Digital Nightfall on 21/8/2001 at 05:44

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<strike>Now that you mention it, I could have read that anywhere. I am sure I didn't make it up, since I did research it, but I don't know if it really came from the game or not. Hmmm...</strike>

BEEP .. wrong. Silly me. He lives in Undermarket ... or at least the old Thief 1 Lexicon says so.

[ August 21, 2001: Message edited by: Digital Nightfall ]

Grundbegriff on 21/8/2001 at 11:18

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BTW, I believe "undermarket" is City slang for "black market" and "underguild" is lingo for "organized crime" -- especially, crime organized by a guild of wardens, or by a guild working alongside (i.e., against or independent from) wardens.

Thus, the City's own underguild (if there were one) would be the nominal association of the crime wardens (Raputo, Ramirez, Webster, et al.), the Downwinders (led by D & R), and any similar guilds that have managed to retain a degree of autonomy or irreducibility.

As you'll recall, the City is at pseudo-war with Blackbrook, but that city's underguild has sent an ambassador, Dorcas Goodfellow, to meet with Ramirez (and perhaps other wardens) in the City, so that illegal trade can thrive even while legal trade is strangled by the Baron's "war"-driven taxation.

Grundbegriff on 22/8/2001 at 18:02

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Naug,

I'm on the fly at the moment but wanted to pause to say, "Good job!" I like your revision of my map and your placement of the river. I also like your inferences about what this placement means for Wayside, etc. I have an idea about the canals and such that I'll post later, as well as a notion about how HighTowne might work without much elevation.



"Let the reader beware."

Grundbegriff on 23/8/2001 at 20:30

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Where is Shalebridge "noted as a lower-class neighborhood"? The only explicit in-game evidence we have is that it's a locale suitable for the vacation of a notable citizen.



Would it be normal to go on holiday in the upper-class enclave of a run-down neighborhood?



Are they vacation hotspots? :)



You've never heard of the masks? ;)

BTW, I haven't posited the existence of post-Precursor artifacts. I've affirmed the post-Precursorial survival of artifacts from Karath-din. There's considerable in-game support for that affirmation.



I didn't say or suggest that each instance of necromancy in the City could be traced to the necromantic influence of an artifact. In fact, in the very passage you quote from my previous message, I say, "I also reckon that Precursor artifacts are not the only source of necromantic effects." Thus, your "yeah, right" is a response appropriate only to your misreading of my remarks (combined with your having overlooked the masks).



You propose that water crystals are used to "cleanse water" just as fire crystals are used to "light fires". It seems to me quite unlikely that crystals are being left in water by the domestic help. On the contrary, crystals seem to form in water, in fire, and so forth. For more on this idea, see the thread
<font color=red>The nature and source of magic in the Thief universe... </font>
(http://www.ttlg.com/forums/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=41&t=001888) http://www.ttlg.com/forums/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=41&t=001888



The criminal underworld would be involved in meeting the high demand for sanitation products? Wouldn't the demand for cleaning the water be met by...boiling the water? ;)

Surely the demand is for crystals that have formed in water, etc., and that can be put to more elevated uses.



Glad we agree! :) You might be right that well-intentioned officials sought to bring back the recently-dead Emperor, who was a man of the people. They certainly didn't seem to care much for his royal son.

Cheers,

G.

[ August 23, 2001: Message edited by: Grundbegriff ]

Grundbegriff on 25/8/2001 at 14:19

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Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Here's illustration #1 of the difference between your approach and mine: where multiple possibilities are available with little or no in-game support, I tend to prefer the simplest or most-supported interpretation, the one that requires the fewest assumptions or the most likely ones. Think of it as Occam's (or better yet, Ockham's) Razor for speculative fiction rather than for ontological entities.

Sure, it's possible that Rofthoffer is going to a slum on holiday because he was once a street urchin who trawled the streets of that slum in search of leftovers and now returns there semiannually to bestow gifts on those who were kind to him and to plot the downfall of the local clergy -- but since there's no in-game evidence to support that reading even though nothing precludes it logically, I still consider it unwarranted. Does Rofthoffer prefer slumming? Perhaps, perhaps not. On my approach, we don't assume that he does unless we have evidence.



