Pathologic: Day Ten, which informs the Haruspicus of the fact that he stands before a choice that will determine his victory

(or, in which Kevin is forced to participate in the Pathologic Iditarod)

The morning of the tenth day has come.

Infected in the past 24 hours: 340 people
Died in the past 24 hours: 623 people
Gone missing: 139 people
Number of dead total: 6230 people
Number of infected: 516 people

Less than three days remain.

---

I wake up early on the tenth day, hardly able to believe that I survived the night. To my immense relief, the health-draining effects of Elder Oyun's potion from yesterday seem to have worn off—my health is dangerously low, but stable. The death toll, on the other hand, is rather disturbing: up by over 2000 in a single day. According to the rest of the casualty report, only 600 of those people actually perished from infection, which means that over a thousand people have died of other causes. As I walk through the lamplit streets, filled with murderous arsonists and trigger-happy soldiers, it's not hard to guess what those causes were. And there are two more days to go.

I know that I'm going to be facing Elder Oyun's second trial today, so I stock up on first-aid supplies and choke down another revolting dead porridge before making my way to the Abattoir. I make a couple of detours into the deserted districts where the plague has burnt itself out, searching the abandoned homes for food and emptying the last of my shotgun ammo into the looters who get in my way. I luck out and find a loaf of stale bread in a kitchen, which I immediately wolf down to stay conscious.

Elder Oyun greets me with the news that he's found the butchers responsible for stealing the auroch blood from the Abattoir. Well, "found" isn't exactly accurate. He knows who they are, but they have gone into hiding. It falls to me to locate them as part of my second trial. Oyun gives me another potion to drink, though this time I have the good sense to ask him what it does before taking it. It will make me ravenously hungry, he replies, which will help because "if you are hungry, you will find the scent of blood better." He tells me to visit the sacrificial mound south of town to consult with the spirits of the steppe, warning me not to eat anything until I have located the offending butchers. Remembering yesterday's ordeal, I make sure to listen. I fight down the panic when I see my hunger meter skyrocket and my health meter plummet. If I made it through the first trial, I can make it through this one.

The hill of sacrifice is empty when I reach it just before midday. I lie down on the stone slab at the top and wait for the spirits to do their thing.

Scenes like this are why I no longer play Pathologic right before bed.

When I awaken, I find the locations of the fugitives marked on my map. All three are hiding out in the marshes with the Worms. I use up another first-aid kit (having already spent the first to survive the trek south to the hill) and strike out for the first location.

The butchers are defiant when I confront them. Each of them tells me the same thing—that I can't get the panacea blood I need from underground, that I need to gouge out the tumor that's been growing on the land and harvest the blood from the wound. It sounds suspiciously like the scorched-earth policy that the Bachelor has been advocating, and I'm in no mood for it. I duel each of them to the death (again, reloading the game every time they land a blow and sap my ebbing health) and return to the Elder with the news. This time he gives me the antidote to the potion, presumably because I didn't try to artificially fix my hunger/exhaustion meters as I did yesterday. When I bring up what the butchers told me before I killed them, he says something about how I can't trust anything they or the Bachelor say about the Polyhedron. The Kains are trying to use it to achieve immortality through reincarnation, to "pour old blood into new veins," Oyun says, an idea as blasphemous as it is unnatural. He will say no more, dismissing me until tomorrow.

Before I have time to be surprised at how straightforward (relatively speaking) this all was, I receive a letter from the last person I would expect: Fat Vlad. It seems he's been granted a temporary reprieve by the mob in the Apiary, and he wants to speak with me before he is marched away to that forbidden room to face his horrible fate. I find him in Mother Keeper's torchlit sanctuary, surrounded by guards but otherwise looking much the same as always.

He has two final pieces of information for me. First, there is an auroch dying at the "Bone Pillar" near my late father's abandoned home, which Vlad recommends that I check out before any of the other powers-that-be find it. Second, Vlad cautions me to beware of his former underling, Elder Oyun. The Elder is fighting a battle with me, Vlad says, and he is not to be trusted.

Watching Fat Vlad in the flickering light, I feel a pang of remorse. For the first time in the game, I believe he's telling the truth. With his execution fast approaching, all lies seem to have gone out of him, and he decided to help me with what little time he had left. He has nothing else to say to me. I feel worse than ever about my part in his death.

