Rat Prophet

Come now, you haven't given us any time to change the set!

This entry contains potential spoilers for Pathologic 2. Read at your own risk.




Name	The Rat Prophet (Крысиный Пророк)
Status	Alive
Location	The Town The Theatre The Rod The Cemetery

The Rat Prophet is a creature that lives underneath the Theatre and is able to visit the player in their dreams. It is able to see the future, but often tells lies.

Description

“	One of the obscure figures whose power lies in their inherent contradiction. Based, of course, on the Rat King—yet there are no rats in Pathologic 2! A demon, a chthonic “thing from below”, he defies expectations by being from the Theatre and not the Steppe. More of a dweller of the underside of Kain’s enlightened world. That’s why he may sometimes “break character”, letting us see that he’s no magical creature—just a child (or dwarf?) wearing a mask.	„
	— [from the game’s design documents]

Similar to the Fellow Traveller and Mark Immortell the Rat Prophet is a player who appears to know that they are part of a performance. The Rat Prophet appears both inside and outside of the set performance, breaking character when necessary. While in character it visits Katerina Saburova at night and influences her prophecies, causing her great pain. The Rat Prophet is incredibly mysterious, and rarely reveals its true motives.

Appearance

The Rat Prophet is a giant semi-anthropomorphic brown rat. It has black eyes and brown fur, and is wrapped in a large black blanket. This blanket either obscures its human-like legs, which is a child’s body with dark trousers and no shoes, or an apparition with no visible limbs. When the Rat Prophet appears as an apparition, its eyes are white.

Plot

Haruspex Route

“	My path was called "The Rat Prophet." I didn't know that it was he who whispered to me in dreams. Until the very end, I believed it was the Earth.	„
	— Katerina Saburova in the Theatre of Death.

The Rat Prophet can be first met in the introductory sequence of the game a little aside from the street, contemplating a jerboa. It will ask whether black suits them better or not; the answer will decide whether jerboas seen later throughout the game will be black or not.

During the 'death sequences' of Pathologic 2, where the player is punished with "failure" by waking in the Theatre to speak with Mark Immortell, a stage hand notes that a 'rat escaped the theatre'. Upon returning to the Town, the player may meet the Rat Prophet outside of the Theatre, observing the tumour in the earth - a large skeleton, shaped like a bull, that begins to grow from the ground. It seems that this growth increases in size with every "failure" of the Haruspex - literally speaking, with every death the Player causes. The Haruspex can dismiss the frustrations of the prophet or take it into consideration.

As the Town grows unsteady with the outbreak, a mob stands outside the Rod one day and declare they are responsible for housing a carrier of the plague. Later, Changeling speaks with the Haruspex, requesting that he pay her adopted parents a visit to make sure they are well. When the Haruspex speaks with Katerina Saburova, she reveals to him the source of her visions, which take the form of the Prophet. It berates the ignorance of humans before evicting the Haruspex from Katerina's abode.

Later still, if the Haruspex goes to the Cemetery to deal with the overflow of dead bodies brought on by the plague and its effect on Grace, he will find the Rat Prophet after speaking to her. The former will offer a solution, though it does not reveal what exactly it does: only that it quiets the spirits of the dead.

The Rat Prophet can be met in both the Nocturnal and the Diurnal Endings. In the Nocturnal ending, it can be found on top of the Polyhedron, and in the Diurnal ending, on a Stairway to Heaven.

Pathologic: The Marble Nest

The Rat Prophet does not appear during The Marble Nest.

Screenshots

Rat Prophet in dialogue
Rat Prophet in dialogue (Diurnal ending)
Rat Prophet in the prologue
Rat Prophet outside the Theater
Rat Prophet in the Haruspex's dream
Rat Prophet in the Cemetery
The Rat Prophet with the incomplete tumour caused by the Haruspex's deaths
The Rat Prophet with a half complete tumour caused by the Haruspex's deaths
The Rat Prophet with a complete tumour caused by the Haruspex's deaths
Rat Prophet in the Diurnal Ending
Rat Prophet in the Nocturnal Ending
Rat Prophet in the Town Hall in the Pathologic 2 alpha

Official Art

Rat Prophet's concept art
Rat Prophet's full models
Rat Prophet from the Pathologic 2 art book
Rat Prophet from the Pathologic 2 art book

Animation Video

Notes

Though still very much a rat, there are apparently no rats in the Town in Pathologic 2. Instead, the rodent population is replaced with jerboas.
When visiting Katerina in the presence of the Haruspex, its legs are gone and its eyes illuminate white.
Alexander Saburov is also able to hear the Rat Prophet that speaks to Katerina Saburova, implying that the Prophet speaks aloud to her.^[1]
In the Nocturnal Ending, the player is able to climb the Polyhedron and hear farewell notes from Ice-Pick Lodge developers, all called “Devisers” and taking the form of various townsfolk children. This is also present in the Diurnal Ending, where the Devisers are on a Stairway to Heaven. At the very top is the Rat Prophet, speaking on behalf of the leader of Ice-Pick Lodge, Nikolay Dybowski.
In the files of the game, the Rat Prophet has a portrait that would appear on the Haruspex's list similarly to other Bound characters. However, its portrait uses the photograph from Pathologic 1, rather than the in-game model like other NPCs. This is likely a placeholder from early development concepts.

References

↑ Katerina Saburova is sick. And it seems like the governor can also hear the voices in her head. The power of love? Or something shadier?



Name	The Rat Prophet (Крысиный Пророк)
Faction	None
Status	Alive
Location	The Town The Theatre

The Rat Prophet is a creature that lives underneath the Theatre. It is able to see the future, but often tells lies. It visits Katerina Saburova at night and influences her prophecies. It appears before the two of the three healers: the Haruspex and the Changeling. It does not appear before the Bachelor.

Background

Prior to the start of the game, the Rat Prophet was known to appear to the townsfolk from time to time, and gained a reputation of a "well-known spectre".^[1]

The Rat Prophet appeared to Katerina as both her inner voice and a character of her prophetic dreams, indoctrinating her to the belief that the town's demise is inevitable and that fighting against it would be pointless.^[2]

Description

The Rat Prophet appears to be a small child wearing a rat mask. It wears a fur coat, a suit, and holds a smoking pipe in its hand. It is described as a mendacious character, being able to twist the truth into lies effortlessly.^[3] The Rat Prophet, however, insists that it speaks the truth, despite what people say.

It can be found either in the Theatre or in the tunnels underneath the town.

Appearance

The Rat Prophet takes the form of a young child in a brown suit. It has a brown rat’s head, and carries a smoking pipe. If observing the Rat Prophet from behind, the rat head is shown to instead be a mask around a brown haired child’s head.

Plot