Previous Thief games help BIG SPOILERS

[CeeKai]

I became a thief fan when i played Thief 2, but i never played Thief 1. So i dont know anything about the previous storylines (playing Thief 2 was a long time ago, so i kinda forgot). Before im going to play thief 3 i'd like to know the previous storylines. Would somebody be willing to write a short summary on the events in Thief 1 and 2 concerning the story or give me a link where i can find something like that?

[TheOriginalNobody]

Here ya go. Thief 1 and the last level of thief 2 are a bit shaky because I havn't played them- yet.

Thief 1's storyline really starts up when Garrett is sent to steal a sword from a man named Constantine. Constantine's mansion is a little- odd. When he returns to his employer, Viktoria, it turns out it was a test, and Constantine was in on it. He is then sent to retieve an ancient artifact (it's an eye, i've forgotten what it's called) from the Lost City (I think it's the lost city). Anyway, when he arrives he finds he needs 4 elemental seals which are dotted around the city. He then retrieves the eye and returns it to Constantine, who proceeds to reveal himself as the Trickster, a pagan god. Viktoria is also not human.
They proceed to rob Garrett of both the eye and HIS eye, which is required for a ritual to destroy the world. Garrett goes to the keepers, who brought him up as a youth. They give him a mechanical eye. They form a plan, which is to take another false eye which is in fact a bomb and switch it with the Eye in the ritual. Garrett switches the eyes and Constantine blows himself up.

[TheOriginalNobody]

Whoops, clicked submit.

In Thief 2, a new group called the Mechanists is gaining power. They worship 'The Builder' and make many inventions such as the 'watchers', a sort of simple security camera. The Mechanists are led by Karras, who is somewhat mad.
One day, Garrett is hired to frame lt. Hagen of the city watch. He does so. Soon afterwards, he is ambushed. Wanting to find out why, he eavesdrops on a conversation between Karras and the Sherriff, Truart. Karras is showing Truart the 'Servant', a strange robot-like humanoid which wears a golden mask. It turns out that Truart is providing Karras with criminals and tramps to experiment on.
Garrett proceeds to steal a record of the conversation from the bank. He then goes to Truart's mansion to blackmail the sherriff, but he has been murdered. Evidence at the scene indicates a policewoman (i've forgotten her name) of doing it.
Garrett trails the policewoman and watches her hand over a letter to a 'pagan', one of the worshippers of the Trickster. He follows the pagan until te pagan is attacked and flees through a portal into a strange forest.
Garrett follows the pagan and fonds the letter was being delivered to Viktoria. Garrett and Viktoria form an uneasy alliance in an attempt to stop Karras.
Garrett goes to spy on Karras, who is holding a party at which he gives Servants to premier nobles about The City. Garrett steals plans for something called the Cetus Project, which have the name 'Cavador' on them. He goes to kidnap Cavador and finds a submarine, the Cetus Amicus. He stows away upon the sub, which takes him to the Lost City, which the Mechanists are developing and working in. He kidnaps Cavdor and returns to Viktoria. Cavador tells them that they were looking in the lost city for masks- the same ones the Servants wear- and somethings called Cultivators. Garrett goes to the mansion of a Lord Gervaisius, who collect artifacts and has a cultivator and some masks. He steals one of both.
<from now on the story gets a bit shaky because I haven't finished Thief 2>
It turns out Karras plans to blow up the Servants and therby killing most of the upper class in the city. Garrett activates a guiding beacon that brings the servants back to Karras. They blow up and kill Karras.

[Nupraptor]

Eh, why not.

Thief: the Dark Project

As a young orphan, Garrett found himself picking pockets to keep himself fed and reasonably healthy. One day, he saw a man in the streets whom people just walked by, as if he wasn't even there. Figuring he must have something valuable, young Garrett made a snatch for the man's purse. The man, however, caught him.

"That's not for you."

"Please, sir! I'm hungry. Don't tell the Hammers, I promise..."

"What is your name, boy?"

"Garrett."

"You have talent, lad."

"Let go of me old man!"

"To see a Keeper is not an easy thing. Especially one who does not wish to be seen. We have a need for those as gifted as yourself. If you've grown tired of how you live, then follow me, and we shall show you a different way."

