jtr7 on 16/3/2009 at 11:12

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You've got it about right. Selling security equipment is the main business, and allows them to introduce other gadgets, making connections, getting the Nobility that made fun of him begging for his attention, while creating the latest fashionable things for the nobles to one-up each other over.

Yeah, Karras was around for some time, recruiting others to his 'cause, but it was the events of Strange Bedfellows and beyond that galvinised Karras break off with his loyalists to start the full-on Mechanist movement, including the Nazi hatred for pagans. The mystery is when was he part of the "discovery" of the Lost City?

nicked on 16/3/2009 at 13:23

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Actually, that was the whole point of the Cetus project - as far as the mechanists were aware, the only way into the lost city was by submarine under the ocean.

Also, Gervaisius. ;)

Meisterdieb on 16/3/2009 at 16:23

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The entrance we see in TDP was probably the only one that needed sealing by the Keepers since other entrances would have been destroyed by the cataclysm or just plain inaccessible for normal people - like a flooded tunnel. Not until the Mechanists built their sub were they able to move their eqipment down there.

Of course that still ignores the question of how the Mages had gotten down there. Either they used their Earth Mages to make a tunnel or there simply are more entrances than even the Keepers were aware.


Yes, but we have IIRC about a year between the events of TDP and TMA. Since we are only talking about one city here, I don't think it would be too far-fetched to think these changes possible. Karras used the Hammerites weakness after their battle with the Trickster to split off and by being "new" and "modern" and probably by bribing the nobles with promises of thief-proof mansions he got some allies for his order.
I'm not quite content with "the Metal age is clearly there" - it is there but not as ubiquitously as one might think. Not that much has actually changed within the city for most of it's people. Most of the new technology is with the Mechanists or the nobles and not present in the rest of the city.

My interpretation is that Thief 2 is actually the Dawn of the Metal age - the actual Metal Age would have come about should Karras have been succesful.


I think we hear or read in one of the in-game notes that Garrett's mechanical Eye was a present from the Hammerites. And in Soulforge Karras reveals that it was him that built that eye. So I think it's a safe bet to say that Karras was a member of the Hammerites before (isn't there a in-game text that actually states thus?) At the very least he was working FOR the Hammerites, although I don't see the Hammers as the outsourcing kind.


We know from the imprisoned priest in Cragscleft that the Hammerites do have dissidents and heretics. But only those extreme enough in their views will be actually branded as heretics - I believe the Hammers know of normal philosophical discourse.
We know from the machines in TDP that the Hammers used gears already, so it's not something the Mechanists invented.

What the Mechanists did was declaring the Gear holier than the Hammer. I don't remember the in-game reasons but probably it was also because they simply need a different symbol and because a Gear isor seems more elaborate and elegant than the hammer.

So I don't think the Gear at the end of the final cutscene in TDP means that there are already Mechanists present.
It most likely serves as an instrument of foreshadowing.

An in-game expalnatzion could be that the gear is already in use for certain religious functions and its introduction in TMA isn't that big a thing.


Another reason for why the Mechanist belief was so fast in spreading throughout the city, can be seen in RL history the HRE in the late middle ages. It was customary that the citizens followed the same religion as their ruler. Which wasn't that much of a problem as long as their only was the Catholic church to join anyway. But when some rulers converted to protestantism their subject had to convert to.

So if you have some lord convert to the Mechanists he will probably want his servants to convert as well (or the Mechanists will require that of him).
Most normal citizens or servants wouldn't mind anyway - since they would have other, more pressing matters to deal with (getting enough food to live and such) and, anyway, they still were worshipping the Builder. No change there.

Meisterdieb on 16/3/2009 at 17:53

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How would a "normal" person be able to get anywhere near the Eye? We see Keeper dying on their missions hiding the talismans, yet Garrett seems to waltz through there without that much trouble.
The Eye is protected in a sealed cathedral(I'm assuming that within the game the Keepers would have sealed all the doors and not just the front gate- because the Keepers may be dumb but not that feeble) within walled of district and "guarded" by ghosts, zombies, burricks, spiders and craymen.
Each one of those is enough to be a problem for any "normal" person, even the Hammers could only contain the incident with all their forces and with the help of the City Watch and (I think it's a least hinted at) the Keepers.


Good point. Though I was thinking more along the lines of how Christians have more than one symbol in use. True, the cross is THE predominant one, but you have also angels on the grave, or chalices and not always and only crosses. Also there are the symbols of the shepard's crook (used by bishops), the rosary, the bible (as symbol not as the actual book), the lamb (for Jesus), the halo's of holiness, chalice (for the sacrament) and probably some others as well.

And also, just as Christ wouldn't hold the Star of David, the statue in the cutscene isn't the Builder holding something "alien" (To be honest, just until now I had always thought that statue to be female - not so sure now). It is just another of his many tools. Karras just chose another symbol - he could have chosen the Holy Chisel (Strange Bedfellows) as well.

My view on Thief's religions: I see Hammerites and Mechanists more as how Catholics and Protestants differ and not as Jews and Christians.

ManicMan on 16/3/2009 at 18:07

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i meant "wouldn't".. sorry, typo ^_^;