(09-23-2013, 09:21 PM)SliceAndDice Wrote: I also don't really get the whole "rebuilt his dead children" thing... I thought those were just visions or memories resurfacing until he finally remembered what he had done.
Spoiler below!
They were. The bodies of his children aren't seen until the final scene, either side of the chair in which he sits to sacrifice himself.
(09-23-2013, 09:21 PM)SliceAndDice Wrote: The Wiki isn't helping either. It's "The Engineer" as in another part of Mandus' personality? But that still doesn't explain the body or who it was.
I also don't really get the whole "rebuilt his dead children" thing... I thought those were just visions or memories resurfacing until he finally remembered what he had done.
The Wiki is basically fan-fiction. Pay no attention to it.
What if the letters aren't literal? What if they're a catalog of his thoughts and memories on different dates? For instance, the journal entries made by his children...maybe they're an old memory from a previous year mixed together with what is happening at the then current time. (Hence the children hearing a pig in the garden.) A sort of 'I wonder what my children would make of this if they were here' kind of thing.
Some of the notes don't seem like something you'd write down. Very stream of consciousness. It could be something he was thinking or imagining on that date. Or maybe the dates are subjective and the man is confused. The notes are symbolic of his memories coming back to him, but because he's so unstable, the dates are mixed up.
(09-23-2013, 11:45 PM)FromTheSidelines Wrote: What if the letters aren't literal? What if they're a catalog of his thoughts and memories on different dates? For instance, the journal entries made by his children...maybe they're an old memory from a previous year mixed together with what is happening at the then current time. (Hence the children hearing a pig in the garden.) A sort of 'I wonder what my children would make of this if they were here' kind of thing.
Some of the notes don't seem like something you'd write down. Very stream of consciousness. It could be something he was thinking or imagining on that date. Or maybe the dates are subjective and the man is confused. The notes are symbolic of his memories coming back to him, but because he's so unstable, the dates are mixed up.
I read them mostly the same way; that they are more "thoughts from this date" than actual writings.
(09-11-2013, 12:50 AM)General Consensus Wrote: It was the August 30th 1899 letter, about the receiving of a crate with a body inside. Oswald describes "It is humanoid in shape, but has suffered severe skeletal deformity. Remnants of leather straps encase the torso, which is deformed, with evidence of muscle mass and displacement."
A Servant Grunt?
About the Servant Grunt, I think I saw him drowned/dead in the Bilge.
where is the bildge? I didn't see it. Is it the sewers? If it is then I didn't see a servent grunt at all
(09-11-2013, 02:36 AM)bluel0bster Wrote:
(09-11-2013, 12:50 AM)General Consensus Wrote: It was the August 30th 1899 letter, about the receiving of a crate with a body inside. Oswald describes "It is humanoid in shape, but has suffered severe skeletal deformity. Remnants of leather straps encase the torso, which is deformed, with evidence of muscle mass and displacement."
Pretty sure it was referring to one of the pigmen, grunts weren't especially muscular.
As far as references to the first game, the most obvious is the Compound X stuff. A letter specifically mentions it being made of, "Brennenburg Infusion (or something like that) Vitae" and some other compound. Also, the reference to an "Orb" (with a capital 'O' interestingly) is a big one.
Also, I may have found the Brennenburg coat of arms. Probably wishful thinking, but this just seemed a little too out of place. I'm curious if anybody can confirm this to actually be a connection to Brennenburg:
Spoiler below!
I think that's it. I remember seeing it always covered by blood in the dark in TDD which made it hard to see. I'm not sure eitherbit iknow birds are on it
(09-11-2013, 02:36 AM)bluel0bster Wrote:
(09-11-2013, 12:50 AM)General Consensus Wrote: It was the August 30th 1899 letter, about the receiving of a crate with a body inside. Oswald describes "It is humanoid in shape, but has suffered severe skeletal deformity. Remnants of leather straps encase the torso, which is deformed, with evidence of muscle mass and displacement."
Pretty sure it was referring to one of the pigmen, grunts weren't especially muscular.
As far as references to the first game, the most obvious is the Compound X stuff. A letter specifically mentions it being made of, "Brennenburg Infusion (or something like that) Vitae" and some other compound. Also, the reference to an "Orb" (with a capital 'O' interestingly) is a big one.
Also, I may have found the Brennenburg coat of arms. Probably wishful thinking, but this just seemed a little too out of place. I'm curious if anybody can confirm this to actually be a connection to Brennenburg:
Spoiler below!
I think that's it. I remember seeing it always covered by blood in the dark in TDD which made it hard to see. I'm not sure eitherbit iknow birds are on it
(This post was last modified: 09-24-2013, 12:03 AM by Doomed316.)
Journal Entries | Massive Spoilers!
I'm sure this will make the discussion a lot easier for everyone!
These were taken from the english.lang file in the install directory of the game (\redist\config\lang_main\). I arranged them into a BBCode-friendly format for ease of use. The entry titles, as they are written in the english.lang file, are displayed in green, with each level's respective entries divided into subsections with orange headers. They are all listed in the same order in which they appear in the english.lang file.
Notes will be posted in a moment! The text is too large to fit into one post.
Spelling mistakes left intact
Mansion
Spoiler below!
Hint_Mansion1A Fever Dream
I wake alone, to a house in silence. That missing sound of children playing is like a dark and fecund sepulchre, beckoning me to begin a descent to the loam where surely only bodies may be found. No matter. - my children call and I shall answer. I will find them.
Hint_Mansion2Attics and Nurseries
But they slept in the attic when they were babes-in-arms, and perhaps they have hidden there now? I remember I insisted upon it, midway between my bedroom and my office.
Hint_Mansion3The Weeping Rooms
Where once we sat to weep Lily's passing, under weapons that cannot slay the angels to retrieve her from heaven. Look beyond the paintings, Oswald, where once you watched her bathe. The children must have discovered those secret places and taken refuge there.
Mansion Two
Spoiler below!
Hint_MansionTwo1Grand Hall
That voice on the telephone, he speaks as if he knows me and indeed I seem to remember him. Like a twin pulled away from the other at birth, I feel we are entwined, though I cannot conceive of how. I am a drowning man grasping for the surface within my own house. Beneath me, I know there are splendid architectures hidden in the dark, if I can only find the entrances.
Hint_MansionTwo2On Bears and Bathtubs
And after the party, she took my arm and said "but darling, however did you get from the trophy room to the guest bathroom so quickly? Everyone considers you quite the magician!" My darling Lillibeth, my father's house has many rooms, and as for mine...well, it also has its secret chambers.
Hint_MansionTwo3A Curious Discovery
Metal ticking as it cools and contracts. This must be the strange machine my new friend told me of. If my children discovered this place, it is entirely conceivable they strayed downwards, delighted in their discovery. Very well, it seems my route is predestined. The descent begins!
Cellar
Spoiler below!
Hint_Cellar1Trapped!
Was it a trick? That voice on the phone, who seems so close to my own, who seems to know me so well, does he lead me for a nefarious purpose of his own secret devising? But do I have a choice? Even though his motives are unknown to me, I must find my boys. I will follow the machinery down to the very core of the earth if it will lead me to Edwin and Enoch
Hint_Cellar2The saboteur has been this way
Intriguing. The gates are far too heavy for a man to lift and are instead hoisted aloft by a chain coiled about a tube that appears to be spun by motors connected to these electrical switches. Whilst the fuse is blown, the motor cannot be spun, and the gates will remain an impenetrable barrier to progress.