With that, Garrett was indoctrined as a Keeper - a secretive and selective group of passive observers, who have watched the City grow and become more indecorous over the centuries. The Keepers are merely observers, however: Only interfering with the progress of events when they deem it absolutely necessary. While they never lie, they manipulate the truth to suit their own ends.

After years of training as a Keeper, Garrett becomes frustrated with their ideals and leaves them out of anger. He returns to his thieving ways, his Keeper training making him perhaps the most exceptional thief in the world. Even as a Keeper in training, he had the most talent amongst all of them. As a Thief, he was virtually invisible.

A note before I go on: The Hammerites, sometimes just called the Hammers, are a fanatical group of zealots who worship their god, The Builder. Their religious symbol is the hammer, and each member of their religion carries around ridiculously large sledgehammers to go with it. They're innovative and are responsible for a good number of the rudimentary mechanical inventions that exist in the City. Anyway, to go on...

At the start of TDP, Garrett runs a few missions here and there: Steal valuable from the local nobility, breaking into a Hammerite prison to bust out his fence... the usual fare. After a particularly impressive job, Garrett is contacted by a woman named Viktoria. She says that she works for someone who would like to hire Garrett to steal a sword. Garrett accepts, and heads off to the mansion of the sword's owner: Constantine. Constantine's manor proves to be very bizarre, often surreal and otherworldly. Nonetheless, Garrett manages to acquire the Sword and escape without detection. When he contacts Viktoria to let her know that the job is done, she says that her employer would like to meet with him, face to face.

After being invited in to his home, Garrett sits down and starts to chat with the person who hired him. Turns out, Constantine was the one who hired him to steal his own sword. It was a test, to see how capable and resourceful Garrett was. Constantine had heard of his talent, but he needed to be sure. See, Constantine would like something stolen: A very valuable gemstone called "The Eye", "for its unusual appearance". Constantine, crazy old codger that he is, offers Garrett a sum of 100,000g to retrieve The Eye. Of course, for a sum that vast, it isn't going to be easy.

It doesn't take Garrett long to discover that The Eye resides in an abandoned Hammerite Cathedral, in a section of the City that long ago fell to disaster. But when he gets there, he learns that the Keepers have locked the Cathedral with 4 elemental wards. So off he goes to find the wards so he can get his reward. The details of where the wards are stored are inconsequential, so I'll skim over them: One is being kept by a group of Mages called The Hand Brotherhood; Another is buried in a long-forgotten area called The Lost City, built by the Precursors long before "modern" times; The third was kept in a cavern, but was stolen away from its hiding place by an Opera House owner; The last was guarded carefully by the Hammerites. After retrieving all four Talismen, Garrett is finally able to open the Cathedral and claim The Eye. Who's value, apparently, goes beyond the size of the gemstone. The Eye speaks to Garrett, often in a mocking tone, as if alive. None-the-less, the stone is his and he's ready to collect his retirement money.

Of course, it doesn't quite go that way.

Garrett hands the gemstone over to Constantine:

"I can't say how pleased I am with you, Mr. Garrett. I simply can't find the words. But perhaps Viktoria could help me in that regard - she has such a way with them."

"Yes. We are both so very pleased. Even though the Eye is... defective."

"What?"

"Viktoria is quite right, Mr. Garrett. I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but this eye is completely blind."

"It's a *rock*. It's what you asked for. Am I going to get paid or not?"

"Of course. Viktoria, are you prepared to give Mr. Garrett his (in a gravelly voice) compensation?"

Constantine's chest swells until his shirt bursts open; Horns emerge from his head and strange runes appear on his skin. Similarly, Viktoria's clothing falls away as vines grow and cover her skin.

"Bow to the Woodsie Lord, and offer up your flesh eye so that his eye of stone may see, Manfool!"

The vines extend from Viktoria's fingers, pinning Garrett against the wall and leaving him helpless as she plucks his eye from its socket.

"Did you think those ancient phrases were mere words, Manfool? LOOK AT ME! I am the Woodsie Lord, the Trickster of legend!"

Placing Garrett's still-bloody eye atop The Eye, we get our first real look at the Trickster: The antithesis of the Builder. The Trickster, called the Woodsie Lord by those who worship him, is an ancient nature god, angered that people have forgotten about him as the tides of progression moved forward.

