Everwatch
Realm of Helm
Location: Mechanus
Cutter, if ever there was a place where the gears of Mechanus seem to tick a little louder, its Everwatch. Under the relentless gaze of that tower, everything seems heightened, and the feeling of being watched is palpable. You see, Everwatch is Helm’s bastion, a surreal floating sentinel in the shape of a tower. The sodding thing appears just when you think you’ve sneaked into Mechanus unnoticed. You might teleport into the plane, or you slip through a sneaky colour pool from the Astral, or maybe you’ve got a fancy plane shift spell ready—and bam!—the Everwatch tower shimmers into existence right in front of you! It’s like the plane itself gives Helm the nod, and suddenly, there’s that towering edifice, floating just above a gear like a hungry vulture watching a battlefield.
The tower itself is austere, sharp, gleaming—all mithral and corners. There’s nothing soft or warm here—Helm’s schtick is about vigilance, duty, and the unblinking, unsleeping watch. The watchtower looks like it’s carved out of the bones of the plane itself, angles and precision, no ornament, and no unnecessary flair. Just pure functionality. The whole thing’s flying, mind you, I’ll give it that for ostentatious. It glides across the plane’s great cogs and turning mechanisms, flitting wherever the need for vigilance arises.
So, you think you’re clever sneaking past? Think again, cutter. The second you pop into Mechanus without the right permit, the tower appears with this gleaming guardian standing outside—some say it’s Helm himself, but surely a power has far more important things to be watching over. No, it’s much more likely to be one of his proxies or inevitable construct servitors—but the dark is no one knows for sure. What is known is this: You won’t be chatting it up. This sentinel doesn’t speak. It just stands there, full plate of mithral covering every inch, presumably peering out of its full helmet with an eye (or eyes) for chaos and ill-intent. They say it can sense your true purpose, your alignment, and whether you’re a threat. But a threat to what? Perhaps to the smooth running of Mechanus, or perhaps to the faithful of Helm. Who’s to say? But one look, and it knows.
And if you’re up to no good, well… let’s just say you probably won’t have time to regret your life choices. This thing can call upon an army of inevitables, maruts and the like, in the blink of an eye, and they’ll gate in faster than you can shake a spear.
So who would live in a realm like this? None other than Helm, He of the Unsleeping Eyes. This cutter has a long and frankly checkered history of standing vigil, come what may. His whole faith’s built around duty—watching, guarding, and protecting.
You’d think that would make him something of a hero, right? Wrong. See, Helm’s got a bad rep, especially after Toril’s Time of Troubles. While all the other powers were slumming it down on the Prime, Helm was given a divine task by an overpower called Ao: Guard the gates to the Outer Planes. Simple enough, right? Well, it seems Helm held his post a little too well, and the resulting chaos cost the primes of Toril dearly. Divine deaths, destruction, you name it—cutters from that world blame Helm for stubbornly sticking to his duty at the expense of, well, everything else. Since then his worship’s been diminished—ironic, no? A power of duty does what he’s told and everyone loses their minds about it.
But I digress, although it does sum up nicely what Everwatch feels like. It might be a levitating metal tower but it bears the weight of Helm’s unyielding nature, embodied in cold, unflinching metal. His realm’s less a place of comfort for his followers and more an eternal reminder that vigilance is often thankless, lonely work.
As for who else dwells here, you’ll find the spectators. These are strange, floating orbs with one great central eye and a few stalks peeking out the top, watching in all directions. Yes cutter, they’re like beholders, but without the genocidal mania. Chant goes that Helm created these creatures to help keep guard, but there’s a dark history tied to them. Some say that the spectators were corrupted by fiends, twisted into the eye tyrants that plague the planes today. Helm’s clergy have made it their life’s work to destroy these corrupted creations wherever they find them, which keeps them on their toes—and keeps Everwatch brimming with the constant tension of old grudges. Of course, the eye tyrants themselves laugh and say this is screed, and the spectators are the abominations—beholders captured by Helm and enslaved by his cruel magic. Perhaps both are true. Perhaps neither.
Everwatch is a mysterious place. They say it’s impossible to visit here deliberately—you can try looking but you’ll never find it. The only way to get to this realm is for it to come and find you, and you can bet when it does it’s because you’re up to something you shouldn’t be. Everwatch appears, vanishes, never stays in one place long. No cutter has managed to map it out completely. And it’s dangerous too. Get on the wrong side of Helm’s divine watcher, and the maruts won’t merely kill you—they’ll drag your sorry body back to the Mechanical courts, where you’ll be tried, judged, and likely executed, in cold, exacting detail. That chill that rushes through the air when Everwatch appears isn’t just the brisk Mechanus air. It’s the icy truth of Helm’s philosophy: Protect at all costs, and damn the rest.
Canonical Sources: Player’s Guide to Faerûn [3e] p159; On Hallowed Ground [2e] p47,181; Planes of Law [2e] Mechanus p10; Player’s Guide p26; Planescape Campaign Setting [2e] DM’s Guide p61 (all have only very brief mentions, I extrapolated and homebrewed much of this).
Source: Jon Winter-Holt