Hint_Cellar3Barrel Contraption
These barrels must be dropped by a mechanism somewhere in the complex. No complex mechanisms here, I think, more a case of finding the winch. That they have been raised to prevent access only fires my curiosity further. What he cannot break, our saboteur apparently seeks to hide.
Hint_Cellar4More electrical sabotage
Another confounded fuse box. The fellow is thorough in his sabotage, if somewhat repetitive. The stench from these barrels is quite discomforting. I would certainly hope that whatever chemistry this room is designed to store is not a defining feature of the flood that threatens my children.
Hint_Cellar5The path is clear...
It seems this chemical processor is merely one part of a much larger complex. No easy route for me, then. I will follow my fever, the calls of my children wherever they may lead me, as I move further into this strange empire.
Alley
Spoiler below!
Hint_Alley1The Factory Offices
All the suggestions of a large workforce, yet no actual signs of life. It is every bit as if someone has attempted to carefully create the illusion of a working factory complex, yet this facade, when examined closely, is clearly just a falsification. But I must put aside my anxieties, quell the unease that pits my stomach and continue on my path.
Hint_Alley2Pumping Station
It appears to be some kind of fuelling station. I have seen automobiles demonstrated at Mr Yarham and Mr Simmon's works, but the smell here is all wrong. This is not petroleum, of that I am sure. Everything suggests to me that this machine must be significant in some way.
Hint_Alley3Holy Orders
This church is connected to the plant - how odd. However, it does suggest another route into the main part of the facility, given the locked doors around the fuelling station. The truck blocks my way however, almost as if the saboteur knew that I might consider this alternative entrance.
Hint_Alley4A Strange Container
This canister looks as if it may fit the fuel pump I saw earlier. It certainly carries the same fetid, unholy reek. I will not think of that which I saw pass me in its cage, I will not gaze again into that dark machine room. A more immediate task presents itself, and the opportunity perhaps to gain access to St Dunstan's.
Hint_Alley5A Fast Getaway!
Dear sweet Lord of all that is good and holy! I must make my escape, grasp this container and its putrid contents and flee this place before that creature, that nearly-man returns. I will head for the church, surely such an abomination could not follow onto hallowed ground!
Church
Spoiler below!
Hint_Church1Inside St Dunstan's
We sat here, I remember, we sat in our black and we mourned and we prayed and we bowed our heads. How I hated God then, how I spurned Him. If this is our Lord, this pig who robs me of my wife, then I refute his embrace. I will carve a new God for us all. Such madness, such a fool I was. If such blasphemous ravings had remained within me, I would be doomed. But even here, I feel the machine throb beneath the flags and I know my path awaits me...
Hint_Church2A Cryptic Clue
Some kind of mechanism. A secret and infernal one no doubt. The missing candlestick is clearly the answer. But why, this I cannot fathom. Why hide secret machines in a place of prayer? And where are the faithful? Why are there drag marks about the altar, as if someone was pulled away?
Hint_Church3Infernal Machinery
The engine fires, the flames are stoked. I hear steam in the walls, vibrations upon the very air. My heart falters at the prospect of throwing the lever and exposing the workings of this dark contraption. But my children beckon me on and I cannot fail them!
Hint_Church4A Hellish Portal
It appears I have no choice. Thus I descend and may God have mercy upon my soul. If this is my Bedlam, and I am to be cast as Matthews, then I will wear that mantle for the sake of my boys, and face whatever horrors lie beneath the altar.
Factory
Spoiler below!
Hint_Factory1The Mandus Processing Company
My soul shudders at what I have seen, but at last I have reached the main part of the factory. Now onwards, downwards, to find those floodwaters and drain them away. Like Moses, I will cleave the waters and lift my little darlings clear of its vile cradle.
Hint_Factory2Lily's Arms are Made of Steel, Lily's Arms are Silent
The pistons are silent, the plant is at rest. I must poke the hornet's nest to open my way, I fear. The scale of these engines suggests a far greater works than is visible from the surface, so my friend must be correct and the larger part of this plant is underground. We are close to the Thames, no wonder flooding is such a risk.
Hint_Factory3Fire and Steel
The fires are stoked. Assuming the same architect is responsible here as with the chemical plant, I surmise that a centralised control system regulates and operates the pistons. It should be a simple matter of finding it, and hoping the saboteur relented after simply extinguishing the fires.
Hint_Factory4The Descent Continues!
What did that dark voice instruct me to do? Under the pistons, into the tunnels and on to the bilge pumps. And if the doors should be locked, I will have to find another means of descent. I cannot trust him, but my path is set. I shall ignore those noises... that snuffling, those shuffling steps below me, I will brave whatever lurks beneath and I will save them!
Tunnels
Spoiler below!
Hint_Tunnels1Sabotage!
Bruised and battered, but alive. I have survived the saboteur's best efforts. He and I are now locked in an epic struggle. But I am driven to find my family, and I will prevail. Ignore the madness about me, do not consider what cruel and unspeakable acts have been committed here. Find the way to the bilge, drain the flood, free your children.
Hint_Tunnels2Maintenance Access
There is clearly another passage beyond the locked gates. It seems I have a choice of approach. The padlock is old but firm, and after that fall, I cannot summon the strength to break it open. Perhaps I can find another way...
Hint_Tunnels3The Centrifuge
It's some form of bizarre mixing device for chemical compounds, and it positively reeks of the foul fluids I have seen too often before. It is clearly a compound, some volatile bastard of two composite ingredients. I should wager I would find them close by.
Hint_Tunnels4A Heady Brew
I have the compound. It hisses and steams in its container like some living thing, a witches jelly to burn and corrode. The container is made from glass - a strange choice unless there is some particular reason why the metal that pervades everywhere else cannot be brought into contact with this so-called Compound X. I should investigate further for clues.
Sewers
Spoiler below!
Hint_Sewers1The Flooded Tunnels
My mysterious friend is correct, the sewers are indeed flooded. To descend further I will have to find the local sluice pumps to drop the water levels. The smell is almost unbearable, it makes me gag. Why should the saboteur have flooded the tunnels though? What did he hope to achieve?
Hint_Sewers2Mandus, postdiluvian
That's done it! Now I can enter the strange decontamination chamber once again and move onwards! The waters are pushed back, making the way to the bilge clear, where I can divert the remainder of this filthy torrent back into the Thames where it belongs and clear the path to the centre of the machine.
Hint_Sewers3A Nest of Wretches
Dear God, a whole nest of these foul creatures... no mind, my instincts have drawn me thus far and I am sure somewhere in this dank complex is a means of further descent. I will not see their faces as they go about their dark business. And yet... and yet, I watch them sleep and eat and play and they are so very human, so very childlike. And I will not think of what I have seen, of the chairs and the cages, and I will not think of how such monsters may be scuplted.
Bilge
Spoiler below!
Hint_Bilge1The Pump Rooms
These must be the bilge pumps. I am at the heart of the saboteur's efforts. In order to keep his flood in place, he must have disabled these vast pumps. But he was clearly rushed, thus far he has left most of his work incomplete, his clumsy efforts reduced to simply switching off all he could find. If I can locate the controls, the remedy will be simple.
Hint_Bilge2Valves and Pipes
Another pump. It seems once again I must engage it. I cannot help but feel I am trapped in some great game, forced to undertake endless herculean labors for the promised reward of my darling children!
