Moira Asylum is a clinic for the criminally insane. Situated on a remote island that is far removed from the rest of the City, the asylum serves as the setting for the game's fifth chapter. Having received a vision of Erin directing him to Moira, Garrett ventures out to the island in search of answers.
Seemingly abandoned, the haunted asylum remains filled with unnerving ambient sounds and jump scares, all deliberately designed to make Moira Asylum the most terrifying location in the game.
History[]
In the distant past, during the reign of House Bresling , this building was once the seaside mansion of Robert Moira and his wife, Edwina. Captain of a ship known as the Abysmal Gale , Robert was by his own admission more pirate than merchant.[1] During one of his voyages, he uncovered an ancient Keeper artifact known as the Compendium of Reproach . Robert recognized a hidden value in the book, which could not be opened and appeared to instead be a large, book-shaped slab of gold. Upon returning home, he stashed the Compendium in his hidden office, within the island's underground tunnels. It was during his subsequent voyage that fate betrayed Captain Moira. A rogue Keeper by the name of Gamall had also been seeking the Compendium, and boarded the Abysmal Gale, before slaughtering its entire crew, including Captain Moira. By the time the ship returned to the City, the captain and most of his crew had risen from the dead as zombies, and the Abysmal Gale was thus placed under quarantine as a plague ship.
Having allied himself with the Keepers, the original Sneak Thief snuck aboard the doomed vessel in search of the Compendium, and discovered the artifact's location at Robert's mansion. The thief proceeded to travel to the island and infiltrate the manor, meeting the now-widowed Edwina Moira in the process. Though the Sneak Thief ultimately recovered the Compendium and escaped the mansion undetected, he had left a profound impression upon the Widow Moira. In the years to come, the memory of their encounter would inspire Edwina to convert her home into an asylum, where those afflicted with obsessive and kleptomaniac tendencies could be properly understood and treated.[2]
This dream was ultimately realized with the help of a Bresling Baron, and in BRy459, Moira Asylum officially opened.[3]
In the later years, under the reign of Ulysses Northcrest, the asylum started becoming less of a hospital and more of a prison. Northcrest saw in the asylum a way of exiling the degenerates from society, as opposed to curing them.[2] The Sneak Thief in particular became especially targeted due to having set in motion the events leading to the Dark Age.[4]
At an undetermined point in time, the infamous Sneak Thief was, in fact, captured and admitted to the asylum. His incarceration did not seem to hamper the thief's remarkable abilities, as noted by several other patients.[5] [6] It is unknown whether the Sneak Thief was ultimately able to escape, or spent his final days at Moira, but he eventually either escaped through or was transferred to the Old Prison beneath the asylum, where the thief left his famous eye behind.[7]
Events of Thief[]
In the centuries since, the current Northcrest Baron has inherited stewardship of the asylum, and Moira has kept in its admittance such noteworthy patients as Aldous Northcrest and the famous painter Montonessi.
During this time, arguments frequently broke out between Dr. Huntfield and his fellow psychiatrists as to whether the asylum should be curing or punishing its patients.[8] The majority of the staff seem to have disagreed with, even loathed, Huntfield and his methods[9], repeatedly condemning the underground prison--referred to as "Reformation"--where Huntfield took a sadistic glee in experimenting on asylum patients.
After the events of Summersday NRy841, Erin was admitted to the asylum as Patient #18[10]. Having witnessed her absorbing the unstable energies of the Primal, the Baron wished to study her in order to determine whether the Primal could be extracted. During her initial stay, the Primal's influence caused Erin to snap, and she regularly screamed about hearing voices (possibly hinting at telepathic abilities), even as she attempted to wake Garrett from his coma. [11] Eventually, Erin's presence began corrupting the other inmates[12][13], and she was eventually transferred to the more isolated levels of the asylum's underground prison.[14] Here, she was subjected to experimentation by Huntfield on the Baron's orders. Ultimately, the attempts to extract the Primal failed, only further contributing to Erin's mental instability.
By the following year, the resulting Primal corruption has run its course, and most of the asylum's patients have since mutated into freaks. The Baron and Huntfield, likely being the first to recognize what was happening, spirited Erin back to the City, where they continued to study her in the laboratory beneath Northcrest Manor. Meanwhile, the asylum staff were either killed by the mutated patients, or fled the island entirely, abandoning the asylum to its no-longer human inhabitants.[15]
Having received a vision of Erin during his infiltration of the Keep, Garrett ventured to the abandoned asylum in search of answers. Moira thus serves as the primary setting for Chapter 5, shedding more light on the events of the previous year, particularly that of Erin's supposed death.
Areas[]
Trivia[]
- Despite the explanation of the Primal in creating the Freaks, the asylum is still very obviously haunted by the ghosts of a past age:
- In the Women's Ward, a woman's voice can be heard telling someone to bring Lady Edwina her wine. This is likely the echo or spiritual imprint of Widow Moira's maid, who had been ordered to serve the Lady a bottle during the events of Thief: Deadly Shadows. The lady had also made this request of the Sneak Thief during their meeting.
- The actual ghost of Edwina Moira herself appears to cast the player out of one of the rooms with ghostly fire.
- Moira Asylum is heavily inspired by the original Shalebridge Cradle: the sheer absence of any human characters, an overwhelming silence, and a predominant lack of lighting or color of any kind all combine to provoke feelings of unease and terror in the player.
- The inspiration is such that even the asylum's front door is initially barred, just as the Cradle's was.
- The prison level is reminiscent of Pavelock Prison from Thief: Deadly Shadows.
- During the mission in Thief: Deadly Shadows, the player has the option of either robbing Moira of her inheritance or letting her keep it, depending on the difficulty. It appears that the original Sneak Thief canonically robbed the Widow, thus prompting her to create the asylum to treat criminals like him.
- The upper areas of the asylum appear to be of modern design, in the style Theodore Eastwick is known for, possibly renovated several times over the past century (although portions of the façade and lobby resemble sections of the original mansion). The Old Prison underneath is built in a much older architectural style, and likely dates back to a few years or decades into the asylum's founding.