The corpus is a collection of written texts, specifically the entire works of a particular author or a body of writing on a particular subject.

The caravan of the “Diamond Ace” is one of the most terrifying events that happened in the country for the last fifty years. Unofficial investigation data has it that the caravan was to blame for the disappearance of over one hundred young people. Of sixteen murders the caravan was accused and found guilty, and there is suspicion of them being the weapon for carrying out another thirty four murders. This hellish team floated to the surface somewhere on the outskirts of the Tarunian area and traveled for four hundred kilometers down the middle of our country, taking lives as they went. Some people were killed and many disappeared never to be seen again. The strategists of the governmental secret services made several mistakes for some unknown reason and the Caravan managed to escape a number of times, just to appear somewhere else spontaneously. It was on September the 14th that the Caravan was caught and massacred near Orv.

What was really so horrible about the Caravan (or the “Family of the Diamond Ace” as they called themselves)? If we were to compile all the rumors and doubtful reports, we could imagine that they were either some vile demons or death cultists. “The Pointless Diversion of Hell”, “The Clockwork Scarecrows”, “The Scrappy Cannibals” – such nicknames and bold headlines provoked the nonsense of the rumors. Reality, in fact, was more prosaic, but no less horrible. Apparently, it was quite a large (500 creatures, 600 with figurines according to some sources) roaming circus.

They left no one handsome or talented child anywhere they went. Their method was as follows: having arrived in some settlement (always at night, just before dawn), they would put their carts in a circle, make camps and some disintegrating stage; in the morning, they would make a performance for children: female singers’ songs, the clown jokes, the somersaulting dogs, cats that could guess numbers and master gymnasts – all these were present. However, while the children were watching the performance, they were being watched from behind the scrappy curtains by dozens of keen eyes. They were out to spot the pretty, the talented, and these eyes would remember them.

After the morning performance, the happy children would return home and sleep happily in their cozy beds, dreaming about circus life and tomorrow’s performance. Meanwhile the settlement would be bustling about the forbidden circus program – the “Macabre Theatre”, and of course the town would go and see it. Ones that came at night would see the circus opening different carts to the ones they opened in the morning and they would be shown just the same tricks that were for the children, but always with a touch of lechery and cruelty. Moreover, they had freaks that they called “figurines” and would secretly exhibit in a separate pavilion for a separate price.

While the adults were watching the show, the acrobats of the circus would kidnap the children noticed during the day and leave behind freaks instead. The stolen children were integrated into the satanic system of the caravan to become all sorts of artists, athletes, clowns and prostitutes. Along with the children they would take the belongings of their parents. The acrobats were often accompanied by heavyweights and strong men, so that in case some parents didn’t go to see the show, they would be tortured and killed.

The reprisal against the caravan was terrible. The punishing measures taken were unparalleled in roughness for our humanist time. The population, however, having been warmed up by all sorts of slogans and theme publications, was rejoicing. It was the first time that the people were prepared to praise the authorities and establish granite monuments in memory of secret service generals. The gymnasts, heavyweights, animal trainers along with the animals and the innocent freaks were killed instantly. The directors of the caravan were taken prisoner for interrogation, but they behaved at the interrogation sessions in just the same way they did on stage, so they became subject to awful torture and beating. Many of the clowns didn’t live to see the trial. Any who survived were given the death penalty.

After that there was a whole wave of repression against free artistry – those inspired by the government and ones performed by the people. Many innocent people suffered. Many had to leave their risky profession and conceal their past. For a few years free artistry was declared out of the law and driven underground. Even the innocent tricks with juggling became forbidden entertainment, being a reminiscence of the dark events.

Any interest for talented children aroused suspicion; as the interrogations showed, the interest for them of the Family of the Diamond Ace was absolutely pathologic – they couldn’t conceal this passion even being threatened with death. Perhaps Anna Heart, (nicknamed Anna Angel) who arrived in the town not long ago, has nothing to do with the Caravan, but when she came, she settled with some orphan girl named Vera Verbah, whose father died during the war and the mother died during the first outbreak of the plague. Vera took her in, welcomed her in her lonesome house, but soon after, she disappeared. Now she’s gone and Anna lives in her house and wears her hair. Why would she need false hair? And others too… sometimes they act as if they fear the revelation of their secrets.