Hint_Bilge3The saboteur strikes once more!
Well, well. My nemesis, my shadowy predecessor has exceeded my expectations. A vital cog is missing and I cannot start the pump without it. It will be nearby, of that I am certain. But I hear noises about me and I know I am not alone. One of the lurkers of the dark, I can smell it's hot breath in this funereal air. I must tread carefully as I locate the missing part.
Hint_Bilge4Finding the Children
The flood is drained. I have prevailed. The saboteur is beaten. My heart pounds with excitement, even as my head spins and shudders in feverous anticipation. How this machine now throbs about me, sensing its rebirth is imminent. The final descent beckons me to enter, as Lily once lay on our wedding bed and summoned me into manhood.
Reactor
Spoiler below!
Hint_Reactor1The Heart of the Machine
And when they first said "Daddy" my heart was molten, as if blood frozen upon the ground were held to the sun to thaw and slop. And they were inseperable, always together, one soul in two bodies, and my love was all consuming. I would die for you, I whispered to their sleeping faces, I would kill. I would set this world to ruin to protect you. I have fought through dark tunnels, great engines, the foulest of beasts. I have set my covenant and drained this flood, and I am come for you now, my darling boys.
Hint_Reactor2A Final Act of Sabotage
The bastard has been here too! This is the epicentre of his meddlings - this is where it began, and this is where it will end. I will seek the source of this obstruction and then I will render this sabotage impotent once and for all!
Hint_Reactor3Ignition Control
Now to find the ignition controls and start the machine once more! Elated, I stride forth upon these catwalks. I am coming my darlings, I have almost saved you!
Engine
Spoiler below!
Hint_Engine1Betrayed!
So it is done. The saboteur was me, and the voice on the telephone was him. But what of us? How do we connect? Surely I cannot be responsible for all I see about me? I cannot remember, I cannot remember! All I can grasp is a moment when the world split into two pieces and the innards of humanity fell from an orifice torn agape into my open, bifurcated heart.
Hint_Engine2Steam Vents
All about me, the thunder of machinery, the blasts of boiling steam. I cannot pass without fear of scalding. I am a lobster, cracked, my circulation stagnated, my vital motions impeded. The steam will boil my whole unless I can find a way to shut it off.
Hint_Engine3Escape through the pipes
If in the throes of my evil, I sent children into the pipes to clean them, then it seems likely there is another entrance I can use to escape this noxious maelstrom of engines. I will ignore the burning in my nostrils from the fumes of that godless Compound X that fuels these machines, and I will become the saboteur - I will destroy the pressure system, enabling me to enter the pipes without fear!
Hint_Engine4Mandus is the Saboteur!
It seems that the pressure system is indeed the Achilles Heel of this facility, something I clearly did not realise in my first clumsy attempt at sabotage. If I re-route the steam, I can wreak havoc!
Hint_Engine5The Pressure Regulator
Some form of steam regulator - I'll wager if I disable it, the damage caused by the rushing steam pressure could be catastrophic - certainly enough to force a temporary stalling of this entire engine. That should cause the steam pressure to drop. Mandus, you clever old goat, I can feel this horror, this grief, this betrayal boil into fury. I will not stand, I will not be undertrodden. If this machine is my air loom, I am the overman.
Hint_Engine6Into the Pipes and out of the Engines
Now quickly, through the pipes before the pressure returns and they fill with boiling corrosive steam - I sense the machine snarl itself about me, its unholy, inhuman mind coil and slick and send its dark tendrils through its conduits to repair the damage. I will return to the streets, I will fetch help, and I shall lead the people upon the factory, burn it to the ground, and seal this evil place underground forever!
Streets
Spoiler below!
Hint_Streets1London's Burning, London's Burning
God forgive me, what I have unleashed! I stand and smell the burning city. I see ash upon the wind. I hear the roars of the sickening beasts and the screams as they fall upon the city and drag its people below for the slaughter. Now I begin to understand what the other composite ingredient of Compound X must be. And I also understand this: it is my responsibility now. I must find a way back to the heart of the machine and complete what I started!
Hint_Streets2Streets and Alleys
There are too many of these damnations, these beasts loose on the street to all have come from the engine rooms! As I emerged, I counted three of the damnable pneumatic lifts, which suggests the machine has been planning this for some time, smuggling routes to the surface all about this neighbourhood. If my bearings are correct, beyond the alley I should stand directly over the ignition rooms - and I will wager that if I find a pneumatic there, it will carry me back to the machine's heart.
Pigline
Spoiler below!
Hint_Pigline1Counter-Attack!
I have returned, an angel of vengeance, a saboteur once more! I will find a way to stop this vast enterprise of slaughter! Enough destruction opened the heart before, confused the machine enough to spring its locks and secret doorways. I must cause it great shock, stab its eyes, poke hot wire into its ears, hammer to its teeth and push glass into every orifice. Then it will gasp and in that gasp, I will scuttle into its throat and stab its heart from inside!
Hint_Pigline2Compound X and the Coolant Tanks
This vile concoction, this Compound X, it is the arterial blood of this horror. Boiled, it creates the steam to drive pistons, but here, it is freezing, and flows about the components to keep them cool. Why should it be that the deeper I go, the cooler it becomes? What great process generates such heat that the machine must quench it with a cocktail of blood and effluent?
Hint_Pigline3Coolant Pumps
I sense an opportunity, my first strike. Impeding these cogs with a large enough object should jam the flow of coolant, causing a pressure build up that will split the pipes and rupture the tanks.
Hint_Pigline4At the Spark Plug
This electrification must be lethal to the touch - now to confound the machine and flood the system, this time not with sewage but boiling, sparking liquid death!
Hint_Pigline5The Path to the Tripery
It is critically injured now, I am sure of that. It jeers no more. I feel it shudder around me, a wounded animal pressed flat to the ground. I feel it is afraid of me, and I hate it all the more, as I hate myself for unleashing it. My head pounds with blood, my teeth vibrate, I retch and burn with fever. I am an angel of death, descending to smother the firstborn for the death of the two that came after.
Tesla One
Spoiler below!
Hint_TeslaOne1In My Dreams I walk with my Children
I walk tunnels where no human has trod before, I am sure of that. It is just me and him now. Frost forms on my coat sleeves, the deathly still and the freezing air tell me I am close.
Hint_TeslaOne2Nikolai's Golem
I am the architect. I am the saboteur. I am the man who murdered his children. I am the man who stood in the duck pond with his dead wife in his arms, wishing the water would bring her back to him. I am the voice on the telephone, I am the butcher who skinned the Professor and beat God to death against the air loom. Only one question remains now. Am I also The Machine?
Tesla Two
Spoiler below!
Hint_TeslaTwo1Mandus is Alone
I search for instruction, for advice, for help in my goals, but in return the system mocks me. Simpleton, it says, you must find your own answers now.
(This post was last modified: 12-23-2014, 08:05 AM by Paddy™.)
Note_MansionDresserJune 24th 1899
In my dreams, I see a man, dressed in jaguar skins and feathered like a blooded saint. What came from the heart lubricated us, it crushed evil under its tread and liberated us all. The foetid heat of the jungle, mirrored somewhere behind my forehead. My temple pounds, the blood boils in my skull. It feels as if there is something alive there; a rat, a damn rat gnawing through my brains, eating its way out into the world. Even the laudanum will not quell its endless hunger. I hear my children playing in the attic but it fills me with terror, not love. What desperate thoughts are these?