Here's principial difference #1 between your approach and mine: you assume that if nothing prohibits a scenario, we can introduce that scenario into City lore and base other inferences on it; by contrast, a assume that if nothing indicates a scenario, we may not simply introduce it into City lore and use it as a basis for further reasoning. You seek to be maximally tolerant of insertions and ungrounded speculations so long as they're possible, while I seek to be minimally tolerant of insertions and speculations, unless they're supported in canonical materials.



For the sake of clarification, then: on your reading, why are the bodies in the laboratory/mask-fitting area of Eavesdropping corpses, and why does Karras say to Garrett that he would have wanted him either dead or in service to Karras or both?



Who says the Eye controls the undead? It seems to me that the undead I've encountered near the Eye are quite out of control. Compare their behavior to that of a typical Servant.

But even if the Eye were supposed to control a whole district of undead, as you suggest, there would still be good in-game reasons to think that masks and Eye could coexist. First, there are many masks but we know of only one Eye; presumably, these were distributed among multiple Precursors. Second, it's sometimes appropriate to have control over a local area but not a wide one, as with garage door openers. Third, we know that the Eye tends to bring disaster, so it could very well mark a failed attempt to broaden the degree of control over undeath afforded by a mask or set of masks.

In my view, the Eye is either a failed attempt to capture the net effect of multiple masks, or more likely an engine for generating or accelerating undeath rather than for controlling it. We have in-game evidence that the special function of the masks -- permitting control of the undead and regulating their behavior -- differs from the special functions of the Eye (which seems to do no such thing).



When A implies B, B follows logically from A and cannot help but do so. By contrast, your inference that I'm referring to Precursor artifacts when I use the phrase "not the only source...of effects" simply doesn't follow with anything like that degree of necessity. A source of necromantic effects could be an artifact; but it could also be a spell, a natural formula or concoction, a ritual behavior, a magical site, a cursed family, a divine judgment, an illusion, or one of a host of other possibilities.

In my view, there's in-game evidence that the Eye is necromantic, there's in-game evidence that the masks may be used necromantically, and there's in-game evidence that some undeath occurs apart from the influence of those two sets of artifacts. Therefore, I infer that there may be other sources of undeath, and that those sources (for all we know) may not even be artifacts. On my view, we can't say what those sources are without in-game evidence. But we don't simply shut down once we've identified a firmly supported source.

There's a difference between having support that X is a Z and having support that only X is a Z. This fact indicates principial difference #2 between your approach and mine: when I have support, I leave other issues open and indeterminate; but where you have support or have decided on an invention, you leave other issues closed.



Indeed!



I'm told that stalactites form in caves, but I can't recall having seen them in every cave I've entered. I'm told that buttercups grow in the wild, but I can't recall having seen them in every field I've traversed. I'm told that condensation may occur on windshields at dawn, but I haven't seen dew each and every time I've climbed into the car.

See how, in keeping with the principial differences between your approach and mine, you falsely dichotomize and limit the possibilities to a single alternative: that crystals either form in all water all the time, or else are not forming in the water at all? By contrast, the idea that water crystals form in water seems to me to be consistent with the fact that we don't find them in "every single body of water we come across". Their formation is a natural process that occurs according to combinations of conditions -- just as common sense informs us that natural processes occur in RL.



The fact that they must be gathered, that they're in demand, and that they're relatively scarce seems to me to support the idea that they form in water, but not ubiquitously. They form when the conditions are right, and are therefore precious. Think of them as similar to truffles.

So then, why would conditions in the City make water crystals even more scarce than they normally are? Hmmm... Perhaps the drought has something to do with that ;)

In any event, Garrett does pick up quite a few crystals along the way, rather than purchase them all.



You're under the impression that boiled water contains no oxygen? And that the flavor of water depends on the presence of oxygen rather than minerals?



You would have had a tough time of it in pre-modern Europe....



Sort of like those hygienic tablets one drops in the cistern of a toilet? And you think there would be a black market for imported flush tablets from Blackbrook?

:rolleyes: :) <IMG SRC="angel.gif" border="0">

[ August 25, 2001: Message edited by: Grundbegriff ]