All this is loathsome forgery, lie and hypocrisy! How is it that everyone pretending to be someone else, why is nobody daring to say the truth about themselves? Substituted children, deceived audience, names, forever forgotten… Stolen actors put on vivid masks play other people’s roles, playing with the puppet threads without even the shade of embarrassment! Sham and plaster casts are everywhere, mirage instead of truth – how do we fight this? How do we live with this now?

The position of the Keeper of the Cemetery has been passed on for over three generations now, however there is no information as for its being caste or ritual. Since the foundation of the stone city, the cemetery was kept by quite a number of people and among them there were not only ones from the steppe. Our contemporary keeper is actually of the late settlers, so it would be foolish to attempt explaining the strange behavior of the keepers by attributing it to their being members of the local death cult. In fact, people of the steppe don’t actually have a fully developed death cult; it is in some way integrated into the complicated cult of the earth. The inhabitants of the steppe are afraid of their dead and take them for filth. The custom of burying the dead by means of putting them inside the earth they think for barbarism and only the chosen ones, the most revered of their people are allowed to be buried in this way. Moreover, occasions of such “filthy” burial are accompanied by numerous rituals of cleansing.

Some primitive peoples look upon their dead just as if they were living. Their mythology didn’t create a world where the dead could live or await the meeting with the living. Not having the ability to preserve the voices and feelings of the dead and not believing in the forthcoming meeting with the beloved ancestors, these peoples try to save the bones of their dead and give them the attributes of the person. In this way they create an illusion of the person’s presence in everyday life. Our steppe people are not of this kind.

I presume that the strange care and warmth with which our keeper treats the dead has nothing to do with ritual or tradition. The desire to care for the dead, to comfort them in the way he does it, comes from the depth of the human soul. The keeper treats the dead in this way because he sees no alternative. It is barely possible that he loves the dead, but I’m sure he feels them too well to treat them with indifference.

I think that the reason for such whole-hearted attention to the dead comes from exceeding usage of twyrin and smoking the resinous roots of saviur. There is no other explanation because the keeper is no madman, in fact, he is quite a sensible person. Twyrin sharpened his senses. By exceeding the allowed dosage of twyrin, living in a scarcely populated area of the town, among the wide variety of herbs, the keeper learnt of the torment of the dead too many things that mortal men aren’t allowed to know. He can feel the awful, hopeless pain of the dead with his skin, his nerves, and therefore, he tries to ease it by feeding them sugar and pouring warm milk on the graves. I think that their pain spread on him shocked the man. He tries to ease his own pain by drinking more twyrin, but his senses sharpen even more and the torment becomes overwhelming.

He brought up his daughter, Laska, in this way. First, he made his wife drink as much twyrin, then did the same to her. The baneful influence of the herbs had an effect on his family members. Their ears are extremely sensitive and the hairs on their skin seem to move in response to any stirring on the cemetery land. His wife used to be a pretty woman in her youth, but later turned into something that looked like a creature from the other side. By the time her hair went gray, she had grown it to be so dense and heavy, as to conceal her whole body. If one were to look at her from behind, her hair reached the ground and fell lower than her waist from the front. Her nails became stone-hard and the skin on her hands became dry and wrinkly because of the constant digging that she was up to.

Obviously, the family cannot treat the dead for anything other than their relatives, perhaps immobile, but present at all times. The three live and sleep almost hugging the dead. The earth, full of buried people lulls them on its dented hand; at night, when the silent aura of the town isn’t broken by any foreign sounds, they press their ears against their rough beds, their blood full of the hallucinating twyrin, and listen to the sounds of the earth; stars shed their cold light from above upon them, staring indifferently at the three. The dead are everywhere around them, their tormented screams and groans louder and louder. Sometimes, having just buried a man in the morning, by the time dusk sets in, they hear the stirring and discomfort of the new neighbor.

