Search the Community

Just wondering who the most infamous Necromancer is lorewise. Was there a founder in the art of Necromancy, like a Lich or something, similar to Nagash in Warhammer or the Lich King in Warcraft? Some sort of evil magician gathering power in a far off land, building his legions for a showdown with the Empire?

For those of you who have been interested in a wide array of game genres, you may remember the buzz years back for Spore, a game whose online servers shut down not so long ago. Spore was an "evolve your own alien race" game, which got a lot of great publicity and was a lot of fun. I remember a big ad for it in Boston some years back when I visited it on a school trip. Sadly, EA consumed the smaller company that made it, Maxis, and sucked it dry, as it has done to many small game companies. One community within the overarching Spore creator community, started by a user called "Dirtymeat" and 2 others, was Spore UBD, or "Underground By Design". They pushed the engine to the limit to make the normally cutesy game into a horror show, utilizing asymmetrical glitches and other glitches prior to updates that added asymmetry, unique color schemes reminiscent of gore, and unique placement of parts to resemble bones to create mutant abominations. They may have even been responsible for inspiring the later Creepy and Cute parts pack, as well as the spinoff Darkspore. They were usually well received in the community, although there were a few "cute purists" who hated them for making a "cutesy child game" into having a horror subgenres. With the later Galactic Adventures expansion, they were even able to try their hand at horror game adventures within the game.

One of my favorite things to do is look in places like The Dark Mod wiki for new lore in my favorite fantasy and sci-fi worlds. But the wiki hasn't been updated in a while. I'M JONESING, GIMME SOME LORE B0SS.

I ask because with Sotha and Melan visibly having wonderfully put together worlds, I'm curious if there's anywhere I can look at to find visible shared concepts, like the inventor's guild. This is ignoring how many shared name mentions I've seen, something I'm a huge fan of.

Recently, about a month ago, @demagogue mentioned the following in another discussion: While we're at it, someone really needs to write an official history of the Empire and a lot of associated fanfic to give our world backstory. And someone ought to make an art book with screenshots across all our FMs and some story, as if it were like one of those travel photo books. Something people put on their coffee table for discussion and just to flip through for fun, or in your case actually make the things. I see the idea you're talking about as something along those lines. I even promised demagogue I might look into it in the future. All of this got me thinking... We know The Dark Mod does not have a strict canon, per se. There's Bridgeport and The Empire, a few other cities, there's notes on what technology, society and the fantastical elements of this setting are, what the various typical "factions" are and how they vary greatly, what the atmosphere and tone is like, and so on and so forth. However, the rest of the things are far more nebulous and are generally down to what an individual player or fan of TDM is willing to accept as potential canon. We had the references to cities (Braeden) or minor setting elements (the mandrasola drug, etc.) throghout multiple missions by unrelated authors, and those are just the simplest of examples. In short, what constitutes as TDM canon, beyond those fairly official basics, is quite maleable. With all of the above in mind, and taking demagogue's ideas into account, I think we could compile a rough, loose history of the overall setting. It doesn't need to be obsessively filled with details, but we could give people some vague idea of what happened in the last two thousand or so years before what we generally portray as the "present day" of the TDM setting. I think we already have plenty of interesting source material to work with, if our goal is to create a rough timeline/outline of The Empire's history, the Builder church's history, and hints at what the history of the world outside of The Empire has been like (also counting with possibly biased accounts, in-universe). Now, speaking about that source material, what do I actually consider as source material ? Technically, every mission or nearly every mission made for TDM could be potentially considered source material. However, I am a little bit more picky about this. I think the closest we have to an established, "hard canon" for the game's universe, is a lot of the above-mentioned source material, and that occurs primarily in two places: In the two or three official missions that come with the basic TDM install (Training Mission, A New Job, The Tears of St Lucia), and in the main Universe articles on the TDM wiki. These are going to be my primary source for compiling the history, chronologically and otherwise. In addition to the official-as-official-gets missions and official universe notes, I am also willing to include stuff from all fan missions, if it expands the history of the setting in interesting, but reasonable ways. If the premise of a mission clearly doesn't fit the rest of the setting directly or is quite jokey, then I won't consider it a reasonable enough source for a potential addition to "canon". Why would demagogue suggest we should compile such a more detailed background history ? Personally, while I don't mind the idea, I am also fine with keeping things as they currently are. At the same time, I have noticed the number of people who come to the forums, clamouring things like "Where's the sprawling story campaign ? Where's the sprawling background story of the setting ?". Less of the latter thankfully, more of the former, for understandable reasons. Still, it seems that a lot of newcomers to TDM, especially those with pre-conceived notions from their time playing Thief (or other fantasy games), seem to want more from the overall setting than just the missions and mission series we have. Honestly, I'm torn on this. I've always been an elliptical storytelling style guy. Less is more. A hint here, a hint there, a throw-away comment there... Some games try to overdo it with super-detailed lore and the results can be... questionable and grating. Part of why I'd prefer that, if we do compile more of a broadly accepted "canon" for TDM's setting, then it should still be accepted in that "broad" way. I.e. it is soft and maleable enough that it does not tie mission-maker's hands, with regards to missions and stories set in the past, present and potential future of the TDM setting. A lot of players think they know what they want if they want a detailed setting, but more often that not, it just ends up with things being overexplained and losing their "charm" and a reasonable degree of mystique. After all, even die-hard Thief fans should acknowledge one thing: Thief didn't try to explain everything. Far from it ! The entire trilogy was very fond of elliptical storytelling, with hinted-at stuff and loads of unexplained stuff and references. I think TDM should keep with that, even if we potentially expand the "hard canon" parts of TDM's canon. Not stuff like "in this or that year, William Steele was born", but certainly stuff like "from the 4th to 7th century of its existence, the Empire was ruled by this or that dynasty, in a unique tetrarchic set-up", and similar.

