Story

The plot of the game is fairly straightforward, but the amount of details in the codex that the player then has to correlate with what they already know can generate some confusion. For this reason, this page will separate the Story into **Plot** (or game narrative) and **Lore** (or character Backstory).

For the complete document containing all the Lore in PDF/ePUB format, please see this link.

## Plot

The Mother, a great warrior who has been protecting our world for a long time, reached a city ravaged by a plague and by the Child's creations. The Mother knows the Child is a Chosen One; she promises to free him from his Other, Suffering, who is trying to break the veil and invade reality, where it would greatly endanger the entire world. She relies only on her own Other, Memory, in this battle.

Mother is seen to be at her limits, but she fights on to reach the Child. Alas, she fails to stop the shattering; the Child uses the power granted by Suffering to break the veil separating Reality from Unreality. The city is lost and the Dark Corner is created, but Mother had given herself to Memory, merged with her other, so she survives in this domain; this is represented by the Red Mother. In the Dark Corner, time and space are skewed so, even if the city was destroyed, the Child, and the world, may yet be saved.

Memory's power is capable of creating the Daughters, images of Mother at different points in her life, and each with different attributes. The Daughters are commanded by Mother and Memory to fight through the forces of Suffering, defeating the Surgeon, Deacon, Maid and the Child itself along the way. Suffering, who until then was semi-dormant as a nucleus, fed on the pain generated from this battle, adopting a feminine form born out of the bodies of the Daughters who fell in battle during this time. Suffering loses this battle and is supposedly destroyed, though it also mentions that suffering is eternal and thus can't truly be defeated. It is debatable whether Suffering is truly dead, or if Others can actually die, but its defeat is conclusive. Mother embraces the Child, now free, and asks him to join her and Memory.

With the Child free and Suffering defeated, the world is supposedly saved, although the game does not directly show the shattering being reversed. The fusion of both worlds has been stopped, but it's unclear whether the city returned to normal or if the Dark Corner is now permanent; in any case, Mother, the Child and Memory can't return to Reality. After the end credits, there is a scene with the Child saying that something is not right, to which Mother introduces the concept of Fear, supposedly an Other like Suffering. This is a hint to a possible sequel, although Lightbulb Crew has stated that there are no immediate plans for one at the moment.

## Lore Part 1: The Child

This section is a recounting of information that can be found in the Codex entries of the Child, the Deacon, the Surgeon and the Maid.

Knowing the child's backstory is integral to understanding the reason for the events seen in the game. This is where some players may become confused because his story, despite being thoroughly referenced throughout the game, isn't recounted linearly. The Child went through several impactful events in a short time, which the game presents as being the different Eras, although their chronological sequence isn't necessarily as portrayed by the game.

The Child was born a Chosen One (like Mother), a special human linked with an Other from Unreality; his Other being Suffering. Because Chosen Ones are feared and shunned, he lived a very rough life, ending up an orphan either due to his parents dying or due to being abandoned, as is more likely. He was eventually adopted by the Deacon upon the latter having a supposedly divine revelation, however, he was a corrupted man who neglected him as well.

The Child eventually contracted the plague ran rampant in the city, which only caused the Deacon to hate him even further. He locked the Child in the cellar, isolating him and starving him away from any possible contact. The Child however, was kept alive by the power of Suffering, despite the disease and the starvation.

Eventually the Surgeon became aware of this Child that was infected but didn't die, and took him off the Deacon's hands at times for experimentation. He, along with his doctors, would perform vivisections on the Child in an attempt to understand the plague and why the Child didn't die. Although he never found the cure in the Child, he became fascinated with him and continued to experiment, injecting lethal substances into him and noticing how he survived. The Child endured immense pain at his hands, and his sadness grew into resentment towards mankind in general.

The only friend the Child had was the Maid, a young woman who had become one of the Deacon's servants after being orphaned at a young age. She was abused by the corrupt Deacon, but grew fond of the imprisoned Child, singing for him, bringing him scraps of food and, generally keeping him company, despite being forbidden from doing so. The Child loved her as the only person who was ever kind to him. When the Deacon realized she was disobeying him, she locked the Maid together with the Child and she eventually caught the plague as well and died next to him. This was the final straw that led the Child to accept Suffering's offers of power, out of hatred for the cruel world that had robbed him of the only person who ever showed him compassion.

The Child accepted the power of Suffering and started conjuring nightmarish creatures into reality, destroying the city and, eventually, tearing the veil separating both worlds, leading to the Shattering that was witnessed by the Mother.