The Trickster and Viktoria leave Garrett to die, as food for their minions. However, as we all know, this wasn't to be the end of our favorite anti-hero. The Keepers finally deem it time to intervene. They enter Constantine's mansion after he's departed, cutting Garrett loose from his viney prison before hastily departing. Determined to find out why the heck he's just gotten his eye ripped out, Garrett searches around the Trickster's lair before making his escape. There, he learns that the Trickster wishes to use The Eye to bring about the destruction of all technology; The Woodsie Lord intends to throw people back to the times when they huddled under trees, afraid of their own shadows... and of him.

Being that Garrett never passed his college course in theology, he decides that he's going to need someone a little more knowledgeable about the Trickster than he. Or, more specifically, multiple someones - the Hammerites. Strange Bedfellows, indeed, as he rescues the Hammerite High Priest from the clutches of the Trickster's minions and asks them for help defeating him. The Hammers agree, and they forge Garrett a counterfeit Eye, telling him that needs to enter the Woodsie Lord's true domain - The Maw of Chaos - and swap the fake Eye for the real one before Constantine can complete the ritual he has planned. "I've never robbed a god before", Garrett quips. "It'll be a challenge". After following him through a portal, and making his way through a madhouse of an alternate dimension, Garrett sneaks up on the Trickster in the middle of his ritual and replaces the Eye. When Constantine attempts to finish the ritual, the jury-rigged Eye blows up in his face, killing him.

Back in the City, all is normal. Most people probably don't even suspect the fate that they very nearly suffered, nor the unsung antihero who saved them from it. On a stroll, Garrett is approached by one of his Keeper "friends".

"Hmph. Keepers", he intones as the figure approaches him.

"So you think you've won?"

"I think I've got my eye back." Garrett refers, of course, to the mechanical replacement now in his skull; A gift, created by the Hammerites to thank him. His real eye is forever grafted to the gemstone.

"Still, you are blind."

"If you hadn't noticed, I just saved the world. Yourself included."

"As we knew you would. As it had to be."

"Now I remember why I left the Keepers."

"And I remember why we let you go."

"What do you want from me? You come to congratulate me? Welcome me back to the fold?"

"Very well. I will speak my peace plainly. You have accomplished that which was written and yes - you've done it well. But there is no place for you with us any longer. Yet you will have a great need of us, and soon."

"I don't think so. I'm through with heroics. And with your kind, as well."

"You cannot run from life as you did from us, Garrett. Life has a way of finding you, no matter how artistic a sneak you are. Listen: There is a book that you were not made aware of. I'm here to tell you that it would be wise for you to read it now. If you can still read heiroglyphs."

"I do try to forget, but you Keepers leave them everywhere for me." [side note: Boy, he wasn't kidding]

"Yes. You have more friends than you know."

"Tell my 'friends' that I don't need their secret book, or their glyph warnings or their messengers. Tell them I'm through. Tell them it's over. Tell them Garrett, is done."

With that, Garrett walks off.

"I will tell them this. Nothing is changed. All is as it was written. The Trickster is dead... beware the Dawn of the Metal Age."

I'll do Thief 2 in a little bit.

[TheOriginalNobody]

Well, that's better than mine.

[Nupraptor]

Added all of this to my post below.

[CeeKai]

wow thanks guys, really appreciated

[Nupraptor]

Because I want to have it for future reference: Here's my detailed summary of Thief 2:

It's one year after the who ordeal of TDP. Garrett, robbed of luxurious retirement he was planning (among other things) has returned to his thieving ways. Money is tight, so he decides to head over to the docks, where many valuables are stored before they're shipped off to their owners, for some quick cash. While there, he overhears several people talking about a new religion. The followers of this religion called themselves the Mechanists, and it's apparently a splinter faction of the Hammerites. The Mechanists are more ambitious and industrial than the Hammers ever were, creating innovation after innovation. In the past year alone, the Mechanists have managed to accumulate a vast assortment of incredibly advanced gadgets, many of which will make Garrett's life difficult in the coming times. Medieval security cameras, locking mechanisms activated by cogs, you name it.

However, Garrett learned long ago that his line of work is rough. Nothing new there. While trying to make ends meat, Garrett is approached by a messenger (gee, you think he'd stop trusting those types), who is willing to pay him a sizeable sum if he can break into the City Watch station and frame one of the Lieutenants there. The price is right, and being as the City Watch has been breathing down his neck lately, Garrett finds the offer difficult to refuse. So he breaks in, framing Lt. Hagen for stealing evidence from the vault as well as picking up a little something for himself while he's there.

