Pathologic: The ending, according to another Bachelor

I evangelized Pathologic to several different friends as I was writing this blog. My friend Ben Hess went out and bought it immediately after our conversation, and wrote me a compelling letter detailing his experience in the game. 

I have, after long hours and a particular kind of focus possibly best described as a 'mania' this week, completed Pathologic. As the executors say, the twelve days are finished... it is all over. I don't think I won.

Upon seeing the executors' unholy beaks outside the doors of some of my Adherents, I knew that the outcome would not be good. In fact, I had forgotten (in those months in absentia from the game) how to view letters I had received. This led to days seven and eight being a muddle of wandering and base survival. I sold my soul for food and healing, and only completed the main quests. I believe the disease appeared in Rubin first, then to Kapella after Big Vlad's suicide, then to Lara, Alexander, and finally Ospina. In short, I cashed in big time on my friends' willingness to die for me. I was able to manage, however, reasonably well without a gun for much of the game. Food became my undoing, and I wound up selling clothes and weapons in fear of starving to death well-armed and armored. Sleeping around (not like THAT) in whichever house was nearest became the norm, and my sense of security dwindled without a place to call "headquarters". After Eve's (apparent) suicide, I didn't have a reason to go to her house. Reading and following your blog left me more and more convinced that I would probably achieve a different ending (though I only read entries for day I had already completed), and this was further exacerbated by the side quests I was unable to complete as heroically as you... An unarmed doctor can only do so much against renegade soldiers, and so my Bachelor became more than willing to escape with his own life an leave riotous citizens to the unjust firing squads.

Apart from the desperate journey of scratching a living from the inhabitants of the town from hell, my own personal struggle with the disease and the larger questions of the town came to a head in a very different way from yours. Around day 10, I had decided that it was a sin to destroy the Polyhedron. Accident or no, it was plague-free. That, to me, became my guiding light in my quest. I was like a surgeon or a sculptor, excising the diseased flesh at will. Take out the tumors, and cut around it.... just to be sure. I carved the town to the bone. The Haruspicus confronted me with his solution on day 11, and I could not conceive of it. The thought of existing alongside the disease, eliminating its effects and the architectural (and so much more!) wonder on the other side of the river was weirdly repulsive to me. Not that I don't think it could work, but it was a panacea to a broken system; a further humanistic advance to fix more problems of humanity. It made the disease (and by extension its dark cause) okay. Or maybe not. Whatever the exact ultimate spiritual meaning of the butcher's suggestion, I rejected it in favor of a fresh start. I sided with Maria. 

Even taking into account the dark history of the Kain family, I was sure there should be no town here. Rebuild on the other side the river. Burn it all. Cut the flesh, graft on the new, and start over. In other words, I was perfectly unwilling to let the inhabitants live with the sins of their past and continue above the pathological and spiritual legacy of the Cult of Bulls. I wanted this place to be a dead shrine to a dead past; a silent stone monument to humanity's sins. I wanted to give the survivors a fresh start, and to maybe... just maybe do things differently. Salvation, in my mind, would come from new creation; from Armageddon and rebirth. Perhaps what this town needed was to spring from the Polyhedron, rather than the Polyhedron being birthed by the town. Sociologically, I didn't want to fix a broken system. But whatever feeble justification, I think my primary motivation was fatigue. 

The Kains were experienced in this sort of thing; the legacy of Simon lives on in George and Victor, and that of Nina lives on in Maria. This family, in many ways is the town as much as the buildings and inhabitants. But they represent the Western part as separate as possible from the Abbatoir and the Apiary. They are a new beginning for the town, as Vlad the Younger is different from boos Vlad. (Victor pointed out in one conversation on day 12 that boos meant "bull-like", and that he was, in many respects, representative of the old ways). This town, I thought, deserved the chance to make new and exciting mistakes, I guess. 

