Thief: The Dark Project (1998) and Thief II: The Metal Age (2000) are something like the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon of first-person shooters. Taking a genre largely dismissed as mindless kinetics, Looking Glass Studio re-invented it for the story of Garrett, a cynical cat burglar in an ageless city, imbuing the game-play with innovation, compelling narrative, and genuine artistry. No surprise, then, that it garnered a cult of online devotees, many of whom create their own fan missions (or FMs), set within its reality.

"Thief had an unexplored, fully coherent world of its own, familiar and alien at the same time," says Conor "Silent Sleep" Armstrong, a Dublin-based student and FM designer. And at The Circle of Stone and Shadow site, Armstrong found an international community eager to explore its contours. Constructed with DromEd, the proprietary level editor that Looking Glass and publishing partner Eidos Interactive released two years ago, Thief's best FMs evince as much creative ambition as the professional missions that inspired them.

Perhaps the most successful on that score, Benny's Dead, in which Garrett is hired to penetrate (and loot) a well-guarded crime scene, is the work of Alex, a cognitive scientist/researcher based in Canada. Keen awareness of the environment is essential to Thief game-play-- it enables Garrett to avoid detection by keeping silent and hidden in shadows -- and the Gingerbread Man (Alex's Circle name) says his vocation was integral to its design. "When the study of unconscious influences on perception and behavior is a focal point of your research," he says, it's inevitable. Echoing the clash between paganism and technology -- a central theme in Looking Glass's games -- the mission introduces a new religious sect for Garrett to contend with: scientists. (In Thief, technology is Industrial Age-era, but the powers that control it are decidedly medieval.)

A close second is Armstrong's Equilibrium, an FM involving the Keepers, the games' elusive scholastic guild. A former acolyte himself, Garrett abandoned the Keepers in anger (or shattered idealism?), to exploit their quasi-ninjitsu skills for personal profit. It's a tantalizing back-story, which was scheduled to be told in Thief III. But after Looking Glass's unexpected bankruptcy last May, the title was cancelled in mid-production. Armstrong considered scrapping his project, too: "It felt a little cruel to swoop in and release rough, fan-made Keepers that would only make players realize how much they were missing." Pressing on, he rejiggered DromEd to create Keeper AIs with stealth abilities like Garrett's. "I recently played through Equilibrium and was pretty impressed," says Terri Brosius, a Looking Glass alum. "I also enjoyed Silent Sleep's interpretation of what some interior Keeper spaces might look like." (She would know: Before LG's demise, Brosius was the one writing Part III's Keeper-heavy story line.) Other FM standouts include the thoroughly suspenseful Ranstall's Keep, which replaces Garrett with Ryalla, a young female thief, and The Ritual, a massive, eerie level in which Garrett must rescue a little girl from impending sacrifice. (All available in the top-ranked section of the Circle site; install with their DarkLoader application. Most anticipated is Circle of Stone and Shadow, an unofficial prequel to Thief II, tentatively set for summer release.

After Looking Glass folded, further professional development of the franchise was constrained by its bankruptcy proceedings. For a time, then, it seemed like the fans would be left to continue Garrett's story alone. Fortunately, Eidos came away with the property in August, bestowing it on highly regarded developer Warren Spector. (Brosius recently began work with Spector's Thief III team.) In the downtime, Garrett's universe is still being shaped by those who love him most, and with such rigorous craft, the distinctions between proprietary and fair use, professional and amateur, all seem rather beside the point. After playing the better Thief fan missions, it's difficult to recall which of Garrett's adventures really happened and which, so to speak, were pure fiction. "I just think, 'Oh, here's something that must have happened to Garrett while I was otherwise occupied,'" says Brosius. And she's grateful for this dedicated coterie who've added so many textures to his universe in that interim. "It keeps Garrett and his exploits alive for me while I wait for Thief III to coalesce," she says. "The best fan missions will live in my memory as part of Garrett's experiences, and that says a lot about the diligence and talent of the community building them."

Are you mod or a rocker? Share your thoughts in the FEED threads at Plastic...