted to get in on. There is even an achievement based on the meme "Halt" which requires you to defeat a Lethe guard. It's not that easy, and the remaster did a pretty good job at making the AI more intelligent. Well, not as intelligent as the Warden, the subject of our investigation today. To start, the Warden appears like many of the Lethe guard NPCs, but has a few differences.

His helmet has a red gemstone centered on his visor, his eyes are a chilling blue hue, and he oddly enough carries an axe and what appears to be a Jackorenthian shield. Now, for those familiar with the game, none of the Lethe guards carry an axe as their weapon, only a sword and shield. Many players looking for him (or rather, unexpectedly encountering him) notice the axe or the shield first.

He often runs up to players, claiming that they dropped an item, and gives them an overpowered, enchanted weapon or armor set that practically carries a player through the rest of the game, including the DLCs. That, is of course, if a player has done good deeds in the real world, or they are struggling. The Warden, unlike most NPCs in the game (the remaster included) is the only one that gives players items.

This behavior in itself is unusual as it was confirmed by the original programmers of Lethe, they were trying to include a gift-giving system based on a player-NPC relationship meter, but it was scrapped due to how complex in terms of programming it was. The Warden's behavior seems like a circumvention of this problem, which the original devs in a 25th anniversary interview said was unusual, and they themselves thought someone had secretly programmed it during crunch time.

As it turned out, this wasn't the case, as they did an internal audit of the game a year after its release and found nothing in terms of code indicating this anomaly. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. A few dedicated modders have tried as well reimplementing this system to limited success, and said mods usually broke the game to an unplayable state. I learned that the hard way.

The Genesis Engine, the very engine that the Forgotten Tomes series has used since Lethe, is very finicky when it comes to complex NPC behavior, usually resulting in very awkward conversations. Even with all the upgrades, the engine itself has struggled with making a player-NPC relationship system. Lennox was, of course, thinking of implementing it for the remaster as they used the more advanced Carcosa 5 Engine, but they thought it would take away from the nostalgia factor of the original.

However, a few of the devs tried looking into this rumored "Warden" NPC, but found nothing that described him, possibly due to the earlier mentioned prerequisites. EDITOR'S NOTE: {He didn't want them to look into him} The earliest recorded encounter with the Warden was on January 9, 2001, a month after Lethe was released on December 22, 2000 by an unknown user on the anonymous image board site 5San at 1917 hours (Central Standard Time). The post was released on the infamous conspiracy board, /51/.

The original thread itself was deleted from the site, possibly due to the thread being "low effort" and not contributing to the discussion presented. Also, many suspected the OP was under the age of 18 due to the consistent grammatical mistakes, which on 5San breaks their TOS regarding who can and cannot post. It was thankfully saved on the internet archive site Alexandria and can easily be searched using the date and time of the post. I'll have a link in the description along with all of my sources.

EDITOR'S NOTE: {Ironically, most of them are not links to the Alexandria Archives} As of the time of writing this, the original poster of the thread (or OP) has not been identified. They are currently being sought for confirmation of this incident. The following is an unedited text version of the original post on 5San's /51/ board for the sake of accuracy, documentation, and transparency. This includes all the grammatical errors that were present.

EDITOR'S NOTE: {The only thing infamous about /51/ was the amount of schizo posting, rambling, and not to mention the constant circlejerks. LMAO. Dude, have you even posted there?! … Sorry, went on a tangent. John cut multiple parts of the post, which yours truly edited back in; including the grammatical parts which are just bad. … Why was it so bad?! … Pretend you didn't read that previous line} THE FIRST WARDEN ENCOUNTER DATE OF INCIDENT: JANUARY 2ND, 2001 TIME OF POST: 1917 HOURS (CST) > be me > come home from work after working an 8 hour shift > fx up some ramen nd hd 2 my room 2 play some lethe > lock all doors and close all curtains, don't want sunlight 2 ruin an allnight session > get 2 the city of agreggo after 18 minutes in a new sv file > stopped by some guard carrying an axe and a red gemstone on his helment"hey, i tnk u dropped this.

best be careful not 2 lose it again." > he disappears > check invtory and enchanted blighted longsword with 284 att power for evry single dmg type"HOLY SHT!" > proceeds to cmpltly break the game did any1 encounter this npc? i nvr seen tht dlg b4, and im not sr if ts was sum sort of inside joke or smthing else? EDITOR'S NOTE: SKIPPING {the cringe}…

The OP of the post was immediately chastised for their bad grammar, the fact that there was no photo to confirm that their story, and the fact their story sounded like a generic horrorspaghett. Replies that actually tried to provide a meaningful discussion regarding this showed a lack of knowledge of this NPC to their knowledge, but were also very skeptical of the OP's claim.