But, ultimately, if I chose utopia then I didn't choose it for myself. My Bachelor will not live in his creation; he doesn't deserve it. Though I went through twelve days in hell without killing a man in cold blood (only self-defense), the blood of every man, woman, and child in the infected zone is on my hands; not to mention the children expelled from the Polyhedron to accommodate the adult "survivors". I have killed the bull and kept the horns only.... I'm a poacher. But my trophy is at least alive. I have spared a few, and that's enough, I guess to sate my conscience. Cut away the flesh. And I assured Maria and everyone that I would leave with the soldiers at dawn. My decision, but not my life. And maybe refusing to live in the utopia I helped create is the proper atonement. After all, in the end I am only a doctor from the city. The plague is gone, and maybe that's enough to live with. 

Duke, this was by far the most difficult game I have ever played. Not only practically, with the clunky mechanics and extreme risk of death by stabbing or fire, but in every way. I have wrestled with the cryptic speeches, trying to figure the angles of each family and each Adherent while (for some reason) trying to keep them alive. I have been awestruck at the betrayals, traps, and pitfalls from those I trusted. I have found out things about myself that would have been happily underground if not for this game. I guess in the end, I was not the Bachelor... It was just me all along. In the end, thank you for showing this to me. I have been to a place that I cannot fully return from, and I have given this game (it feels a little lacking to call it a 'game', now) a part of myself in exchange for it giving me... something. Insight, maybe. Self-awareness... discovery? I can't name it at all, yet. But I'm more and more convinced that, even though my ending cutscene was accompanied by oddly distressing music, it wasn't really and totally wrong. I feel, here at the end of all things, that I have a story to tell. Like the Bachelor, I may have created a utopia, but it is not mine... I don't deserve it because of the blood on my hands. What I do have is a story to tell... and my Bachelor will live on in the Capital, perhaps to write an account of the town to which he performed the ultimate amputation. 

- Benjamin

Pathologic: Day Twelve, in which it will become apparent what all this was for (PART I)

At 7am:

The morning of the twelfth day has come.

Infected in the past 24 hours: 378 ppl.

Died in the past 24 hours: 648 ppl.

Gone missing: 122 ppl.

Number of dead at the moment: 7776

Number of infected: 512 ppl.

This day is the last. Less than fourteen hours remain to make a worthy decision.

Today's Forecast: Clear, with a 40% chance of artillery fire.

I walk outside and find the streets deserted. Everything has gone: the rats, the dirtied sheets, the plague clouds and leprous robed figures. The bandits have been exterminated. Every single district of the town has swept clean of any trace of the plague, save for the now-useless scarecrows which were once stationed at the entrance to each zone. I've received panicked requests from both the Haruspicus and the Devotress: their adherents are sick, and I'm the only one with enough panaceas to cure them.

First, however, I'd like to share some thoughts.

The decision I make today should be impartial: I've spent twelve days in this hell-hole of a town gathering information, making observations of its squabbling inhabitants, running errands, watching men die in the streets. Nobody is beyond judgment here. Yet I have a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach. Maria (or Nina?) Kain's little diatribe yesterday did nothing to strengthen my resolve. Did I really call her "Dark Mistress"? And, really, have I been playing into the Kains' hand all along? They want the Polyhedron to construct a Utopia. They want the town destroyed as much as I--though they want it destroyed so that they can birth a new town, a new Utopia, on the other bank of the Gorkhon. Victor Kain tells me the new town will be larger, better, birthed from the cocoon of the Polyhedron. 


I'm sick of hearing everyone else's drivel about how the Polyhedron is unnatural. It's a tool. We have been making tools since we crept down from the trees: we made fire, cut stone, burrowed holes. These things are not "natural"--but it doesn't make them intrinsically evil. It's how they are used that determines that. The question all along has been this: what is the Polyhedron's use?

Despite the ominous colour scheme, I insist this thing is as harmless as a kitchen knife.
If the knife were in the hands of little kid.

The Polyhedron was created to preserve. It's more than a tomb. It revolutionizes our idea of the tomb: it turns our tombs into brief waypoints, regurgitates our consciousness, refracts the breath and light of the human spirit and pours old wine into new skins. Is this evil? I don't know if it is. The reality of all this, however, is that like any tool, the Polyhedron has been misused. It was thrust, unceremoniously, into the heart of the earth. And from this, one of two things may have happened: either the wound became infected, sending the Sand Plague upward through the man-made tunnels beneath the city, or the puncture stirred up a restless poison.


