A list of characters appearing in the Thief reboot. Mostly sorted by their faction and social group, though some are sorted by what larger role they play in the narrative of the installments. Characters and factions from earlier games can be found here.
This is a continuing work in progress, so remain patient and stay tuned.
Garrett
Garrett has lived in The City all his life. He's an experienced and shadowy figure, skilled in thievery, stealth, infiltration and escape. He's known to the rest of the underworld as the 'Master Thief' - the best of the best.
When the game begins, he reluctantly works alongside his ex-apprentice Erin to steal a valuable and apparently magical artifact from the manor of Baron Northcrest, only for the operation to end in disaster when Erin falls to her death and Garrett is put in a coma. When he wakes, he finds that a year has passed, and the city he knows has been dramatically changed by the arrival of the Gloom.
- Anti-Hero: Garrett is a Type IV. He detests killing, and steals only from those who won't suffer greatly from losing their treasures (without deserving it), but he is more than willing to avoid doing the right thing if it means he doesn't get in harm's way or attract the attention of the law.
- Celibate Hero: Garrett doesn't even hint at attraction to another character, male or female. When he has to infiltrate the House of Blossoms in Chapter 3, he mentions he's never been there. Granted, it's an upscale brothel, but you think that would make it even more enticing to a master thief.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Garrett may be an unrepentant kleptomaniac, but he despises killing even when it's necessary.
- Deadpan Snarker: Garrett is bitingly sarcastic towards just about everyone he meets. Unlike the prior Garrett, he's doing this almost entirely out of disgust with his environment, first with Erin, and then with the entire City.
- Everyone Has Standards: He is a thief, not a grave robber, and shows open disgust at the lack of respect the Thief-Taker General shows to the dead. He also detests killing when it's not necessary, calling Erin out in the prologue for killing a random guard's son, who is also a guard.
- Experienced Protagonist: Garrett is already a master thief by the time the game takes place, and has already taken on Erin as his apprentice. While there is an upgrade system, it's for his new Magical Eye, which he justifiably hasn't had time to look into.
- Gentleman Thief: Played for Laughs. During his escape from the home of the Baron's Architect, Garrett crashes through a window and onto a table — where a group of nobles are enjoying dinner. He gives the shocked guests a curt "evening", and continues out the other side of the building.
- Gonna Need More Trope: Upon lowering the Baron's Great Safe, Garrett's only response is "I'm gonna need bigger lockpicks".
- I Am What I Am: Invoked by Garrett when he decides to raid the Baron's Great Safe after freeing Basso from the Keep.Basso: No one is paying you to do that.Garrett: It's not about payment... It's who I am.
- I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Garrett clearly feels guilty for Erin's death, and spends several missions trying to come to terms with what happened in the course of working for Orion and the visions he's seeing. Then it's revealed that she's not dead at all, and has been psychically contacting Garrett so he can find her whereabouts.
- Impaled Palm: Garrett gets his left hand impaled with an arrow, courtesy of the Thief-Taker General, while opening the Baron's Great Safe. For the rest of the game, his hand is bandaged, and pushing up boards in the way of sidling spaces is more difficult for him.
- Impossible Thief: With enough Focus, he can steal jewelry off of people who are wearing said jewelry without them even noticing.
- In the Hood: Is never seen without his hooded cape.
- Kleptomaniac Hero: The game is called Thief for a reason.
- Possibly even more so than the original Garrett. The original Garrett only stole because he was good at it and had to pay rent, even suggesting he dislikes thievery but prefers it to a regular job. This Garrett seems to actually like his work, making a point to steal even when he has no reason to.
- Legacy Character: Evidence around the game points to him being a descendant of, or even the reincarnation of, the original Garrett
, who is hinted to be the 'Sneak-Thief' mentioned in the backstory.- Generation Xerox: Like the original, he knows someone named Basso (who would've had a wife of the same name as the original Basso's), like the original he's a thief, and like the original, ends up with a special eyeball in one socket.
- Mark of the Supernatural: His right eye is a strikingly pale blue thanks to a shard of the Primal Stone embedded in it.
- Not in This for Your Revolution: Garrett shows disinterest in Orion and the cause of the Graven, and is only interested in personal gain and information on what happened during the year he spent unconscious. Orion counters by telling Garrett that he can't just ignore the world forever.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Justifies killing the Thief-Taker General if he chooses to fight him, despite having a "no kill unless needed" rule, because he's just that bad.Garrett: As a rule, I don't kill people unless I have no other choice. But like someone else I know... I don't play by the rules, do I?
- Phantom Thief: Invoked by completing chapters in the Ghost playstyle.