He was definitely telling the truth about the bull at the Bone Pillar, in any case. The poor animal lies impaled on a spike and surrounded by shifty-looking Worms. According to them, this is an auroch, and what happens to it is up to me. I am to ask my Adherents—the children who stand to inherit the town—what I should do with it. I'd better hurry, though. It's already late afternoon.

Once again, the issue of my character's walking speed returns to bedevil me. My Adherents are scattered all over town—most of them at the far edges—such that there's no efficient way to visit them all. Add to that the hellishness of the sprawling infected zones, and I'm going to be pressed for time even without having to deal with the health issues from yesterday. I talk to Spichka first, since he's close by, then make the laborious trek to meet with Notkin on the south side of town. Both of them seem horrified by what I tell them and say that the bull needs to be removed from the spike immediately.

Mishka: "I have got wet and faded."

Mishka agrees, but she seems bothered more by something else. A few words about Mishka: she is easily the most pathetic character in the game. Sad-eyed and sickly, she leads a lonely life in her damp, claustrophobic railcar. Her parents died a long time ago, presumably during the first outbreak of the Sand Plague, and now she treasures the only memento she has of them: an ugly little doll made of burlap. Mishka hints that the Devotress took her doll out to the marshes because it was "hungry" and wanted to graze, but she never got it back. I feel so sorry for her (and so creeped out by the thought of the Devotress using her doll for who knows what) that I promptly agree to find it for her despite the time pressure I'm under.

I find the doll sitting out in the marshes, eerily alone. I don't have time to return it yet, not with nighttime approaching, so I stash it in my inventory and move on to the graveyard to meet with Laska. By now I have covered almost every area on the map and have to resort to chewing coffee beans to avoid keeling over from exhaustion.

To my dismay, Laska's not in the mausoleum that she apparently calls home. General Blok has arrested her for not allowing his soldiers to desecrate (or as he would put it, "sterilize") the graveyard. A teenage girl informs me that she's being held at the Town Hall, all the way up on the north side. (Haruspicus: "My legs are failing me!") Yet when I storm inside to confront him, it's not Laska standing next to him, but the Devotress.

What is she doing here?

Blok is losing it. He rambles on about duty and safety, pausing every now and then for little asides to the Devotress, asking if she agrees and if she thinks he's doing the right thing. He can't seem to keep his mind on our conversation and claims ignorance when I demand to know his reasons for placing a little girl under arrest. The Devotress is silent the entire time; she merely stands behind the general, watching.

Finally, Blok points me south again, where the army keeps its reserves of weaponry. I retrace my steps for the third time as I make the painfully slow journey, darkness falling around me. With the amount of distance I've covered today, I feel like I've run the Tour de France without a bicycle. (At this point, my notes for the day simply read, "THIS IS RIDICULOUS!! Running back and forth across town! AAAGH!!!") I pop the last of my coffee beans into my mouth as I stumble along, ignoring the hit to my health.

I find Laska locked up in a boxcar under armed guard. I order her released, by the general's authority, then ask about the auroch at the Bone Pillar. She adds her voice to the chorus calling for it to be released, and I make a beeline for the Bone Pillar in the northeast, hoping I'm not too late.

I arrive just before the bell tolls for 11:00. The Worms say that the auroch will be removed from the spike tomorrow morning, and each one hands me a vial of its blood: four panaceas' worth. I pocket them and head south one last time, to deliver Mishka's doll to her. Before I do, I take a short break to read the letter I received from the Bachelor this morning, who is still trying to convince me that the Polyhedron needs to be saved. The Kains have discovered the secret to eternal life, he says. I snort and disregard his argument.

Mishka is, of course, happy to see her doll. As a reward for my efforts, she hands me ... a vial of auroch blood? Where did you get this? I demand. From the base of the Polyhedron, she answers. Every now and then pools of blood will appear at the bottom, though nobody can say where it comes from.

Then my map changes.

