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02/23/2004
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Title : Masque of the Red Death
Filename : masque.zip
Author : raetsel
Contact info : raetsel@gwi.net
Homepage : http://www20.brinkster.com/raetsel/thief/thief.html
Date of release : February something, 2004
Version : 1.1 (fixed a little bug, thanks to Spyrano!)

Description : This was originally for Komag's contest #4 - stupid things kept ticking me off - so it was never finished & left alone for a year & should still probably be viewed in a "demo" sort of way. Some *spoilers* of things that may not be so obvious are way down the bottom of this readme - so if you don't want to know, don't scroll! cheers!

"The city has been overcome by what everyone is calling the 'Red Death.' The disease strikes even the most healthy suddenly, and death is swift. The streets are littered with dead bodies, and everyone is too afraid to even take care of the mess. All of the nobility of the city have decided to hole themselves up in the estate of their Lord, Prince Prospero... all of the nobility who make it across town before being struck ill, that is. Fortunately, many don't make it to the Prince's castle, and their purses have just been laying around waiting for a... good citizen... to come along and take care of them. I even got myself an invitation...

'Lord Frobenbauble,

You are cordially invited by Prince Prospero himself to a grand gala this evening at his estate. Within shall be merriment like no other and without will be this 'Red Death.' Do be assured that no contagion will breach these walls and to this end, the Prince requests that all arrive well before midnight as the gates will be securely sealed by this time.
As always, let the peasants deal with these dark times. Come, drink, eat, be merry and safe from this pestilence.

Prince Prospero'

I'm definitely no noble, and they won't go letting me in the front gates, but I'll find my way in before midnight. Merry, drunk nobles -- just sounds like my kind of party. I think I'll masquerade as... a thief."


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Play Information

Game : Thief 2: The Metal Age
Level Names : Masque of the Red Death
File names : miss20.mis
Difficulty Settings : no
Equipment store : no
Map/Automap : maybe (won't crash)
New graphics : yes
New sounds : yes
New conversations : not really
New models : yes
EAX Support : yes
Multi language support : no
Briefing : yes

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Construction

Base : none
Map Size : tiny
Build Time : no clue, really
Build Info : originally for Komag's teeny-space contest #4 - and not expanded past those dimensions - or beta-tested - consider mostly some sort of demo of something or rather (stupid dancing people? :p)
i've never enabled eax until this time (the sound card i'd always played thief with made it all messy & it sounds pretty weird on my new one too) - so excuse me if that bit sounds odd

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Loading Information

Run via DarkLoader. Don't unzip the file.

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Thanks To (in no particular order)

Kyle!

Uncadonego - voices! he's the man for this stuff! (Prince Prospero in briefing, Red Death)
Nameless_Voice - for all of his great custom objects (models used listed below)
Sledge - for letting me use his windmill blades, his tutorials & encouragement (windmill.bin)
Hit Deity - for being the dromed guru & encouraging guy that he is :)
Schwaa - for all of his custom objects and tutorials & great missions!
GayleSaver - broadcast customization fix & much more!
Komag - for his website, contests, custom menus, tutorials, missions, answering questions...
GOB/MOG - for his textures, being his amusing self & often getting one to think abstractly (think i didn't use his textures in this one, though)
David Gurrea - textures
Hengist, Telliamed, Yametha, YcatX, Dark Arrow, d0om, Mortal Monkey

and of course -EVERYONE- at TTLG, Looking Glass & everyone who has ever made an fm... I've played and loved them all :)

Tristania - "Postludium" used in the briefing
"Gypsy" from Lord of the Dance playing on victrola (yes, i know it gets annoying, but it purposefully doesn't have a shut-off - to fit with the story)

oh yes, and Edgar Allan Poe :)

and to anyone i may have forgotten to thank here, thank you!!!

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Nameless_Voice's models used:

NVClawTable
NVGlobe
NVLocket
NVMushroomTable
NVPictureFrame
NVPocketWatch
NVSpiderChest
NVWindChime

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* Copyright Information *

This level is ? by raetsel

distribute this mission however you want, but give me credit and all that sort of thing.

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

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The Masque of the Red Death
by: Edgar Allan Poe

The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No
pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its
Avatar and its seal--the redness and the horror of blood. There were
sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the
pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and
especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which
shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men.
And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease,
were the incidents of half an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious.
When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his
presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the
knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep
seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive
and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own
eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in.
This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered,
brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They
resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden
impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply
provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid
defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of
itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The
prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were
buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers,
there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these
and security were within. Without was the "Red Death".