Being able to hear the speech of the dead and feel their pain, the keeper can no longer forget about his ward. He cares about them because feels with every molecule of his body that their existence is not over. Perhaps he no longer thinks that this care is utmost necessity, but takes it for an unpleasant, but essential duty.

When Nina Kain ruled the town, the people, who weren’t used to monarchy and even more so to pristine magic, watched with awe and fear how a demonic queen can rule. It seemed that a figure of a divine woman with a sweeping wave of dark hair is soaring in the sky, her exquisite features wrapped in clouds; she seemed to be a massive monument of an ancient sovereign. They said she was almighty. They said that at night, in her true form, – her head touching the sky, her figure slim and lithe as an ivy branch and as the lightning, – she walks around town, lightly moving her pale shoulders, and takes what is hers, but gives with godly generosity what otherwise mortal men could have under no circumstances.

That’s what they used to say and that’s what they say today. Now that it has been fifteen years since her death and her biography is history and legend, it is worth looking at Nina’s image and separate the truth from fiction.

First of all, the truth is that during the short period of her rule, Nina managed to shake both souls and minds of people who weren’t at all inclined for reasonless exaltation. The truth was that she was indescribably beautiful – even the most captious judge would find her appearance both perfect and demonic. Imperious gestures of her delicate hands, milk-white skin, pitch-black eyes, majestic deportment and iniquitous forms of her bitten lips. The truth is that the people’s memory gave her such features that both refined tyrants and enlightened emperors would love to have.

However, the most interesting thing is that everyone called her a witch despite the fact that she never demonstrated some supernatural deed, not once. In fact, she actually didn’t have any “special” abilities. She couldn’t throw lightning, nor could she do any tricks, nor stop enemy legions by means of gesture, nor transform lead into gold. But what really was? The masses’ memory is the most sober historical source; it cannot be cheated or bribed by planned falsifications. What happened?

This woman emanated this special sort of energy – the energy that allowed her to create things that shouldn’t be. Next to her seemed possible – and in fact were – such things that wouldn’t be possible under any other circumstances. This energy was extremely strong within her. It was like a fiery column that stretched from her head to the sky, one could almost feel it. Being unable to make this image more vivid, the people invented a legend about a woman that was extremely tall, reaching the sky, and went about playing with the town as if she were a child playing with toy bricks. That is actually the image of the Mistress Nina on children’s pictures of that time. Rapture, violent happiness and passion were the feeling that filled the space where she went. That was her witchery.

Her nature suited that of the Kain family. The Kains have this heritage of inclination for brave and dangerous experiments, impudence and absence of any desire to acknowledge any laws, no matter if they are the laws of physics or history; this virtue was the very environment that Nina was most comfortable with. Their manner of ruling by means of invisible power, regulating the directions of the people’s mood, its uprises and storms, all this gave her great opportunities. Nina took the town in her warm hands, squeezed it into an obedient lump of clay, softened it and began shaping the realm of her dreams.

Meanwhile people loved her more and more! Her passion was, in fact, contagious; her strict eyes burned with furious mirth, which had no effect on her mimics or behavior. Nina was the kind of person that is so vividly seen in Maria now: one of coldness, absolute self-control and total sobriety, with the ability to perform foolhardy deeds.

From another source:

“…The whole time that Nina was the Mistress of the Kain family, she held the town in fear. Paradoxical, but that was the cause for the increase of love towards the Kains, that took place lately – compared to Nina, all the other members of the family looked extremely humanist. Nina broke and crippled dozens of lives, families broke up because of her, and houses were taken down on her command. Any, who she didn’t think to be her equal weren’t worthy of taking into consideration at all – people for her were some kind of ants. When Nina was bored – and that was quite a frequent event – she behaved as if she were Dracula, simply went around the city looking for situations that could interest her and solved different things according to her understanding of justice. She could easily take a child from a stupid mother, give him to the Master of the Abattoir for him to make a steppe scout out of the child. She could enter a house and order its inhabitants to show her the most precious thing they had and if the people tried to conceal the real item, she would order for the liars to be dealt with. No matter how strange, but the people were quite patient about this. Nina was taken for a beautiful and awe-inspiring protector of the town, who had to be propitiated by means of bloody sacrifice. When Nina died, the inhabitants took a deep, easy breath, but continued to treat her as before, in fact, even with more piety, because now she obtained another quality that was added to what she already had – she was dead.”