My eyes move from right to left over the picture—from the veins of sacrificial blood from the Abattoir, to the sharpened stem that plunges down to meet it, then up to that blackened horror incubating within the Polyhedron. Suddenly, it all clicks into place. The Bachelor's letter, the blood at the base of the Polyhedron, the urgency of removing the spike from the suffering auroch at the Bone Pillar: everything is united. Maybe the Kains have discovered how to be reborn in the Polyhedron, but in order to achieve this they need fuel, nourishment for the soul within. In the words of Elder Oyun, they need to pour old blood into new veins.

The Polyhedron siphons the lifeblood from the earth, the earth sickens, the Sand Plague comes. A syllogism, deadly in its simplicity.

I hurry over to the Polyhedron as a thin drizzle begins to fall. Just as Mishka said, blood is pooled at the base of the stairs leading up to the Inner Chamber. I collect a sample, and it's exactly the same as the blood I received from the Worms at the Bone Pillar.

If I had any doubts before, they're gone now. I don't care what the Bachelor says or whom he's been talking to. If we want to eradicate the Plague once and for all, the Polyhedron—and that thing growing inside it—must be destroyed.

Pathologic: Day Eight, on which the Haruspicus will discover who is the bearer of the secret mark

(or, in which Kevin gets a tour of the sausage factory)

The morning of the eighth day has come.

Infected in the past 24 hours: 244 people
Died in the past 24 hours: 417 people
Gone missing: 40 people
Number of dead at the moment: 3336
Number of infected: 503 people

Less than five days remain. The sanitary army will arrive tomorrow.

---

As always, the devil is in the details. My successful creation of the panacea yesterday came as a complete surprise, albeit a pleasant one; I had assumed that, with nearly a week to go, I would face a long struggle to find the cure if I found one at all. To have created the panacea so relatively early struck me as curiously easy, at least by Pathologic's standards. As the eighth day progresses, however, I realize that the worst part is yet to come. The blood that I use to create the serum is extremely rare (thanks mostly to the obstinacy of the people of the Abattoir), and a single flask of panacea is no cure at all when an entire town is clamoring for it. The Inquisitor predicts that the town will tear itself apart as citizens vie for a dose of the serum, of which there is not enough to go around. The question is no longer "can I find a cure in time?" It's "which people get to be cured?"

It seems that the game is going to make me choose who lives and who dies.

Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

Each day I find myself writing something about how the Sand Plague has gotten almost unbearable, only to discover that things have somehow gotten even worse on the next day. Day Eight is no exception. Nearly every district in town now is either crawling with the Plague or convulsing in its wake. On previous days I could usually pass safely through an infected zone with some fleet footwork and a bit of luck, but now it is impossible for me to come out unscathed on the other side of an infected zone. Multiple plague clouds converge on me from different directions; arsonists, bandits, and the infected attack me on sight; rats chase me even into healthy districts until I stab them or seek refuge indoors. My gloves, boots, and facemask have all degraded to the point where they hardly shield me from the Plague at all (yes, in Pathologic even your clothing wears out, requiring expensive mending). I can't properly convey the deep, weary feeling of relief that sweeps over me whenever the green-hued air of an infected zone gives way to the normal browns and tans of a healthy area.

Oh MAN, we are screwed.

Even the buildings are diseased. This has been going on for a while, but today is the first day that I notice just how awful everything looks. Nearly every structure is covered in bloody sores, leading the Inquisitor to theorize that this isn't just some nasty bug. It's something elemental, a force of nature. Maybe it comes from the earth itself. She has already tasked the Bachelor with testing soil samples.

The Bachelor, for his part, thinks the inhabitants of the Abattoir are to blame. Whatever sacrifices they're making in there, whatever blood they're pouring into the earth, it's poisoning everything. Unsurprisingly, the Cult of Bulls isn't going to admit someone with such opinions into their inner sanctum, which means that once again he needs my help. I agree, though less from a desire to help him than from a desire to talk with Elder Oyun again. The Bachelor is beginning to worry me; in our conversations he seems increasingly detached from our battle with the Sand Plague. I sense that our goals and loyalties are gradually diverging from one another.