Note_MansionAtticMapFebruary 14th 1899
Yes, he said, I know these ruins.
He was a shabby fellow, all rotten with some malodorous disease. I caught him looking at me strangely, as if what he really wanted to know was how I knew of them. Biting back the temptation to box his ears for the impudence, I simply smiled and told him that my family's library contained intriguing travel books. The illiterate oaf did not understand that of course. He agreed to lead us anyway.
I have told the children, truly, this will be an extraordinary adventure. If those old stones hold the financial benefits I predict, it will be merely the first of many.
Note_MansionKillingRoomClockwork and the Soul
Replacement is dissatisfactory. So like a pump.
Better the intestinal canal, like a tapeworm, already hosting intrusion and the breed. Brass better than copper, more resistant. Filaments sewn to bone hold.
Marrow pipe removal with needle potential. Composite replacement straightforward, will respond to electromagnetic inducement to increase yield rate, serum provides accelerated resetting resulting in naturalised movement within two to three days. Subjects still require severing of frontal lobes to reduce emotional distress upon reactivation.
Damn, damn it. Damn this wretched soul. If only it were clockwork.
Note_MansionChildrenAtticEdwin and Enoch's diary, October 11th 1899
Daddy says there won't be a Christmas this year, he is much too busy. Nanny says we must not disturb him, he is ever so busy. He is gone for work before she wakes us and often we are asleep before he returns. We found a bird in the garden with a broken wing. We gave it to Nanny, who said it was a filthy thing and hit it with a rolling pin. Later, we crept downstairs to bury the body when everone was asleep. There was a pig in the garden, we heard it snuffling about. Then Daddy came and said we had to come inside straight away. He was furious, but we think he'd been crying again.
Note_MansionPianoDieses Herz
Schlaf mein Kind, schlaf
Dein Herz schlägt unter meiner Hand
Und ich wiege Dich
in diesen offenen Wunden mein
Dieses Herz
Sanft weiter durch mich
Und Dein Herz gehört mir
Und ich wiege Dich
in dieser verdenden Liebe
Dieses Herz
Träum diese heilige Wunde
wird bluten
und die Engel trauern
nur um Dich schlafen zu sehen
Mein Kind, schlaf und ich
werde Dich wiegen.
Note_MansionTrophyRoomDecember 20th 1899
I am to have a visitor, the distinguished Professor A. He is come to ascertain my mental wellbeing after my prolonged absence from the club. But I am not stupid. He is here to spy for them. When they stalked The Ripper, he was often called to pontificate upon lacerations and missing organs. And now he comes to me, to doff and wheedle and 'my dear sir' and 'but you must still grieve' and 'perhaps just a quick look at your engines, the triumph of the age'. He knows nothing of loss, nothing of sacrifice.
But to refuse? That would simply poke the hornet's nest, invite a swarm of interlopers and thieves. I must entertain this buffoon and submit to his intrusion. Perhaps I should show him the tripery. See whether his stomach, so trained by rummaging in the innards of clumsily vivisected whores, is strong enough to stare into the real engines of his golden age. I may even introduce him to Jack, or his sons at least. We have stronger locks on the windows now, and we bring their toys to them.
Note_MansionBearEdwin and Enoch's diary, October 3rd 1899
Daddy says we're not allowed to play with the animals anymore. We were playing hide and seek with Cook and he came and shouted at us, just as we were going to hide behind Mr Grumpy Teddy. Cook says it's because of the guns in there, but he always lets us help polish them, so it can't be that. Anyway, that room is haunted. If you sneak around there at night, you can hear the ghosts in the walls behind the cases. They are often angry, or that's how it sounds. We think that's why you can hear them rattling their chains and slamming doors and things like that. We don't like it in there anyway.
Note_MansionOfficeNovember 7th 1898
The bank is refusing credit, the ignorant swine. I sit alone at night and weep, once the children and servants are safely asleep, when they cannot hear me. My darling, how I need you now. They say I have squandered my fortune, that my investment in these latest machines has ruined the family name. What? That I was to remain a local butcher?
What are these two arms compared to the multitude that can be applied, without pay, without tire, by adapting the mechanisms we find in the looms and the mills. But, if the bank has its way, it will all come to nothing. If they come for the house I swear I will kill them. I will kill them all. I will take my rifle... my rifle...
Note_MansionBackOfficeNovember 29th 1898
Of the few books to survive after those degenerate peasants fired my Great Uncle's castle were his travel diaries. He talks of archaeological digs in Siam, Arabia, which yielded treasures of quite extraordinary worth. And, most interestingly, he hints at those yet to be found, in the Americas where civilisations were consumed by the jungles. Of course, it all makes sense - those conquistadors were only driven so far by their faith - El Dorado did the rest. And yet, there is more. "Find the Temple of the Stone Moon", he writes, "and the world will never more be hungry, and neither shall you."
My mind is made up. Damn the creditors. I shall leave my work unfinished and I shall take to the Americas, and I will return with my soul richer and my pockets bulging.
Note_MansionRockingManRoomOld Sallie i' the Doll's Cottager
O, She come a-snuffling by night round ye door
With her pretty apron right down to the hoof
And her ringlets are fair and her eyes china blue
Like a half-buried hand in the wintery snow-o
Like a hand in the wintery snow
And she'll beg you for apples through the window ajar
Her face be all hidden but her eyes shine aflame
And though you'll be tempted her bosom so fair
She'll snatch you and catch you and eat out your heart-o
She'll catch you and eat out your heart
So look to your manners come the eve of the year
Lest Sallie comes calling for apples my dear
And know that some doors ne'er should open wide
Take heed of your father and keep safe inside
Disobedient children make Sallie her pies-o
And warm Sallie's beastly insides
Note_MansionSwitchboardHouse Systems
1, Bathwater Electrification
2, Marrow Disposal
3, Opiate Dispensers
4, The Lord Austin Dean Innard Scoop
5, Iron Butler
6, Billiard Room Snare
7-8, The Gag Throttles
9, Vanity Cosh
10, Master Bedroom Tenderiser
11-12, Teeth Removal Spoons
13, Upper Window Lockdown
14, Mr Nilsson's Intestinal Clampings
15, Charnal Chute
16-18 Draining and Hosing
19, Anal Parasol Extender
20, The Howell Anti-Puckering Pump
21-22, Bolster Blades
23, Piano Lid Finger Snare
24, Old Sallie in the Doll's Cottager
25, Tramp Catcher
Cellar
Spoiler below!
Note_Cellar1DeskJune 3rd 1899
I realise now that my fear of dirt stems from the disease I contracted climbing those lost jungle temples. It is as if those clean places, so free of humanity's filth, imprinted upon my soul and left it fragile to what I find here.
Fear is what keeps us all in our places, and the fear of the flesh, the ruin of the flesh is the greatest of them all. I am sickened, I am ruined, but I will build such machines to contain this plague and heal us all.
A new century is upon us.
Note_Cellar2WorkBenchAugust 19th 1899
Von Reichenbach writes of the Odic Force, whilst that ignorant charlatan Blavatsky pontificated upon the soul. They are both cretins. To think one could strive for such great heights without wading first through puke and innard, without standing upon an architecture of bones! Montezuma was the wiser. But here, in our temples of steel, I have witnessed the severed head of a man, recently trampled to death by a runaway carriage, immersed in a solution of the Brennenburg compound open his eyes, and cry "Oh where are my legs Sir? Where is my body?" We are breaking through the barriers of death itself. Oh my dead darling Lily, it is too late for you, but I promise you this: I will save our children from death and, if need be, I will wrench them back from the blackness with this wonderful concoction!
