Oswald Mandus

Oswald Mandus
Biographical information
Full name	Mr. Oswald Mandus
Born	c. 1849-1864
Died	31st of December, 1899–1st of January, 1900
Cause of death	Suicide; through impalement
Age	35-50
Known for	Family owner of the Mandus Processing Company. Discovering an Orb in Mexico Creating the Machine His faux charities for the poor
Physical description
Species	Human
Nationality	British (English)
Gender	Male
Eye colour	Blue
Hair colour	Greying
Career and family information
Affiliation(s)	Mandus Processing Company
Occupation	Industrialist (meat processing)
Spouse(s) or partner(s)	† Lillibeth "Lily" Mandus (wife)
Children	† Edwin Mandus (son, victim) † Enoch Mandus (son, victim)
Other family	Hazel (possible grandmother) Alexander of Brennenburg (possible great-uncle) Daniel (possible great-uncle)
Non-familial relationships	Tabitha Stepwood (acquaintance)Father Jeremiah (acquaintance, victim)
Behind the scenes
Voice actor (English)	Toby Longworth
Appearances
A Machine for Pigs	Controlled (player character) Audio (phonographs) Mentioned

“

Ahead the trickle to still waters. I dragged myself deeper into the temple, downward ever. Towards a wind that held the voices of my children, beckoning me to set them free.

”

Oswald Mandus

Mr. Oswald Mandus is the main character of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. He was a wealthy industrialist and passionate inventor who took out massive loans to try to apply his new machinery to his businesses; however, he was unable to make a turn in profit. In his desperation, Mandus went through the journals of his great-uncle, which was the catalyst for the events of the game. Everything mechanical in his estate seems to be of his own design. Mandus is voiced by Toby Longworth.

Early life

Oswald Mandus was born into a wealthy English family, possibly one with some ties to the old Prussian aristocracy, during the mid-19th Century. The Mandus family owned the Mandus Processing Company, which specialized in industrial meat processing. They owned a massive factory, possibly the largest of its kind in London, for this purpose. He later became the head of the family and married Lillibeth "Lily" Mandus, whom he loved deeply.

Mandus was something of either a hobbyist or a hunter. He had a collection of rifles and a museum of stuffed and fully mounted skins of some large mammals on display, including a hippopotamus, a giant anteater, and a grizzly bear.

Adult life

In September 1890, tragedy struck Mandus when Lily died during childbirth, leaving her husband near inconsolable. She'd given birth to twin sons, Edwin and Enoch. Mandus promised her on her deathbed he would take care of them both; she was buried and her teeth were sold to make dollies for the poor.It is implied that Lily’s death was the catalyst for his soul splitting in two.

In the late 1890s, Mandus intended to expand and update his factories with new machinery to make his product-lines more efficient and safer for his workers, but this decision had dire consequences. He invested too heavily in his machines, with no immediate returns, and the bank refused credit, condemning him for squandering the family fortune. Mandus faced financial ruin and feared it was only a matter of time before the bailiffs would come to repossess his home.

Expedition to Mexico

In desperation, Mandus began to look through his great-uncle's travel diaries, which mentioned archaeological digs from around the world that yielded great treasures. His great uncle also hinted that undiscovered treasures lay in the jungles of the Americas, with the “Temple of the Stone Moon” specifically mentioned. Mandus, interpreting this as a sign the temple held enormous wealth, decided to solve his financial problems by finding it.

A few months later, Mandus personally undertook an expedition to Mexico in order to find the temple, and took his beloved children along with him. On February 14th, he found a man who knew where the ruins of the temple were located and who agreed to lead him and his children to it. The man was confused as to how Mandus came upon knowledge of the temple, but still agreed to lead them there.

After entering the temple, the twins seemed to have come across the Orb first, calling it a "stone egg." The boys told their father to hold it up to his ear, as it sounded like the sea. Upon contact with it, Mandus saw all the coming horrors of the 20th Century, such as the World Wars, conditions in the Soviet gulags, the atomic bombings in Japan, and worst of all, the deaths of both Edwin and Enoch. They would die painfully sixteen years in the future, during the Battle of the Somme in the First World War. To spare his children this horrendous fate, he sacrificed them on the temple steps. Mourning and cursing the world, he took the Orb and the boys' skulls back to England, leaving their headless corpses behind in Mexico.

