[SPOILER] Plot Discussion Thread *Spoiler Alert*

[VaeVictis]

I struggle to comprehend how murdering the entire world and turning their dead bodies into manpigs will prevent future murdering throughout the world. do I even understand what the fuck that machine was doing?

Humans were the source of the problem-so he was confronting the problem. I'm not saying it makes perfect sense (if I don't kill them, they'll die!), but giving his state of mind, it apparently made more sense than allowing them to exterminate themselves.

It would have made more sense if he didn't try to save his kids by killing them, them building a machine which turns people into pies. I mean honestly, there is no rational connection between what The Machine did, and what it was supposed to achieve.

See above. He was essentially confronting what he felt to be the source of the world's problems. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that there's more it to than what you're initial statement seemed to imply.

[WALP]

I thought he got his heart ripped out?

[Alardem]

The Machine itself is limited to London, which removes the possibility of it being able to transfigure/destroy humanity on its own. But that is a moot point. Just as a little nuclear bomb contains the power to burn up a city of hundreds of thousands, the Machine, sated by the blood of London, would be the catalyst for some unimaginably horrific event. It claims that it will cause a nuclear eruption in the earth's core, but that only seems to be the harbinger for something far more unpleasant to humanity.

Why does Mandus go along with the idea? Because he's a man-hating, warped shit. Why does he regret it and end up sabotaging it? Because he ultimately couldn't stand the idea of being as impure as the humans he wants to remove himself from.

[VaeVictis]

The Machine itself is limited to London, which removes the possibility of it being able to transfigure/destroy humanity on its own. But that is a moot point. Just as a little nuclear bomb contains the power to burn up a city of hundreds of thousands, the Machine, sated by the blood of London, would be the catalyst for some unimaginably horrific event. It claims that it will cause a nuclear eruption in the earth's core, but that only seems to be the harbinger for something far more unpleasant to humanity.

Why does Mandus go along with the idea? Because he's a man-hating, warped shit. Why does he regret it and end up sabotaging it? Because he ultimately couldn't stand the idea of being as impure as the humans he wants to remove himself from.

Pretty sure we can all agree with this.

[Alardem]

All the questions about Mandus' logic seem to imply that he actually cared about the welfare of people. To that, I'd say that he'd have done a much better job being a genuine philanthropist rather than masquerading as one.

(Well, there's a bit of nuance. Apparently there are files unused in the final product which indicate that Mandus had compassion for his workers and the poor, despite the highly stratified nature of society obliging him to look down on them. That would explain his resentment for the hypocrisy of the rich.)

I suppose part of his despair comes from realizing that, no matter what good or evil he does, he ultimately won't be able to make the world a better place. His inner hatred of people wins out and he decides, with the logic of the terminally despaired, to take everything he and his society were doing to their (il)logical extreme.

[Fortigurn]

Humans were the source of the problem-so he was confronting the problem. I'm not saying it makes perfect sense (if I don't kill them, they'll die!), but giving his state of mind, it apparently made more sense than allowing them to exterminate themselves.

But the argument was that killing a small number of people now would save many millions later. So it wasn't as simple as 'People are the problem, let's kill all the people'. The argument actually really was 'Make pies now to prevent future global warfare'. And that makes absolutely no rational sense whatsoever, in any way. Not to even get started on 'Kill my children now to stop them dying in a future world war which I am now going to prevent with meat pies'.

The best job I can make of it is to read Mandus as hopelessly controlled by The Machine, in the same way that James Tilly Matthews believed he was controlled by a machine he called 'The Air Loom'. There are several explicit references to Matthews and the Air Loom, in Mandus' notes.

If this is my Bedlam, [the asylum in which Matthews was interred] and I am to be cast as Matthews, [John Tilly Matthews] then I will wear that mantle for the sake of my boys, and face whatever horrors lie beneath the altar.

I am a lobster, cracked, my circulation stagnated, [Matthews claimed the 'Air Loom' prevented circulation of the blood through a process he called 'Lobster-cracking'] my vital motions impeded.

If this machine is my air loom, [the name of the machine Matthews believed was being used to control and torment him] I am the overman.

I am the voice on the telephone, I am the butcher who skinned the Professor and beat God to death against the air loom.

[Alardem]

Aztec sacrifice as interpreted by a mad industrialist. Mass sacrifice of blood to feed a dormant god and bring about a new world. Not exactly sure how this is hard to grasp. It's the same principle that leads people to pray, to perform sacrifice, to do any ritual that requires faith in something abstract.

Someone with more Aztec knowledge on me does a dissection of how the game utilizes Mesoamerican motifs.

[VaeVictis]

I understand what you're getting at, Fortigurn, and I agree that his logic was flawed and unsound (I never said it made sense to anyone but Mandus himself). I'm just saying that his motivation goes beyond 'making pies to prevent global warfare'. That's all. And he may have been using his children to justify it to himself, for all we know.
He hated people, that much is clear.

[Alardem]

Mandus' logic is flawed and unsound. Why is this a problem?

EDIT: Why did he kill his children? To preserve their innocence. Growing up and becoming soldiers would imply the loss of that - Mandus killed them because he couldn't stand the thought of them becoming no different than the rest of humans. They would have become pigs to the slaughter, killing for the empire and ground up by the war machine. He killed them so they could remain as children.

[Fortigurn]

I understand what you're getting at, Fortigurn, and I agree that his logic was flawed and unsound (I never said it made sense to anyone but Mandus himself). I'm just saying that his motivation goes beyond 'making pies to prevent global warfare'. That's all. And he may have been using his children to justify it to himself, for all we know.
He hated people, that much is clear.

Mandus' logic is flawed and unsound. Why is this a problem?

Yes to both. The logic is indisputably flawed, and I don't have a problem while we consider Mandus to be totally irrational. But the narrative doesn't set it up that way.