Vampyr guide to character hints in Pembroke Hospital

You’ve met the new boss by 8am but you’re no superman, so here’s an easy guide to finding out all of the dirty little secrets at Pembroke.

After the angsty and emotional first hour of Vampyr where you – the newly-vamp’d baby goth Dr Jonathan Reid – get to grips with the depressing reality of chomping on people and awesomely teleporting about the place, you take the night shift at Pembroke Hospital as head surgeon. And you know what that means… plenty of unsuspecting victims to chow down on! Or only the really nasty ones, if you’re a sanctimonious bastard like I am. Figuring out all of every character’s hints can be a bit of a pain in the neck though, so I’ve gone through all the effort for you.

Quite a few of these hints can’t be unlocked until you reach chapter 3 of the game, so if you hit a snag or want to unlock all of them in one sweep, it’s best to wait until you’ve played the first couple of hours of the game before hint hunting at Pembroke.

Clay Cox

Clay is one of the first consumable characters that you’ll encounter, and he’s also the easiest to justify consuming. You’ll find him getting stabbed and then doing some stabbing down by the canal. You can eat him right away, but doing so gates off all of his hints.

• If you ask Clay about the man he shivved and tossed in the canal, he tells you that he murdered the man’s brother, and revenge is why he was caught in the altercation.
   
• Clay feels pretty confident about escaping the law for his riverside shanking. If you press him on why he thinks this is, he informs you that he’s a gang leader, and expects to remain one after recovering and leaving the hospital.
   
• Clay is somehow married despite being a massive wanker. His wife is Edwina Clay, and you find this out by reading a letter from her on the edge of the bed in the tent that Clay hangs about near from chapter 3 onwards.
   
• Having discovered her existence through the letter, you can then ask Clay about his wife. During the conversation, he mentions having thrown away a knife gifted to him by her, which he considers to be a lucky charm.

Tippets and Branagan

Dr Corcoran Tippets and Nurse Gwyneth Branagan have an established relationship, so some of their hints overlap and are reliant on conversing with the other in order to unlock. Tippets is aging but remains determined, and Branagan is a well-respected nurse.

Tippets

• If you talk to Branagan about the staff, she expresses a fondness for Tippets, but worries for him as he always seems to work far too hard without rest.
   
• If you do the same with Tippets and ask him about Branagan, he shares a fondness for his colleague, going so far as to wager she’s overqualified and would be a doctor if she were a man.
   
• After sleeping in the hospital for the first time, you’re sent into the Old Mortuary to recover some emergency supplies to create makeshift medicine. In the basement of the mortuary, you discover a dead patient. Examining the body and the coroner’s report, you realise that Tippets had operated on the man and botched the operation, resulting in the patient’s death.
   
• If you confront Tippets about this patient death, he admits to horribly failing the procedure. Continuing the conversation, he says that he plans on resigning after the Spanish Flu outbreak is secured.
   
• This next one requires timing. Wait in the courtyard were Tippets resides, and wait for him to start entering the hospital. Use your vampiric vision and follow him up the stairs, where he locks himself in a room. Now, exit through your office balcony, loop around the building and past the mortuary entrance, and keep turning right. You’ll be able to teleport up to a balcony and look through the window, where it’s revealed Tippets injects drugs to cope with his work.

Brannagan

• You discover this first hint by finding Tippets’ second hint, that Brannagan is overqualified as a nurse and would be a doctor if she were a man. Bloody patriarchy.
   
• Once you gain access to Dr Strickland’s office – we’ll get to that – you can find a letter there that discusses Branagan neglecting her duties, diagnosing and prescribing patients without consultation from a doctor.
   
• You can also confront Brannagan about Tippets’ failed operation. Through this, you discover that she assisted in covering up the incident for Tippets to keep him from being fired.

Blight and Thatcher

You encounter Newton Blight by where you first entered Pembroke Hospital, and he asks you to find his friend Oswald Thatcher, who stormed off into the sewers after an argument and hasn’t yet returned.

