[SPOILER] Plot Discussion Thread *Spoiler Alert*

[Kein]

This is my opinion on the whole "why isn't the Shadow following Mandus even though he touched the orb" situation.

The Shadow seeks out any person who touches an Orb, as we all know. In addition, we know from the previous game that blood warding is a legitimate technique to curb the Shadow's advancement. One specific journal entry struck me as intriguing in that it detailed the Aztec blood rituals, something very similar to the blood warding Daniel did prior to Amnesia: The Dark Descent:

And I said, look, my darlings, can you see it? And they said Yes, Daddy, Yes, we can see it. A tall, weathered cap of a steep sided pyramid, so like those of Egypt. 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 upon them.

Most of us have come to the consensus that Mandus killed his children in Mexico following the Orb's revelation. I believe that the Orb's revelation was the catalyst for his bloodthirsty crusade to "cleanse the world". By killing his two sons on the steps of an Aztec temple he basically followed in the Aztec's footsteps of blood sacrifice (which can possibly be interpreted as blood warding). In this case, killing his children in Mexico set him forward, per say, and allowed him to have leeway from the Shadow for some time.

This time was then extended upon his arrival in London when he almost immediately began work on his grotesque, blood-spilling factory. The entire machine could have been continuously warding the Shadow from ever setting foot near Mandus due to the immense amount of bodies it seemed to have been discarding.

That was my thought at first, but then I re-played DD and according to the original setting - there never was enough blood for Shadow to completely shrug it off. Daniel killed many, many people and to what cause? Shadow still followed him at the beginning of the game.

So - no, there is no consistent and strong (in-universe, canon-wise) explanation why Shadow is not following Mandus. At all.