The Thief

The Thief
Shrouded criminal
An innovative mind
(We watch spirits move)

Shadowed, they’re oblivious
With plans awry
(We watch spirits move)

Who can save us now?

Love seems baron when cash is king
Wealth here for the bleeding, what good will bring
More than I could ask from those who sleep
A crooked mind, an honest heart, ancillary
They collide…

Cheating innocence
I’ve got the time tonight

Tonight…
Tonight…
Tonight
Tonight
Tonight!
Tonight!

I got time, I got time…
I got time, I got time…
I got time, I got time…
I got time, I got time
I got time, I got time
I got time, I got time!
I got mine, I got mine!

Love seems bare of meaning when cash is king
Wealth here for the bleeding, what good will bring
Me more than I could ask from those who sleep
A crooked mind, an honest heart, ancillary
They collide

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Hunter comes upon a Thief robbing the bodies of soldiers. Though the desecration of the bodies angers Hunter, the Thief calms him by noting his petty criminality is inconsequential compared to the war. Accepting this logic, Hunter spends the night with the Thief, who then directs him onward…

What’s in a name?
‘The Thief’ — and for once we actually have a name for him! He’s Pierre and he’s our third Horror, Greed. So we have destruction, death, and… well greed is bad of course, but next to those two, is it really so bad as to be called a ‘horror’?

Pierre will show us yes. Absolutely.

Also with his name being Pierre we can pin Hunter to a specific location — he is presently in France, lining up with references to Hunter fighting in the Battle of the Somme later.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter and Pierre alternating, but mostly Pierre.

🌲🌲🌲

>0:00 – 0:08 Instrumental
Man, this song. I know it’s coming every time as part of the horrors of war sequence, but this is the first time I think I’ve really sat down to listen to it. Everything about how it’s written, sung, and structured is so shadowy and airy that it passes under the radar, which thematically I think is the point.

Just wanted to say that before the lyrics take over, and also say that the lyrics here are wild, in the sense of how odd the phrasing is and how much you have to extrapolate from tiny phrases and only vague ambiguous references to anything. I think I have some ideas though. Also this little guitar at the start here reminds me of something from Silent Hill lol.

>Shrouded criminal
Okay, so here’s my best guess as to how to approach this song’s lyrics. We have two clear intonations that play through this song: an airy one, which is Pierre’s, and a ‘solid’ one, which is Hunter. The effect is more clear in the chorus and the predominant narrator across the song is Pierre, but the abrupt contrast on these two words is also playing with this dynamic.

‘Shrouded’ -> This is Pierre, in disguise as he stealthily picks through the bodies prepared for burial at the end of The Poison Woman. The soldiers who prepared the bodies have left, since nighttime is imminent if it hasn’t fallen already. He believes he hasn’t been seen, but…

‘Criminal’ -> This is Hunter noticing Pierre’s lone silhouette, realising he’s stealing, and accusing him of criminality by approaching and training a gun on him. Pierre has been caught, and now we know what he is.

Time seems to freeze on this situation as the first couple verses continue — the intonation on criminal isn’t actually Hunter’s (it’s like a combination of Pierre’s and Hunter’s), with the first couple verses going ahead to describe more of what the situation is.

>An innovative mind
Is stealing from corpses really that innovative? I suppose it could be from Hunter’s perspective, if he’s never encountered the concept of graverobbing before (kind of like how he never encountered the concept of prostitutes even after bedding one), and for Pierre it might indicate that the war has given him opportunities to thieve prolifically where he couldn’t before. There’s only so many graves with so many valuables in them you can rob, right? Unless the guy literally died an hour ago and still has his uniform on and pockets full. His usual fare is probably living people but he’s seen easy money to be made on the war front, so here he is.

>(We watch spirits move)
Clueless on every aspect of this — who ‘we’ is indicating (Pierre and Hunter?), what the spirits are indicating, and why or how they are moving. I’d figure spirits would point to the ghosts of the dead soldiers, but how would Hunter and Pierre be watching them? Just some kind of empathy/thought to how the dead soldiers would react, driving Hunter and Pierre’s responses to this situation? Or some kind of physical action with the bodies being moved?