Note_CellarOffice1August 22nd 1899
In America, they talk of building their cities to the skies. To me this seems folly. But perhaps it is simply a case of a nation founded without a history of its own. We walk upon our histories; they are compacted into the very loam beneath our feet. The engineers we employed talked of this. They talked of how, when building the underground trains they would often come across older tunnels criss-crossing the capital.
What palaces lie buried beneath us? We are digging, digging, excavating and re-appropriating what we find. At the centre of the planet, my architect tells me, there is a great iron ball. It is the egg of the world.
Note_CellarPumpRoomSeptember 11th 1899
Our power source provides surplus energy for our needs, and the architect has assured me that the excess is being stored safely deep within the factory. I have been as far as the entrance to the storage chambers, but it is clearly hazardous to proceed further. Our workers enter and work there, but they do not last long. We dispose of the bodies beneath the chapel, in an old medieval plague pit, which seems appropriate. They are covered with burns and strange growths upon the skin that blister and split when they are moved. The smell is quite overwhelming.
All we require for the new power source is a steady supply of clean water, which we are diverting from the sewers. Our entire enterprise is thus built upon human waste.
The power source generates substantial heat, which rises through the chimney complex and warms the tunnels for the workers. Provided there is not too much blood in their excrement, it functions as a perfect closed system.
Note_CellarOffice2May 1st 1899
But then, what if they could stand upright and walk as men? What if the brute were harnessed thus? Would they sing, would they find their own God?
I have seen these things and I will tell you now, no. No they will not. But they will happily accept fealty to a God thrust upon them, and worship it thus given. In this, I realised, they are no different to the masses. They are much the same as us.
Once this irrevocable threshold is passed, I understand that we too are shackled and must be set free. To free the man, we cut the man. In order to cross that great evolutionary line, it must first be painted upon the ground.
Church
Spoiler below!
Note_ChurchFactoryWallOctober 11th 1899
We integrate the very latest knowledge of chemistry, using low levels of a laudanum derivative in feed to subdue the product even before the initiation of the process. This means that when we drag them from holding pens onto the line, they are less likely to panic and damage machine components, other products or themselves.
This section of the belt is sheathed in rubber and kept well lit to maintain good spirits, and we have actually found that the intelligent placement of gramophones and simple acoustic amplification tubes around the line means we can use music to further soothe the product.
We find Debussy particularly effective in this regard.
Note_ChurchTruckDelivery Schedule
How in blazes are we supposed to meet these damned schedules if even the basic equipment we are provided with simply will not perform its designated function! These cursed new-fangled trucks will only run a fraction of the distance my old nag managed before running out of stinking gasoline. The gaffer says it's fine and there's plenty of pumps to refill them outside the factory walls, but you end up dragging a blessed tank from the truck to the nearest one to refill it, and the one in the storeroom is empty again. I can't be turning that crank handle all day only to find the tank is empty! Well, sod it says I, enough for a night and to my bed I go. It's not like anyone needs access to the bleeding graveyard anyway. Harry, if you get this, I'll meet you in the Damson Templar for a jar.
Note_ChurchLobbyNovember 23rd 1899
Twin candles, bent to the will of the central saint, casting their light to the corners of the chapel. Father Jeremiah I thought could be trusted with the secret, but he is like all of the others. So the old priest has gone to the holding pens with his flock, he says he will enter into our world with them. A shepherd indeed.
Note_ChurchFactoryStoreSeptember 28th 1899
"Imagine", they say "a machine one day that might think like a man!" As if this is to be desired. One might almost boast of creating a man who breeds like a pig. Men and women upon all fours, rutting carelessly, ejaculating their filthy little missives into the streets. Alleys and gutters running freely with the careless spill of their conjoinings. The air thick with the whimperings of lust. Bodies streaked with their own emissions. We have created a world where man is so utterly debased he will spray his seed over passers-by. And yet, this is the condition Babbage aspired to.
No, this is not the machine we seek. Such an entity should be nothing less than a deity, and we would fall upon our knees and worship it. We shall not carve gods to bicker and fornicate, they will exist to clean the world and set us free. I reject Babbage as I reject these men of government. Let the pigs copulate in the gutters whilst they can, we shall scoop them up and ease their ascension soon enough.
Note_ChurchStoreroomA Letter of Heartfelt Thanks from Mrs Tabitha Stepwood
My dear Mr Mandus
I take this opportunity to write to you personally with my sincerest and most heartfelt thanks. Your generosity is an inspiration to us all. Last night I sat the head of the table and watched the orphans happily eating, for once, they will not go to sleep hungry.
This morning, Alice knocked upon my door, and she had made for you this tussie-mussie of dried flowers, which I enclose. Please tell the kind sir, she said, that these were the finest sausages a child ever ate. To see a starveling so rosy-cheeked and well-fattened, well, Sir, it is a miracle most profound. We are indeed in your debt, Mr Mandus, and I am delighted to say that I have spoken with the Governors and they agree that we can proceed with your programme for child labour reform without hesitation. I hope you will find our children full of promise. They will, I assure you sir, make the most wonderful additions to your product line.
Note_ChurchPreistroomFather Jeremiah's Journal, October 1st 1899
They flock to us now, where once I had to walk amongst them, to bring salvation into their lives. Now, drawn by warmth in winter, by the food that Mandus distributes, my church is full and my charges are saved. He walks amongst them and they almost worship him. He will not allow them to work in his factories, claiming that his workforce are specially trained for the new machinery he uses, and that it would be irresponsible, nay unethical, to risk such precious lives as he sees here.
A changed man since Mexico. It is to be praised that in the face of such appalling tragedy, and from the confines of his sickbed, as he is often chained to, he conducts one of the greatest and most benevolent charities in all of London. Not content with the rise to become the dominant food produce business in the land, he distributes his goodwill, his fares, to the poor and they congregate about his kingdom in gratitude.
Note_ChurchPensThese final thoughts
What exhumation is this, what rotten fruit, what be-stitching of parts?
I doubt I will ever be found, yet I leave you this, scrawled in the malodorous half-light, whilst my tormentor shuffles below, my fellow prisoners keen and squeal in the gloam, and where I wait for the knocking upon my cage that signifies it is, finally, my turn to make that dark journey into the interior.
Factory
Spoiler below!
Note_FactoryAboveGroundOctober 17th 1899
Each compartment is ergonomically designed, with a feed-trough at one end, so the product naturally settles into a position ready for the stunning arms to connect to the skull. We use the natural static charge built up by the friction of the carts against the belt to build an electrical charge, which is contained within glass vacuum canisters at the sides of the stunning arm mechanisms and delivered along the stun arms via copper cabling. We have observed that the artificial lightning contained within these canisters seems to calm the product further.
Post-stunning, the line tilts sharply to the vertical, the physics of which tips the stunned product upwards to fall directly onto the hook of the bleeding line. This hook passes normally through the haunch or thigh of the product, and from this point, we dispense with the belt and instead instigate a channelled floor, which creates a funnel allowing blood and by-product excretions to collect and run to the fluid collection tanks.
