Story explained with chronological events

[Amenophys]

The details explained here are set in their chronological order, following the dates provided by the different journals notes.

November 1898:

Mandus is a local butcher. His wife died from child-labor complications years before, something he holds deep regret over.

He invests all his money into buying a meat factory, but because the technology he was using wasn't understood well by the general populace, the banks refuse him credit. He gets into debt, and expects lawyers to knock on his door at any time.

He views his machine as a work-in-progress: "What are these two arms compared to the multitude that can be applied, without pay, without tire, by adapting the mechanisms we find in the looms and the mills?" At this point, he has no evil intentions.

February 1899:

Money seems to flow again, and things started getting better for Mandus. He travels to Mexico with his children and visits the Aztec ruins.

Once there, he becomes fascinated by the human sacrifice rituals performed during the Aztec era.

March 1899:

Mandus is now back in London, but sick. He probably caught a tropical disease during his previous travels. He has servants at this point, a sign that he is financially well-off.

He dreams of a 'great machine'. He kills all his servants and buries their cadavers under flowers in his garden. He states that he wanted to "re-craft them".

Obviously, Mandus is under the influence of an orb he got from his travel in Mexico. He wrote: "I can only hear the voice from within that gentlest of stones (...) then we came to London and I set it upon the mantelpiece." (creds. Centuryon).

The Amnesia Wiki (http://amnesia.wikia.com/wiki/The_Orbs) states:

"Mandus recovered an orb from a ruined Aztec temple in Mexico. He was uninitiated and the orb fractured, and shattered into two. Consequently, this was so powerful it also split Mandus' own soul into two as well. The two orb halves bled so madness they revealed unto him all the horrors of the wars and genocides to come in the 20th Century. He went insane and murdered his own children rather than endure them living in such dark evil times. Mourning, he took the two orb shards back to England to use them to power The Machine and remake the world." (This statement however contradicts the alleged date of death of the children, which is supposed to happen after October)

The Orb is actually set up inside the machine, and it is possible that the orb had its own purposes, and was actually trying to establish its power in the real world (this dimension). The ultimate goal being to whipe all mankind from the surface of Earth (as stated from audio notes).

April 1899:

Mandus receives a crate from his uncle. It was a heavily deformed human body (probably a "grunt" from TDD, creds. Misterbombi) . It seems to have been affected by the power of the Orb and even by the ethereal shape of his uncle (the character from The Dark Descent); "I smell the Orb upon him, and suspect my great uncle's presence in his curious condition".

After studying the body, he discovered it could be used to manipulate biological processes in humans. However, he decides to use pigs as experimental subjects instead: "Men are difficult to control and rotten with sentimentality. No, we require a new creature for our chattels: loyal, clever, strong, easily sated".

May 1899:

The pigs used for the experiments seem to have evolved into intelligent creatures. Mandus thinks about providing them a god in order to form some sort of religion: "They will happily accept fealty to a God thrust upon them, and worship it thus given. In this, I realize, they are no different to the masses. They are much the same as us."

June 1899:

Mandus is sick from his travels to Mexico, possibly from a tropical disease. He's weakened, has strong fevers and nightmares, but is very determined to work on his machine. He seems to start acting psychotic towards his children: "I hear my children playing in the attic but it fills me with terror, not love. What desperate thoughts are these?".

July 1899:

Mandus continues his research and begins working on a mysterious compound, "of one part Brennenburn Infusion Vitae to one part Orgone Monad Disperal". It seems that the compound is able to reanimate dead bodies.

August 1899:

Some of his first test subjects (mutated pigs) escape from the machine into the sewers. The machinery seems faulty. In some areas where the air is hot, the temperature seems to provoke undesirable effects on the creatures: "They live sporadically, torn from one world to the other and back again in violent, unpredictable bursts. For a few seconds they are creatures of this world, then they are torn away and cease to have physical form. This vicious ripping back and forth between worlds has driven them quite insane". As a result, the areas where the creatures resided were sealed.

During the same month, Mandus continued experimenting with Compound X. While experimenting on a dog, he found that drowning a living being to death permitted resurrection without side-effects.

The product was so strong that, "The severed head of a man, recently trampled to death by a runaway carriage, immersed in a solution of the Brennenburg compound open his eyes, and cry "Oh where are my legs Sir? Where is my body?" We are breaking through the barriers of death itself".

The day after the experiment, Mandus prepared the new workers who arrived. Out of pity, he drugged them to keep them calm, then sent them into his machine of madness, where they endured a transformation: "we have removed all the mirrors. After the process, it is their reflections that trouble them the most". He viewed them as poor souls that were now his children.

At a moment in the game, you can stare at a functional automated line where bodies are hooked and dismembered. The bodies were probably remembered with various parts from both pigs and humans, then given life back with the coumpound.

He also goes on to explain how he employed children to clean the pipes. They would later be fed to the pigs.

October 1899:

Mandus improves his meat fabrication procedures; five notes cover the manufacturing of the "product", including details on the bleeding line, evisceration, energy recycling, temperature control...

What were these "products"? Human beings. The note is priceless:

"More efficient and less visible to picking off stragglers and strays is the removal of entire communities in one swoop. Let the ground open under them and fall to the maw. Last month, by activating the doors at shortly after midnight on a balmy Saturday, fifty-seven individual products were obtained in a single catch.

