Technology vs. Magic

          “Hammer, anvil, forge and fire, chase away the hoofed liar; Roof and doorway, block and beam, keep the Trickster from our dreams.”

            So murmurs any given Hammerite guard as they patrol, Garrett listening from the shadows as he sneaks around. The Hammerites are more aware—indeed, it is central to their religious zeal—of what technology means for humanity than anyone else in the City.

            The Thief games hint at a dark past for humanity, when people ran around wild and scared, in the woods, worshipping strange, powerful, and evil gods, and fleeing from monsters. This past bleeds through in the game’s undead and monsters. In the same world as sword-toting guards there are giant spiders, lizard and bug beasts, zombies and ghosts. What do these things harken back to?

            Lord Constantine, or the Trickster, tried to bring back the dark past with his Dark Project. He wanted to blot out the light, have the world ruled by monsters again, and then have the people come to him and worship him as their god. In contrast, Thief II’s Mechanists wanted to bring even more technology to the City, and held an even more zealous hatred of the Pagans and of nature than did the Hammerites.

            Throughout the Thief games there is this dichotomy between the past, nature, and magic, on one side, and the future, civilization, and technology, on the other. It borrows, of course, much from our own world’s history, especially that of Western civilization.

“Vigilance is our shield, which protects us from our squalid past; Knowledge is our weapon, with which we carve a path unto an enlightened future.” 
This also Hammerite guards may say. They operate on a fear of regression into a primeval past. The pagans? They have no conception of progress or time, or at least they desire no progress and want time to stand still. Their world is one only of dances and monsters and darkness, and central within their world is awe shown towards arcane magic.