[SPOILER] Plot Discussion Thread *Spoiler Alert*

[Alardem]

I have always thought that Shadow attacks people who are trying to obtain the Orb, that the Guardian punishes the very desire to have this cosmic thing for myself alone. That's what happened with Daniel when he took the Orb away.

As long as there's a hidden underground temple in a Machine for Pigs I presume Mandus wasn't hunted by the Shadow simply because he haven't took the Orb, he was influenced by its powers and has built entire machine around the temple, but the Orb itself was always untouched down there at the mysterious London temple.

Another possibility and preferable one is that Mandus did take the Orb with him away from Mexico. But instead of trying to hide from the Shadow he has built a twin temple just underground the London and let Shadow guard it downthere. Somehow the Shadow became satisfied but began to heavily influence poor Mandus whose mental state was heavily shaken by the death of the beloved wife, who died at the birth of the twins. He, Mandus, began to think that the world itself and a human civilization is a monster. And killed his children to save them from the horrors of the world. At the same time he did not just killed them, he sacrificed them and used their hearts to obtain the Orb powers in order to build his Machine. And that Machine was able to merge pigs and humans only because of the Orb powers, because of the special vitae version. And the whole purpose of the Machine is creating of the "army" of monsters capable of destroying whole mankind, unworthy of this planet.

Well, anyway, all those words above are just presumptions, nothing more.

The only thing that I am sure about (for myself of course) is that the temple under the London wasn't there, nope, it has been built by the Mandus. The twin of the mexican temple. That's something I am sure about. But that what I feel, I do not insist I am right and I do not have any exact arguments that I am right.

I'm under the impression The Shadow just sort of does what it wants. It felt more beneficial for it to simply influence Mandus, I have the feeling that truly it would never have really hunted and killed Daniel until after his contact with Alexander and all the evil they had done. After all Daniel was manipulated as well into doing evil things.

The Amnesia wiki's interpretation of the Shadow is that it actually held back on Daniel because it wanted him to kill Alexander for it. That's why it blocks out any chance of escape from the castle, and why Daniel is suddenly free to escape if he murdered Alex.

Again, I'm inclined to think that the Stone Egg operates in a different manner from the Orbs.