Pathologic - Occupation

*Spoilers*

Day 9 - The General arrived with his army (and his ginormous gun), so I went to talk to him in the morning. He sent me in the direction of the Abattoir on the matter of producing more Panacea, which is where I was going to end up anyway. I spoke with the Elder, and he seems to be beginning to accept me, but only if my behavior/responses are satisfactory and only if I pass certain trials. Some of the sacred blood was stolen from the Abattoir the previous night, and the Elder gave me the task of finding out who had stolen it. In order to make the task extra challenging, he cast some kind of spell on me to increase my exhaustion (causing the meter to fill up at a rapid rate).

I had previously thought that allowing the exhaustion meter to reach maximum would cause me to instantly collapse, or, similarly, that allowing my hunger to max out would cause me to instantly die of starvation. The fact is, the only thing that kills you is when your health drops to zero. However, when your other meters reach critical (or perhaps only when they max out, I'm not sure), your health gradually declines. For example, if you're completely exhausted, or starving, you won't immediately collapse, but your health will start to decrease slowly, and when/if it hits zero, then you'll collapse.


Luckily, it was early in the day, and my health was pretty high (good ol' Meradorm the night before), and my exhaustion low, so I was starting from a good spot. Still, I was led on yet another wild goose chase across town, trying to track down the Bachelor, who had entered the Abattoir the previous night and who I was certain would have information regarding the stolen blood.

He wasn't at Eve's house. Eve told me he left for the Polyhedron. At the Polyhedron, I talked to a Doghead who explained that the Bachelor had made a fool of Kahn (the Kain kid, head of the Doghead gang, leader of the children living in the Polyhedron) by giving him rifles with blanks (ha ha), so they tossed him in a jail cell in the factories (same place I spent a lovely night earlier in the week) as punishment. Lucky for me, his guard was the coward I spared the life of on my first night in town - the one who stole some stuff from the Dualsouls' hideout. Since he owed me one, he agreed to free the Bachelor.


The Bachelor told me that the ones who stole the blood were members of the Order - a few Butchers and Worms - traitors. I took that information back to the Elder, thus completing my trial. He didn't seem surprised by the revelation, though. He probably already knew, and was just testing me. Well, he says this great sacrifice I'm destined to make will occur tomorrow...

Which means that yesterday's Olgimskiy decision was unrelated. Sure enough, the Beak in front of Big Vlad's house confirms his death. I wonder how things might have turned out if I had informed Mother Keeper that Young Vlad was the one truly responsible. Ultimately, I decided that if Big Vlad wanted to take responsibility, that was his choice. And as bad as I feel condemning anyone to death, it seems that if one had to choose between the two, the younger Olgimskiy should live. At any rate, I couldn't stop it from happening, so I chose not to entangle myself in that family's fate...