Blight

• Blight asks you to find Thatcher because he can’t himself. When you ask him why, he talks about his phobia of rats which he picked up during the war.
   
• You find out from Thatcher that the two were buried alive together for a week after a bombing during the war, and Blight confirms it when you ask him.
   
• If you wander down to the canal and use your vampiric vision, you’ll see Blight and Thatcher enter a caged-off storage area, where they embrace each other lovingly and kiss. Aww.
   
• You can ask Blight about his relationship with Thatcher, and he expresses confliction and fear over his homosexuality and societal repercussions.

Thatcher

• Thatcher has undiagnosed claustrophobia, which you discover when rescuing him from the sewers. You can ask him about seeing a doctor about it, but he says he’d rather deal with it himself and that he doesn’t like doctors.
   
• When asking him why he has claustrophobia, he acts dismissively and asks you to guess. If you tell him you think it’s because he was buried during the war, he explains, unlocking this and Blight’s second hint.
   
• Discovering that Blight and Thatcher are in a relationship is also one of Thatcher’s hints, and when you ask him about it he seems more confident and unashamed of his sexuality.

Hooks and Hawkins

Nurse Pippa Hawkins and ambulance driver Milton Hooks are the Bonnie and Clyde of the Pembroke Hospital, but their relationship is a whole lot less glamorous and gung-ho.

Hooks

• Hooks asks you to recover his missing wallet as part of the “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” investigation. When you find it, it contains a photo of Hooks and Hawkins, signifying that they are a couple.
   
• If you ask Hawkins why Hooks always seems grumpy and upset, she tells you that he has a mediocre reputation among his colleagues.
   
• Circling around the north-east side of the hospital and into the makeshift mortuary, you find a corpse in one of the wooden huts. On it, you find a letter where the dead man’s wife talks about how Hooks extorted them in order to be given a bed at the hospital.

Hawkins

• Discovering that Hooks and Hawkins are a couple by recovering Hooks’ wallet is also a hint for Hawkins.
   
• If you talk to Beatrice Goswick, she tells you that she has reservations about the quality of the hospital. Pressing her further, she talks about a nurse named Hawkins who made them pay more money in order to secure a bed for Mortimer.
   
• In the second room on the left, there’s a set of lockers behind a reception desk. The second locker contains a letter from Hawkins’ family, in which you find that she’s considering quitting her position as a nurse at Pembroke.
   
• You can ask Hawkins about this, and she expresses that she feels useless in her role as a nurse, and this is why she’s considering quitting.

Elwood and Howcroft

Thomas Elwood and Thelma Howcroft have an unusual relationship. The injured former soldier and vampire wanna-be both have some interesting things going on.

Elwood

• Elwood served in the war, and during his service he suffered a face-disfiguring injury. If you enter the operation room in the corridor where your office is, you find a doctor’s report that says he feels responsible for his injury.
   
• After finding out Howcroft’s condition, you can ask Elwood about her. He expresses that she is living proof that there’s hope for him.
   
• You can ask Elwood about how his injury occurred, and he reveals that it wasn’t from a bombing as he claimed. He visited a sex worker in a flat and a fire resulted in his face being burned. Telling him that he can’t hide forever reveals he’s too ashamed of his injuries to see his family – picking any other option gates off this hint.

Howcroft

• When you initiate conversation with Howcroft, it quickly becomes apparent that she suffers from Cotard’s Syndrome – she truly believes that she is a vampire (she isn’t).
   
• If you head north-east from the hospital along the canal and loop around into an alley, you can enter a building. Go up the stairs to find a Priwen hideout. Kill the guards, and you’ll find a letter instructing them to spy on Howcroft, as they think she might be a real vampire.
   
• After discovering this, you’re able to ask Howcroft what she really knows about vampires. She tells you that she witnessed an actual vampire feeding on prey, and this is what led to her developing Cotard’s Syndrome.