Perhaps sensing the Inquisitor's scrutiny, the Abattoir has closed its entrance, which means that once again I must do a favor for Mother Keeper to open it. This quest isn't as difficult as the last one I had to complete for her, but it's more disturbing in its implications. It seems that, despite my encouraging words to her on Day Six, the timid, soft-hearted Klara has disappeared, leaving only her cunning doppelganger to quietly spread fear around town. (Or maybe the Devotress everyone has been seeing is actually Klara, and my well-intentioned white lie did no good. Maybe the "doppelganger" is just some trick. Trying to pin down exactly what this game is doing with the Devotress character is a maddening exercise in confusion.) The Devotress has been appearing solely to the children of the town—my Adherents—and telling them frightening stories and riddles. Mother Keeper is scared of her, which does not bode well considering that Mother Keeper does not seem to be scared by anyone or anything else. She wants me to get the Devotress to tell her the end of the story that the Devotress has been telling to all the kids. There is an urgency to the request that suggests there's more behind it than merely a child's curiosity.

I finally track her down in the trainyard, interrupting a strange tête-a-tête between her and bedraggled orphan Mishka. The story she tells has something to do with a crystal flower that parasitically grows in a garden, killing all the normal flowers around it until nothing remains but crystal flowers. There's obviously a connection between the crystal flower and the Sand Plague, but it's hard to tell whether the Devotress intends her story as a cautionary tale, a fable to be emulated, or a glimpse of some unavoidable future. In any case, what I've heard will satisfy Mother Keeper, though I worry about leaving Mishka alone in that railcar with the Devotress. Why is she focusing so much attention on my Adherents?

Burakh Vs. the Elder

Ever since I received my inheritance on Day Two, I have had two goals for my time in town. The first was to find a cure for the Sand Plague and produce a panacea. The second and more enigmatic goal was to figure out the identity of the "Betrothed," the one to whom belongs a strange symbol that I found in my heritage box. Why exactly this is so important is a question that I have been unable to answer so far, though from today's title I have a feeling that I'm going to find out today. The Elder supposedly is the one who can tell me who the Betrothed is and why I should care.

This assumption hits a snag almost immediately. Elder Oyun seems to have decided overnight that he doesn't trust me, and he refuses to cooperate with my requests for more information and more panacea-producing auroch blood. When I protest that my heritage entitles me to those things, he scoffs that I haven't grown into my father's legacy yet. Whoever handed over my inheritance has been keeping things from me, including another special object without which I don't deserve so much as a cup of water from the Order.

When I confront Ospina about this, she says that she did it only because she's in love with me (?) and didn't want me getting mixed up with the Elder before I was ready. Leaving aside the sudden declaration of love (which might be a translation issue, her attempt to manipulate me, or both—I have no idea which), I'm furious that she kept something from me that hurt my position with the Elder. She claims she was doing it for my own good—there was apparently bad blood (no pun intended) between Oyun and my father, and things might have gone badly for me if Oyun had thought I was making a power play for his position as head of the Order. He is in a precarious position right now, Ospina says. The Oyuns are not a respected family as the Burakhs are, and he's the Elder only because Fat Vlad, who controls the Abattoir's meat-production operations, set him on the proverbial throne (perhaps as a sort of puppet ruler). Now that Oyun's sacrifices are failing to appease whatever force is causing the epidemic, many in the Cult of Bulls are calling him a fraud.

With that, Ospina hands me a talisman made of a bull's horn. This is the last piece of my inheritance, she says. I am still unhappy that she didn't give it to me earlier, but she has convinced me that at least she didn't do it out of malice. Besides, how could you stay mad at a face like this:

OSPINA QUOTE OF THE DAY: "The Inquisitor continues her terrible harvest. Is she at least beautiful?"

Back in the Abattoir, I present the talisman to Elder Oyun. It is not quite enough to convince him that I deserve full access to the Order's secrets, but he grudgingly agrees to reveal the identity of the Betrothed: the earth.

Well, maybe the town, too. Over the generations, the people of the Abattoir have been sacrificing bulls and pouring the blood into that huge pit I saw yesterday. They say that, down there in the darkness, the blood nourishes the earth, which is actually a living being they call an udurg: "a body that contains a world." The stuff I use to create the panacea comes from that underground reservoir. According to the Elder, the Sand Plague has come because something is interfering with the reservoir, either blocking or poisoning it. Contrary to what the Bachelor seems to think, the town and the earth beneath it form a symbiotic relationship. With its nourishment either drying up or becoming corrupted, the world is slowly eating itself, and the town along with it. This would explain why even the town's structures are being ravaged by disease. The only way to reverse this process and save the town, Oyun says, is to present some sort of sacrifice, to provide the udurg once more with untainted blood.

