The component has to get a variable from its owner; that owner could be one of several different classes. When you get a variable, you get it from a specific class; even if two different, unrelated classes have a variable with the same name and data type, you can only choose one to pull it from. In this case, since the owner of the component could be a door, a chest, a monster, an NPC, a road sign, etc., I pull it from the base class that they ultimately all trace their inheritance to and then cast the owner of the component to it.
