On the last Thursday of May, Looking Glass staffers cleaned out their desks. Confident to the end that a major publisher would save their company, the final word had stunned most of them.

Some exchanged farewell posts on the Looking Glass fan site, a community that boasts, by webmaster Saam Tariverdi's estimate, about 100,000 unique visitors a month. After writing "Thank you all so much for showing how computer games can be art," a Philadelphia supporter located a Boston liquor delivery service on the Web, and soon enough, cases of Sam Adams and Pilsner Urquell beer arrived at the Cambridge offices. Pre-noon drinking commenced.

"At that point," says Laura Baldwin, a part-time level designer and dialog writer for the Thief series, "the mood was a combination of still stunned and black hilarity -- plus lots of phones ringing as headhunters dived in."

The conceptual desks are about to be cleared out, too. This week, the company's intellectual assets go to auction. But if Thief were sold, would the original team be available to complete it? "I feel like that work is only two-thirds done at this point," Pearsall says.

Other core members are less enthusiastic: On the week they folded, muses Terri Brosius, "I would have said that I would work with anyone, anywhere, to finish Thief III." No longer. Now, "I would need some key LG people involved -- many of whom are on the verge of accepting other offers too."

Unsure it'll ever be told now, Brosius described for me her vision of the trilogy's end, which would decisively resolve its thematic clash of technology and nature and the moral conflicts within Garrett. "I think Garrett was ready to accept that there are consequences to his actions ... [he'd become] a different person, and his path would be a different one -- probably one where he is finally ready to give, rather than always take."

While some prospective bidders are interested in hiring most of Thief II's talent for Part 3, observes LeBlanc, "It could also easily not happen ... or end up being someone else's idea of what Thief III should be." James Sterrett, TTLG's media watchdog, worries about this last possibility. "I'd be most unhappy if it winds up in the hands of people who don't understand its magic." If that occurs, gamer fury (however misplaced) will probably refocus aimed at Romero and Eidos and their decisions (however inadvertent), which indirectly contributed to the shuttering of Looking Glass Studios.

"But no matter where the blame falls," Keighley concludes, "this is the story about artists who ended up not being able to sustain their creativity because of the realities of business. There's nothing worse than that."

And what ultimately becomes of Garrett, embattled individualist trying to make his way in a decadent era obsessed by gold and the lure of new technology? For now, his fate has been remanded to shadows.

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