I am more inclined to believe the latter. The Sand Plague has struck before. It has been here from the beginning. If the architect had any knowledge of this, he might have chosen a better place to make the puncture. Is the Sand Plague a judgment? A fizzing antibody? It's pure science--a manageable result of a routine operation. We might find a harmless plot of land near the capitol, conduct some research, do some digging, and plug in a dozen more Polyhedrons with no repercussions. All this was nothing more than an experiment. We could do it better next time.


The Polyhedron is not evil. But after my chilling conversation with Maria yesterday, I am conflicted. It comes to this: The Polyhedron or the Town. Destroy the Town and a legion of Kains will build their own version of "paradise" no different from the current madhouse on the other side of the river. Destroy the Polyedron and the residents of this god-forsaken little hamlet will go on with their pagan practices: the children will grow into quibbling men and women. They will abuse the earth, pour poisoned blood and tar into the ground, and go on killing and expiring and expending.


In the end, nothing will truly change. So what does my decision matter?

This sculpture at the Kains' makes much more sense in light of Kevin's map.

I have enough panacea to save just one set of Adherents: either the Haruspicus' children or the Devotress' corrupt ones. It might as well be the children. I find, after administering several doses to the last of the sick, that I suddenly have a letter from the Authorities. It's cryptic and mildly passive aggressive, and for the better part of the day I pay it no heed. The General will need my decision at 7pm, promptly, at the Cathedral. 


However, at the apex of the Polyhedron, the door has opened again. I step inside, into the inner sanctum, and trace my way down the steps, deeper and deeper, to the very base. After a brief head-swimming blackout, I am greeted with this strange scene:

It's two kids in a garden standing behind a sandbox in which they have crudely modeled their own version of the Town and the Polyhedron. I've gone on and on about finding a "true adversary". And in the end, I don't believe it was ever the plague. Here, at the base of the Polyhedron, I may have found my adversary.

Pathologic: Day Eleven, in which the Bachelor will discover the truenature of the Kain family

At 7am:

The morning has come.

Infected in the past 24 hours: 371 ppl.

Died in the past 24 hours: 618 ppl.

Gone missing: 131 ppl.

Number of dead at the moment: 6798

Number of infected: 552 ppl.

Tomorrow everything will be over.

[I lost my map screenshot for today. The town is completely plagued or burnt out.]

Base of the Miracle

The Inquisitor needs a more in-depth look at the Polyhedron's architectural plans. She believes the structure—unnatural as it is—has somehow caused the epidemic. Perhaps something in the base will tell us more. This is preposterous, of course. I’ve been inside. It’s a wonder—a testament to human ingenuity. It shields from plague; it doesn’t spread it.

Andrey has the plans, so I head to the tavern. Of course he’s not there. He’s purportedly been arrested for his renegade hero routine yesterday. However, when I ask General Blok to recall his arrest, he tells me no such order was issued. A large faction of soldiers have staged a coup, and is leading Andrey to his death down at the southernmost part of the train tracks, just at the edge of town.

I follow the tracks to find a swarm of soldiers, all pointing their rifles at me. Unfazed, I walk through the ranks to the very end and address the officer in command. He’s some haughty everyman, and he believes I am the architect. I’m sentenced to death, he says; he’s taking control now. My pleas don’t matter, so I stall fortime by asking for a final smoke. He promptly knocks me out, and the world goes black.

Dude, you get the puppet avatar. There's no way you're getting out of this alive.

When I come to,I’m standing in front of a burning pyre out in the middle of the cemetery, stripped of all my weapons and medicine, shivering in the rain. I’ve only just oriented myself when several snarling attack dogs emerge from behind the graves and try to bite me. I jump onto the pyre, skirting the flames, and beat each dog’s brains in, then head to the gravekeeper’s house at the edge of the cemetery. After some convincing, the little girl Laska gives me some tourniquets and a butcher knife.

