A small observation before starting: this is the 150th article on Surreal and Creepy! And what better way to celebrate it than writing again about Pathologic 2, one of my favorite games ever.
Pathologic 2 is set in one of the richest fictional cities ever created in a video game, a place of deep and ancient traditions, full of cryptic and mysterious inhabitants struggling between conventional lore and new development of the town. Pathologic 2 is a long journey of 12 days through starvation and disease. After trying to keep yourself and the population alive, your decision will shape the story. And at the end of the 11th day, you will decide the town’s destiny and future. While the Diurnal ending will offer the possibility of roaming a peaceful town while interacting with every surviving character, the Nocturnal ending will show a very different town. In this article, I will analyze the Nocturnal Ending.
The Kin were the original population of the cold steppe, long before the town was there. The Kin is a variegated population of different beings, each with a peculiar aesthetic associated with their function inside the ecosystem. Herb Brides look like women with very few clothes, or partially naked. But the point is that they are not human. Their function is to help the herbs grow by dancing in the cold steppe… and to provide blood to speed the growth. Worms are instead very creepy and bold individuals, with very big eyes. They are not very smart but are instead almost hive-minded, working at more physical tasks. The Kin is related to Earth, worshipping the soil and protecting it. When the town started to industrialize, the Kin became victims of this event. Herb Brides were forced into prostitution, while Worms became the main workers at the Abattoir. The Sand Plague came to reclaim a place for the Kin, who are in fact immune to it. And the player can help to achieve it by pursuing the Nocturnal Ending.
To achieve the Nocturnal ending, the player must help the Kin and make the Town (or better the Udurgh, as you can read more about here: Pathologic 2 – the two faces of Mother Earth: what is slumbering under the holy ground?) survive the army. To do that, the player must find the courier with the orders for the final attack against the Polyhedron, and burn the letter. By doing that, the Sand Plague will never be healed through the underground blood of the Udurgh, and it will spread all around. The Sand Plague will obscure the sun, creating a perpetual night. However, without any more reason to harm the townspeople, the Plague will yes invade the city, but while losing its pathogenic power. It will not infect or kill people anymore, it will only morph the city environment to bring back the Kin and its most legendary exponents. The Plague will fill the air like ashes, obscuring the sun and terrifying the townspeople. On the other hand, Herb Brides happily dance under this eternal night, Worms are finally accepted by society, and the colossal Aurochs are back from their extinction. In fact, the first sign of the Nocturnal ending, after the sun’s disappearance, is the manifestation of colossal bulls all around the town.
Gargantuan shades taller than any building, the Aurochs create an even more surreal and cryptic environment during this ending. But what are these gigantic bulls? The Aurochs are a legendary breed existing in this cold steppe way before the town. Then, after the town and its industrialization, the Aurochs fell victim to the progress. When the Abattoir became the first income of the town, the Aurochs also were slaughtered there as any other bull, becoming only meat production and poisoning the earth with their blood. When the Plague takes back the town, the Aurochs stand proudly in this dark world as monoliths of a new era. Are the Aurochs copies or descendants of the bull God Boddho? Some conversations imply that they could be the same manifestation of the bull god, but being its descendants is also a viable option.
So, the town is now a plagued and silent wasteland, with colossal bulls standing all around; what happened to the townspeople? The player will find the majority of the inhabitants in the swamp, watching the horizon and a bit dozed off. As if they were under a nightmarish spell, the people barely remember the player, staring at the nothingness and unable to elaborate complex thoughts. Because, regardless of the eternal night and the plagued clouds around the streets, the town is now a safe place. The Sand Plague is not infectious anymore, it reached its purpose and now that the Kin and the Earth are respected again, it doesn’t need to kill anymore. As a sentient being, the Sand Plague knows that the war is now over, and it will not slaughter the surrendered town. If you want to read more about the Sand Plague, you can find my other article here: Pathologic – the Sand Plague: the evolution and the meaning of an eldritch sentient disease. However, no matter how many times you try to convince people that the town is now safe, they simply do not want to listen. They don’t want to share the Town with the Kin and, without any other place to go, they plan to simply wander through the steppe to search for another home. Everybody is completely detached from reality, stoned, a shell without any more purpose. People refuse to accept this change inside the town, staring at a purposeless future waiting for them on the other side of the swamp.
Not everybody is ready to leave the town, and some people, especially kids, still gather on the top of the Polyhedron, ready to live in this new reality. Masked kids scattered around the stairs of the Polyhedron are ready to provide cryptic pieces of advice to the player. As a dark reminder of its important role inside the Kin’s community, the Rat Prophet stands at the top of the tower, staring at the new kingdom that it helped to shape. Because as the first emissary of Mother Earth, the Rat cannot be happier with the outcome (and you can read more about this character in my analysis: The Rat Prophet: the lying emissary of an eldritch plague in Pathologic 2 [Creepy Characters]).
The three girls with special abilities are sitting together on the edge of the Polyhedron. They are preparing to become new Mistress, women of power always part of the three most important families in town, able to shape the town’s faith through visions. But the winds are changing, and so there is a need for new domains for the Mistresses. Grace, the daughter of the gravedigger, who always was able to communicate with the underworld and the dead ones, will become the new Mistress of the Dead, since the town has more dead people than living ones. Taya, the child of powerful dreams in charge of the Termitary, will become the Mistress of Bulls, since now there are also more bulls than people in the town. Clara, the Changeling and third playable character in the original Pathologic, will become a new Mistress. A lonely and isolated Mistress of great power, but still without a specific domain.
The player could speak also with other people in touch with the Plague who are somehow enthusiastic about this new direction. The little and weird Murky now lives in a train wagon, surrounded by all the lanterns that she was able to steal. The kid was often speaking to the Plague, but now this dark world could be scary enough for her, and to face all this darkness she needs a lot of light. Aspity is completely ecstatic about this transformation of the town, greeting you on top of one of the many unfinished stairways to heaven, and congratulating you as new the leader of the Kin.
The Cathedral, the spiritual building for the ruling family of the Kains, an eldritch structure where rumors say that time was born, is now a pagan temple for the Herb Brides. The women are dancing in the main hall, celebrating the beginning of a new era when the Kin is now at the center of the town. However, Eva from the city is also dressed as a Herb Bride, very interested in their culture and dances. However, her ingenuity could be a danger, and the player warns her about the risks coming from the Herb Brides. In fact, they could even devour her at the end of their dance. Definitively the Kin and the townspeople are at the antipodes of cultural traditions, and joining something that you don’t deeply believe or understand, could be extremely dangerous. Somehow, Eva here is a representation of cultural appropriations, including dangers and offenses related to it.
The Nocturnal Ending of Pathologic 2 is an incredibly dark experience, a portrait of a new world where the old beliefs are re-established that can be truly experienced only by reaching this ending, offering something that not even the original Pathologic was able to show.
You can also check the complete video of the Nocturnal Ending in the Surreal and Creepy YouTube Channel. Link below:
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