The "janny" (an "affectionate name" for moderator by 5san posters {that are assholes}) of the /51/ board subsequently IP banned the OP and deleted the thread soon afterwards. Not too long after the incident, many more encounters regarding the Warden appeared on the /51/ board and the /vya/ (video games) board regarding this NPC. It appears these incidents were in mockery of the OP {more like bullying}, though some seemed deftly serious, claiming anomalous behaviors with screenshots.

Those serious posters propped up more over the course of the month. Though infrequent, it triggered a great deal of interest regarding this unknown entity. Within a few months, discussions of the anomalous NPC had spread past 5San to various forum posts on different sites, all claiming the same strange behavior from a guard with a red gemstone on his visor, carrying an axe as his weapon. Discussions about this NPC eventually died down within a year, but the incidents continued.

A small community of those affected by the NPC began hosting a site called Red Guard Watch to document these incidents, but also to analyze his strange behavior to understand the possible ulterior motives behind this NPC. As far as why the Warden was originally known as the "Red Guard", it was due to the odd red gemstone located on his visor, as discussed earlier as seen here. Though it's more like a slightly pinkish gem. I think it's fuschia? Magenta?

No, it's more like a- EDITOR'S NOTE: {Morrrre rambling for 38 seconds … I wish I had a way to show my face, but… GOD THIS IS SO [EXPLETIVE] CRINGE!} Many aren't sure of the gem's exact nature, but some theories have circulated on the site. One of the oldest theories was that it was a dev that somehow managed to create an internet session with a random player of Grandview's choosing, and that gem was an indication of a unique developer player character.

This theory reasonably died down as if that did happen, the game would lag as a result, which it never did when the Warden appeared, and that there are no 3D character models in the game's files that resemble the Red Guard with any ID variables correlating to any of the Grandview developers. The most popular and widely accepted theory is that the gemstone itself gives the Warden some higher form of awareness and powers that expand to the real world; something that is well-documented.

In my personal opinion, however- EDITOR'S NOTE: SKIPPING THE NEXT 1 MINUTE, 22 SECONDS} {JUNK! JUNK! AAAAND… more junk} Red Guard Watch later changed the site's domain name to Warden Watch following a series of odd incidents that seemed to indicate that the NPC acted as a vigilante evidenced by certain incidents that resulted in the harm of certain players that aptly described as bad-natured, and committed horrific, real world crimes.

Members of the site thus separated two categories of incidents by the outcome of the player affected by the warden, which they dubbed "Benevolent Incidents" and "Malevolent Incidents". The latter of which will be discussed later, as the incidents in question are disturbing in nature by how and why they transpire. For this investigation, there will be three benevolent incidents discussed, and one malevolent incident.

But, as I described earlier, the Warden only appears to certain players based on certain conditions in real life. The most well-documented are the benevolent incidents. These incidents occur when a player is good-natured, has done good deeds, typically is in a difficult life situation, and has turned to video games as a distraction from their real-world problems; that is according to Warden Watch. The Warden often appears to a player and says they have dropped something and then disappears.

Players who do not know of the Warden seek him out, either with questions or thanking him for the items he gifted them. An untitled quest begins, with a marker leading directly to the Warden. The reward itself is not listed, and often appears as garbled text, but promises it is something very useful. The location is usually random, but it typically is an isolated area of Lethe's world map, isolated from enemies.

The Warden is completely still at this stage; he greets the player and seemingly confiscates their weapons, preventing them from attacking him. He also begins with the standard Lethe guard greeting dialogue, but it heavily deviates after the initial introductions to dialogue not even written in either original's/remaster's script.

Thankfully, these interactions are pretty well-documented on Warden Watch, and for this document, I have selected three examples of these benevolent incidents, of which we can begin our investigation of this anomalous NPC. They are pretty crucial in understanding this anomaly. Quick disclaimer: I have made sure to censor any private information for the subjects (or close relatives of the subjects) I have interviewed regarding these benevolent incidents that are the most well known on Warden Watch.

The methods of communication and recording vary, but all of them seem to be aware of the player's mental, emotional, and physical state. Odd, I know, but the incidents in question demonstrate some strange form of awareness from the Warden, something that defies all logical explanation. But before we begin, the following content depicts mature themes, foul language, and disturbing textual descriptions. This video is intended for mature audiences and is not for those of the faint of heart.

This is your last chance to exit this rabbit hole we are about to explore, a deep, dark, and otherwise disturbing one that- EDITOR'S NOTE: {Dude, just get on with it already!! … Sorry. My boss told me not to yell while typing. … I will say, though, he's not lying. What he's going to go over is pretty disturbing; especially the malevolent incident. So, uh, if you are not supposed to be, like, on a computer, then buzz off! … Sorry, I had to, of course, kindly point it out to you. … Well, you haven't clicked off, so uh, I'll skip ahead. FYI, John "censored the original transcripts as they weren't "interesting enough". WTF?! … Nvr mind. I'm playing the transcripts in full. {SKIPPING VIDEO BY 1 MINUTE, 38 SECONDS}