Story Spoilers: Nyarlathotep?

[Victor Kade]

Well, I take my hat off, sir. Everything just fits.

"He spoke much of the sciences - of electricity and psychology - and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude."

Maybe he was the Engineer?

No because the engineer was mutated into a pigman...

[Dash213]

cool, it really sounds like the god from the tample and the story. and you description of him, it's kinda like that corpse in the last temple level inside the tube. it's black and hairless and looks kinda weird.

[Lightice]

Why is it that Mandus is not also hounded by some supernatural guardian of the Stone Egg? Does that indicate the Egg has a different function/purpose from the Orbs used by Alexander?

I can see a couple of possibilities. Perhaps Mandus's Orb is just a shard. Maybe peeking into the future rather than another world doesn't cause a backlash; in TDD it's at once point stated that the Shadow isn't some vengeful monster, but simply reality reasserting with itself. Or maybe the massive blood sacrifices that Mandus performs keep the Shadow far away. He is certainly harvesting Vitae for his Compound X.

No because the engineer was mutated into a pigman...

Don't mistake an engineer with the Engineer. The large type of manpig is called an engineer because they maintain the Machine, but the Engineer is Mandus's name for the will of the Machine that split off himself and inhabits the "Stone Egg".

[Alardem]

I'm not sure if sacrifices actually did anything to ward off the Shadow - that was just what Alexander led Daniel to believe, and for all we know that could have further incurred its wrath. But I agree about the Machine likely being far more effective at harvesting 'Vitae' than anything Alexander had available to him.

I'd just go with different objects having different properties. The Orb can grant you power but kill you if you misuse it, the Soapstone (owned by Justine) can makes you obsessive and sociopathic, and the Stone Egg can grant you twisted visions of the future. Making the world predictable/logical goes against the appeal of Lovecraftian fiction.

It's interesting to note that in one of the unused endings, the Stone Egg would apparently hatch and unleash a 'great light' implied to be like atomic fire. Perhaps this is the cleansing that Mandus hoped to achieve.

EDIT: Could it be that Mandus himself unknowingly fulfills Nyarlathotep's role? He enacted the will of greater forces (the future, or perhaps an Aztec deity), was deceptive in order to garner followers (disguising himself as a philanthropist), and seeks to wipe the earth clean of humanity so that another race (the Man-Pigs) can dominate them.