danko day 2 part 4 (09:16)

09:16 on Day 2

[no clue what the screenshot is supposed to be of here.]

"Kapella had two leads for me. While finding this kid named Spichka will probably be more important in the long run, it's still rather early and I should have enough time to check the other lead so I decided to head for Lara's house."

[screenshot of some random children about the town.]

"There's a lot of kids outside, but hardly any adults. I'm a bit worried, because it seems like a lot of these kids are just left to fend for themselves. If this was the big capital I'm sure the government would have taken care of them already. At least they have Kapella that can take care of them."

Lara's house, complete with random douchebag.

VERSUS

Lara Ravelle: Can you see the panic the town is in? The prices are rising with every passing hour. They haven't delivered any provisions to us for several months now, and the shops are almost empty. With the meat production stopped and everyone getting ready for the epidemic, people are prepared to buy things at very high prices.
Bachelor: I can't believe they would admit I'm right that easily.
Lara: We need to buy a lot of provisions. Even today that is a very hard task, tomorrow I don't think it will be possible at all.
Bachelor: How much do you need?
Lara: I have been able to secure a shelter in town. I want at least twelve people to be able to survive the epidemic there for up to a month. My friends and anyone who help set up the shelter will hide in there.
Bachelor: And what have you done so far?
Lara: I've collected all the money I could find, and I've sent out some people on errands. They will do their best to find the stores with the best prices. Now I need to take the most important donations, those from the Kains and Olgimskiys. Julia agreed to spare some as well. I will visit them, and then I will have to join this crazy rush for the shops.
Bachelor: Lara, you need to keep in mind that if there is an outbreak, however unlikely that is, those that you let into the shelter will live and those who you can't bring may very well die. Do you understand this?
Lara: Yes, but we have no other choice now. Even if I can only save a few people I'll do what I can. I'm used to having to do everything myself.
Bachelor: You should stay here. I will buy everything that you need. I have to walk around town today anyway. Tell me what you need.
Lara: I need the money from Young Vlad, Julia and Maria Kain. Visit them and tell them that you are helping me out. Then you need to find and buy some bread, smoked meat and fish, as much as possible of each. Buy only food that can be stored for a long time. You will need to take all of this to the House of the Living. I'll show you where it is.
Bachelor: Okay.
Lara: Thank you. Forgive me for loading you up with such hard work, but the time will come when many will be happy that we managed to take care of things like this beforehand...
Bachelor: I know.

New Task: House of the Living posted:

Lara wants to arrange a refuge for her friends and relatives, where it will be possible to survive an epidemic. I should ask Young Vlad, Maria Kain and Julia Luricheva for their donations. It is necessary to buy three pieces of bread, dried fish and smoked meat.

"It seems like I will have to take a long walk all over town. Well, I have plenty of time for that, and it is for a good cause. However, I don't really like the fact that the town is so close to panic. Surely this Sand Plague can be cured just like any other sickness?"

[INVENTORY SCREEN]

"After leaving Lara's place I checked my own supplies. It seems like I already have all the smoked meat and dried fish Lara asked for. Now I just need to buy a few loaves of bread. It's a good thing I checked the stores yesterday. With the money I have already I should be able to buy enough for Lara as well as for Eve and myself without having to walk all over town to pick up money. I'm sure the donators will need their money for other things. There's a food store nearby, and I went in and asked if they had any bread for sale."

[find some shop screenshots to put here. possibly complete with ridic prices.]

"1650? For a loaf of bread?! This is absurd! Now I know why Lara is worried. I thought the stocks looked meager yesterday, but there's hardly anything left! I took my leave and checked with the other stores nearby, and they all had the same prices. It's a good thing I bought so many rations yesterday, but it seems like we will really need those donations after all."

"On the other hand, the store-keepers were just as desperate for supplies as the rest of the town. While they had enough food for themselves, I was offered a lot for some medical supplies as well as my gun."

[expensive gun dot jpeg]

"My revolver is now worth a fortune! But with all the craziness going on in this town I am definitely not letting it go."

The price of food has now increased roughly tenfold compared to day one. Yay for a free market! This mean that if you bought food on day one, congratulations, you will not die a horrible death of starvation. Nah, it's not that bad, but if you're prepared you can take advantage of this. Why? Because non-food items are increased to five times, and this mean all that junk you have can now be sold for sweet cash!

But... What's the use for cash if you have to spend so much to buy anything? So in essence: All cash you saved from day 1 is now useless. If you saved anything valuable that isn't food, you can lessen the impact of this price raise, but food is still rather hard to come by. If you bought food, like we did, you don't really have to worry that much.

I had a lot of fun finding this out the hard way on my first playthrough.

