Note: Shit, I've finally finished! 120 hours! 50,000 words! And how many people are still following? Five, maybe? It's been an awesome piece of work for me, and an excellent game experience... but I'm never doing this again.

For twelve days I've seen this place slowly die, and the people within it do everything they could to escape their deaths. Some turned to violence, others to the supernatural, or to crime and psychosis. But in our darkest days we had bonded together in desperation--our lines of fate weaving together to repair the fabric of this town. I had a list of Adherents, people whose lives held the key to my victory, and the Harupsicus and Devotress each held their own lists.

Together we had saved everyone that could be saved... except for Eve, who had gave her life so that her soul would rest in the Cathedral I was about to enter. It was 7PM, and my two counterparts and I were about to join tonight's council to decide the fate of the town



The decision of what to do with this town was all mine, but I could feel the pressure from each character through the stares they gave me. I saw Maria Kain was on the pedestal at the front, flanked by Inquisitor Aglaja, and General Blok—the man waiting for my word to directed his guns. The Haruspicus kept his distance further back. The Devotress paced slowly down the aisle with arms outstretched, as if walking a tightrope.

If I sided with Maria, we would move the townspeople into the Polyhedron as the town was razed—in time, a new settlement would be erected on the other riverbank. Maria, the new Scarlett Mistress, would be the force that reestablished the town’s relationship with the steppe. This town was welcoming her rule.

The Inquisitor and the Haruspicus wanted me to destroy the Polyhedron. They imagined the plague to be punishment for creating a monument that defiled natural laws. In this sense, the Tower was an enemy of rationality--it was an idea that I had just yesterday been inclined towards... But now, thinking about what the Devotress had told me, I had realised Aglaja’s ulterior motives in wanting the Tower to be destroyed. It was a personal reason for her—and she had preyed on my passion for truth and fear of the illogical.

And then, there was the Devotress Klara. She would make a miracle and turn this town back to what it was before. They called her a saint. But she was the biggest enigma of all of them.

I had my one final talk with each.

--

Maria Kain



“I have already begun, my Daniel… When the night falls, and a wind will scatter the smoke from burnt ground, and the dust from destroyed buildings will go down, you will see some new constellations in the sky. They will carry their light to us and when the first particles of this light reach the merlons of Polyhedron… a miracle will happen.”

“This is now my town. I am the mother, and so far as I shall participate in the birth of a new town, I want to be present at the destruction of the former town. This is my duty. I am the only one left from all house of Kains.”

--

Haruspicus Burakh

I wanted to ask him why he had sided so steadfastly with the Inquisitor, when we both knew she had been dishonest with her motives.



“Yes you are simply offended by her. You feel that she has betrayed you only because you trusted her. It is not necessary to assume a saviour in someone beforehand, and when this person does not justify your calculations—curse him though he never knew about your hopes. You are guilty. If you want to destroy the town and keep the Tower just to vex her, and thus, push her to destruction... this will be unworthy. You will turn into a spiteful puppeteer conducted by the thirst for revenge.”

--

Inquisitor Aglaja



“In this case they are the same. It is strange that you have not understood that. This place is Utopia that is a violation to nature. Utopia must be destroyed. It is evil.”

I ask, “What is Utopia, Aglaja? What causes such hate in you?”

“Usually utopias were constructed to embody an ideal of justice, freedom or economic prosperity. This is different from others. This town is not ‘a place which does not exist’. It is something that cannot be. Should not be. Here the reason connects with the source… The phenomenon which is beyond the habitual reality, which contradicts the laws of common sense and embodies itself the things that the people should not know, experience or see. And still, despite of this, it is something created and materialised at human will.”

I challenge her, “A man strives to happiness, and this is a great blessing. What’s bad about it?”

“Societal masterpieces are rare… Here, a nice town suddenly starts to die. Nobody knows for what reason. Why this one in which even the miracle was embodied—the most interesting, the most mysterious, inhabited by the most talented people? Why? A miracle—casually embodied in Polyhedron—has been violently withheld by the flesh of the town which has grown it up and fed with the resources: people and hot blood. This Polyhedron, once a miracle, became a prison.”

“I am philanthropic. My duty is not to kill, but to rescue. I sentence a few to death for the sake of rescue of the many. Here and now I suggest buying the happiness of several thousand for a small sacrifice. Because a utopia demands sacrificing of more and more. Even this Utopia.”

--

Devotress Klara

She has apparently heard that small voice in my head… the one that drives away my rational mind, to cause me to think “what if?” In the Polyhedron I had seen into the impossible—a magnificent prism built by those who were never restricted by the laws of physicality. It was a Tower with the ability to harness something supernatural. Could I bring myself to destroy such a miraculous artifact?