What must I sacrifice, then? I ask. But the Elder has clammed up again.

The alternate view of my town map. Notice that the hill on which the town rests
has been revealed to be a bull.

The Life of Fat Vlad

The Inquisitor is pleased with my findings—more than pleased, she seems downright giddy in her fascination with the idea of the udurg—and I settle in for an evening of scrounging for tomorrow's supplies. Funny how the wearying process of scraping together enough cash to meet the 800-dollar price tag on a loaf of bread, so onerous at first, is becoming almost mundane. I guess one gets used to anything after a while.

At around 8 pm, I receive a letter from George Kain containing some unsettling news. Now that the Apiary has been unlocked, its inhabitants have been calling for the head of Fat Vlad Olgimskiy, the man who had locked them up and left them to rot. Fat Vlad, perhaps shaken by the Inquisitor's presence, has decided to surrender himself to the mob. According to George Kain, though, he is not to blame. He's only taking the rap so that his son, Young Vlad—the true mastermind behind the Apiary fiasco—will be spared. Kain tells me that, as the only person with any influence over the butchers of the Apiary, I have a responsibility to go to them and make sure they punish the right guy.

I am at a loss. I've distrusted the elder Olgimskiy from the start, but even I don't think that he deserves whatever horrible fate the denizens of the Apiary have prepared for him. On the other hand, I have no reason to believe that Young Vlad is guilty either, and Kain, as a member of one of the rival families, could have ulterior motives for disposing of the scion of the Olgimskiys. I go to the Inquisitor with the news, telling her to throw the weight of her authority behind an investigation. She callously dismisses my concerns as beneath her and warns me not to tell her how to do her job. I am to handle this "petty" matter on my own.

Not knowing what else to do, I head toward the Apiary on the other side of town, hoping that I'll have an idea of what to do by the time I get there. No such luck. All too quickly, I am standing before Mother Keeper in her torchlit inner sanctum, with her waiting for me to deliver the guilty party into the Order's hands. I have three dialogue options:

1) Fat Vlad is guilty
2) Young Vlad is guilty
3) I refuse to help

I'm afraid to take the third option, which would keep my hands clean but also leave the quest unfulfilled. Failed quests can put my Adherents in danger, and I am also worried about losing whatever favor I've curried with the Order. The quest must be finished. My mouse hovers over Young Vlad's name, but then I remember his helpfulness, his knowledge of the town's secrets, my deep-seated distrust of Fat Vlad, and George Kain's questionable motives. I change my mind and, with a click, condemn Fat Vlad to the butchers' clutches. I feel like a coward.

Before I leave, I ask Mother Keeper exactly what will happen to the man. She replies that the Worms and butchers will take him into a back room that she is forbidden to enter. When they finally leave, Fat Vlad will be gone—vanished without a trace. I feel the hairs on my neck prickle. "Mother, do they eat him?"

The kid looks back at me in the firelight. "I am not allowed to go in that room, Burakh." Her expression does not change.

Pathologic: Day Three, during which the Haruspicus will be risking his life to solve the puzzles of the ancient writing of the steppe people

(or, in which Kevin gets an eyeful of the Sand Plague)

A random poster hung near the town hall. Take a good look, my lovelies. It's all downhill from here.

The morning of the third day has come.
Infected in the past 24 hours: 42 people
Died in the past 24 hours: 39 people
Gone missing: 13 people
Number of dead at the moment: 117
Number of infected total: 46

Another night, another few hours spent defending townsfolk from the depredations of stab-happy thugs. My revolver has become so worn out that it doesn't even shoot straight anymore, and I don't have remotely enough money both to repair it and to buy food for the upcoming day. Fortunately, I've gotten pretty handy with knives of my own and can go toe-to-toe with thugs without suffering too many wounds. Having learned the hard way the importance of harvested organs in the town's shadow-economy, I now have no compunction about taking everything I can from the cooling bodies of the bad guys. They no longer have any use for it all anyway.