Nobody could imagine any of the difficulties or terrible events that could come with the building of the railway that was bound for the north-west of the Mountain Knot. So the Local Administrative Council decided to go on with the project.

This decision was inspired by the rate of development of our country and the promising results of the geological survey. The scarce settlements of this area, most of which were built in the previous century, are basically cattle-dealing factories, and few of them became small towns. Theses towns’ inhabitants are a society that is quite unusual and paradoxically pretentious. Manufacturers, ethnographers, inspectors, anthropologists, descendants of the political outcasts and random visitors – all in all educated people – managed to peacefully coexist with the native inhabitants of the area, whose traditions haven’t gone far from the archaic social system.

The railroad project was meant to bring mutual prosperity to the area, so the Committee members were extremely surprised to see the coldness with which the local inhabitants reacted to the news. The engineers even encountered sabotage and open diversion on certain occasions, which resulted in whole large parts of the railroad being spoilt. They used to make sacrifice altars from the sleepers and spirals from the rails… These diversions were explained by means of blaming some dark tribes for them; however the investigation showed that the acts of vandalism were not performed without notification of the local authorities, they had actually been encouraged by rulers.

Nevertheless, the road was built and heavy goods trains started moving along it soon.
The administration’s indignation grew even greater when they received notifications one after the other, about three trains’ mysterious disappearance. However, the local rulers (the owners of the factories, to be more precise) were using their far-off position from the metropolis to bathe in autocracy. They denied having anything to do with the events. The disappearance of the trains they blamed on the evil will of the Steppe, which was worshipped by many tribes as an ancient mother. What could be done about that?

The North-western line has a bad reputation now. Once a month would some regular train roll down it, driven by a frightened man; having unloaded the mail, building materials and manufactured goods, it takes cattle and produce. Then something, half-man, a deaf and dumb sorcerer would ascend upon it. He drives the train through the dark Steppe, praying to the spirits and ancient gods, so the earth would not unleash its wrath for the ones that are taking the skins, hooves and meat of her slaughtered children.

And the Steppe answers with a groan. She breathes scorching underground steam in front of the train, and huge dark animals scour the area around it, moving close to the train, jumping at it, stepping over it, and bend their massive horned heads to the train’s top. They move with the train until the horizon fills with the vague outlines of scattered outskirts of the capital.

Viscous twyrin, drunken twyrin, smoky twyrin, gray and green, black, bloody, brown and rusty twyrin… What a great amount of tears and blood were shed because of this drink, and how much is yet to be shed… Similar to the western absenter, but more complex, more ancient and deeper, it like no other drink gives an unrecognizable distortion of reality. It also has a similar history to the one of absenter. First it was the drink of beggars, some barely literate steppe inhabitants, who understood the howling of their bulls better than human speech. Gradually, it was discovered by the aesthetes and rich eccentric people, and there, it is being collected, tasted at prestigious saloons and pharmacies sell it in silver thimbles as an expensive poison.

People collected numerous recipes, compiled encyclopedias dedicated to the different methods of brewing twyrin and preparing herbs. Some enthusiasts even arranged expeditions to the Steppe to infiltrate the Order and learn the secret techniques of making the drink. The problem is that the twyrin made by herb gatherers is always going to be different from the one made according to a written recipe, no matter what kind of a drink is being brewed.