>Shadowed, they’re oblivious
Pierre confesses that no, the soldiers who prepared these corpses don’t know he’s here and that yeah he’s not meant to be here. He has probably been following platoons around and picking up their scraps for a while now. Could also be pointing to the corpses as oblivious — which of course they are, they’re dead. Hunter might be thinking about what the soldiers would think, but Pierre has an answer to what they actually think about this: nothing.

>With plans awry
Probably just pointing again to Pierre graverobbing? Plans of cleanly burying the soldiers going awry because Pierre is robbing them? Pierre’s plans going awry because Hunter caught him, so he needs to think fast?

>Who can save us now?
This is the dead soldiers speaking, or Hunter’s thoughts of what the dead soldiers would say. They’re being robbed and can’t defend themselves, so who can save them? Hunter. We return to him aiming his gun at Pierre and demanding that Pierre stop, drop everything, and explain himself.

>Love seems baron when cash is king / Wealth here for the bleeding, what good will bring
So this is Pierre’s response, and his argument. What is the point of acting on sentimentality, and leaving the dead soldiers’ possessions for the dead soldiers to have, when Pierre can take those valuables and put them to proper use? Living people certainly need dollars more than dead ones. Especially Pierre, who insists he is too poor to worry about sentiment (love is baron); the money has to come first (cash is king).

‘Love seems baron’ -> Play on words here with baron/barren; Pierre’s greedy focus on money has made him unempathetic towards others, so he’s happy to exploit and use people’s pain to make a buck. Though he was able to see though the Poison Woman, the implications of what Pierre is saying here have not clicked for Hunter.

>More than I could ask from those who sleep
Hunter’s voice interjects, receptive to Pierre’s rhetoric and so finishing his lines. Pierre is arguing that he needs the money; if he is not actually poor, then he is making himself out to be so well enough that Hunter is sympathetic towards him. What he’s getting from graverobbing is a bounty incomparable to his everyday wealth and he seems to appreciate this. So compared to actually killing people, or robbing living people, is what Pierre’s doing really so horrible? Hunter’s a soldier, who is he to throw stones?

>A crooked mind, an honest heart, ancillary
Hunter accepts that Pierre’s methods are scummy, but fundamentally he isn’t that terrible. He puts away his gun and stops threatening Pierre.

>They collide…
Hunter and Pierre decide to camp together for the night. There is obvious discord between Pierre’s worldview and Hunter’s, though Hunter has decided it’s not a big enough deal to reject Pierre.

>Cheating innocence / I’ve got the time tonight
Meanwhile, while Hunter’s thinking to be a good camp buddy and not get on Pierre’s case over heartfelt grievances, Pierre is thinking about how to exploit Hunter. He thinks Hunter is gullible enough to rob and agreed to camp with him to facilitate that.

>1:35 – 1:45 Instrumental
We hear this strong buildup as Pierre’s actual thoughts start to make themselves known.

>Tonight
Pierre is anticipating the massive haul he’ll be able to steal tonight and becoming excited as he prepares camp, talks with Hunter, and graverobs.

>Got time, got time
Echoing two things here.

First: ‘Left right, left right’ from The Lake and the River. That was Hunter mindlessly pushing himself to march out of the bounds of the Lake; here it works to illustrate Pierre going left and right to and fro from body to body to body, robbing them.

Second: ‘We’ve got the time if you’ve got the scratch’ from The Pimp and the Priest. What’s the point of this song? Why is an encounter with a thief included among such horrors as destruction and death in the context of war? How come this one’s so tame, such that even Hunter doesn’t seem to regard it as horrible once he thinks about it, but still relevant enough to include here?

BECAUSE THIS IS THE HORROR THAT ALSO DRIVES THE ANTAGONIST OF THE WHOLE STORY. DUHHH! Our little Pierre may be a smalltime crook in comparison, but his mindset is exactly as mercenary, heartless, and cruel as TP&P. He does not care what kind of hurt he inflicts as long as he gets his money and he will happily backstab others for his own gain. He says as much to Hunter’s face and still Hunter underestimates the utter parasite he is. The only reason he’s targeting dead people, and hence was able to rationalise himself in a way Hunter accepted, was because it was an easier profit. Why struggle with robbing living soldiers if they’ll die within the week anyway?