Note_FactoryOfficeApril 30th 1899
The crate arrived this morning, and I had it delivered directly to the workshop. The body is remarkably preserved, although there is a subtle yet nauseating stench of damp and rot. It is humanoid in shape, but has suffered severe skeletal deformity. Remnants of leather straps encase the torso, which is deformed, with evidence of substantial muscle mass and displacement. It is difficult to ascertain whether this unfortunate is the recipient of some barbarous surgery, or was born deformed and an attempt to force his gnarled body into some semblance of humanity was made. What he is I cannot tell, but I smell the Orb upon him, and suspect my great uncle's presence in his curious condition.
So it can be done. We can reshape the body into a tool, accelerate the processes of Mr Darwin's evolution. But here my great uncle and I part company. He chose men as the subjects of his experiments, but men are difficult to control and rotten with sentimentality. No, we require a new creature for our chattels: loyal, clever, strong, easily sated.
Piston Room
Spoiler below!
Note_PistonRoomOfficeOctober 18th 1899
A series of collecting vents have been installed along the ceiling at this stage of the line. In the process of stunning and bleeding, the product often expels stinking vapours from its digestive system, which can be collected, condensed, and used in the methane boiler to drive the engine as a whole. In this way, the more product is processed, the more power becomes available to the machine, and productivity is actually increased. A simple stroke of genius, but one that encapsulates the benefits of self-regulatory automation.
Note_PistonRoomFloorOctober 21st 1899
The product moves now into the bleeding. A system of spring-loaded blades are arranged here. Tension is built via a series of springs that run along the bleeding line, using the momentum of the product itself to build up the energy for the action ahead. The blades are released at a point of optimum tension as the product passes them. The combination of the speed of release and the sudden stop against the rubber buffers at the side of the line sets the blades spinning rapidly enough to cut the throat of the product. It is a clean, sympathetic and efficient process. The product then continues along the line, and the natural bleeding process is allowed time to occur, the blood collecting in the angled basin at the foot of the line. Secondary springblades are positioned at two further points along the line. Should the mid-level rubber buffers continue to be manipulated, in the form of a semi-bled product thrashing or twitching, these movements automatically form the basis of the spring energy required to send the next bleeding blade into activity.
Tunnels
Spoiler below!
Note_TunnelsLabJuly 15th 1899
In order to facilitate assimilation of tissue groups, a compound is required, or the cells will not bond. Disposal of non-bonded subjects must be immediate and using incineration or we risk continuous animation without form. This is... unpleasant.
A simple compound of one part Brennenburg Infusion Vitae to one part Orgone Monad Disperal fluid is sufficient. This can then be administered intravenously to subjects following re-assembly to maintain bonding. The compound is unstable and highly light reactive - once in the body, the Schumann Lamp can be used to activate the compound, but outside the body is highly corrosive. It can even destroy small quantities of metal.
Note_TunnelsOneAugust 20th 1899
Took delivery of another batch of imbeciles today. They are the sorriest specimens of humanity I have ever seen. No-one asks where they go to. The authorities of Bedlam are simply happy to reduce the over-crowding in their teeming, stinking halls. We measure their skulls, check their teeth. We give them Laudanum to pacify them.
They wait in line, livestock, dull brown eyes and filthy skin. Many soil themselves as they wait.
Into the manipulator they file in silence. I hear the hissing of gas. I hear the dull groaning as teeth are removed, as bones are reset. I hear the pigs screaming. We have removed all the mirrors. After the process, it is their reflections that trouble them the most. Afterwards, when they sleep, I walk amongst them. My children, I whisper to their dreams, you are my children now. I have children once again, and your forms imperfect will be the engines to make my own blood flow again.
Note_TunnelsTwoAugust 4th 1898
More experiments with Compound X. Took the dog and injected it with strychnine. After the expected convulsions and spasming, it died just after midnight. I immersed the body in a large tank of Compound X and introduced an alternating current via induction coil for a period of three and a half minutes. Partial return was induced. However, damage incurred prior to death was retained upon revival, meaning the dog continued in the acute state of strychnine poisoning until I put a bullet in its skull. But drowning? Perhaps, yes. It is after all known to be the kindest of suicides. If one were to drown, replacing the fluid in the lungs with Compound X should theoretically be perfectly possible as a revival method.
Note_TunnelsThreea warning
inflamed it is, burning it does. bleeding from each hole, fore and aft, leaking down my legs, blood and excrement. my lungs are in my vomit, i pass clots of my organs now onto the filthy stone. drink this, he says, and i did drink it, i did do that. because of the changes, they ripple inner me, my teeth sneeze out and scatter like mice in the dark. i cannot find them all, gathered what i can, push them back into my grey gums with my fingers but the nails are all weepy and falling out.
drink it, he says, it'll help the running of the fever, because not us all can take the change. on the other table, a beast under a blanket. i never wanted to see under that, but he drank it too, he passed it under the blanket and i heard it drink. dear god almighty, how can a man shit so much blood and still live?
Note_TunnelsCentrifugeAugust 1st 1899
Where de Laval spins milk into cream, we will spin life into dead flesh. The mixing process takes approximately two minutes, during which time the process emits harmful Curie Radiation. For this reason, centrifuge controls have been placed into a shielded antechamber where it is advised the operator remains until the spin has ceased. At this point Compound X can be extracted and sent, via the pneumatic delivery system to the Laboratory ready for use on subjects.
Sewers
Spoiler below!
Note_SewerPumpRoomOneOctober 22nd 1899
Naturally, once bled, the product must be scalded, dehaired and scraped ready for gambrolling and evisceration. For this, we pass them through the steam reservoir, which is kept at a constant temperature by passing excess high-pressure venting from the engines, via the boiler and series of large copper pipes, into a stone chamber just below the workhouse. At the centre of the machine, there is a component that must be kept at a consistently low temperature, which controls operations of the processing of product throughout the system. Alongside this, refrigeration is of the utmost importance in retaining product quality, and this also requires heat to be removed from certain areas of the machine. Two problems are therefore combined into a single solution: the removal of heat from some areas and the requirements for increased heat in others.
Conducting panels draw heat using the principles of convection regulated by the boiler and sending freezing air along one set of pipes in one direction, and super-heated vapours in another.
Note_SewerPumpRoomTwoDecember 15th 1899
What ungodly temple is this? Beneath the vast boiler, that barnacle bruise, that cacophony, that barely-contained, that swollen heart of hate, what is this stillness, this silence, this palpable air of death I have found.
What clean blue water without a ripple or a blemish, whose light engulfs me so? What rods fall into this water, this metal so unlike brass or steel, a milky sheen to the surface, a white clean like cotton wrapped upon a pole. Why this humming, this dizzying sense of vibration, electricity, power? How can this deep water be so clear, these rods descend into the earth so?
And all around, above, where I stand, the machine as it ever is, dark metal, joints, stairs and gratings. Yet here we suckle at the very stillborn tit of god himself.
Note_SewerPumpRoomThreeFebruary 17th 1899
And I said, look, my darlings, can you see it? And they said Yes, Daddy, Yes, we see it. A tall, weathered cap of a steep sided pyramid, so like those of Eygpt. Stone falling away from the summit, vines crawling about intertwining the stucco serpents that thrive about the steps. A palpable sense of stillness, a weight of forgotten. And this, here, this is where the king sat. And this is where the priests lived. This house, this is the house of the dead. And here, where the sun strikes, this is where they threw the hearts that were not consumed.
No, my darlings, they most certainly were not savages. You see, they believed that the sky could fall on their heads and they truly, truly believed that offering blood was the only way of stopping this from happening.