I have instructed the workhouse to begin plans for a street festival before the end of summer, to pack out the narrow lanes with a teeming throng, with hundreds of pairs of feet. We have begun to assemble a network of false streets and have extended the holding pens in preparation. A second pigline will be added to enable the system to cope with the increase in traffic."

The massive killings went unnoticed, just how Mandus expected. "No-one misses the poor. Round up some orphans and the world will thank you for it. Disappear a w'♥♥♥♥ and a gentleman applauds you. Cull a beggar and a lady walks safely again". He started growing hatred for rich people: "I have plans for them all. We will feed them and then we will feed from them.".

At the same time, Mandus implies that Jack the Ripper was actually the pigmen: "When they stalked The Ripper, he was often called to pontificate upon lacerations and missing organs". About the professor, he then wrote: "I may even introduce him to Jack, or his sons at least" (creds. Chudah)

December 1899:

Mandus seems to isolate himself more. A professor from a club Mandus used to be a member of visits him. He soon grows suspicious and starts to think that the professor was there to investigate Mandus' doings and to check if he was mentally okay. It is implied that Mandus kills the professor after the visit.

Three days after the professor's visit, Mandus starts to think about his actions.

The player then begins the game on December 29th, just before the new century.

Death of the children:

How exactly Mandus killed his children is not clear. They were around 8 or 10 and were still alive on October 1899 according to the journals notes (which however is contradictory to some other notes). They used to play in forbidden areas and even witnessed the pigs, which were dangerous.

The Orb (see month of March) told him they would be killed in the coming conflicts of the next century and that it would be better to mercy-kill them now then to have them live in such a world (also cf. Aisar's post). The exact date of death of the children, during his travel in Mexico or between October and December, is an open debate.

The way Mandus killed his kids probably has to do with the aztec sacrifice rituals and the precious eagle cactus fruit. The scene where the two kids pull their hearts out of their chests would support/hint at that. (creds. nadenitza)

And indeed, the last note where Mandus spoke of his children was from December 1st: "This spoon was the same you gave your twins, then you used it to dig a hole to their clockwork souls and you ate up their hearts like soup on the way to keep you fat.

Fat little mole, where will you dig next, I asks, you and your little silver spoon made from the silver spine of your children, and wrapped in the hair of your dearly departed?"

(Grammar fixes by Riddy)

[Aisar]

edit: let me know if you did not intend to have the children's death explained fully here, I will promptly remove this post :)

Excellent, thanks for the post and the explenations. Mandus kills his kids during his madness. The Machine tells him they will be killed in the coming conflicts of the next century and that it is better to put them down now then have them live in such a world. This is the overall theme of the story from The Machine's point of view. Everyone should die, no one should experience the horrors to come.

[Riddy]

Now this is worth bumping. I think in one audio log though, it's implied he kills the professor somehow. Might want to add that in. Nice writeup.

[Amenophys]

Originally posted by Riddy:

Now this is worth bumping. I think in one audio log though, it's implied he kills the professor somehow. Might want to add that in. Nice writeup.

I made it more obvious in the reading, thx

Originally posted by Aisar:

edit: let me know if you did not intend to have the children's death explained fully here, I will promptly remove this post :)

Excellent, thanks for the post and the explenations. Mandus kills his kids during his madness. The Machine tells him they will be killed in the coming conflicts of the next century and that it is better to put them down now then have them live in such a world. This is the overall theme of the story from The Machine's point of view. Everyone should die, no one should experience the horrors to come.

It can be cool to know more about the children's death, I somehow updated the OP

[Riddy]

Do you mind if I revise your post and fix some grammar and spelling issues?

[Amenophys]

Originally posted by Riddy:

Do you mind if I revise your post and fix some grammar and spelling issues?

Send it in PM

[Amenophys]

Thx I updated

[Riddy]

Fixed some other errors I found, might wanna update again :)

(some credit would be nice too)

[Amenophys]

Originally posted by Riddy:

Fixed some other errors I found, might wanna update again :)

(some credit would be nice too)

Updated again, and yup credits already were at bottom of the post, I would not forget that ;-)

[Amenophys]

bumped

[Lone Wolf]

Thanks for the summary.

[Sweet Dee]

Thanks for the timeline. I'm going to work on my own sequence of events informed by nineteenth-century history, and this is super helpful! Do you have any theories about the man in the machine? Could it be a hallucination of Mandus's, or is it an actual person?

[adfsg]

Very enlightening, thank you. So any human subjects of experimentation were likely fed to the pigmen or euthanized?

[Amenophys]

Originally posted by sir_voe:

Very enlightening, thank you. So any human subjects of experimentation were likely fed to the pigmen or euthanized?

Human subjects were transformed, into pigmen...

[Amenophys]

Originally posted by Amnesia: A Machine for Pugs EB:

Thanks for the timeline. I'm going to work on my own sequence of events informed by nineteenth-century history, and this is super helpful! Do you have any theories about the man in the machine? Could it be a hallucination of Mandus's, or is it an actual person?

The guy making the phone calls, and talking to Mandus, is Mandus himself, his evil part.

[Amenophys]

Bumped.