After this traumatic experience, Mandus changed for the worse, a strange illness, a fever, had come over the man. He had grown to despise the world and detest humanity, viewing them as no different from pigs. Mandus sought to remake the world and avert the future wars to come by mechanizing the ancient practice of human sacrifice he had seen evidence of at the temple.

Constructing the Machine

The construction of the Machine commenced and Mandus began experimenting with Vitae and other chemicals of worldly and otherworldly origin, including Orgone Monad Disperser Fluid and Compound X. He then had the body of a Gatherer, most likely a Servant Grunt, brought from the ruins of his great uncle’s domain, Brennenburg Castle. He studied it intensely, and used what he learned to help create his Manpigs. The Manpigs were created through a mixture of Orgone Monad Disperser Fluid and Vitae, the finished product being called Compound X. This was used to reanimate parts of human and pig flesh into monstrosities that served Mandus’ will.

Mandus employed various malpractices and cruelty in and out of the workplace, including the forced labour of orphaned children, who would work inside the highly-pressurized machinery and often get scalded to death in the process. Mandus then began abducting the residents of London to further his dark research and create even more of his monstrosities, no matter their social class. He wined and dined the rich before abducting them from their beds, murdering them, feeding their corpses to The Machine; he also cooked their flesh to serve even more high-profile guests or processed and sold it on the market, turning perhaps thousands of Londoners into unwitting cannibals.

Despite all of his atrocities, Mandus’ finances are implied not only to have recovered, but to have flourished. It is mentioned by the priest, Father Jeremiah, that the Mandus Processing Company had become become the dominant food producer in the land due to the new machinery (and subjects) used. Mandus used his recovered and expanded wealth to finance both his Machine and his numerous charities, although he used this as a cover to abduct more subjects. He tried to bring in Father Jeremiah into his plot, but the priest refused, preferring to suffer the same fate as "his flock."

Near the end of December, the construction of the Machine and its Manpigs, the reapers of mankind, was virtually complete. The Machine was on the verge of being fully automated for the collection of humans for slaughter, their blood sacrificed at the temple core.

The ministry and those from the rifle club, former friends and associates of Mandus, grew suspicious and concerned by these recent activities and employed Professor A to investigate Mandus’ affairs in late December. Mandus received the Professor in his home and recorded their conversations with the latter’s consent. The Professor and Mandus discussed their conflicting philosophical beliefs as the former was given a tour through the The Machine. Mandus told the Professor he had a partner in his endeavor, "the Engineer." The Professor came to see Mandus as fanatical, but expressed his awe at both Mandys’ sheer will and the intricate machinery. He asked Mandus if he could meet the Engineer, and Mandus responded by murdering and skinning the man.

Eventually, Mandus woke from the hatred that had been festering within him over the past year. He and the Engineer soon split by an unknown cause, sending his other half into the Machine itself and making it sentient. Given Mandus's reflection at this time ("If you are evil, at least yours is an honest evil and that alone makes you Ubermensch"), he realized he was no longer the enlightened conduit he believed himself to be. Seeing himself as a monster that is beyond redemption, Mandus tried to take his own life by grabbing exposed wires. This was ultimately unsuccessful.

In a last-ditch effort to stop what he had begun, Mandus went through the Machine and sabotaged what he could. This included breaking electrical fuses, turning switches off, and removing pieces of machinery. When it was complete he retired to his room, overcome by the fever he contracted in Mexico, and fell asleep.

He woke to the sound of his children calling. This awoke the compassionate side of Mandus, which had "fallen asleep" since the events in Mexico. Since Mexico, his heart was filled with hate for the world. Now it was time for the kind half of Mandus to learn what he had done over the past year.

Events of A Machine for Pigs

Main article: Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

Mandus is eventually overcome with fever and haunted by nightmares of a monstrous machine obscured by an Aztec altar. He eventually recovers consciousness in his own bed, with no recollection of how much time has passed since his last memory. All he knows is that his children, Edwin and Enoch, need him. As he rises from bed, somewhere beneath him he hears an engine roar into life.

When Mandus awakened from a nightmare caused by a fever, it had not only left him delirious, but the severe illness has resulted in memory loss. The entrepreneur cannot remember anything more than his name, and that his children need him, which he immediately sets off to search for.

Unlike Daniel, who completely erased his memories in Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Mandus slowly recovered his and writing them down in his Journal as he made progress.

During his search, he received a phone call from a mysterious man telling him that he won't see his children again unless he restarts the Machine. He trusts this voice and confesses it sounds like his long-lost twin, not realizing it's the other half of his very own damaged soul talking to him.