“You want to keep Polyhedron from respect for the related genius who has calculated the mechanics of a trap for the miracle—the device able to catch what is impossible to be caught! In the Polyhedron you have seen cold, glass, mathematical masterpiece! I see it differently.”

“Who are you?” I ask again.

“Probably I am not the one whom you knew before. In fact, we are more than one… And perhaps many of us exist. A pretty face is the same—but who knows whose will stands behind it now?”

--

The General

For eleven days I had heard this town ramble about on fate, about realising one’s destiny and accepting predetermined consequences. I now realised that I was tired of it all. Aglaja had shown how the Authorities had set up the events leading to my arrival in this town… it was like my whole life consisted of a series of triggers that lead me deeper into an enormous trap. Aglaja had used me again, for her own selfish purposes, and I could no longer bear it.

And on an intrinsic level, I knew that myself, Burakh and Klara were all outsiders. Aglaja and General Blok represented the might of the Authorities--figures who I only knew through their letters. At the end of it all, this town ruled by the Kains. So let them have it! Let them decide what it shall become... whether a utopia or a wasteland! Let their Polyhedron become the glimmering beacon of their new order!

“Destroy the settlement," I tell the General, "but do not touch the Polyhedron. The survivors will take refuge there until we vaccinate them, and the epidemic will finally come to its end.” It is four hours till midnight, and I leave the Cathedral to wait for midnight.

---

And so I left. I wanted to see the Polyhedron this one last time. I climbed up into the entrance, into the Inner Chamber—the cylindrical space with the tall spiral staircase--and waked over a diagram printed on the floor at the very top of the paper staircase. It was a portal that normally took me back outside...

But instead, I had stumbled upon somewhere new. I was in a walled, circular garden. In the middle was a sandbox with a sand-model of the town, complete with glass-funnel for the Polyhedron. Two small children stood behind it, staring at me. I thought this was some new area in the Tower, but something felt wrong. As I walked closer, I realised the children were much taller than me.



I approach the boy and ask, “who are you?”

“We were at a funeral, and now they send us to play in the garden for ten days because they do not want us to interfere... We are playing ‘Town’ here! And such world has appeared miraculously! Magic. We have planted it, and you see what has grown. But now this all decays… But you know how it is interesting! You are there too! We thought that you were there—but you appeared to be real. You are not our puppet anymore.”

“I am human,” I tell him.

“You are very similar to one of our toys. Actually it is called ‘Bachelor,’ but we named it Daniel Dankovskiy. For fun.”

“…No.”

“Oh? You mean you are not a toy? Try then to hit me. Why you stand still and not move your hands? You cannot? Hit! Do not feel sorry!”

I launch my fists at him, but they swing and swing and never seem to hit. I finally give up.

The girl responds, “Don’t be upset. It’s good to be a toy too… We needed to use you somehow. We never loved you too much. You’ve always been a scary puppet—and it was no fun to play with you. But now you’d better help us to repair the small town, rather than to be distressed. You can do it perfectly. Very little is left, and the game will be ended. All the same it is time for all of us to go home.”

---

And just now, I realised I had had my encounter with “the Authorities.” And I was a puppet—a ragdoll working to save a doll-town… the feeling was absolutely haunting. Playing through Pathologic, even though I had been accustomed to the routine of fourth-wall breaking… and even though the game had told me up-front that I was a character playing a role… I felt more like Daniel Dankovskiy than ever. He was angry as hell. And I—I had invested over a hundred hours playing and writing up this game… I was beyond horrified.

But I then started thinking of what the game was trying to say. These children had started this tragic game in their sandbox, having returned from their first funeral, or having started to lose the innocence of their childhood. They chose to deal with it by integrating it into a game. And thus, they were architects of a dream, and Polyhedron was the portal that connected the two worlds. The Tower was therefore, literally, made from the imagination of children and thus not bound by concept of realities.

I had read somewhere that Pathologic was designed around a manifesto that wanted games to deliver relevant, real-world experiences. Pathologic reminds me that yes, I am playing a game… but as the two children here, we are able to learn new concepts through the exploration of a virtual space. Just as all of us will experience death or loss, this game presents to us the deterioration of a human society as we come face-to-face with our own mortality.

---

As I leave the Polyhedron, I get a letter from the Masks inviting me to the Theatre for a brief discussion of free-will and other things. “Bachelor has lost his fight for freedom since the moment of birth,” they say, “But when each of your steps is foretold—you still have freedom to make the foretold steps.”



It has been twelve days I’ve performed in this tragic pantomime. I’ve killed, suffered the loss of friends, the loss of sanity, and my own existential horror. At midnight tonight, my story came to an end.

END DAY 12