Elaine Heyworth

Elaine Heyworth, née Spencer, was the wife of Patrick Heyworth, the owner of the Nemeton Monastery, and catalyst for the events of Koudelka.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow. (Skip section)

Biography[]

Pre-game[]

Little is known of Elaine's early life. What is known is that she met and fell in love with Patrick Heyworth when he attended university.

During this time, James O' Flaherty also vied for her affections, but eventually backed down due to his poverty, lower social standing, and friendship with Patrick. She and Patrick eventually married while James went on to a seminary instead.

The couple shared their home with Bessy and Ogden Hartman - a married couple who served them. Ogden was a former captain of pleasure boat, until it sank in a collision - for which he was blamed - drowning many of the passengers and crew.

Tormented by his grief, he began to obsessively paint pictures of the vessel, as an outlet. Elaine treated the couple kindly, and felt that Ogden was undeserving of the sole blame for the incident, while also expressing a fondness for his paintings.

Murder[]

Eighteen years before the events of Koudelka, one night, when Patrick and Ogden were away, thieves broke into the home and killed Elaine during the raid. When Patrick returned he was devastated to discover his wife's murder.

Driven by despair, he refused to accept her death and sought a way to restore her to life. He had no success until a mysterious man told him of a book of forbidden arts, including being able to resurrect the dead - the fabled Émigré Document.

Resurrection[]

Following the book's instructions, he and his servants moved to Nemeton Monastery, to use the dark secrets buried within its foundations to bring Elaine back to him; a price that could only be paid in blood.

Using the energies of both the lingering resentful spirits of the Monastery, and his own specifically murdered sacrificial victims, he placed Elaine's preserved corpse into a hidden cauldron - buried beneath the church - and waited.

From the cauldron grew a giant flowering plant, from inside the petals of which, Patrick could see Elaine returning to life.

However, to his horror, he discovered that what he resurrected was only his wife's body, but not her soul; leaving only a destructive, animalistic shell. Her spirit, though untainted by the ritual, was bound to her body, leaving her unable to move on unless it was destroyed.

Koudelka[]

01-2016-nov-12-021 — Elaine appears before James

To free her trapped spirit, and put an end to Patrick's madness, she reached out and found a receptive mind; Koudelka Iasant, drawing her to the monastery.

While Koudelka explored the library she heard Elaine's spirit cry out, and received a vision of her as she was in life.

In a twist of fate, James O' Flaherty was also present at the monastery, to investigate the theft of the Émigré Document. He had been unaware of Elaine's death, and was devastated to learn of it.

To find out more of what happened, Koudelka channelled Elaine's spirit, allowing it to briefly manifest. Elaine spoke gently to them, and told them of her death, and the events that had since transpired. She begged them to destroy her body - although James found this hard to accept.

She explained that while she had been robbed of her life, and could hate her murderers, she chose instead to view it as part of God's intentions, and that Patrick had been wrong to try to undo that. Before fading away, she again begged that they destroy her physical body - it was an aberration that shouldn't exist.

Freedom[]

Canon (Bad) Ending[]

In the (canonical) bad ending, bloodied and beaten by Elaine, the trio lay sprawled across the rooftop. Rising to his feet, and holding his cross out before him, James questioned his faith, before resigning himself to his fate, admitting his love to Elaine. Calling upon some divine force, a beam of light shot from the heavens, enveloping them, causing them to ascend upwards, as the ugliness of Elaine's form was stripped away revealing her true body - reunited again with her soul. Elaine spoke kindly to him of their shared memories, and told him they were returning home.

The pair faded in a flash of light, with the implication that they had passed on to the hereafter.

Non-Canon (Good) Ending[]

In the Good Ending, as she dies, her eyes change from cold blue to brown, and her expression softens - the implication being that her soul and body are reuninted - opening her mouth as if to speak, before, with a monstrous roar, her body falls into the burning monastery and explodes.

Spoilers end here.