Two guards are stationed at the cemetery’s entrance. I stab one in the back, silently, then the other, take their rifles, and march cold-blooded back to the train yard. Everyone in this entire town—even the military—is an idiot. I shoot each soldier in the head before he can fire a single shot, then run to the patrol leader and shoot him squarely between the eyes. I take back every single thing he stole from me, then walk back to the Tavern in hopes that I might hear some news regarding Andrey.

The sop is waiting for me there. He tells me he’s surprised I didn’t ask about the base earlier. It turns out the Polyhedron is supported on a spring—a three hundred meter-long shaft, about five and a half meters in diameter, was drilled into the earth beneath the foundations of the town: a crystalline rose sprouted froma metal stalk. A sort of lever, weighted down by the foundations of the town itself.

The Inquisitor is convinced that this is the instrument which has stirred up the plague. Through some shift, the stalk punctured the clot at the heart of the town,which has sent plague up from the soil itself. This makes sense to her. But it isn’t good enough to me. Yes, the wound has stirred up the disease, but the disease has been there from the beginning. I have very good reason to suspect the Steppe folks and their pagan practices in the Abattoir. They thirst for blood. The worms always tell me they never have enough blood to feed the earth.

Who’s to say that the excess of sacrifice—the poisoned meat, the putrid flesh fed by these steppe barbarians—is not what originally created the plague? The Polyhedron was the one prick that revealed the infection: it was there all along. With modernization—with systematic and permanent housing, with wells digging into theground—the once-harmless practices of the natives, repeated ad infinitem in the same place, has become malignant.

Today's Pantomime was admittedly unsettling.

Preparations For Crowning

I take care of a few smaller tasks—saving several wrongly condemned men from a firing squad and suppressing some unsavory rumors about the Kain family. The most alarming quest of today concerns Maria Kain.

The Kain family continues to talk of dying, of suicide. They all seem to have gone mad. After some coaxing, I talk to George Kain, who talks of the Inner Chamber of the Polyhedron. It is a tomb, of sorts, and also a receptacle for the now-deceased Nina Kain, Simon’s love. Yet Nina Kain is returning, he says. The beautiful Maria Kain, who has loved me for quite some time, has accepted the soul of her mother.

Utter nonsense.Of course, Andrey and Peter have succeeded where I failed. I may have mentioned—the Bachelor and the Inquisitor met years before when an attempt to resurrect the human form was conducted in the capitol. It failed miserably. Perhaps, in this squat-hole of a town, it has not.

Maria needs pledges from the two other female authorities in town: the young Kapella and, inexplicably, Klara the Devotress. I go to both of them and ask for a token of their fealty. Klara protests—she says that Maria will become a “sorceress queen”and make her own twisted version of a utopia from the town—a “violation of nature”, man’s own attempt to create the kingdom of heaven. I dismiss her; this is all a simple formality. I return to find Maria’s followers congregated outside her front door. They look mad. Everyone in this part of town has gone mad. Perhaps it’s a side effect of the panacea.

Her Entourage

She’s waitingfor me inside the tomb behind the Kain family’s estate. Rather than summarize,I’ve transcribed a conversation so strange that Ospina herself would be proud. [I have made slight adjustments for clarity.]

MARIA: It’s not me. Not your Maria anymore, but not the Scarlet yet. Nothing of me is here. Touch my flesh: your hands will touch the air only.
BACHELOR: Here are the signs of recognition from Klara and Kapella. They bow to you, Dark Mistress.

MARIA: Scarlet. But let it be so. That means that if a miracle happens – and by tomorrow only those who should survive by my plan live, and the ruthless Authorities will forget about us as before –we shall deny the severe law of life. And then the dream will triumph. And a new Utopia will rise.

BACHELOR: What do you call Utopia, Maria?

MARIA: It’s not the Tower, Daniel. It’s the town. We understand the word “Utopia” not as an ideal of prosperous trade,a perfect social system and political validity, but as a mystical fact of materialization of the incomprehensible, normally inaccessible to the profane person.

BACHELOR: Who speaks now by your mouth?These aren’t your words, and this is not your voice.