Every bottle of twyrin is unique. The ability to distort reality and the different details to the effects depend on every tiny grass that was used for brewing the drink. Some mystics think that the herb gatherers give a name to each twyre root they find in the Steppe. The gatherers memorize these places and walk round them at a certain time to pick the roots. Some are picked as soon as they are born, some at certain days. They wait for the proper crop for several years in some cases.

A lot not only depends on how the herbs are picked, but also on how they grow. “Twyre is pain of the Steppe” – so says the Order ('huung twyrat ag agyl'). They believe that the juice that runs in the depths is the juice of the ancient gods, buried underneath the layers of clay, sand and fertile soil, and that twyre is the herb that absorbs all the juice before any other can. The people of the Steppe also think that twyre imbibes the pain of its time – the inspiration, the expectation of forthcoming changes, fear, the smell of war and the spirit of the people. Different twyre takes in different things, for example the bloody twyre is the kindest and most compassionate, regardless of its name, the brown is the most awful, the black has a feeling of anguish about it, and the rusty has a special memory of archaic history.

It is these details that determine the features and abilities of every drink, and not the proportions in which the spirit should be added, the choice of water and the mixing brews.

“… This Herman Orff has a simple appearance. Quite small, baldish, lean – forty years of age, looks sixty. He has none of that arrogance that is usually a recognizable feature of all governmental inquisitors. They say he is not a man of great physical strength and that is quite a rarity for universal emissaries that are our inquisitors…”

“…Despite the tradition, Orff never used any methods of direct influence. He never hides and never pretends to be someone else. Always goes straight to the point. He restored the ancient methods, such as interrogation and preliminary investigation. No secret techniques, no tricks. It seems that he is purposefully breaking the rumors about inquisitors’ inexplicable powers, which usually spread around a city and get in the way of investigation, no matter how right those rumors might be…”

“…Please pay special attention to Herman Orff’s methods. We are not speaking of a mission of delicate nature; we have a global crisis, which has included impressive masses of the population. Such crisis cannot be resolved by means of diversion, spying, psychological influence and diplomacy. To prevent a revolt before it even starts, so that the rebels find that the reasons for the uprise are no longer present before they can even make any steps – that is a political matter. Here we have to solve an equation with dozens of functions…”

As an opposition to Phylin or Mark Karminskiy, whose methods of handling massive crises were also effective, Orff never took to useless cruelty. An inquisitor always causes fear. Obviously Orff was feared as well, but when playing a game Orff always set all his cards on the table and always won. He was the teacher of such radical inquisitors as Sagatka, Kurin and Aglaya Lylich. It is interesting to note that all of them were executed on the Committee’s command, the reason for that being their inclination for display of initiative. Behind the directness of their methods they hid some game of their own, for their personal profit, which they had been playing without the knowledge of the Authorities.

* Inquisitor (governmental inquisitor) – in this case the word has nothing to do with the church. Inquisitors are people of a restricted group of specialists (their numbers at different times varied from 19 to 52), for whom the Authorities would assign tasks of extraordinary nature. The thing is that inquisitors had a mysterious gift – they could solve a problem that appeared to have no solution. Unique knowledge, techniques and skills, as well as most profound erudition were accompanied by temporary autocracy that was granted to them by the Authorities. When on a mission, the inquisitor was never restricted by any laws except for the ones he made himself.

While the heads of the Houses wielded material power, such as governing, their women were traditionally close to the earth and the Steppe, so they had the sacred power. These women had the reputation of powerful telepaths that are able to communicate with the supernatural forces.

…Victoria Olgimskaya, The White Mistress, has practically become a local saint. Her tombstone is still decorated with heaps of flowers, and people keep bringing all sorts of foodstuffs, embroideries, apples, cups of salt and other tributes.

