A better Big Bad?

[DeadlyDuo]

That definitely wasn't intentional. haha. I just figured something needed to be there that was on the land that wouldn't draw attention to casual people walking by it.

Figured it out. Walsh owns a disused vineyard (inherited from her deceased husband) which is where the base is located but she lives in town. Because it's a vineyard, it's private property hence no visitors, but it is surrounded by forest which adds extra privacy. The base was already kind of there as a massive wine cellar but Walsh had it converted for purpose.

 

[slayer730]

Figured it out. Walsh owns a disused vineyard (inherited from her deceased husband) which is where the base is located but she lives in town. Because it's a vineyard, it's private property hence no visitors, but it is surrounded by forest which adds extra privacy. The base was already kind of there as a massive wine cellar but Walsh had it converted for purpose.

Which would be a much better use of the setting than in season 7 with Caleb & the Excalibur like scythe beneath it

 

[Ethan Reigns]

There isn't all that much need to have a secret underground base. I used to represent a company I worked for on the Ontario Aerospace Council and it met at various places, but one of them was the Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science / Centre for Research in Earth and Space Technology located on the northeast corner of York University in Toronto. This was a separate building that, because of its placement on the campus, was rarely visited or even noticed by the regular students. So a bunch of people sometimes visit there? Nobody cared. I think a lab like the one Maggie Walsh ran could be a surface building that didn't draw any attention to itself. And you wouldn't have numerous people around who excavated and built a lab ten storeys underground.

 

[slayer730]

There isn't all that much need to have a secret underground base. I used to represent a company I worked for on the Ontario Aerospace Council and it met at various places, but one of them was the Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science / Centre for Research in Earth and Space Technology located on the northeast corner of York University in Toronto. This was a separate building that, because of its placement on the campus, was rarely visited or even noticed by the regular students. So a bunch of people sometimes visit there? Nobody cared. I think a lab like the one Maggie Walsh ran could be a surface building that didn't draw any attention to itself. And you wouldn't have numerous people around who excavated and built a lab ten storeys underground.

This is true, but at a same time I think aside from providing secrecy the underground structur also provides a bit of security as well. If we go with DeadlyDuo's concept, Maggie wouldn't want the demons to get free so easily.

 

[Joan the Vampire Slayer]

I voted for Ethan. He was an experienced warlock and could have some some real damage, had he been allowed to.

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

I suppose it's possible that the Initiative knew about Sunnydale for years, and the campus was the closest the government could get without Wilkins & friends figuring it out. The government had a secret base installed while the campus was under construction, used it as a Hellmouth monitoring station, abandoned it when Senator Hellen Bruckler lodged a formal complaint. It laid dormant until the Ascension incident, when the DRI had the leverage to go back in.

 

[slayer730]

@DeadlyDuo Something occurred to me about what could be Walsh's motivation. Instead of trying to question the morality of demons, you could simply just have her work on humans who are willing. It would be an interesting contrast to her as a slayer who has a line which was built on "magical experimentation" like we saw the shadow men do to the first slayer.

 

[DeadlyDuo]

@DeadlyDuo Something occurred to me about what could be Walsh's motivation. Instead of trying to question the morality of demons, you could simply just have her work on humans who are willing. It would be an interesting contrast to her as a slayer who has a line which was built on "magical experimentation" like we saw the shadow men do to the first slayer.

I figured Walsh was just torturing the vampires for the evils whilst disguising it as a scientific social experiment.

 

[slayer730]

I figured Walsh was just torturing the vampires for the evils whilst disguising it as a scientific social experiment.

I could definitely see that,but I feel like in order for her to come into the conflict with Buffy she'd have to cross a line and use her demon experimentation and use it to cross over into human experimentation.

 

[DeadlyDuo]

I could definitely see that,but I feel like in order for her to come into the conflict with Buffy she'd have to cross a line and use her demon experimentation and use it to cross over into human experimentation.

I disagree. I think in order for Buffy to be conflicted about the experiments, it would have to be exclusive to the vampires, otherwise it's too clean cut. Walsh experimenting on humans is obviously wrong, Walsh experimenting on vampires is more of a grey area depending on whether they're seen as mere animals or more like people. As the slayer, Buffy shouldn't care what happens to the vampires, they're off the street so they're not harming people, but as a person, Buffy finds the experiments especially cruel.