Fiddick, Strickland and Ackroyd

The story of Dr Thoreau Strickland, Dr Waverley Ackroyd, and Harvey Fiddick is one of professional rivalry, experimental medicine, and patient neglect.

Strickland

• Strickland is a fan of your research on blood transfusion and testing, and has conducted research of his own. If you ask him about it, he tells you that it hasn’t been successful thus far.
   
• Once you gain access to Dr Swansea’s office, you can find a letter written by Ackroyd expressing concerns over Strickland’s research, and mentions that he has made mistakes before.
   
• Strickland sends you on a mission to find a drug order he sent to the pharmacy that never arrived. When you reach the pharmacy, the drugs aren’t there, but his order list is, and it contains ingredients for an experimental and illegal spanish flu medication. Confronting him about it reveals that he has been secretly testing it on unsuspecting patients. Continuing this investigation grants you access to Strickland’s office.

Ackroyd

• Ackroyd seems displeased by your presence, and asking him about the hospital reveals that he has a distaste for modern medicine methodology, fearing it negatively impacts the patients.
   
• Also in Dr Swansea’s office, you find a letter written by Tippets. He suggests that Ackroyd should not yet be promoted to head surgeon of Pembroke as he seems overly proud and arrogant.
   
• If you ask Ackroyd about Strickland’s attempts to cure the spanish flu, he doubts his success but will not report his methods because he doesn’t wish to use rules and regulations to discredit him, and believes he is still a good practitioner.

The Goswicks

Perhaps the darker of the storylines, Beatrice and Mortimer Goswick are economically out of place at Pembroke Hospital – there’s a sad but justifiable reason why.

Mortimer

• Mortimer was allegedly hospitalized by his mother because of the spanish flu. However, a letter in Strickland’s office says otherwise, that a medical examination showed no evidence of symptoms.
   
• Exiting through the front door of the hospital, take a hard right and walk behind a tent against the hospital walls. You can look through the window and eavesdrop on a conversation between Mortimer and Beatrice that reveals he suffered his injuries because he attempted to take his own life.
   
• Confronting Mortimer about this, he asks you to retrieve his suicide note so that his mother doesn’t read it. You’re given a key to his flat and a waypoint. Going there and reading the note, it’s clear that Mortimer has suicidal tendencies and may attempt to take his life again in future.

Beatrice

• If you ask Beatrice about how she finds the hospital, she expresses having reservations about the hospital’s efficiency, and doesn’t hold Pembroke in high regard.
   
• When you confront Beatrice about Mortimer’s suicide attempt, she reveals that she kept the information a secret in order to keep Mortimer from being jailed – suicide was still illegal in 1918.
   
• After reading the suicide note, you can ask Beatrice about the danger that Mortimer is in, and that he might make an attempt against his own life again. She’s adamant that she won’t give up on him, and refuses to acknowledge Mortimer’s suicidal tendencies.

Rakesh Chadana

Rakesh Chadana is a former doctor who looks after the unclaimed corpses in the makeshift mortuary. He also sells medical ingredients, and runs a slightly suspect pawnbrokers.

• You can talk to Chadana about his work, and ask him about whether he’s put off by the dead bodies. He explains that since serving as a medic in the war, death doesn’t scare him.
   
• Dr Swansea has a lot of letters in his office – one is from Chadana, explaining that he has no actual medical qualifications and that his appointment by the military as a medic was a mistake.
   
• Enter the second room on the left in the hospital reception where you find Hawkins’ letter from her family, stand behind the counter. Using vampiric vision, you look out the window to see Chadana looting the bodies of the unclaimed patients he looks over.

You may have noticed the absence of Dr Swansea from this list despite him being a consumable Pembroke character. That’s because Swansea’s hints are discovered later on in the game, and are inherently tied to the main plotline of Vampyr. Since you can uncover the hints of every other character here relatively early on, it’d be a massive spoiler and a dick move to say anything more here, so stay tuned, or pick up Vampyr to find out for yourself!