Perhaps, my darling. Perhaps they were mistaken altogether. Or perhaps their tragedy was they could simply not spill blood enough to prevent the sky from falling in upon them.
Note_SewerExperimentsAugust 1st 1899
Several of the older forms have breached their containment area and escaped into the sewers. They remind me of my limitations - this is no Chelm and I am no Eliyahu, at least, not quite yet. It is the heat generated from keeping the doorway between open that is to blame. We cannot simply pack them about with coolant as we do at the centre where the doorway is. The later versions are kept safe by the freezing temperature of those towers. Up here, where the air is hot and fetid, they become overheated, and their duality tears them asunder, as the other place flies from their cells and their vitae splinters. They live sporadically, torn from one world to the other and back again in violent, unpredictable bursts. For a few seconds they are creatures of this world, then they are torn away and cease to have physical form. This vicious ripping back and forth between worlds has driven them quite insane. I have ordered the affected areas sealed, and will not allow my loyal workers to enter. These are damned places now, the abode of failed experiments, ghosts of fear and spite.
Bilge
Spoiler below!
Note_BilgeEntryOctober 23rd 1899
Newly scalded, the product passes into a section of the line framed with steel brushes. The natural process of abrasion removes any hairs and tougher sections of skin, and at the same time, the forelegs are removed with a further blade powered by a compressed steam duct from the scalding room.
The flow and change of air around the entire system creates differential pressure. A complex arrangement of pipes converges this into a single vacuum chamber, to which is attached a funnel. As the product passes the funnel mouth, the entire viscera are removed, via the anus, in one clean and efficient process by the meeting of the two areas of pressure. This process causes the vacuum chamber to seal once more, building a new charge of pressure for the following product. The viscera flow into the tripery vats to meet head, feet, hairs and any skin lost in the scalding process.
Note_BilgeMainPumpMarch 8th 1899
I have stood before myself, reflected in the cracking mirror of my own life. What forms are these that swim in my dreams? What shadows cast by the lonely temples? As I lay dying on the stone steps, all I saw was a great serpent wound around the pistons and pumps, wounded by the crush of the wheels.
This heart, this vast beating. Stilled now, time and jungle about me. I dreamt of underground, subterranean, an enterprise. To unlock the passion, the coming century. Must we be crushed underfoot by metal feet not mine? Surely this machine can be better, it can serve us as we serve it; it can save us all. I will build to the core of the earth, invert Babel as I am a Midas chained.
Nuclear Boiler
Spoiler below!
Note_NuclearBoilerOneMarch 15th 1899
Curled into my bunk, all sick and sweat ridden. They clean my room about me, but I can only hear the voice from within that gentlest of stones. It sings to me and I dream of a great machine.
We will build a new world from the ruins of the old. We will plant flowers in the rotten ribcage and let them grow to hold the sky from falling. I remember how it whispered to me, as we rolled sick and heaving. And I remember when we pulled into Southampton and we both wept, for it was every bit as much a desecration as had been sung to me.
And then we came to London and I set it upon the mantelpiece, and went into the house and gathered the servants and set on re-crafting them, and then I went into the garden and buried those tiny shattered skulls under the weeping bulges of the rhododendrons.
Engine
Spoiler below!
Note_EngineUrchinsAugust 31st 1899
Children really are the most wonderful, useful creatures! The unfortunates from the orphanage have proved indispensible in cleaning the larger steam pipes. It appears that matter from the slaughtering process may indeed vapourise at source, but drifts like dust through the air and lodges in the pipes, causing them to foul. Periodically, we shut the pressure down and send one of our pixies into the pipes to scrub the reconstituted fat away. Armed with just a shortened broom, our little explorers venture into the dark.
Of course, we can only keep pressure down for a short period, so they must be fast, or they risk being trapped and boiled by the superheated vapours when they rush back into the system. Then we will be sending their comrades in afterwards to scrape free the cooling mess. The survivors tell me you can reach all manner of places within the complex through the pipes. I smile, tell them I am so proud. And then feed them to the pigs.
Note_EngineCotDecember 1st 1899
There is a spoon of medicine, I says, and it's a silver spoon what you did get born holding, ever so painful for mummy dear but grasped so hard it was in a little screaming red fist. Later you used your spoon to dig a hole in the garden to get all the way to Mexico, and then you did eat worms with your spoon on the way to stay fat.
This spoon was the same you gave your twins, then you used it to dig a hole to their clockwork souls and you ate up their hearts like soup on the way to keep you fat.
Fat little mole, where will you dig next, I asks, you and your little silver spoon made from the silver spine of your children, and wrapped in the hair of your dearly departed?
Dear Sweet Jesus, my darling Lilibeth, what am I become?
Note_EnginePipesif you are reading this
then you have got as far as i did so read quick and you may get further. minnie, she told us before they took her down, theres a secret way through. she told us she met two boys in the pipe, no older than us, but dressed like little gents proper they were, but already there in the pipes they was, like they'd always been there. they told her to follow and then they could get all the children free, they knew the way to a secret door that would get us out. she was going to follow them, but then they sounded the steam bell, so she had to get out or she'd have been boiled up like the others. of the two boys, she never saw them again, but i heard others have seen them too and they've said the same thing.
minnie said look for the signs the boys have left. they said they'll always be here, waiting to help us all home.
Note_EngineLift29th December 1899
Can a man construct himself anew? Can a man, on realising who he is, on what he has become, tear himself apart down to the bricks and begin again? Are our souls just this, tiny cogwheels and clockwork, and intricate machines to serve a function that, upon reflection, we might set to a new task? Can a man, defined by his actions, defined by that which he now finds abhorrent, set to sabotaging this body his machine, until those children of his soul turn in new motion, and he may awake to a new sun, a new year, a new century with hope in his heart? As I reach my hands to the exposed wires I ask myself this - is redemption possible for such a creature as I? And if not, then surely better to die amongst my creations than to continue to live as a monster.
Streets
Spoiler below!
Note_StreetsOneOctober 25th 1899
No-one misses the poor. Round up some orphans and the world will thank you for it. Disappear a whore and a gentleman applauds you. Cull a beggar and a lady walks safely again.
I hate them. I hate them more than any of the others. This privilege, this pretension. These so called leaders, these pillars of society, these rich and fanciful. They wear their filth on the inside, but they are no less dirty.
I have plans for them all. We will feed them and then we will feed from them.
Note_StreetsTwoOctober 24th 1899
We have set aside an entire wing of the mansion for their parties, we invite them from near and far, and we guzzle them in with fine wine and the finest cuts in all of London. My god Mandus, but these chops are rather divine, who is your butcher?
Feed them up, for the wine and the grains will also lend a character to the product, keep the flesh relaxed. Opium in the champagne and gravy. A hog roast every night for the Duke and the Duchess! An actress battered and sliced! An artisan in every mouthful! An importer of fine teas stewed in his own leaves! They bicker and breed under the table, by the fireplace, on the carpet stained with wine and fat, whilst long dead nobles of deformed grace and cold stare watch them from gilded frames along the crooked walls.
We will hose it down later, as we shovel them into our machine.
Note_StreetsThreeOctober 25th 1899
A different strategy for the poor, who mistrust the offered hand, the plate of steaming offal. For them, we are become the disappearance in the night.
More efficient and less visible to picking off stragglers and strays is the removal of entire communities in one swoop. Let the ground open under them and fall to the maw. Last month, by activating the doors at shortly after midnight on a balmy Saturday, fifty-seven individual products were obtained in a single catch.