This comes back to bite him in the arse later, however, when the City Watch ambush him at the Crippled Burrick Inn. One of Garrett's "friends" sold him out, and the bulldogs now know where he lives. The Master Thief is not quite so easy to capture, however; With the help of a flashbomb, Garrett makes a getaway, quickly relocating himself to Shalebridge.

While in his new hideout, Garrett's old friends, the Keepers, decide to pay him a visit. They ask him to come with them to their Library. Grudgingly, Garrett agrees. There, he sees an old woman, Catuca, who is reading prophecies from a book in another language. A small child by her side translates:

"My hand is copper, my brow is lead / Suffer me in a red patina, swept along in a molten flow to a sad eternity / My stride interrupted, my thoughts untimed / My tears are become drops of silver that shatter the crystalline fern / I plead the wind to sweep us away"

"Nice poem", Garrett quips.

"Not poetry: Prophecy. The Metal Age is upon us."

"I pick the gilded apple from the iron tree / I wipe the rust from my brow."

"Iron Trees?", the thief asks. "Not in my part of town".

"Find the humor if you must but can tell me truly, Garrett: Are there any trees in your part of town? I will answer for you. There are not."

"Destiny and danger are still focused on the one / The renegade who is both brethren and betrayer."

"Well, you got the danger part right, anyway. Tell you what: You Keepers can plant a few shrubs around town and I'll take care of me. I can find my own way home."

With this, he turns and leaves, much to the anger of the Keeper Council. Still, Keeper Artemus follows him, to give him a letter before he leaves. In the letter, the Keeper tells Garrett, in typical cryptic fashion, that someone has hired Sheriff Truart to kill him. The letter goes on to say that the Sheriff will be at a Mechanist Seminary the very next night and that it would be in his interest to see what Truart has to say.

While at the Mechanist Cathedral, Garrett is confronted by more of Karras's inventions: His 'Children'. The Children of Karras are large, lumbering mechanical beasts with a cannon attached to their arm. These are his enforcers, made explicitly to cut down those who do not obey the law. Garrett avoids them easily enough and makes his way to where the meeting is being held.

Unfortunately, the meeting involves more showing than talking, and Garrett is unable to discern exactly what's going on from the other side of the door he listens in from. Still, what he can make out sounds useful: Truart is taking bribes from Father Karras, the head of the Mechanists. Truart is arresting vagabonds and street scum under made-up pretenses, then selling the poor saps to Karras. Apparently, Karras is converting them into 'Servants' - mindless helpers that will do anything their owner asks. For all intents and purposes, they become automatons. After Truart leaves, however, Garrett learns that Karras recorded their conversation, should Truart decide to back out of their agreement. He then has the viktrola which he used to record the conversation stored away in the Mechanist's safety deposit box at the First City Bank & Trust, which is Garrett's next stop.

After stealing the viktrola from the bank, Garrett decides to play Truart a visit. He figures that he can use the recording to blackmail the Sheriff into confessing who hired him. However, someone's beaten Garrett to the punch: Before getting up to the Sheriff's room, he learns that he was murdered in his bed. Quickly running out of options, Garrett heads up to the room himself to see if he can find any evidence as to who murdered Truart. In the room, all he can find is a key ring with the letter "M" stamped on it - the insignia of Lt. Mosley from the City Watch. The plot thickens.

Lt. Mosley, however, had an alibi for the murder itself. Still, she's obviously involved somehow. So Garrett decides to follow her, see what she's been up to. And sure enough, he catches her leaving the station suspiciously early, carrying a letter. So her follows her to where she drops the letter off and has a peek at it. The letter confirms his suspicions that Mosley was working with someone else, who is responsible for the Sheriff's death. After putting the letter back where she left it, he waits around until its recipient comes along: A dirty, flea-ridden man who speaks oddly. In fact, his speech is kind of similar to how the minions of the Trickster spoke. This is a Pagan: One of the worshippers of the ancient Trickster god who live outside of the City. They live in huts, out in the woods and are despised by both the Hammers and the Mechanists; The latter especially. In fact, before the courier can reach his destination, he's ambushed by some Mechanists and shot with an arrow. Quickly, the Pagan ducks into a cemetery, where Garrett follows. There, he finds a portal that the Pagan must have took to escape. Still determined to find out where the letter is heading, our loveable thief hops on through, winding up in the forests outside of the City.

