Sentient Artifacts discussion

[Firetaffer]

I haven't seen a thread about this, oddly enough, since the eye and the heart are so intriguing. Do you think we will see a return of these odd talking stones? I've been doing a little research and not much seems to be known about them other than they are stones that can talk. That's not to say they aren't interesting, but according to some sources they seem to say that Garrett is one of the few people who can actually hear them talk. Does this have anything to do with his eye being lost to one of them, or perhaps the eye saw something in Garrett? What are the nature of these rocks, it doesn't seem to be elaborated enough. For exactly how long have they been sentient, maybe a sacrifice was needed for one of these gems to have sentience, that of the sacrifice. If they were sentient to start off with they must have thousands of years of knowledge behind them.

[DJ Riff]

Keepers' souls were entrapped in these artifacts to make them sentient. The purpose of it was to make the Final Glyph be activated only when all other means of keeping the balance failed. Once the Final Glyph has been activated, they're all dead. It was Gamall's plot to activate the fake 'Final Glyph' on the map of the City in her lair, thus draining their power.

Who shall watch the watchers? Who shall keep the Keepers? Alas, there is no one. No one to watch us. No one to keep us. This conclusion fills us with dread. For even a Keeper should not be left unchecked. So it became our work to plan for the worst possible contingencies. If at some distant time in the future, should the Keepers become unbalanced, then only our work now would stand in the way of disaster. This is why we labored so long and hard to create the Last of All Glyphs. Yet our best thinkers were not satisfied. What if, for some reason unknown, it came into play too soon? Before these future Keepers had a chance to complete an important task? So we devised the Sentients, each a separate key, each with a will of its own. The Heart, the Crown, the Paw, the Chalice, and the Eye. They would not consent to the journey, which would culminate in their annihilation, until the time was ripe and the One was present. To ensure success, five Keepers were recruited to make the crucial sacrifices. And so, the Last of All Glyphs, our safeguard, stands ready against Keeper corruption. I hope we have done service to the future. May the Unwritten Times never come.

[Platinumoxicity]

Garrett was the One Keeper, therefore Garrett and the sentients do have a strong connection. Garrett was part of the failsafe, therefore would be reasonable to assume that Garrett was the only one who could hear them. But remember, The Eye likes playing around. It enjoys manipulating people and seeing them wander around lost in a maze. The sentients can talk to humans if they want to. The Eye kept whispering to one of the Wieldstrom guards, until he got fired because people thought he was crazy. The Eye seems to be the only one interested in people, therefore it's the only one who talks to them. The others just don't feel like it.

The eye saw something in Garrett the first time they met. It was the Eye that sealed the cathedral doors and forced Garrett to find another way out. And assuming that when the Eye got Garrett's flesh-eye and begun to see, that was the moment when it realized that this man was the Key. The final piece of the failsafe, and its destiny was near. And Garrett did rescue* the Eye from the trickster. So they are kinda 'buddies'. And even though the Eye threatens to "come for Garrett's other eye too" -that was just a joke. The Eye was definitely on Garrett's side, although it deliberately neglected to tell Garrett about his importance in the failsafe, just to see how he would figure it out, and what he would do upon figuring it out.

I don't know what will happen to the sentients after the initiation of the failsafe. Could be that the life-energy of the ancient keepers, trapped in the artifacts was used up when the failsafe was triggered. We never saw what happened to the Eye after the glyphs were gone. But Garrett was as much part of the plan as they were. And after the job was done, Garrett was very much still alive, even though his purpose as a keeper had been fulfilled. So could be that in the same way, the sentients' purpose as pieces of the ancient keeper puzzle was fulfilled too, and now they are just as much worthless thinking objects, as Garrett is just an extraordinary thief. They may not have some big cosmic purpose, but they still exist. That is a possibility.

*Constantine had developed natural magics that would allow him to incapacitate sentient inanimates, to tap into their power without asking them. You can find his research notes about the subject in his mansion. The Eye doesn't do what it's told. That includes weak old senile obsolete self-appointed gods. Constantine had to put the Eye to sleep, or the Eye would have betrayed and killed him itself. The only command that the Eye ever obeyed was to execute the failsafe with the True Keeper.

[Hecateus]

In reading this, gotta wonder if Garret might lose the other eye too. Thought would be very new direction for Thief.

[MarrowMonkey]

I do not remember all these details, especially from TDS. Is there some website where all this has been written down?

[DJ Riff]

In-game text: Gamall's Lair
TDS Custom speech files — seek for The Eye
Compendium of Natural Magic, Chapter 15: Tatyana's Flowers

[Platinumoxicity]

In the original draft of the dark project story, the Eye was actually a pagan artifact, (I think) and was on the Trickster's side. There's an unused voice file where the Eye yells "Master, something is amiss!" if it notices Garrett trying to sneak up on it to swap it with the counterfeit Eye. In the released version, the Eye is not on anyone's side, and Constantine just wants to syphon its power for his own needs, using the magical concoctions to incapacitate it.

[tarvis79]

I'm pretty sure that the Eye and the other artifacts are now lifeless, since the text says the journey would "culminate in their annihilation." That could mean the initial deaths of the Keepers, but since it says "the journey" would commence "when the time was ripe and the One was present," I think it means the sentients are now dead.

[Platinumoxicity]

It's a shame that the Eye doesn't use nearly all of its lines in Still Life with the Blackjack. Because it's such an interesting character. Also a shame that apparently it really is dead. Garrett is now the only part of the failsafe that's left. He's the irrelevant remnant of the ancient machine that served its purpose.

[MarrowMonkey]

Originally Posted by DJ Riff

In-game text: Gamall's Lair
TDS Custom speech files — seek for The Eye
Compendium of Natural Magic, Chapter 15: Tatyana's Flowers

Thanks!