It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his
seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously
abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends
at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.

It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me
tell of the rooms in which it was held. These were seven--an
imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long
and straight vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to
the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extent is
scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different, as might have
been expected from the duke's love of the bizarre. The
apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced
but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at
every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To
the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow
Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the
windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass whose
colour varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the
decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the
eastern extremity was hung, for example in blue--and vividly blue
were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments
and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was
green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was
furnished and lighted with orange--the fifth with white--the sixth
with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black
velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the
walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material
and hue. But in this chamber only, the colour of the windows
failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were
scarlet--a deep blood colour. Now in no one of the seven
apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of
golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the
roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle
within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed
the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod,
bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the
tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were
produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in
the western or black chamber the effect of the fire-light that
streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes,
was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the
countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the
company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.

It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the
western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and
fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand
made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken,
there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was
clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar
a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians
of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their
performance, to harken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce
ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the
whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it
was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and
sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused
revery or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a
light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked
at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly,
and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming
of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then,
after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and
six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another
chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and
tremulousness and meditation as before.

But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent
revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye
for colours and effects. He disregarded the decora of mere
fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed
with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have thought him
mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear
and see and touch him to be sure that he was not.

He had directed, in great part, the movable embellishments of
the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fete; and it
was his own guiding taste which had given character to the
masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare
and glitter and piquancy and phantasm--much of what has been since
seen in "Hernani". There were arabesque figures with
unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such
as the madman fashions. There were much of the beautiful, much of
the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and
not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro
in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of
dreams. And these--the dreams--writhed in and about taking hue
from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem
as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony
clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a
moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the
clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes
of the chime die away--they have endured but an instant--and a
light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And
now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and
fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many tinted windows
through which stream the rays from the tripods. But to the chamber
which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the
maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows
a ruddier light through the blood-coloured panes; and the blackness
of the sable drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the
sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled
peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears
who indulged in the more remote gaieties of the other apartments.

But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them
beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly
on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon
the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the
evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy
cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve
strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it
happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, with more of time,
into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled.
And thus too, it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of
the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many
individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of
the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the
attention of no single individual before. And the rumour of this
new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose
at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of
disapprobation and surprise--then, finally, of terror, of horror,
and of disgust.

In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may
well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited
such sensation. In truth the masquerade licence of the night was
nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod,
and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince's indefinite decorum.
There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be
touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life
and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can
be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that
in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor
propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded
from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which
concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance
of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had
difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have
been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around. But
the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death.
His vesture was dabbled in blood--and his broad brow, with all
the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.

When the eyes of the Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral
image (which, with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to
sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was
seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder
either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his brow reddened
with rage.

"Who dares,"--he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood
near him--"who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery?
Seize him and unmask him--that we may know whom we have to hang, at
sunrise, from the battlements!"

It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the
Prince Prospero as he uttered these words. They rang throughout
the seven rooms loudly and clearly, for the prince was a bold and
robust man, and the music had become hushed at the waving of his
hand.

It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group
of pale courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke,
there was a slight rushing movement of this group in the direction
of the intruder, who at the moment was also near at hand, and now,
with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the
speaker. But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad
assumptions of the mummer had inspired the whole party, there were
found none who put forth hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he
passed within a yard of the prince's person; and, while the vast
assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from the centres of the
rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the
same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the
first, through the blue chamber to the purple--through the purple
to the green--through the green to the orange--through this again
to the white--and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement
had been made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince
Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary
cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none
followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon
all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid
impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure,
when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet
apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was
a sharp cry--and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet,
upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the
Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a
throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black
apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect
and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in
unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse-like
mask, which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by
any tangible form.

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He
had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the
revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each
in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony
clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of
the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held
illimitable dominion over all.

-- THE END --

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*spoilers* or tidits

- Nameless_Voice's chimes are loot
- the goblets that highlight, but you can't pick up do have their purpose - try finding something to "use" on them
- none of the regularly-loot objects that you can't pick up count toward the loot amount - all loot is obtainable
- later... if you turn the victrola back on - don't fret that a frob again won't turn it off... just bash it with something