I wasn't quite sure where to put this - there doesn't seem to be a 'lore' section that I can find, but the general section will do. So, mages. They're not (legally) permitted to make a profit from their magic. But of course that means there's a healthy black market full of dabbling bookworms who learned a couple of charms and now peddle their meager magical talents in back alleys and after-dark pubs. My question is this: What do we call them? Essentially, I plan on making a mission centered around such a character, and I need a snazzy slang term for a mage who operates outside the law for profit. The term 'Hedge-wizard' doesn't really cut it, that's more of a derogatory phrase used by more upstanding mages to look down their noses at the common apprentices. I'm looking for something from the point of view of fellow thieves and cutthroats. How do they refer to their more magically-inclined peers who sell them arcane arrows and breath potions?

Not so long ago I found what could make a pretty good profile picture and decided to try it out on these new forums. But I couldn't find a button anywhere that would let me change it. I asked on Discord and it seems Spooks also couldn't find anything anywhere. So I logged into an old alternative account and, lo and behold, that account has a button. This is on the first screen I get when I: 1) click on my account name in the top-right of the browser -> 2) click on 'profile'. Compared to my actual account: Are you also missing this button on your account? It'd be very much appreciated if that functionality could be restored to any of the affected accounts.

Hi, I need to know what the code is to use Spoiler Tags. I am using my tablet and I don't have the options to use anything, like spoiler tags, quote tags, text changes etc. Thanks

So I recently got into the dark mod, and it's probably one of the best stealth games to come out within the last decade. However, there is one little thing that I would like to bring up and it's one of the things that The Dark Project (or Gold) did better than Thief 2 which is commonly overlooked and that is the general lore of the world. For example: Thief 1 was full of all sorts of strange mythical places and a complex world that made you feel like you where apart of something bigger than pulling a heist off. Garrets story might have been really simple, but there was so much stuff underlying that it was ridiculous. The balance between Nature and Human Buildings (the evils of both show in thief 1 then 2), the lost city, the bonehoard, the elements of magic (Earth, Air, Fire, Water), and all this depth just in the world alone. Thief 2 was obviously dominant in the stealth department, but it didn't really bring nearly as much depth to the series and was really centered around the main antagonist. Now that doesn't mean that single missions can't have depth for example, I just beat WS1: The North and there was a lot going on in this mission and so much history behind the area and a lot of drama. However, it'd still be cool if there was a general lore or several general worlds or canons that could be built off of and added to. Now there actually is a innate canon with the dark mod, for example the builders, steam-punk, mideval, environment, etc but I it might be interesting to take it a step further. So what I thought might be a cool thing to do is maybe developing a general lore, or several different canons that mappers can decide whether or not they want to be a part of that. Say if this actually happens (or already is happening I might not have noticed it because I'm new) and there are 3 main cannons, mappers could decide whether or not to make additions to one of none of those cannons with a map and then it'd help sort of recreate the whole mythical world brimming with lore that thief 1 had. Maybe have a lore section or canon section on the wiki that would hold info on each lore, and what maps are associated with the world and whats considered canon for each lore and what is not, and I'm not really saying that they should all be stories written around a single main character I mean just the world, factions, workings in magic, etc could be developed and added onto making an interesting community made setting (or several settings). I'm not really saying this absolutely should or ever will happen, but I thought it would be an interesting idea to discuss: What I proposed and just lore in general.

Hi guys, through the "cheats" topic I got the idea, that it would be quite useful, if there were tags for missions (the post was about removing the killing restriction in some missions to suit the prefered play style). I don't know how easy or difficult this is, but with them, it would be quite convenient to pick missions with playstyles, environment, etc one does want to use. This could also be expanded to other mission properties. I remember a discussion about climbable drains, handles on doors, that cannot be picked and other things the map author chooses for himself. That way these things would be clearer and as I said before, it is easier to choose missions with playstyles that suit oneself. What do think?