There, Garrett follows the trail of blood that the pagan leaves behind, past Mechanists who have apparently been exterminating the Pagans in their homes. The trail doesn't stop there, though: The Pagan went all the way into the Maw of Chaos. No turning back now, so Garrett follows him all the way into the Maw, to the pagan's final destination: Viktoria. Appearing from the ground, Viktoria confronts Garrett, revealed as Mosley's co-conspirator. Viktoria confides that the Mechanists are a problem for her and her pagans as well, and pleads with Garrett to join forces with her to overcome this new, more terrible foe. She's willing to put aside the past if he is.

So they join forces, and Viktoria begins to share her information with her new partner. Karras is throwing a party at the Mechanist tower, Angelwatch. Viktoria suggests that now would be a good time to break into his office and find out what he's got up his sleeve. While there, Garret learns that Karras has been giving away his servants to the nobility of the City, probably in an effort to win their favor. He also discovers the location of the Cetus Amicus: a vast submarine that the Mechanists are using to travel to and from the Lost City. There, they are unearthing many of the artifacts of the precursors, which have been providing the jumping board for many of the Mechanist's inventions. Garrett kidnaps the head of the project, Brother Cavador, and drags him all the way back to the City, where Viktoria interrogates him.

From the Lost City, Cavador had taken two types of things to bring back to Karras: Brass Masks, like those worn by the servants, and "Cultivators", devices whose purpose is unknown. But the same number of each were taken, so the dynamic duo presume that they are connected. Since it'd probably be a good idea to figure out why Karras wants these things, Garrett heads over to the estate of one Lord Gervasius, a collector of rare masks. Before Garrett can go in to get them, Viktoria informs him that he needs to hurry: Whatever Karras has planned, it's not going to take him much longer. He's currently adding some kind of seals to the doors of the Mechanist Cathedral.

Not only does Garrett manage to acquire a mask from Gervasius's abode, but a cultivator, as well. Some experimentation shows that the Cultivators emit a "rust gas", which destroys all living things that it touches before settling into dust. Garrett and Viktoria start to put the pieces of the puzzle together:

"Well, we know that Karras has installed them in the masks of the servants."

"Yes."

"And the servants have been placed in the homes of the wealthy."

"Yes! The homes with the gardens! The plants there could sustain a reaction large enough to destroy... everything!"

Karras himself would be locked away safely inside the airtight Soulforge Cathedral. Garrett thinks it's time to come up with a plan. Viktoria, however, argues that there is no time for waiting. There is a guiding beacon which Karras has used in the past to draw the servants back to Soulforge; Viktoria says that Garrett needs to activate it now, so the servants will be locked inside when Karras gives the order for them to release the rust gas.

Garrett tells her that her plan is suicide; He'll find another way. Viktoria, however, cannot wait. She begins an assault on Soulforge.

Elsewhere, Garrett's Keeper friend approaches him hastily, alerting him to Viktoria's premature actions. Garrett arrives in time to see Viktoria fighting Karras's machines. Unable to overcome them, she sacrifices herself, allowing them to kill her so that the cathedral will be filled with enough plantlife to sustain a reaction if the rust gas were to go off inside. Despite their past history, even Garrett is touched by her sacrifice, and sets off to finish what she began.

While inside Soulforge, Karras taunts Garrett via speakers throughout the cathedral. It's here that Garrett learns the true depths of Karras's cunning, and his madness. Karras was a former Hammerite who left the Hammers to form his own religion. People flocked to him, drawn in by his charisma and the promise of his revolutionary technology. The whole thing, however, was but a smokescreen: In his eyes, human beings were weak, flawed creatures - only put on this earth in order to bring about the Builder's true children. And in his own eyes, Karras was destined to bring about the Builder's paradise by cleansing it of humanity so that his children could inherit it.

Garrett secretly activates the guiding beacon, drawing the servants back inside moments before Karras is ready to throw the switch. The airtight doors seal, and Karras destroys himself and his Children with the press of a button as the rust gas is released and trapped inside.

"All this? It was written?" Garrett inquires.

"All?" Again, the Keeper who contacted him earlier.

"Viktoria's death? And Karras? Was it written? In your books?"

"All is... as it was written."

"And there's more." Not a question.

"Yes."

"Tell me."