- Take My Hand!: Despite being disgusted by Erin's brutality, he genuinely cared about her and didn't hesitate to try to save her life both times.
- Would Hit a Girl: In the prologue, granted in self-defense. Played straighter with the number of female NPCs that can be knocked out or killed.
Erin
A fellow thief and Garrett's former student, who was abandoned by Garrett when she proved to be reckless, impatient, and a willing murderer. She and Garrett team up for a heist at Northcrest Manor, only to stumble upon the Baron's attempt to harness the Primal. When Erin attempts to complete the job against Garrett's wishes, she falls and is apparently killed by the unstable Primal Stone, and Garrett is knocked into a coma as he attempts to save her.
- Asshole Victim: She proves herself to be ruthless, disgusting her former mentor, and is seemingly killed early in the storyline.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Erin was a new prostitute at the House of Blossoms, but murdered her first John and escaped, becoming Garrett's apprentice.
- Deadpan Snarker: Like Garrett, Erin is a font of sarcastic quips.
- Disney Villain Death: Falls through a skylight and onto the Primal Stone trying to retrieve her Claw. In the final level, she falls off the ship after Garrett removes the Primal from her, but this time Garrett managed to throw the Claw down to her.
- Faux Affably Evil: Pretends to be really friendly, but is an unrepentant killer.
- Hates Being Touched: While a prostitute at the House of Blossoms, she told a John not to touch her and shanked him when he didn't listen.
- Hidden Depths: Erin was a talented artist. With training, she might have been a great one.
- Not Quite Dead: Erin was seemingly killed after falling on the Primal Stone, but it's later revealed she's barely alive and being held captive by Orion, and later the Baron.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Garrett has numerous visions of Erin following her "death".
- Power Echoes: Erin's voice develops these when channeling the Primal.
- Professional Killer: Some of her quotes imply she was not just a thief but an assassin once she meets up with Garrett again.
- A Pupil Of Mine Until She Turnedto Evil: Downplayed. She is Garrett's former student, but turned to assassin work instead of thievery. It runs directly counter to his ethos of "don't make additional trouble for yourself by killing people", but this doesn't get brought up that much.
- Rage Against the Mentor: She sneers at Garrett for berating her when she kills a guard.
- Surpassed the Teacher: Claims she's done so with the help of a grappling hook-like tool she invented, though Garrett calls her out on relying so much on it. However, Garrett soon proves better at using the claw than her, even commenting that she made it sound noisier than it really is.
- Take My Hand!: When she falls through the skylight, Garret doesn't hesitate to grab her hand and try to pull her up.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Becomes this at the very end of the game, due to having accidentally absorbed the Primal into herself, and ultimately deciding to use its power to lash out blindly at everyone and everything after being tortured and controlled by the Baron and later Orion.
Basso
As in the original series, Basso is Garrett's old pal and associate. He's the guy who gives Garrett missions in-game.
- Call-Back: Numerous references and mythology gags to the previous continuity of Thief.
- He says "never again" in response to Garrett asking him if he's getting married. This may refer to "Running Interference", the very first mission of Thief II: The Metal Age.
- His bird is named after his wife-to-be from the same game.
- Basso jokes about Garrett eyeing his sister; Garrett fancying Basso's sister was a motivation for breaking Basso out of Cragscleft Prison in The Dark Project.
- Distressed Dude: In Chapter 4, Basso is captured by the Thief-Taker General and imprisoned in the Keep. This is meant as a trap for Garrett.
- Legacy Character: Like with Garrett, Basso has the same name and occupation as his namesake from The Dark Project.
Elias Northcrest, Baron of the City
Elias Northcrest, tenth Baron of his lineage, is a cold and ruthless man. Over 60 years of age, this hardened individual is pushing for an age of progress and industry over all else with a seemingly heartless and single-minded obsession. Unlike his father before him, Elias Northcrest is focused on a singular vision which can be seen in the city all around. With ever-larger and looming structures of cold stone and icy metal, smoke-wreathed factories dark and relentless, and huge power-carrying pipes pushing through the streets, the Baron's dream is a dark one for most.
The Northcrest family and Elias in particular has strived for years to convince the people that the only way forward is through power you can touch, hold, and feel. To this end, the worship of the old gods is suppressed and being forced out of society by any means possible. Since the last Golden Age, however, the promise of a bright new future still lies quiet. The Baron appears to have mysteriously withdrawn, but his iron grip on The City remains in the hands of his fearful right-hand man, the Thief-Taker General. Even when the Baron was more accessible to those who live within The City, he was renowned for his cold and unforgiving mentality. With the gloom rolling inexorably through The City, it would seem that Elias Northcrest still prefers to work on how his city can grow on the bones of those who live there.
