When I get to leave the town for the first time to report to the Baron, I have this encounter:
As you close in on the rows of canvas tents, the land around you grows even more barren. Every scrap from the surrounding fields has been picked clean. In the furrows and trenches you find yourself trudging across, nothing grows. All is bare, save for a lone tree or fence post that would once have marked the outskirts of peasant farmland.
A familiar face greets you on the edge of the camp.
“Deities…can it be you?” the man says, transfixed by your mask.
“Greetings, Rowan,” you reply. “And well recalled. Last time we met, you were feverish. How’s the leg?”
“Working,” he smiles, giving the limb a bump with the shaft of his pitchfork. “Thanks to you.”
“And Jarin?”
“Doing as well as any of us.” He suddenly looks troubled. “Times are grave in camp. I cannot imagine the suffering in Thornback Hollow.”
“We are doing what we can,” you say.
“That’s all anybody can do,” Ryia says. She dismounts and begins to lead the horse by the reins. “Keep this reunion brief, I have to get you to the Baron.”
“Doctor, one more thing…” Rowan says, sheepish in his tone. “I was wounded while poaching fish, you may recall.”
“I do. You broke quarantine.”
“Aye…as do many more, these days. Those fish are all some of us have left to eat.” His speech quickens, forcing the words out before you can cast further judgment. “Only, nobody is sick. At least not with your problem. Well, the problem. The lack of sleeping.” Rowan takes a breath. “S—so, I think the fish are safe.”
“Those who ate them took a terrible risk,” you say, stern. “Yet…there is nothing to be done for that now. This information may be useful, Rowan.”
He seems to relax, glad that your admonishment was restrained.
Which for my playthrough makes no sense, because I never met Rowan before. At the beginning of the game, while waiting to meet the Baron for the first time, I had a soldier come to me about someone with a bad leg. But I just gave a diagnosis based on his description without actually going to see the guy. And I never heard about him poaching any fish either.
The only one I met was that woman (Tace, I believe) that pretended to be a Hunter to flee the town.
Also in Chapter 1, right after the militia took away the supplies for the Mayor, I get this passage:
Faces dart away from windows as you pass by. A ragged urchin scoops up a cat and dashes down a side-street. Wind whips up dust around your feet. Somewhere to the east you hear the rhythmic creaking and banging of a door. Your colleagues are silent, fixed on carrying their supplies and their tired limbs along the street.
The prior descriptions of the surroundings mentioned that everything is drenched from the rain and that mud is everywhere. So suddenly having the ground dry enough for dust to go around seems a bit strange.
In Chapter 10, when Tace brings me the invitation to the masked ball and asks me for help in the uprising, I get four options that essentially all say that I will help them. Even though up until this point I’ve pretty much consistently to stop bothering me, I have no interest in their power games, and now let me treat this plague to stop this whole town achieving equality only by all being equally dead. And now the greatest concession I can make to this is “If my medical obligations allow, I’ll help the uprising any way I can.”
Which I wouldn’t do even if I were to go to the ball.
And while the actual choice on whether or not to go to the ball comes a bit later, I’d prefer to have the choice to say “No” outright, instead of lying to them that they have a supporter in me.