MARIA: Truly. You listen. This world exists, but is not given into human hands. Never. It is revealed only by delicate hints; in inevitably perishes under a straight sight. Mystery is its life; this world dies if it is enslaved.

BACHELOR: This is why the pestilence has begun?

MARIA: Probably. But luckily, even in the best adjusted mechanism failures happen. Sometimes the two worlds—mundane and utopia—touch each other! The antibodies collide! And contrary to the law of self-preservation they do not perish, but merge, forming a marvelous symbiosis. Thus is Utopia – a terrestrial embodiment of an unearthly miracle – achieved!

BACHELOR: And you chose to create this town? This is how an embodied miracle looks?

MARIA: Yes. We could build a magnificent town of rock crystal, sapphire walls, emerald roofs and ruby roadways, as you would expect from children’s fairy tales about magic countries. But here true life – living people of flesh and blood – exists. What surprises you?

BACHELOR: Why dirt and dullness? Why worn walls, brick-works, rusty beams and sewage manholes? Is this how Utopia should look?

MARIA: This is how it looks. That’s why it’s Utopia instead of a dream. It is even associated with the word “bog”. It needs dirt. A bog of peat bathed in a ruby sky. Utopia accepts even the basest humans, the unattractive terrestrial. Therefore: the bloody Abattoir, rotten fields, barracks, and impoverished slums. This is the land.
BACHELOR: Oh, so . . . 
MARIA: Utopia needs the Cult of Bulls, a living echo of the symbiosis between the world of beasts and spirits and the world of men. The animal nature lays the foundation of our civilization. Dirt, blood, manure, devouring each other’s skin and meat and bones: tools from which civilization, the commonwealth of creators, grows. 
BACHELOR: And where’s the miracle? 
MARIA: In the earth a miraculous merge of the Anthropophobic Steppe and the Human world occurred. This settlement transfigured from a society of devourers into one of creators. A true wonder was born. At its height, the Cathedral was built. But here we failed. 
BACHELOR: . . . And then you built the Polyhedron. 
MARIA: Yes. The Tower of the Riverbank has finally metamorphosed – a miraculous merger of worlds. The world of the possible and the world of the impossible. 
BACHELOR: If all this was so great, why the pestilence? 
MARIA: I do not know, Daniel. This is not our fault. The town has not sustained this tension, has not endured the heat. So we begin again. There is no death. We are not afraid of it. You see, I am dead and incorporeal, yet I am here. Like a restless soul doomed to return.

Her words leave me conflicted. I lurch back to my bed through plague-ridden streets. Over the past two days chaos has overtaken the town: I can’t go ten steps without seeing another bandit cut an honest man down, or see the plagued burned down in waves like fields at the end of harvest. The buildings are red and blotched. And above it all, in perpetual bloom like a concrete rose, lingers the impossible shape of the Polyhedron. 

Pathologic: Day Ten, on which the creators of the impossible make their appearance and a discussion commences of the miracles witnessed.

At 7am:

The morning of the tenth day has come.

Infected in the past 24 hours: 340 ppl.

Died in the past 24 hours: 677 ppl.

Gone Missing: 139 ppl.

Number of dead at the moment: 6770

Number of infected: 576

Less than three days remain.

Today's Map. The Plague is almost unbearable.

Seized Focus

The Inquisitor is curious about the Polyhedron. Such a thing shouldn’t exist—it defies the laws of physics, of nature. Yet it stands, almost suspended, at the head of the town like some silvery crown. It was built by Peter Stamatin, and it is from him that we must procure the plans to study the structure in fuller detail.

I find his brother Andrey in the Tavern on the east side of town, and he tells me soldiers came to arrest them and, in a panic, he killed them and let his brother escape. Peter now wanders the town looking at his old architectural experiments: “endless stairways”, he calls them.

These things are impossible.

I ought to have mentioned these strange structures earlier. Originally I thought they were the remains of burnt houses. As it turns out, these were prototypes of what would eventually become the Polyhedron. I’ve walked up the stairs once or twice and surveyed the land—all the sounds of the city fade away at the top of these naked stairwells, leaving only one sound. And that sound is children—babies—crying, fading in and out.

