Hiram Abiff's Tools

Hiram Abiff's Tools
Type	Tool
Effects	Relocate the Warehouse to new host country
Source	Ancient Israel
Danger	Major (if improperly stored or activated)
Activation	Proximity to each other
First Appearance	Cangku Shisi
Last Appearance	Endless

Hiram Abiff's Tools are a set of three stone-working tools (Setting Maul, Compass, and Square) used in the process of establishing the next iteration of the Warehouse.

Origin

Hiram Abiff, also known as the Widow's son, is the central character of an allegory told to Freemasons. Abiff was the chief architect that designed and built the first temple of King Solomon in Jerusalem. When the temple neared its completion, three other masons confront him in succession, each demanding the secrets of the Master Mason that Abiff had been confided with. Each time he refuses to divulge the secrets, and each time his assailants strike him with a different mason tool; he is injured by the first two, and struck dead by the third and final tool.

Freemasonry is described as rich with symbolism, much of which is centered around the working tools used by masons. These tools are used by freemasons to teach lessons. The logo of the Freemasons is the Square and Compasses. In terms of either, as Freemasonry is non-dogmatic, the tools do not have any singular meaning or lesson attached to them that is uniformly used or taught across the entire belief.

How It Works

When the three tools are activated in order, they transport the Warehouse to its next host's country, creating a need to store the tools separately.

Setting Maul

The Setting Maul begins the tools' process by activating the Compass when the handle and head are united. After the Compass has transmuted the current Warehouse's inventory and the Square has converted it back into matter at the chosen location, the Maul must be struck against the cornerstone of the new Warehouse to complete the process, thereby rendering the transfer irreversible.

For safety, the Regents split it into two pieces, storing its handle in the current Regent Vault. The head of the Maul is stored in the birth place of the current Warehouse's host country; In the case of Warehouse 13, the head is stored in the cellar of the Green Dragon Tavern in Boston, Massachusetts, specifically the secret safe house underneath the tavern where Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty plotted against the British.

Mason Compass

As soon as the Setting Maul activates the Compass, it glows and begins to turn the Warehouse's inventory into pure energy. It does so by "scanning" the Warehouse with a bright beam as the podium it stands on rotates, converting the inventory as it passes over it. The entire process takes about a day to complete. 

The Compass, on its podium, is stored inside the Warehouse in a vault known as the Aisle of the Widow's Son, which is one of the most secure places inside it.

Mason Square

As the Compass transmutes the artifacts into energy, that energy is then immediately transferred to the Square, which converts it back into matter as the new Warehouse forms around it. 

History

The tools are implied to have only been used by the Warehouse after the abandonment of Warehouse 2.

In the 1700s, the Sons of Liberty conceived the Boston Tea Party in the Green Dragon Tavern, leading to the birth of the American Revolution and, by extension, the United States of America. After Warehouse 12 was replaced by Warehouse 13: the head of the Setting Maul was stored in the tavern's cellar for this reason, by 2013 its handle was stored in a safety deposit box in the Regent Vault in Elk Ridge, South Dakota, and the Compass was stored in a specially-devoted chamber in the Aisle of the Widow's Son.

The Alternate Benedict Valda from the timeline that Paracelsus created remained in the prime time continuum after its erasure with the use of Louis XIV's Silverware Forks. While in the prime continuum, he wished to recreate the science- and experimentation-focused Warehouse Paracelsus had established, and to that end planned to make a deal with the Chinese government to transfer the Warehouse to their country as Warehouse 14, as it is the only country with the financial power and tactical wherewithal to create such a Warehouse. At some point he began communicating with a Chinese consulate to discuss this deal, and they agreed that Warehouse 14 would be located underneath the Beijing Olympic Stadium.

The Alternate Valda hid inside the prime Warehouse 13 for a time, researching artifacts to help him achieve his goal and studying Claire Donovan, as her relation to Claudia Donovan (herself a Caretaker candidate and the future Caretaker of Warehouse 13) made her a feasible candidate to be his puppet Caretaker with which to control Warehouse 14. Before leaving the Warehouse, he stole his prime counterpart's key to the Setting Maul's handle's safety deposit box in the Regent Vault from his personal quarters in the Dead Agents' Vault and managed to infiltrate the Compass's chamber in the Aisle of the Widow's Son to move it to the Warehouse's basement so that, when activated, it could scan its inventory uninterrupted.