"Eventually I sold off anything I did not really need, like a lockpick and the tourniquets, and bought the bread I needed. I'll have to collect the donations now to cover the cost of all this. Even if I had the meat since before, I will still have to buy more sooner or later or I will starve myself."

This part requires quite a bit of running. I took the time to do quite a bit of trading with the kids and drunks around town, because there are a ton of them out today. Basically we got a few more bullets for our revolver and a lot of medical supplies. I'll cut to the actually interesting bits. This is essentially the downfall of Pathologic for many people. You have to run around a LOT, and the game sometimes gives you the most awful fetch-quests you could imagine. I keep myself occupied by acting like a total bum and listening to the interesting but creepy music. I hope you can still remember where the following people live, otherwise just ask for a map and I'll mark our route there.

[transitions again! we're at Horns!]

VERSUS

Maria Kain: You look a bit worried. Is there something wrong?
Bachelor: Lara wanted to meet you to receive the donations for her shelter. I will be helping her out with the purchases. I told her to stay inside, and I don't advice you to leave your house either.
Maria: Yes, I'm giving her my personal savings. I tried to persuade my father to issue some money from our family funds, but he still refuses to believe in the epidemic. That's just how our family is at the moment.
Bachelor: Why do you believe me, then?
Maria: Me? I haven't thought too much about it. I feel like I should trust you. By the way, have you found the evidence you were looking for yet?
Bachelor: Not yet.
Maria: It would be good if you never found them, Daniel.

"Maria gave me 2000 in cash. Of course it's generous of her to give away money, but this barely covers even a few of the supplies. I will head over to Young Vlad and see if his family can help me out."

VERSUS

Young Vlad: With everything that's been going on lately, I think we need to reconsider our lives.

Bachelor: I've come on Lara Ravelle's request.
Young Vlad: Yes, I remember. It's a pity I can't get a nicer sum from my father.
Bachelor: Can he be convinced in any way?
Young Vlad: It's better not to try.
Bachelor: Really? Why so?
Young Vlad: He has a point of view of his own about this. It seems he's also assuming that you may be right, but he doesn't want to openly admit it. Do you see the difference? It's obvious that for some reason the evidence you seek is not advantageous for him at the moment. The more so if it will lead to expenses straight away...
Bachelor: I see the difference, but I don't understand the game he's playing.
Young Vlad: I won't discuss that. I can only sympathize with you and advice you not to disturb my father about this.
Bachelor: I understand.

"Young Vlad gave us 4000 in cash. This leaves Julia. It's quite walk to her house from here."

[city hall??]

"This house is marked as the City Hall on my map, but it doesn't look like it has been used very much lately. It stands out from the buildings around it because it's so... hmm... sterile? Nearby I found those ruins again. What were they called? Stairway to heaven? Seems like a very appropriate name. Now that I know that it's built by those crazy architect brothers, it feels like they somehow fit in better in this town. They make very sturdy buildings, though. I guess they don't want their 'art' to be town down too easily. On a whim I decided to climb all the way to the top this time."

[ lotsa screenshots of him scaling the "ruins" the stamatins made, the one that looks like a tall and blasted out building]
 
"It's strange. I could hear the sounds of the town quite well from up here, but the dusty air and the falling rain makes it hard to see very far. It's so unlike the sounds I'm used to in the capital. Just the wind howling, dogs barking, children shouting... and the very unsettling sound of a baby crying."

"I really shouldn't have looked down when I was about to walk down the stairs, though. With no safety railing I have to be very careful. I continued on my way to Julia's house."

[luricheva's place.]

Julia Luricheva: Anything new going on in town? I'd like to go and have a look...
Bachelor: I've come on behalf of Lara Ravelle.
Julia: Oh, yes. She said she needed help buying some provisions and store away some fresh water. Lots of people have come to me already, either offering their help to me or asking for help themselves. I can't believe all this is happening just because of the death of one man!
Bachelor: There's been quite a few deaths recently.
Julia: This is awful. The whole time I live here, I keep wondering how fragile the cardboard that separates humans from animals really is. Anyway, let's get back to the subject. Here is the money. I don't believe there will be an epidemic, so I am not in a great hurry to give away all my belongings. However, I trust Lara's decency. I hope she will find some other use for this money.
Bachelor: Thank you, Julia.

"Julia gave us 3000. In total this is not quite enough to cover all the purchases. Instead of being selfish and denying Lara her supplies just because the donations didn't quite cover their value, I will offer her some of the food I already have. Maybe I will regret it later, but since I have no intentions of letting this plague spread, I can just use the money I now have to buy more food once everything has calmed down."

"I have all the food safely packed away, so there's no worry about the stores running out. I will take this back to Lara whenever I have time for it, but all this walking has taken some time, and I need to find this Spichka boy first. He should be found in a house in the northeastern part of town."