- Aristocrats Are Evil: The Baron ignores the plight of the poor and enforces strict martial law.
- Big Bad Ensemble: With Orion, who turns out to have been both the Baron's half-brother, and a fellow member of the conspiracy to summon the Primal.
- Disc-One Final Boss: By the time Garrett gets to him, the Graven are already tearing down his palace, and Garret himself is only interested in getting some answers. This leads to the reveal of Orion's true nature, kicking off the third act.
- Evil Is Not a Toy: It's heavily implied that his attempt to summon and control the Primal would've ended in disaster anyway, even without Garrett and Erin interrupting.
- Face Death with Dignity: When confronted by Garrett, the Baron simply tells him that if he's there to kill him, he should just get it over with.
- Killed Offscreen: After the conversation with Garrett, banter overheard in Stonemarket suggests that the Baron was found and killed by the Graven mob attacking the palace.
- Nay-Theist: A family trait to an utmost degree. Elias went so far as to converting the chapel on the Northcrest estate to a vault for his family's most prized heirloom. He even expresses disgust with his wife when she makes an offhand comment about how automatons would view their makers as "gods."
- Oh, Crap!: Although he opts to Face Death with Dignity, he panics when he sees that Garrett has the missing piece of the Primal Stone in his eye.
- Visionary Villain: He wants to bring the City into an age of "progress and industrial enlightenment".
- Walking Spoiler: Any discussion about him will inevitably bring up that he's not the actual Big Bad, making him a decoy villain in the series' tradition.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Baron genuinely wants to uplift humanity and create a better life for everyone. It's just that he has no regard for the rights of individual humans, particularly the lower classes.
- He did try to contain the harmful effects of the Primal energy by sealing one of the shards in his vault. It just wasn't very successful.
- Younger Than They Look: While he definitely isn't a young man, exposure to the Primal energy has had a deteriorating effect on his body, aging him even further and rendering him sterile.
Thadeus Harlan, the Thief-Taker General
Thadeus Harlan is the Head of the City Watch and the Baron's right-hand man. He has made a career out of catching thieves and is regarded publicly as a hero, holding the title or "Thief-Taker General." In reality, he is a rottenly corrupt individual, who squeezes the criminal element of the City into submission through the "Black Tax", abuses his own men, and coldly strips the dead of valuables to line his own pocket.
- Arm Cannon: Has an arm-mounted crossbow, shown to use Fire and Blast arrows.
- Attack Its Weak Point: During the Climax Boss fight, using Focus mode to club him in his crippled knee will stun him for a few seconds, letting you get a few good blows in on him with the blackjack.
- Bad Boss: Brutalizes his underlings and even kills them if they disappoint him.
- Climax Boss: He's finally confronted at the end of the second-last chapter, and is the only proper "boss" fight in the game. There are multiple ways to take him down, or you can avoid the fight entirely and sneak around him.
- The Dragon: Enforces the Baron's orders and is the commander of the soldiers patrolling the City.
- Due to the Dead: Averted, as Garrett notices. Thadeus is more than willing to gut a corpse with a bone saw to get at a plot-important ring.
- Evil Cripple: Wears a leg brace and walks with a limp thanks to Garrett accidentally kneecapping him in the prologue chapter. Besides preventing him from running, it really doesn't seem to hinder him much in combat.
- Handicapped Badass: Even though the Thief-Taker General needs a leg brace to walk, he still manages to give Garrett a real hard time as a Climax Boss.
- Knee-capping: Garrett accidentally shoots him in the knee with the Claw's grappling hook during the prologue. This is a weak point for him in his boss fight.
- Implacable Man: After Chapter 3, the Thief-Taker General spends the rest of the game chasing after Garrett, even following him into the very heart of Graven-held territory.
- Made of Iron: If you choose to confront the Thief-Taker General in a straight fight, he can take an incredible amount of damage before being defeated (requiring several Blast Arrows to knock down, which are otherwise a one-hit-kill against anything else). Pretty impressive considering he's just a normal human being with no supernatural powers. This is likely to encourage players to take the stealthy approach instead and sneak away from the fight entirely.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: His appearance is strikingly similar to Daniel Day-Lewis' character, Bill "The Butcher" Cutter, from the film Gangs of New York. As for his title, personality, and occupation, he's based on the infamous real-life Thief-Taker General, Jonathan Wild.
- Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Clearly regards the law not as a means in itself, but simply a tool to hold power over others. He's very similar to Thief 2's Sheriff Truart in this respect.