Cue: screaming children sounds

I find Peter in the heart of a plague district, dressed as an Executor cremating bodies beneath one of his stairways. He’s gone mad—he tells me he’ll give me the plans if I bring him five bottles of twyrine to assist in his suicide. I go out, retrieve the twyrine, and procure the plans. He tells me he believes a building is capable of housing a soul—of capturing, freezing, a soul and containing it. The stairwells scattered through town were misfires, aborted attempts, at building the masterpiece that now sits like a crown at the head of the town.

The late Nina Kain funded this enterprise because she believed this building could house a spirit. The children believe the Polyhedron grants wishes and dreams, but the Kains have other (as of yet unknown) aspirations for the creation. Peter says it has power because we believe it has power: a miracle will not happen unless people believe it can happen.

After some gentle prodding, I convince Peter to give up suicide and live another day. It’s not so simple, of course. Klara, the Devotress, has been whispering in his ear, telling him that by building the Polyhedron he has taken a miracle into captivity. It is unnatural, to be sure, but is it truly evil?

Of course, I think over the Polyhedron, and the Kains’ belief in soul houses; the implications are chilling when I think of the cries of children in the endless stairs. I wonder if Peter didn't accidentally capture something in his contraptions that he shouldn't have.

Madness of the Kains

Catherina Saburov is convinced that Simon Kain has revived and is walking the streets. Ridiculous, of course, though I’m almost willing to believe anything at this point. After all, I have never actually seen Simon’s body. I check with Rubin, now freed from the Kain family and notably shaken, wondering why he is still alive: he tells me there is no possibility that Simon could have resurrected. He cannibalized every particle of his corpse to make the vaccine.

Victor Kain advises me to do damage control—to spread a rumor that George Kain believes he has become Simon—and pays me a handsome sum. I report to the Inquisitor who sees through my lie and responds with cool indifference. Something in our relationship has changed. The thing is that I don’t quite disbelieve the rumor myself. The Kains have slowly begun to slip in the past few days. George speaks of slipping into a trance to retrieve the spirit of the Polyhedron. Victor has begun to rave of reincarnation. Maria, of course, remains silent.

The Kain family tomb, I assume. Note again: the horns.

Pictogram

Mark Immortal, theater director, tells me that an uprising and sacrifice has broken out near the bone pillar in the Tanners District. He is, and has been, noticeably upset for his auditorium’s transformation into a morgue, though he comments that they have been his finest audience in a long while.

The problem is easily solved: after a quick inspection, I ask General Blok (still alive) to send his men in to clean things up, and go on my way. The men are protesting the Polyhedron—they say it is destroying the town, and they want it torn down. When I report back to Mark, he admits he instigated the riot. In his boredom, he’s decided to stir up a bit of mischief.

The Bone Pillar

Utopia

Pathologic is the Western name of this game, but in Russia the title is мор (Pestilence) with the subtitle утопия (Utopia).

In passing, I find a teenager on the street and ask him what he thinks of the Polyhedron. He tells me of its wonders: how, deep within, there is a kilometer-long labyrinth. He says, “You walk and walk in it, and it does not come to an end. When you go out – it is considered that it’s your reflection that leaves, and you yourself get to the Other Country.” I ask what “the reflection” means, and he replies, “It’s as though it’s you, and at the same time it’s not you. They leave not talkative. Therefore it’s said that it’s your reflection that comes back – to quiet the parents and so on. And your real self goes to the country of Utopia – to the magick country.”

This town is worthless. I hold to this. Yet the crown is its one treasure. The Polyhedron is impossible: a miracle, a feat of human ingenuity, completely accidental, and with its thousand uninfected children, it is the one pure thing this town has. Perhaps a cold anesthetic wonder, but a true wonder nonetheless. If one thing could be saved, it is the Polyhedron.

The sketch changes again.

Yet I am uneasy. The Polyhedron makes possible some passage to “Utopia”, the children say, but what is its true cost? I believe in equity: in order to gain anything, something must be given up. What have the depraved folk of this town not yet given up?