[houses n shit]

This is the house that Kapella marked on my map. It doesn't look like anyone lives here, though. The lock is rusted through and the door opens easily, so I decided to look inside.

[interior design! also spichka]

Spichka: Wanna hear something interesting?
Bachelor: Tell me.
Spichka: Some houses are always open for you, and you can come and go as you wish. Some only open up under special circumstances, if the owners dies or people move out or something. Some are only open if you know the way in.
Bachelor: And?
Spichka: Well, I collect places like that. I made a map a year ago. There are so many marks on it there are no room for the actual town! I once found an apartment like that and hid there for about two hours, and the owners still never noticed I'd been there.
Bachelor: It would be better if you spent your time at school studying, rather than hiding in other people's houses.
Spichka: Then will you teach me how to tell by a person's eyes how long they have left to live?
Bachelor: I don't think that's possible. Anyway, they say you have seen the Silent House, right?
Spichka: We saw that silent house, alright. I shouldn't have gotten close... Can you have a look at me just in case? But they say if you get infected you can feel it straight away. It's as if they poured some boiling resin into your blood. Yeah...
Bachelor: Well, you don't have a fever. Did you say you went to the infected house? Where is it?
Spichka: It's really close, just across the yard. Where Isidor lived. That's one freaky place, alright... So hot, smeared in blood... eeewh! They say things like that happened in the first outbreak, too. Bloody mold was crawling down the walls, like big scabs.
Bachelor: What kind of nonsense is that? How can a stone building get covered in scabs?
Spichka: Hey! I know what I'm talking about. The disease lives in there, that's why it's scary... What if it crawls further? But no one cares! The guys told me that there is blood leaking out from under the door from when the demon Shebnak was eating in there. No one wants to believe it until it strikes them...
Bachelor: Why do you think the disease is in there?
Spichka: I couldn't see anything through the windows, but you said yesterday that Simon and Isidor died of a disease, so I just put the facts together. I'm not a kid anymore, so I understand. And I don't believe in all that steppe stuff, even thought I live next to the Order. My friend's father is a tanner and he says it's all bullshit too.
Bachelor: What do you mean, you live next to the Order?
Spichka: Well, there's the Apiary. They are such animals in there. They are all from the steppe, and were fed all these stories while they grew up.
Bachelor: I will check out Isidor's house.
Spichka: Come, I'll show ya.
Bachelor: It's okay, I know the way. But you should go home and stay there.

Main Quest Update posted:

This Silent House turned out to be the residence of Isidor Burakh. If I can enter it and find evidence of this disease, the ruling families will have to accept my word. The word of Bachelor Dankovskiy. Rubin told me yesterday that I could find immunity boosting medicine in the local drugstores. I should take some before I enter the Silent House, just in case.

[motherfuckin' pathologic dot jpeg]

My god! Spichka was right. It seems the whole building is covered in some red mold of some sort. I better not touch any of it. The air out here seems fresh enough, though. Maybe this scared off the guards, because they are nowhere to be seen. I should take this opportunity to prove myself and force George Kain to accept that I'm right.

[NOM NOM PILLS]

Before entering, I downed a few of these tablets I had with me. They are a rather common brand in this country, so I know I can rely on them.

We now get our first look at yet another vital statistic. This one is called Immunity, and it is normally stuck in the middle.

If you down pills like these ones or in some other way give your body a bit of a boost, it temporarily goes up and then slowly returns to the middle again after a few hours.

The easiest way to increase it for the Bachelor is just to rely on modern medicine, but all of these pills take away a bit of your health. Not enough for you to worry, as long as you don't need more than a few pills. You take the pills in advance when you think you will encounter any sort of disease or sickness. I think this is pretty much a given time to down a few.

Daniel VIDEO: Dankovskiy bravely ventures into the Silent House. What will he find?!

VERSUS

HORRIBLY ILL PLAGUE VICTIM

 Woman: Who is it? Is there a man here? Will you help me?!
Bachelor: This is awful! What is that mold growing in that room?
Woman: So hot... So painful! My head is about to explode. My blood is curdling in my veins. The only reason I'm not screaming is because I don't want the children to hear.
Bachelor: There are no children here.
Woman: I constantly hear children's voices... A girl is crying, and a boy is laughing... We shouldn't scare them! Don't let them in here!
Bachelor: This is gibberish, there is no one else here!
Woman: Don't come close to me! We are all dying already. I told my sisters not to leave the house. They are roaming about here...
Bachelor: What are you talking about?
Woman: Please don't kill us! Don't kill them, they are just begging you for help. By now, their minds are clouded because of the pain. I heard them praying... Don't get close to them, and leave quickly!
Bachelor: I'll be back with help.
Woman: Take this key and lock the front door after you leave! It's the only way to keep my sisters from escaping into the town.