- Skippable Boss: Garrett is given the option of either teaching him a lesson or simply sneaking past him.
Orion / Aldous Northcrest-Hucks
Orion is a large, charismatic man referred to as 'the voice of the people' by the desperate civilians of the City. The restless mob doesn't really know Orion's roots, but his tone and message are clear enough: Before things will get better, the Baron must fall. Orion's ability to connect with the people's pain soon means that the ranks of the Graven swell with common folk desperate for change and a new beginning.
Orion professes to have the answers to The City's problems, with one of the biggest being the relentless advance of the mysterious sickness known as the Gloom. To protect himself from the attentions of the Baron and the Thief-Taker General, Orion operates from the unseen back streets and hidden alleyways of the city.
- Bastard Bastard: Orion is revealed to be the illegitimate brother of the Baron, sired by their father during a drunken one-night stand with a housekeeper.
- Big Bad: Ultimately, he's the real main threat to the city due to his inability to accept that his cure for the Gloom is horribly flawed.
- Big Good: Takes this role for much of the game, especially for the lower classes. Or so he seems.
- Cain and Abel: It turns out Orion is actually Aldous, Elias' half-brother who was exiled by their father, the previous Baron. Orion is now working to overthrow his brother, after the current Baron's failure to harness the power of the Primal to industrialize the City.
- Charm Person: Implied. One of the Graven (who apparently used to be rather peaceful before joining in on the riots) notes in a journal that his "head's been all swimmy" ever since meeting Orion.
- Dark Messiah: He becomes one for the Graven cult.
- Harmful Healing: His plan to cure the Gloom involves using the Primal energy inside Erin. The same energy shown to transform people into homicidal mutants, and the source of the Gloom to begin with due to its corruption.
- Karmic Death: Aldous wanted to exploit the energy of the Primal through Erin. She uses that power to partially transform him into a Freak, killing him.
- Obliviously Evil: He doesn't seem to realize his actual position in the plot, to the point of willful ignorance. While he is trying to do a good thing, his method is so flawed that it doesn't matter.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: He seems to genuinely care about the lower classes and want to cure them of the Gloom. It's just that he has no compunction against blowing up much of the City to do so, and he's too stubborn to realize his "cure" will cause more harm than good.
The Graven
Ravaged by the Gloom and kept under the heel of the Baron's Watch, the common people of the City rally under the banner of Orion, spreading his message and encouraging acts of rebellion against the Northcrest regime.
As the Graven movement grows in power and the Baron's grip on the City weakens, they devolve into an anarchistic cult; hailing Orion as a messiah and viewing themselves as the first members of a new religion that will soon sweep the world.
- Chaos Is Evil: They serve as the "Chaos" against the Northcrest "Order", and are decidedly too anarchic and uncivilized to be considered good.
- Cult: They rapidly form one around their leader, Orion.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: Their 'uniform' consists of dark clothing decorated with blood-red markings, and they're very unfriendly.
- The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Extremely so. The City is in flames not long after the uprising begins proper, looting is widespread, and even the most inconsequential members of the Northcrest regime are shown absolutely no mercy.
- With Us or Against Us: If you aren't singing Orion's praises, the Graven will want nothing to do with you. When they start taking over the streets, they're just as hostile to Garrett as the Baron's men are. It's not because he's against Orion (which he is, but hasn't told anyone associated with the Graven at that point), but because he's not directly affiliated with Orion.The Graven: Those faithless who refuse hope can accept death! Hunt them down! Bring them to glory! Show them the strength of Orion's conviction!
The Freaks
Twisted, abhuman beings that dwell in the darkness beneath the earth, the Freaks are the result of unprotected humans being exposed to the energy of the Primal.
- Creepy Long Fingers: Their hands are lengthened to talons.
- Foreshadowing: The very first Freak you see is in the ancient ruins beneath the House of Blossoms, and only for a few seconds before it scurries away into the darkness.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: Their eyes glow brightly when alerted. Blue when they're searching for you, red when they've found you.
- Kill It with Fire: Fire or blast arrows are one of the more effective methods of taking them down.
- Made of Iron: They take a lot more punishment than human enemies. Your standard melee attack does almost nothing, and Sawhead Arrows barely slow them down.
- No-Sell: They're completely immune to stealth takedowns.
- Super-Senses: Freaks are able to detect you when you use Focus around them, thanks to the ability being derived from the Primal shard in Garret's eye.
- Was Once a Man: They're humans corrupted by the Primal and turned into monsters.
- Weakened by the Light: Light sources drive them away.