I'm on my way home to catch a few hours of sleep before daylight when I spy a figure running down the street ahead of me, pursued by another person. The pursuer catches his quarry and kills him/her before I can catch up, and when I arrive on the scene I can see why violence was called for. Facedown on the ground is the rag-covered body of an infected person. I'm not surprised, exactly—I've already heard that a quarantine is in effect now that the Sand Plague threatens to rage out of control—but the sight is unnerving, a small foretaste of what's to come. Then, remembering something the Bachelor mentioned when we first met, I put on my gloves and take a deep breath. Infected organs are necessary, too, if we're ever going to find a cure.

I have a busy day ahead of me. As soon as I wake up, Fat Vlad's daughter Kapella (who, as you'll recall, is one of my Adherents) informs me that Notkin (another Adherent) is in trouble. I find his hideout surrounded by thugs, whom I dispatch with great difficulty (I have to fight all four at once, and my knife is almost completely dull after last night). Inside the hideout, I find a terrified Notkin, whose brush with death has momentarily shattered his tough-guy act and left him touchingly vulnerable. I am surprisingly gentle in my interaction with him, telling him that "it's all right now." For all his brutishness, Artemiy Burakh apparently has a soft spot for children.

Other major figures in town are keeping me on the go with an assortment of errands. In a development that secretly tickles me, the Bachelor, once the town's darling, now finds himself hamstrung by the locals, who don't trust him to do his fancy city-doctor autopsies on infected corpses. I'm the one to whom they look for help. Meanwhile, Fat Vlad pulls me aside to ask a favor. It seems that, upon hearing of the outbreak, Fat Vlad has rounded up all the butchers who work for him, locked them in the Apiary, and thrown away the key. Three of them have escaped his clutches. He wants me to hunt them down and turn them in.

I've suspected from Day 1 that Vlad cannot be trusted, and this ruthless (and unilateral) decision of his immediately makes me suspicious. He assures me that he did it for the good of the town—if these people have contracted the Plague, why not isolate them and let them tear each other apart rather than endangering everyone else? I'm not convinced, but lacking anything more than a hunch, I agree to go along with him for the time being. For more information on the butchers' whereabouts, Vlad directs me to a familiar-looking house near the outskirts.

Next stop: Ospina.

OSPINA QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Perhaps it is better to be turned inside out?"

Weirdly, it seems that Artemiy feels some sort of kinship with Ospina. By way of greeting or perhaps as a sort of password, she recites the beginning of a folk rhyme, which I then complete for her. I learn that we are both connected to some sort of bull-worshiping nature cult of the steppes, a religion that is still practiced by the Worms who live outside town and who toil in the Abattoir, slaughtering (or sacrificing?) cattle. The strange object I received with my inheritance yesterday is a cattle brand, shaped like a symbol in the cult's language. Ospina can't tell me what the symbol means, but the three escaped butchers can. She's hidden them in safehouses scattered across town. She gives me the location of the first one, on the condition that I keep Fat Vlad in the dark. I readily agree. I may not be fully on board with whatever religious ceremonies are going on in the depths of the Abattoir, but the steppe people are my people and I'll be damned if I betray them to some conniving nobleman, whatever his plans are.

The butcher is holed up in a nondescript house right in the middle of the infected zone. I'm a little daunted, but I knew it would come to this. I pull on my gloves again, tie a handkerchief over my face, and plunge in, stepping over a pile of bloody rags at the entrance.

The infected zone is a nightmare. The air is tinged a sickly green. Shrouded plague victims mill about like zombies while rats chitter in the long grass by the sidewalk. Both pursue me if I come too close. One man lies on the ground in the fetal position, weakly struggling against the virus in his veins and clutching at me as I pass. I know that I should probably put him out of his misery with an overdose of morphine, but I can't bring myself to euthanize him and press on. Sitting in my computer chair, I find myself trying to breathe as little as possible.

Never mind, I don't want to know the secret of the symbol. In fact, I think I'll try again at getting that business degree.

The butcher's hideout is even worse. I can hear screams of agony from the dying in other parts of the house as I pick my way through the mess. I have to keep moving because clouds of plague-bearing mist frequently sweep through the house. These clouds seem almost to have a mind of their own, creeping around corners and roiling up staircases as if they are chasing me. At one point I get cornered and can only watch as a plague cloud envelops me. My vision contracts and blurs slightly, and I don't have to check the upper right corner of the screen to know that my infection bar has been activated.