The rest of the content is unofficially translated content taken directly from the wiki page

...The town was torn in two by a confrontation between two formidable women. On some days everything was shackled by a terrible tension—this meant the Mistresses were "spinning their yarns". The streets were empty. People locked themselves in their houses, not daring even to stick their heads out, as if a hurricane was raging outside. It seemed that anyone that stepped into the threshold of this energy would be engaged in a whirlpool of forces with which a person wouldn't be able to cope. But those days always passed, and people opened their doors in relief; and the Mistresses, dressed in new garments, would visit the townspeople to their houses and lavish them with gifts, smiles and gracious mercy. The confrontation continued, but the townspeople could no longer feel its depth. This was Victoria's merit.
— [taur.4.1]


While the heads of the Houses wielded material power, such as governing, their women were traditionally close to the earth and the Steppe, so they had the sacred power. These women had the reputation of powerful telepaths that are able to communicate with the supernatural forces. The first and most powerful Mistress was Olgimskaya, which is strange considering she was an outsider.

The mark left by Victoria Olgimskaya is still visible today. By all accounts, during her life she was an exceptional woman, and after her death, she practically became a local saint. Flowers, foodstuffs, embroideries, apples, cups of salt—all sorts of offerings and decorations are left daily on her tombstone.
— [taur.12.2]


If the main feature of Big Vlad is heaviness, for Victoria, it was softness, which was manifested in everything about her, from her movements and her way of speaking, to the way she did business. At the same time, she was a strong and willful woman, able to quietly insist on certain things or "arrange circumstances" so that situations were resolved with her desired result. Overall, she was a worthy wife to a powerful husband.

Everyone in the town considered her their benefactor, although she never engaged in charity—there was no distribution of money, no organization of shelters, nor patronage of those who could not take care of themselves. She did little good, but was always "spinning her yarn". I understood this in such a way that the very fact of her existence stopped the development of strife and eased devastating events. People felt it, and for that they loved her.

This quality, the ability to make people happy just being herself, she gave to her daughter, young Victoria. All that is good in Capella was passed down from her mother, and please keep that in mind.
— From a letter by Vlad the Younger


Victoria died shortly afterwards Nina passed away, and some believe she did it deliberately in order to restrain her unbridled opponent, for Nina had acquired a mystical power over the town after her death. When Victoria joined Nina, the townspeople breathed a sigh of relief, comforted by familiar hands wrapping them at night, and invisible wings sheltering them from a newly opened abyss. Victoria, who in life had taught to love man for what he was, and to ask nothing more from him, had become the guardian of the family's hearth—protector of the weak and the poor.
— From private correspondence


Those who try to show Victoria's splendour by dressing her as a white witch who defeats the wicked witch are fools. This was not what made her splendid. Those who represent her as a good mother soothing children from a nightmare are naive. Warmth and cold, the house and the road, woolen furs and glowing light, the darkness and the stars: they personified extreme limits and were thus very close to each other. Only together could they share the universal loneliness of a Mistress.

The splendour of Victoria was that she loved her rival much more than she was loved by her. Although stronger than Nina, Victoria, protector of the people, opened the way to Nina and allowed her merciless truth to prevail.
— [libr.XIX]

The memory of a dead person lives just as long and just as fully as often and how properly he is remembered by the people that were close to him. This widely acknowledged banality is not as simple as it might seem. According to our legends, the person is beginning to be forgotten as soon as his soul leaves his body. Only constant mental effort, which demands really inhuman exertion, most thorough concentration of attention, memory and imagination allow us to keep the dead among the living just as if he were alive.

This primitive childish view of life after death, which has nothing to do with the existence of the soul after its owner is deceased, has set in quite firmly in the late colonists’ traditions. Perhaps it has something to do with the special role of small children in our society.

«…No, it is not a house, and it is in no way related to our foolish, if one may call it, Cathedral. Initially, Focus existed only on paper; it was pure abstraction. A theoretical construction of Simon Kain's, an intermediate agent in a long chain of assumptions regarding the «existence of a human being outside their natural boundaries», as well as in the afterlife. Do you get what I mean?
The term Focus can be often found in the works written 30 years ago; the meaning, depending on the context, may vary and refer either to a state of a «forsaken person» or «the concentration surge of human psyche» (sic). Later, after a short period of tranquility, Simon all of a sudden proceeded to materialize this subtle, elusive idea with the power of his blazing talent. He achieved overwhelming success in this field. Even those who had already known what Simon was capable of were amazed. It should be noted that the materialization of Focus became the first step towards the execution of Simon's audacious plan.»
[libr.CIL]