After kidnapping and taking control of Claire via Chester Moore Hall's Achromatic Lens, Alternate Valda infiltrated the Regent Vault, killed Regent Keeler with Vyasa's Jade Elephant, and stole the handle. He then traveled to Rapid City, South Dakota to demonstrate the usefulness of artifacts as weapons of war to the Chinese representative by using Oliver Sacks' Record Player to render a park full of people unconscious. By this time he had already obtained the Square from an unknown location and, when the representative agreed to his deal to move the Warehouse, he had Claire give it to them to be taken to Warehouse 14's planned location.

When Arthur Nielsen and Steve Jinks investigated the deposit boxes to learn what had been stolen, Artie realized Alternate Valda's plans and informed Myka Bering, Pete Lattimer, and Claudia Donovan of it and the artifacts' abilities. Artie instructed the latter three to go to the Green Dragon Tavern to reach the Setting Maul's head before Alternate Valda while he and Steve went to the Widow's Son Aisle to secure the Compass, only to discover he had already moved it elsewhere.

Alternate Valda then traveled to Boston and killed the Regent guarding the hammerhead in the Green Dragon Tavern before going to its basement and using Claire's telekinesis to break open a wall to access the secret room the Setting Maul's head was kept in. Myka, Pete, and Claudia confronted them, but Alternate Valda used Claire to trap them inside the secret chamber, then reunited the Setting Maul's pieces, triggering the Compass and beginning the transfer to Warehouse 14. The two of them meet with the Chinese consulate and take a private flight with a group of other Chinese diplomats to Beijing.

Artie and Steve witness the Compass begin the transfer and locate it beneath the Warehouse. The first try to neutralize it to no avail, as the neutralizer merely evaporates, and then temporarily manage to halt it by coating the base of the podium with cans of Original Sticky String. The group learn Alternate Valda's whereabouts and Pete, Myka, and Claudia take the Warehouse's portal to the Ancient Regent Sanctum to reach China quickly. In the meantime, the Compass's podium has broken free of the Sticky String, and so Artie resorts to attempting to destroy it with Julius Wilbrand's Lab Coat Buttons, to no avail. Out of options, he and Steve then attempt to halt its movement with a rope.

Beneath the stadium, Alternate Valda has Claire trap Pete, Myka, and Claudia while he searches for the cornerstone with the Setting Maul. Claudia manages to free Claire from his control, and he decides to become the Caretaker himself when he senses this. Claudia then alters the Achromatic Lens so as to send her telekinesis to him. Pete and Myka confront Alternate Valda; Pete takes the Fork and Myka takes the Setting Maul. Alternate Valda takes it back with his telekinesis, and both are then erased from existence when Pete neutralizes the Fork. Myka separates the Setting Maul's head and handle, instantly ending the transferal process and returning the inventory to Warehouse 13.

Myka and Artie return the Compass to its chamber in the Widow's Son Aisle, but as they are closing it they notice the Compass still glowing, indicating it is still active. They call Mrs. Frederic, who says that Alternate Valda may have managed to still set into motion Warehouse 13's eventual replacement.

When it was evident that Warehouse 13 would inevitably be succeeded by a fourteenth sometime in the future, Pete Lattimer attempted to prevent this by throwing the Compass into the Lehmann Fornax to destroy it.

Trivia

• Series writer Ben Raab has pitched the Setting Maul as an artifact to be featured in the show since Season 1.
  • Incidentally, he now owns the Setting Maul prop.
• When this episode was initially conceived, it was the Compass itself that moved as it scanned the Warehouse, not the podium on which it stood. When Artie and Steve use a rope to try and stop it from moving, it was originally to be wrapped around the Compass,
• A part of the Compass bears a word written in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, "𐤈𐤉𐤓𐤀‎". When input into a modern Hebrew converter, it is translated as "טירא". This is intended to be translated as "טירה", meaning "castle" (referring to Solomon's Temple, which Hiram Abiff constructed), but the first letter is incorrectly "א" instead of "ה". The correct Paleo-Hebrew spelling to achieve this translation would be "𐤈𐤉𐤓𐤄".
• The script written on the rim of the top of the Compass's podium appears to be Paleo-Hebrew or Phoenician.
• The Green Dragon Tavern was, coincidentally, also a popular meeting place for the St. Andrews Lodge of Freemasons. Paul Revere, one of the Boston Tea Party's leaders and who famously announced the invasion of the British that would instigate the first military engagements of the American Revolution, was himself a Freemason of that lodge.
• Artie claims that the artifacts will phase into the new Warehouse via the Square only after the chosen location's cornerstone is struck with the Setting Maul, but artifacts are already seen being teleported to Warehouse 14 before Alternate Valda does so, and then return to Warehouse 13 once the Setting Maul is dismantled. Therefore, in canon, it is likely that striking the cornerstone only makes the transfer permanent and irreversible.

Appearances

Season 5

• Cangku Shisi
• Endless (compass)