Panicked, I rush out of that room into a bedroom across the hall and almost bowl over the butcher, who's just ... standing there.

I have no idea how he manages to survive in this place.

We have a hurried conversation amid the screams and the chaos, and I learn one final tidbit: I need to find a man known only as the Elder of the Abattoir. Only he can reveal the meaning of my symbol and (maybe) the identity of the Betrothed to whom it belongs. Who is he, what does he look like, how do I find him? The butcher doesn't know. All he knows is that the Elder of the Abattoir is not currently living in the Abattoir.

After all I went through to get here, I was expecting a little bit more.

The Abattoir is the thing in the northeast corner that looks like a giant heart. And I will probably have to go there.

I eventually make it out of the infected district, somewhat the worse for wear but at least alive and in no immediate danger. I visit Fat Vlad to pump him for information about the Abattoir (carefully omitting the location of the butcher, of course) and stop by the Bachelor's to drop off some infected organs for his examination. He makes the startling discovery that the Sand Plague is no longer active in the tissue; it apparently can't survive in a host after death. With proper quarantining, we can stop the epidemic before it gets out of hand. But for some inexplicable reason, the powers-that-be send out notices to the general public that do not include this information. Why are they lying to the townspeople? I don't know, but we're going to pay for it later.

I spend the rest of the day completing side quests and stockpiling supplies, readying myself for whatever catastrophe awaits me tomorrow. I'm feeling optimistic in spite of everything else—it's the first day in which I've been able to finish all the tasks that have been given me, and I feel prepared to face the next day. But around 7:00, I suddenly double over. My vision contracts and blurs, and my own labored breathing rings loud in my ears. I pull up my character screen to find that my infection bar has crept up slightly. I may have weapons and money and food, but the Sand Plague in my bloodstream is here to stay.

Pathologic: Day One, during which the Haruspicus is to become a wanted criminal instead of a lawful heir

(Or, in which Kevin squeezes a liter of blood out of himself and learns a lesson about hubris)

It’s the start of the first day again. Artemiy Burakh, the Haruspicus, wakes up in the weeds by the train station, again. The Executors inform him of his newfound status as a hunted man, wanted for multiple murders. Again.

Instead of turning left and sneaking around the depot, he walks directly toward the campfire to his right. And that small decision makes the difference between a Haruspicus slowly dying of hunger in the middle of a field and the Haruspicus I’ll be following for the rest of this game. Taking the right-hand path puts me in contact with a crucial character early on, whom I didn’t meet until much later during my abortive initial attempt. It’s a hard lesson in just how much the smallest decision will affect my character’s future, but it’s a lesson well taken.¹

The campfire on the right is surrounded by four or five townspeople (which is why I intentionally avoided it on my first attempt), who give chase as soon as I step within the ring of the firelight. I make a break for some warehouses to the east and barely manage to escape by hoisting myself over the fence and ducking inside the nearest building. I turn away from the entrance and find myself surrounded by half a dozen children in the semi-darkness.

It’s not necessarily a safe situation to be in. Children in Pathologic are not innocent lambs wandering through an adult world. They are dour and ruthless, with a special interest in sharp objects like straight-razors and fishhooks. As I will learn over the course of the day, the children of the town have formed two opposing gangs, the Dualsouls and the Dogheads, and all of them—from 6-year-olds to teenagers—are willing to kill each other to survive. Like animals before a storm, they seem to sense the approaching disaster and have even taken to raiding the town’s pharmacies in order to stockpile medicines. One can trade with them to get supplies, but it seems best not to underestimate them or trust them overmuch.

Glower all you want—your clothes still look dumb

The warehouse into which I’ve stumbled is the lair of Notkin, a grim but fair-minded leader in the Dualsouls. He says he doesn’t believe all the horror stories about me that have been circulating, but I have to do him a favor before he’ll trust me completely. I’m so relieved to encounter someone who doesn’t want to lynch me on sight that I agree immediately. So it comes to pass that, less than two hours into the day, I find myself on a mission to kill a traitorous gang member on the orders of a boy who’s not yet old enough to shave.