«The first example of Focus was a structure made of mirrors, drafts, hot-water bottles, and wooden boxes. The construction required geometric calculations, as well as the weirdest factors such as scent and location of «final things». It took its final form after two years of work. That's when it became clear that Focus is no fiction, but a working model.
Inspired by his breakthrough, Simon created several Focus specimens, each different from the other. One could fit into a walnut shell, the other required to assemble an edifice so improbably large for our modest town, the third was housed in the wine cellar, and for the fourth Simon experimented with a yurt in the Steppe.
The specimen shared one thing — its purpose. Focus allowed to preserve the Memory and maintain the permanent effect of the departed's presence. The concentration of this effect was so strong that by reaching Focus persons would be able to communicate with the deceased as if they simply left the room and were able to reply to the visitors through a thin wall
<…>
Eventually the term was used for any building that were suitable for preserving Memory. Time went by, and new opportunities were discovered in a random way. The one thing was constant — a man-made building. That's why architecture is so remarkably respected —of all forms of art it's the one that allows to translate the principles of Focus in the fullest and most accessible way.»
[vir.12-F]

«We define memory as ability to preserve in real life the traits and feelings of a human being who is now long gone. The memory of a dead person lives just as long and just as fully as often and how properly they are remembered by the people that were close to them. This widely acknowledged banality is not as simple as it might seem. According to our legends, the person is being forgotten as soon as their soul leaves their body. Only constant mental effort, which demands really inhuman exertion, most thorough concentration of attention, memory and imagination allow us to keep the dead among the living just as if they were still alive
<…
This primitive childish view of life after death, which has nothing to do with the existence of the soul after its owner is deceased, has set in quite firmly in the late colonists’ traditions. Perhaps it has something to do with the special role of small children in our society?»
[from personal correspondences]

«Dear deceased of the Stone Yard truly cohabit the place hand in hand with the living! May the Earth watch over the human bodies, may Grace bring them food to their tombs — the nobles of the Stone Yard honor their dead in the most profound sense of the word. It's not the body but the spirit that they revere, the very object of their endeavors. <…> There are ones whose Memory is worth it. Even though these people are long gone, most of them still exist here. Say, the deceased Mistresses. It could be explained by mysticism, but the Town still lives with the idea of these women not being dead entirely; the Mistresses still pull the strings like colossal puppeteers whose shadows hang over the Town».
[vir.204-A]

Pathologic lore is intriguing but sometimes confusing due to the sheer ammount of information to process and sometimes you need to recap a little or sometimes you forgot some context on why X is relevant. Those reasons is why this section exists.
Heavy spoilers of what happens in all three routes, as I want to give a full picture of the events.
Everything in this section was written by me, for what I interpreted using the sources listed below, so feel free to take them with a grain of salt.

• What happened in "Massacre of the Caravan" ?

The Ace of Diamonds were a group of talented people that acted as a group before the second outbreak which quickly became one of the country's biggest fear. The caravan was a circus that moved from town to town, offering two performances. One for the children, one for the adults.
When the children's play would end, they would head to bed as it ended near "bed-time". As the night fell down, the adult play would start, starring the same performance used in the kid's play, but with a cruel twist. While the adults were busy, the Ace of Diamonds would kidnap the children that were sleeping in their beds and then convert them into subsequent actors or prostitues of the Circus.

On day 5 of the Bachelor route, Anna Angel, an ex-member of the Ace of Diamonds Caravan, asks you to blackmail Var, another ex-member of the Ace of Diamonds Caravan. When you reach him, you learn that he has an "adoptive daughter" and that he is looking for her.