I have instructed the workhouse to begin plans for a street festival before the end of summer, to pack out the narrow lanes with a teeming throng, with hundreds of pairs of feet. We have begun to assemble a network of false streets and have extended the holding pens in preparation. A second pigline will be added to enable the system to cope with the increase in traffic.
Note_StreetsBasement23rd December 1899
I stand and look at myself in the mirror, penis in hand and my reflection grins at me and his mouth is full of the sulphur mustards. "Vain fool", he sneers, "Are you really so very different? Do you genuinely believe your works of evil are any greater than the rest of them? You are simply a weak man, a product of his age, the same as any other. This is Empire, cretin, this is the killing idiocy, the natural result of this social Darwinism. If you are evil, then this world is evil. You just let the blood run in the street rather than hiding it in the poorhouse. You hold the blade and slide it home yourself, you do not pay a man to do this for you where you cannot see it. If you are evil, at least yours is an honest evil and that alone makes you Ubermensch". And thus I wash my hands and take to bed.
Pigline
Spoiler below!
Note_PiglineOneOctober 25th 1899
No machine blades for fatty bishop and gluttony heiress. Prime cuts all for the sorting bins, and the very best, as always, back in the dumbwaiter to the kitchens above, to be stewed and plumped and gravied and breadcrumbed and returned to the table for the next night's feast. And not every night, you see, although we have begun to increase the frequency of the final act. Unlike the poor, the rich will be missed, given time. But we will continue to spoil and ready them, and our fine foods are now exported to mansions and lodges across London. And it has been noted in The Times of late, how rather overweight the great and the good are becoming, with their diets of fine wine and rich meat. Indeed, in Punch just last week, a cartoon showed Viscount Selwyn as a stuffed pig, laid upon a platter for his peers to dine upon. A vicious and cowardly slander, no doubt.
But he tasted delicious.
Note_PiglineTwoOctober 27th 1899
Then upstairs, to bed! To bed! To toss and turn on bloated stomachs, to copulate and puke upon chaise-longue, four-poster or dressing table. Collapse at last into the engulfing mattress, drunk and drugged and fat and stupid and senseless. And spring the trap, manpiggies, spring the trap.
At a pull of a lever, a set of hydraulic pistons and gears are fired, resulting in three walls of steel bars dropping from the ceiling via the canopy to cage the product into the bed, preventing escape. The entire bed is then tilted backwards into the wall by a powerful spring mechanism, also fed by the hydraulics. The pressure for this system is created as a by-product of the vacuum evisceration system employed for mass production elsewhere on the pig line - in this way, we have created our very own bottled revolution, for the movement of the masses is a causal factor in the extermination of the rich!
Note_PiglineThreeOctober 27th 1899
And waste not, want not, for here the assorted slop and innards are sifted and sorted and enter the world through more channels and means than one could possibly conceive. The product passes by this section of the engine and is driven through the blade, splitting it into two sections ready for the butcher's block. And in the interim, it is kept in our freezer bays under the house, and the heat produced naturally by the refrigeration process feeds into the pipes and crannies of these rooms and is the very reason, my dear friend, that we can sit here in shirts and waistcoats but no jackets, on a freezing winter's night, without a fire in the grate, and discuss our great enterprise. The warmth in our bellies and toes may be attributed directly to those bellies and toes even now passing through steam, fire and blade beneath our feet.
Note_PiglineFourDecember 2nd 1899
Walking away from those temples, that small pile of stones under the rhododendrons. The skulls of innocence under the loose clod. Headless ribcages in the cool stone behind the altars, three thousand miles apart. I trace back my life to this instance, rain channels eroded in ancient stone. The toxins are already in this damp, this falling water.
I hack and retch and vomit into the sink and grasp the bowl with both hands and stare. There in the plughole, as clear as day, a toy spine, clockwork and intricate, like a child's spine, but clockwork. How could that be? How could a child's spine be made like clockwork? I washed it carefully and placed it on the mantelpiece, by the egg I laid myself, under the garden where the childrens' skulls are buried. I call it my Mexico.
Tesla
Spoiler below!
Note_TeslaEntrance25th December 1899: If You Should Find This
Then you already know all I would tell you. You already know what you have done, and what you must now do. Walking away from those temples, that small pile of stones beneath the rhododendrons. The skulls of innocence under the loose clod. Headless ribcages, cruelly torn asunder to expose their flowers, in the cool stone, behind the altars, three thousand miles away.
I trace my life to this instant, rain channels eroded in ancient stone. The toxins are already in this damp, this falling water.
And in that instant, cradling my children's heads in my palms, I knew then I had to unbuild what I myself had constructed, though even then it was little more than a sickening dream. This machine is ever mine, and it falls to me to redeem it, and myself.
Note_TeslaPigs27th December 1899
I am halved, I am bisected. I placed my feet in the stirrups of childbirth and I hung upside down and the great blade of history cut me in two like a butchered pig and my guts fell onto my children and smothered them in my love. Each half of me still living, but the guts kept falling onto my children. So we each went our separate ways and one half built a machine instead, to hold his hate in and to keep his heart beating. And the other fell into a sleep, to blunt the pain. And then he had terrible dreams and when he awoke, the other had made ovens and killed and skinned and cooked all of those he held dear. And thus, holding onto his guts, he strode forth to find himself and make himself whole again.
Note_teslatwo28th December 1899
Memories, they surface like bloated bodies rising to the scum of the Thames. I looked at them, covered in the blood of their dead mother, little piglets squalling in their swaddling and my heart at once was filled with a great love and a consuming hate I could never have imagined. At that point, did my soul split, creating him? Was this the egg of my soul, the moment the great clock began to tick? Is the only path to redemption to join us together again, to make myself whole, to close the great circle and take that madman into my heart once more - and forgive him, and myself as well.
(This post was last modified: 09-25-2013, 08:18 AM by Paddy™.)
Thanks a ton for that, Paddy. Looks I didn't get all the notes, after all.
As for the symbol of the eagle, it's actually in the mansion a lot when you look around. The one in Brennenburg had an Orb in its claws, though.
Uhm. Just as a slightly unrelated note.
Sorry if I say something someone has already explained, or ask a question that's already been answered. I did spend two nights last week going through this discussion thread, but I still likely forgot some things, or just plain missed others. I mean... it's 60+ pages of discussion. Cut me some slack if you'd be so kind~
But thank you, Paddy, for the well organized list of notes! UwU
It seems like I actually managed to get all the notes on my first playthrough. A couple of things this thread reminded me of, however:
-Mandus' great-uncle is definitely Alexander - Daniel never owned Brennenburg, and he has no right to inherit it.
-It's unclear exactly when Mandus sabotaged the Machine and subsequently got amnesia. It appears that his doubts had emerged by December 1st, his awareness of his split-soul appeared on Christmas (25th), that he and the Engineer had already split by the 27th, and memories reappeared on the 28th. Yet on the 29th, he talks of reaching his hands to the 'exposed wires', which I would assume to be the sabotage attempt we see in the game's opening.
Are we to assume that he was lying around in bed for a couple of days, only able to regain his strength on the 31st?
-Is it possible that Edwin and Enoch's diary actually dates back from 1898, and that the writer simply had a typo?
(This post was last modified: 09-24-2013, 02:51 PM by Alardem.)
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[SPOILER] Plot Discussion Thread *Spoiler Alert*
