\n — @adurdin is thinking aloud

Zombophobe

I am a zombophobe.

When I step into the shoes of Garrett, the City’s most renowned thief, I am fearless.  I enter the heavily guarded mansions of the City’s upper crust with impunity, and leave with my pockets full of their wealth.  No patrolling swordsman or watchful archer daunts me; even the deadly mechanical beasts of the Mechanists fail to give me pause, for I am the master of stealth and shadows.  I come and go without them ever seeing me, a lightened purse or missing silver goblet the only evidence of my passing.

But the zombies terrify me.  I will run past armed guards, but when a zombie is nearby I want only to cower in a dark corner, far away.  I have to force myself to creep slowly past, fearful of making the slightest noise that might alert them.  I hold my breath; irrationally, for they obviously cannot hear me, the player, breathing.  Yet I spend long minutes not daring to move, listening to the half-choked, wheezing moans of the zombies, always dreading the change in tone that signals they’ve seen me.

It’s even worse when the zombies are dormant.  They appear to be inert corpses, but their horrible wheezing gives the lie to that.  If I walk too near, or make too much noise, they will rise, awkwardly, suddenly, sending me into panic.

Except for one night. I was playing the fourth mission, Down in the Bonehoard, in the old catacombs full of both dead and undead.  I don’t know why, nor how, but that night the zombies held no terror for me.  I laughed at them, toyed with them.  I ran around them, mocking their clumsy shambling.  I hit them with my blackjack, which cannot knock them out, but merely enrages them.  And I led them, like a piper leading rats, into the fireball traps in the bonehoard.  The fireballs violently dismembered them, hurling body parts around the room. And I laughed again, and went in search of more zombies.

Today my phobia remains.  Even now, when I see—or worse—hear a zombie, the old terror grips me again.  But for that one glorious fearless night, the zombies were my playthings.

Thief: The Dark Project was a groundbreaking stealth game, released in 1998 to great critical acclaim and modest commercial success.  Two sequels were developed, Thief II: The Metal Age, and Thief: Deadly Shadows; a fourth instalment is in production.