His adoptive daughter, Willow Mellow, is a kid that attended the circus when she was younger. She was kidnapped by Var, then her father came to rescue her and he ended up getting killed by Var. She is a dancer of the pub during the outbreak, keeping it a secret from her father. Willow dies because of the Haruspex in the Bachelor route, meanwhile in the Haruspex route, she can be spared, but will die the same evening because of the disease, never meeting her father in the process.

Anna's role on the Diamond of Ace caravan was being a singer. She was born being a mute, turned into a singer by "sorcery" (according to her own words). She took the hair and voice of Willow Mellow, as she was the original golden singer of the pub. People tend to think that there is a different Willow Mellow, but one of the dialogues from Anna on day three implies that is not the case, and that Var's willow had her voice and hair colour stolen. Because of this, all she has now is lewd dancing.
Var's role on the Diamond of Ace caravan was being a fire eater and a snake charmer. When the Caravan persecutions and arrests started, his back was broken with an iron bar, leaving him disabled.

*Despite Willow being impossible to save, and the secret never being revealed to her father, the father will send Arsonists will be to the town from Day 6 onwards, in an attempt to cease his rage.
It is not possible to prevent this.
It is not known how would he react if he ever knew the truth.

• What happened in "The Keeper of the Cemetery" ?

Because The Steppe believes that digging holes in the ground is Taboo and thus should be prohibited, when burying bodies, a ritual must be done to be "forgiven" for such acts.
Although they also mark incinerating bodies as something Taboo, according to the corpus, commoners can't be buried, only those that were highly respected or admired. What is done with the bodies of commoners is unknown to me, at least.

Grace's father was part of the third generation of Cemetery Keepers. The keepers, by blood, all have an unreasonable desire for "comforting" about the dead. Their empathy and care for the dead is often interpreted to many as if they were in love with the dead, and despite it being possible, the Cemetery Keepers treats the dead this way because they believe there is no alternative. They feel the dead too well to treat them with indifference.
Grace's father, being a sensitive man, he can feel the awful hopeless pain of the dead with his skin, his nerves and therefore. He tries to ease the pain by feeding the dead some sugar, giving them food such as bread while pouring milk on their graves.
Naturally, such pain will always become unbearable, specially when it's every single day which is why he started drinking Twyrine. Meanwhile Twyrine serves as a temporary solution, it also sharpens their senses, making the pain more and more overwhelming, resulting in some kind of addiction for Twyrine.

He made his (at the time) pregnant wife and then daughter also get hooked with Twyrine.
Grace's mom was a very beautiful woman in her youth, but when she began to get older, they excess of Twyrine wasn't easy to miss. Her hair grew so long her feet were able to touch it, her nails became stone-hard and the skin of her hands became dry and wrinkly thanks to the constant digging she used to do.

At night, the three of them sleep pretty much hugging the patches of dirt of each grave, with an unreasonably ammount of the hallucinating Twyrine in their blood while listening to the sounds of the earth, surrounded by the tormented screams of the dead, which groan louder and louder with each passing day. Sometimes when they bury someone in the morning, by the time dusk sets in, they hear the stirring discomfort of their new nighbor.

Some bonus info gotten from Pathologic 1-2 and the wiki

• Grace's parents never bothered to do the documentation to give her a legal name, so "Grace" became her nickname.
  
• Grace's father died three years ago to the events of the 2nd game.
  
• Grace cannot read nor write and she lives in the Cemetery by eating whatever she picks up off the ground.
  
• In Pathologic 2, Grace also sings and recites poetry to the deceased to sooth their souls.
  
• In Pathologic 2, Peter Stamatin will adopt her if you complete Dora Feugel's quest. If Peter dies after being adopted, Grace will still be in his apartment, claiming to hear his spirit and wishes to care for it.

• What happened in "Nina" ?

WIP

• What happened in "Geographical note" ?

WIP

• What happened in "Of some peculiarities of the method of brewing twyrin" ?

WIP

• What happened in "Of Herman Orff’s methods of investigation" ?

WIP

• What happened in "Victoria" ?

WIP

• What happened in "Recreation" ?

WIP


It is assumed that all these stories happened "inside the sandbox".