Mandus becomes aware of shambling monsters wandering around the premises and witnesses strange abominations as he ventures through his estate into the depths of the cellars. Undaunted, he makes every effort to find his children before any harm befalls them.

Eventually, following the guidance of the Engineer, he manages to drain the floodwaters and restart the great engines, thus reactivating the Machine. By the time he realizes he has been tricked, it is too late. His dark alter-ego reveals its intentions to destroy civilization and prevent future wars. His other half is now free to resume harvesting and reshaping mankind into monsters and sends its army of Manpigs forth into the streets of London, attacking its inhabitants indiscriminately and without mercy.

Realizing that no outside help can possibly come and that his children are gone, Mandus swears to destroy this machine at all costs. His broken soul tries to convince him otherwise and to give up, but Mandus asserts he will make it up to his children and wash his sins clean. If he is unable to, then he concludes that it's better for one beyond redemption to die with his creations than to continue living as a monster.

He begins to sabotage the Machine once more, evading the Manpigs that give chase and attempt to stop him. In the final hours of the 19th century, Mandus finds the core and shuts down the Machine for good. He then sacrifices himself on a mechanical clockwork chair, which mimics the Aztec ritual of ripping the heart from the still-living victim's chest, and both Mandus and the Machine die together upon midnight as London and the world silently enter the 20th century.

Personality

Despite being outwardly belligerent, Mandus was actually a very kind and compassionate man, who cared deeply for the poor. The innovative businessman was already somewhat eccentric, before his marriage, having secret passageways built into his mansion. He was apparently acquainted with Tabitha Stepwood, who ran an orphanage. Mrs. Stepwood wrote a letter to Mandus, informing him that she had talked to the Governors about Mandus's attempt to reform children's labor, in which the Governors agreed with. Later, Ms. Stepwood told Mandus that the orphans will make "the most wonderful addition" to his products.

Mandus was a very loving and devoted father. Indeed, he made a self-observation that he loved his children far too much; he'd do anything to protect them, and would lie, cheat, steal and even kill for them.

Quotes

Main article: Oswald Mandus/Dialogue

• "Oh God help me. I am lost in the dry paper soul of the world."
• "We are the pig, Professor. We are all the pig."
• "And as the dust settled on my open eyes and we lay together embraced forever, I heard miles above us, the sounds of the city turning over in its sleep. A church bell ringing out. And in that moment, the new century was born."

Trivia

• Mandus is potentially the great-nephew of Daniel from the first game.
• The name "Oswald Mandus" is a reference to Ozymandias, a fictional ruler glorified in the famous poem of the same name by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ozymandias is the Greek expression of the name Ramses, the poem being tangentially about Ramses II, having stood (as a statue) a king amongst a ravaged land, surrounded by lifelessness and rubble.
  • Oswald Mandus's name could also be a reference to the antagonist of the Watchmen comic book series, who goes the name "Ozymandias." If this is true it could be possible that Mandus's goal was not to wipe out humanity, but rather to do what Ozymandias did, by creating such a massive slaughter that the powers of the world would be scared into making peace forever or possibly be forced into submission with the Machine as their leader.

Mandus's arm model.

• Much like Daniel in the first game, Mandus's in-game model consists of just an arm.
• Unlike Daniel, who has concept art of his in-game appearance, Mandus has no concept art of his appearance.
• It would appear that Mandus, while being completely oblivious to the Orb's true powers, is aware that Castle Brennenburg existed, as well as Alexander's long research about the Vitae and the Gatherers.
• Despite the horrors Mandus faces in his journey, unlike Daniel or Justine, he doesn't lose sanity whenever he witnesses disturbing events or staring at the Manpigs, implying that his mental state is stronger than the previous two characters.^{[incorporate]}
• Daniel from the first game respawns after death due to the Shadow. It is unknown why Mandus respawns after death. A theory could be that his soul is not complete, due to his other half still being alive within the Machine.
• Mandus seemed to originally use Daniel's voice samples for his reactions to the Manpigs. As heard in the teaser trailer, when the Manpig is breaking the door down, the gasps heard are Daniel's. These may have functioned as placeholders until Mandus's voice samples were recorded.

Gallery

A close approximation to Mandus's appearance, according to Samuel Justice (the lead audio designer).

Mandus CO. Meat Processing Facility logo.

Mandus Processing Company logo.