Calendra's Cistern

Calendra's Cistern

You've been 'invited' to a formal party at he Weeping Angel Tavern with Lady Calendra as the host. Your objective, find out about the relic taken by crime from the swamps in the south.

August 8th, 2000

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Authors: Team Calendra is: Purah (Anthony Huso) Totality (Triston Attridge)

Thumper (Gary Barton) Loanstar (Paul B.)

& Deep Qantas (Teemu Salmela)

Contact info: See homepage for contact info to all Team Members.

Homepage: http://www.aros.net/~purah/calendras.htm

Version: Official Release, Patch level 1Date of release: August 2000

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************************ Please Read This Page ***********************************

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"I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go

walkin' with a dead man over my shoulder.."

-Oingo Boingo, "Dead Man's Party"BACKGROUND:

This is your city. A black-caped lord, you survey your domain from the rooftops

with pensive, cynical eyes. They are analytical eyes. Like camera shutters, they

slice and assess every footfall on the midnight cobbles below. You time every

pendulous swing of the lanterns and evaluate every fitful throw of shadow from

one end of the street to the other. Your ears unconsciously decipher the sullen

echoes of voices, machinery and wind. This is a city of metronomes where chimney

pots sway to the ancient gurgle of pipes whose forlorn songs rise from throats

of incurable decay. You gauge the lonely armored scrape of each city watchman as

a matter of habit, for there is machination in thievery. And timing is

everything. You have internalized the rhythm of movement and non-movement, the

play of shadows, down to your very own pulse.

You chuckle sardonically, amused to find yourself thinking of the Keepers. But

you have good reason tonight.

Mercedes was a hard minded, hard bodied acolyte who left the Keepers shortly

after you. Though your relationship lasted longer than that of most thieves in

the city, you're not exactly a family man. Besides, Mercedes started dabbling in

sorcery and had her own agendas. But that's all in the past. And loneliness can

be delicious in its own way . . . especially on the rooftops at night. Her

letter arrived yesterday. You have it tucked in your breast pocket and it

reminds you of the times you spent together as acolytes. It mentions a party, a

job, strictly business it would seem . . . But you don't think so much about the

letter's content as you do on the familiar handwriting. And then you decide that

it is an interesting proposition after all. Not the money so much as the

challenge of stealing something more abstract than lucre or relics. A theft of

time and a little company to remind you of your fading youth. Such delicate and

unpredictable prizes fall outside what you've memorized of this clockwork city.

At the thieves' guild you once heard an old rogue say that the thief's burden is

not his bag of loot but the endless desire to possess what he does not have.

Tonight you meet an old friend . . . for you, a splinter of what might have been

is gleaming like a jewel under museum glass . . . and opportunity makes the

thief. BRIEFING LETTER:"Garrett,

I know we agreed not to see each other, but there's a party tomorrow night and

you're the only man thief-enough to be my escort. You've heard of the Weeping

Angel Tavern? It's near my new apartment on the south side of town. I heard

the owner, Lady Calendra, is closing the tavern early in order to throw a lavish

party. An elite few are invited and among them, a count seeking payment for his

delivery of a certain ill-gotten relic taken by crime from swamps in the utter

south. I don't know much about it really, but as far as the party goes, we're

'invited.' I'll expect you in the Weeping Angel's wine cellar by midnight. I

overheard there is a secret door there to the place the party is being held.

As Always,Mercedes

P.S. I think it's formal dress so...I'll be wearing black."

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KNOWN BUGS:

1) There are some spots of architecture that the AI's just don't like. You may see a

funny occurance from time to time, (blame it on the AI's being drunk at the party)

:)

but not very often...and we think we have erradicated 99% of the bugs.

2) ****IMPORTANT**** We have overwritten the Success.avi for this mission. This

means you will get the Calendra's Cistern Success.avi when you complete other

missions. To recifty this: BEFORE you install Calendra's Cistern, copy the

original Success.avi from your Movies folder into a different folder. When you

are done playing Calendra's Cistern, you can then move it back.

3) If you do not have the briefing movie, Thief will exit when you try to play the

mission. You can either download the movies from www.thief-thecircle.com or tell

Thief not to play the briefing. To do that, change the name of the file

thief\strings\missflag.str to missflag_briefing.str and

thief\strings\missflag_no_briefing.str to missflag.str

If you decide to download the movies later, you can just reverse the names to

enable the movies (or just view them directly).

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CREDITS TEAM CALENDRA:

Purah: Design/story/art/achitecture/skins/overall design coordinator

Thumper: Additional story/subplot/architecture/objectives/technical guru/head voices

Totality: In-game store/traps/puzzles/special projects/finalized bug fixes

Loanstar: Many recordings/sound FX/movies/music

Deep Qantas: Conversations/skin tweaks/maps

Special thanks to: Wes Morrison for reskinnable objects and skins! And a very very

special thanks to LGS studios. There is a dedication in-game near

the Weeping Angel tavern. Without the folks at LGS, we would have never

found the shadows. Huzzah! Also a special thanks to Janet Turner for

her art in one of the briefing shots and to Maria Curcic (who will

undoubtedly be either loved or hated) as the voice of Mercedes.

Beta Testers: MaD-SaM, Blaze Pureheart, Tim Ewers, Daniel Kessler, Shadow Runner,

Chris Csernica, Andrew Dagilis. If I forgot anyone, then you didn't

post to the "sign-in" section of our forum...sorry.

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* Play Information *

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Game: Thief: The Dark Project

Mission Title: Calendra's CisternFile name: miss20.mis

Difficulty Settings: yesEquipment store: yes

In-game store: yesMap / automap: yes/yes

New graphics: yesNew sounds: yes

New monsters: yesEAX support: yes

Multi language support: no...and don't ask :)Briefing : yes

Difficulty levels: Foot Pad=Normal, Thief=Hard, Garrett=Expert

* Construction * Base: From scratch.Build Time: 1 year +

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* Loading information * With Thiefloader:

Copy the calendra.zip into your thief/missions folder. Run Thiefloader,

select calendra from the list and press play.Without Thiefloader:

We don't recommend it but you can unzip calendra.zip into your thief directory,

run Thief, start a new game, and select "Calendra's Cistern". If you don't use

Thiefloader, keep in mind this warning:*** WARNING ***

The archive includes various files that will overwrite the original ones if

unzipped without prompting. Backup your Thief directory first if you do not

wish to lose any files.

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* Copyright * Copyright (c) June 2000 by each member of Team Calendra

Permission is granted to freely play and distribute this level providing it

remains whole and intact. Mission designers: Please ask one of us before using

the custom elements of this mission.

This level was not made and is not supported by Looking Glass Studios or Eidos

Interactive.