A few children remain who have not succumbed to the cutthroat mentality of their peers, however, and I encounter one of them, Laska, a bit later in the graveyard to the southeast. She’s tending to one of my attackers from the previous night, who managed to survive my righteous beatdown and drag himself to the cemetery. It’s not clear what this girl is doing hanging around inside a mausoleum all day, but never mind. Laska informs me that the man will die unless he gets a blood transfusion from someone, and I realize that this is my chance to rehabilitate my reputation in town.²

Enter the Humpback.

The Humpback enters

He may look unpleasant, but I have a feeling that this guy is going to be one of my best friends once the quarantine clamps down. He gives me some much-needed food. He also says he will trade health supplies for the internal organs I harvest from bad guys; I politely avoid dwelling on what he might use those organs for. The Humpback offers to prepare a transfusion for me, but he needs some blood to work with first. Not having any in my inventory, I panic until I remember where I can get some: my own veins.

Artemiy: “I’ve decided to squeeze a liter of blood out of myself.”³

I survive the operation (barely—it takes a huge chunk out of my health meter) and limp all the way back to the cemetery on the other side of town, keeping to the alleys and bushes all the way. The transfusion works, my former enemy is eternally grateful, and—finally, at long last, oh thank you Lord—I can walk openly through the streets without worrying that a beefy factory worker will try to stomp a mudhole into my face. Store owners still won’t sell me food, but I’ll take what I can get.

Compared to the twelve hours I’ve spent clinging to life by my fingernails, the rest of the day is uneventful. I make my way to the Clot, a mansion right in the center of town, to speak with a man called “Fat Vlad” Olgimskiy. Fat Vlad, by all accounts, is a shady character with one finger in a lot of pies—sort of a small-town mob boss—and I’m sure that he can’t be trusted. Nevertheless, he’s extremely friendly and helpful to me, clueing me in on why I’m in this mess to begin with. Apparently, both my father and the town’s mayor suffered a grisly death at the same time, and everyone thinks I murdered them. A young doctor from Moscow (the Bachelor) is trying to convince them that the two men died of a horrible disease called the Sand Plague, but it’s slow going. Fat Vlad suggests that I seek the Bachelor out tonight.

On my way out, I stop to talk to Fat Vlad’s young daughter Kapella, who gives me the last bit of information I need before the day ends: the names of my Adherents. These are the people whom I need to keep alive once the plague hits. Looking at the pictures she gave me, I notice Notkin’s face. Then Laska’s. Kapella is among them as well. All of my Adherents are children.

I make my way to the Bachelor’s house as night falls, taking swigs of water to stave off my growing hunger. As I talk to him, it’s clear that neither of us likes the other person much (I’m rough and arrogant; he’s stiff and kind of a goody-two-shoes), but we’re willing to forge a tenuous truce for the sake of the town.

As we talk, I notice that my reputation meter has filled up completely, meaning that my name has been cleared for now. I thank the Bachelor for his help in discovering the true cause of my father’s death, then collapse into the nearest bed. As I drift off to sleep, I try not to think too hard about being indebted to the unsavory Fat Vlad, about the weight of my father’s legacy, or about the fact that the town’s children—those kids who are desperate to steal medical supplies, who love the feeling of a straight-razor in their small hands—are counting on me to be their savior.

¹ It’s also a warning shot across my bow, as if the designers are saying, Don’t try to get clever. Modern game design is often conducted according to the Yellow Brick Road Philosophy: If the player must go from Point A to Point B, the game should make it blindingly obvious which path to take by making the path fluorescent and having everyone tell the player to start following it. In order to make things more interesting for myself, I usually look for ways to take the road less traveled. In Pathologic, this road is muddy with the tears of presumptuous gamers like myself, brought low by their own hubris.

² One of the interesting side effects of Pathologic’s reputation meter (and videogame morality systems in general) is that it incentivizes “good” actions in a way that doesn’t actually have much to do with real morality. I don’t particularly feel like loving the enemy who is slowly bleeding out in a cemetery, but my desire to make the game easier by increasing my reputation meter is stronger than my desire to see him suffer. Ergo, I save his life—because it’s to my advantage to do so. I suppose this teaches us either that I am a horrible person or that what we call altruism in real life is often closer to a calculated assessment of altruism’s side benefits than we are comfortable admitting.

³ Quoted verbatim. Gotta love the translation.