| “ | Who is Karras, but the Hand of The Builder? What the Builder wills, Karras... does! What the Builder wants, Karras... makes! Prraaiisse to Karras! (pause) ...And the Builder... | ” |
| — Karras, considering himself above The Builder | ||
Karras is the head of the Mechanists and the main antagonist during The Metal Age. He was a brilliant inventor, sociopath, genius, and prophet who split from the Hammerites to found his own faction due to his own extremist beliefs and interpretations of the Master Builder's will: namely, that all organic life was inherently flawed. He also had a distaste towards the conservative, insular nature of the Hammerites and their slow technological progress. Though Karras suffered from a speech impediment, he was very charismatic and commanded a loyal army of Mechanist followers.
Before the Mechanists[]
In an unused conversation, Karras showed initiative during his time as a Hammerite, when a thief named Gibson attempted to steal Lord Bafford's Scepter after Garrett had already stolen it. In it, Karras offered Bafford an unknown ransom for Gibson, rather than letting him be turned over to the City Watch.[1] While it is unknown why he wanted Gibson, it is possible he used him as one of the early experiments for his scheme involving the Masked Servants or used the opportunity to curry favor with Bafford to secure early funding for the freshly budding Mechanist cult given the Lord's history of donations to other individuals or organizations, in addition to Bafford's contacts with established merchants and society.
Reinforcing his proclivity for social scheming and arranging alliances through gifts and favors with important figures before they fully rise to power, when Garrett lost his eye to the Trickster, Karras was the one who designed the Mechanical Eye given to Garrett. Karras said, shortly before his death, 'I gave the eye to thee in the hopes that thou wouldst be an ally, but 'twas not to be.'[2]
The Builder's Paradise[]
Karras in his protective chamber in Soulforge Cathedral.
As per his radical interpretations that all living beings were inherently flawed and thus unable to ever fully serve the Builder in their weak fleshly forms, Karras planned to eliminate all organic life in The City, and to do so, he offered the nobility gifts, namely his inventions called Masked Servants. These servants were designed to be tireless and completely obedient, in effort to craft them into the perfect servants. They were however in actuality the result of harvesting the bodies of vagabonds, beggars, and prostitutes before their eventual conversion into placid slaves via Mechanist biochemistry and surgery, by means of modifying the Precursor Mask salvaged from the ruins of Karath-Din to be used as a controller over the minds of the original subjects. Each servant was also secretly equipped with a Cultivator and canister of rust gas. This gas fed on organic matter, killing it and converting it into an inert red powder that resembles rust. Although the gas dissipated under normal atmospheric conditions, the reaction also released more rust gas, allowing it to propagate if more organic matter was nearby. The rust gas released in the large gardens of The City's nobility would fuel a chain reaction that would destroy all nearby organisms. Using this method, he planned to wipe the City clean of life and create a "Builder's Paradise" in adoration of his god.
Death[]
Karras and his Children moments before his death.
Karras distributed his servants and was nearly ready to carry out his plan when he was killed by his own scheme. Viktoria infiltrated Soulforge Cathedral and sacrificed herself to spread vines throughout the Cathedral's many vents in order to boost the gas's reaction rate before Garrett modified the Guiding Beacon, the device which controlled the Masked Servants, so that the they would return to the cathedral and release their deadly gas inside the hermetically sealed cathedral instead of the hapless City. By the time Karras realized that the Servants had returned, it was already too late and he was consumed by the gas.
Notes[]
- Karras has a deep hatred of Garrett, even leading to instruct Sheriff Truart to go after him before he teamed up with Viktoria. Despite Karras claiming he would have liked Garrett as an ally, he also claims that he learnt from the defeat of Constantine that Garrett was not to be trusted and could be a threat to those who employed him or sought to work with him.[3]
Trivia[]
- In Thief: Deadly Shadows, a recording containing Karras' last words can be found in the Wieldstrom Museum.
- The Hammerites mention him a few times in their texts in Thief: Deadly Shadows.[4] He and his sect are written about within a book that can be found in Caduca's chambers within the Keeper Compound.[5]