Probably the worst thing about him is that he isn’t so obvious. If the Tank showed Hunter that morals weren’t the most powerful force on earth, and the Poison Woman was challenging Hunter to find the boundary between justifiable and unjustifiable immorality, the Thief is the force that says it’s okay to compromise your morals for personal gain, and purely by being so lukewarm after those other horrors, Hunter actually accepts it. Hunter has done awful things before — like how he treated Ms Leading in Red Hands, or what he has done in his course as a soldier — but those were consequences of him being immature and indoctrinated respectively. It’s this moment, where he sits back and lets Pierre graverob, on the rationale that Pierre ‘has a point’ and ‘isn’t that awful’, that Hunter first allows wickedness to flourish simply with the sentiment of ‘eh’.

I wonder if Hunter actually joins in with some of the graverobbing too. I’m going to figure no, he doesn’t go that far yet (and Pierre would probably be irascible about losing profits to Hunter), but it feels worth it to at least float the possibility.

On top of that, I figure this ‘tonight’ and ‘got time’ section describes Hunter and Pierre having a conversation while camping — and we’re hearing it from Pierre’s side, where he’s conspiring how to manipulate Hunter into giving up his valuables. Meanwhile, the last two regiments Hunter attached himself to have all died over The Tank and The Poison Woman, so he needs directions to meet up again with friendly forces. It’s unclear whether Pierre could know an attack would be coming soon, but the directions Pierre gives are bad directions that almost get Hunter killed.

Which personally, I think was purposeful. Because then Hunter will be a corpse and Pierre can leisurely rob him. Got mine!

>Got mine, got mine!
Hammering in the point; Pierre isn’t bothered an but about anyone or anything as long as he gets money. People can be left bleeding, screaming, dying — he doesn’t care, he won’t be there to help them. Escalate the scale of this sentiment from one petty graverobber to entire nations plundering the scraps of other war-ravaged nations, or encouraging the continuation of wars to benefit homeland industries — certainly, that’s horrifying.

Narratively, Pierre and Hunter have solidified their plan for Hunter to depart at daylight, across what Pierre seems to know is an active battleground. Aware that Hunter will likely die, and in fact hoping for it, they go to sleep. Dawn breaks with the next verse.

>Love seems bare of meaning when cash is king
Pierre’s thoughts are revealed: he doesn’t see the point of love, or in broader terms, of being selfless, principled, or doing good for others when he stands to make a buck by being exploitative instead. So it’s not that he’s too poor to get by without resorting to questionable means, it’s that he’s an opportunistic vulture who would’ve been doing this either way. You know how Ms Leading singled out TP&P as being ‘alone’ in The Church and The Dime? Yeah, same deal for Pierre, try to imagine him with a woman, or doing anything heartfelt, and he’s sterile. Too busy thinking about how to get money from the situation.

Narratively, I see this verse as Pierre seeing Hunter off in the morning before Hunter departs. For now we’re sticking with Pierre’s viewpoint, contemplating on what he’s done by manipulating Hunter into danger, and not caring. Hunter has been friendly with Pierre and Pierre is also brushing that off as pointless.

>Wealth here for the bleeding, what good will bring / Me more than I could ask from those who sleep
Subtle variation on the line changes its meaning, ‘what good will bring me more than <what I can get from graverobbing>?’ So basically, what virtue is so amazing that it should incentivise Pierre to prioritise it over money?

>A crooked mind, an honest heart, ancillary
Pierre is the ‘crooked mind’, Hunter is the ‘honest heart’, ancillary points out to how they have ostensibly worked together by forming this plan for Hunter to get back to an allied unit, but said plan is really all to Pierre’s benefit.

>They collide
Hunter leaves, unaware of how he’s been tricked. Could also be noting how Hunter has taken in Pierre’s lesson of ‘it’s ok to put aside scruples if you can tangibly benefit’.

>4:15 – 4:25 Instrumental
Hunter sets off across the quiet battleground that Pierre indicated would get him back to an allied camp. Things for now seem peaceful, but there’s still an air of precariousness…

>4:25 – 4:48 Instrumental
As Hunter proceeds, something begins to feel wrong… an odd yellow mist is forming across the field…

>4:48 – 5:01 Instrumental
Someone dangerous is approaching — and with their approach, the yellow mist is growing thicker and thicker…

The Poison Woman | Act III | Mustard Gas