A Plague Tale Innocence: Story Summary (Spoilers)

A lot happens over the course of A Plague Tale: Innocence‘s story, so it’s to be expected that you might be looking for a story summary for A Plague Tale: Innocence that makes sense of everything.

*Warning: Spoilers Ahead* If you somehow got to this point and missed the warning signs we put all over the place, and the title itself wasn’t clear enough, we are going to be discussing the story of A Plague Tale Innocence so turn back if you want to experience it on your own.

Story Summary for A Plague Tale Innocence (Spoilers)

Starting off as a tale of two orphans trying to survive in a world ravaged by the Black Death before branching out into dark fantasy and horror themes, the game goes places you probably didn’t expect when you first picked the game up.

Not only that, but several elements of the plot are delivered in the background, spoken of between guards and NPCs as you’re sneaking past them.

This can make getting the full picture of what happens in A Plague Tale: Innocence tricky, so we’re here to simplify things with a concise, clarified summary of everything that happens during the game’s plot.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Chapter 1 – The de Rune Legacy

The story begins with Amicia De Rune going on a trip through the forest with her father Robert De Rune, the Lord of a town and the De Rune estate, and her dog Lion.

The two discuss how both Robert and Amicia’s mother Beatrice are busy with their own obligations and don’t have time to spend with Amicia.

More importantly, they reveal that Beatrice must keep a constant watch over Amicia’s sickly younger brother Hugo. A talented Alchemist, she has tried to find a cure for his condition for years to no avail, though Amicia knows little of what his illness even is.

Their talks are cut short when Lion spots a wild boar. Amicia injures the boar with a stone sling, after which Lion gives chase. As a result, Amicia loses track of him, after which he is attacked and killed by something coming out of a hole leading underground.

Robert catches up with her to see this and, alarmed, takes them both back to the De Rune Estate. He then tells Amicia to meet up with her mother and tell her what happened, which she does.

In the process, she meets Hugo for either the first time or the first time in years due to his quarantine.

Shortly after this, Inquisition guards arrive at the house with a captured Robert and hand him over to their commander, Captain Nicholas.

Nicholas kills Robert, then orders his men to question everyone living at the De Rune Estate for Hugo’s location and kill any who don’t give it to them.

This forces Amicia and Hugo to sneak off the property. They reunite with Beatrice for a time and, while Hugo shows signs of agitation from his illness, they reach an escape route.

To give Amicia and Hugo time to escape however, Beatrice stays behind. She instructs them to find Laurentius, a doctor who has aided her in her pursuit of a cure for Hugo.

This leads to what appears to be her death, though Amicia only sees a bloody sword come through a door.

Regardless, the children flee through the forest. Though guards give chase, the same strange creature that killed Lion starts attacking them in time with Hugo’s agitation and fear from everything going on.

This allows the children to escape into the river, washing up on shore near the town their father ruled over.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Chapter 2 – The Strangers

After reaching the shoreline by the town, Amicia and Hugo enter in search of help. Instead, they find the townspeople locked in their homes, frightened by an outbreak of plague that stemmed from the church.

They form an angry mob and attempt to kill the siblings forcing the two to flee. They are nearly caught before Clervie, an old woman, allows them into her home.

Amicia asks Clervie if she knows how to reach Laurentius. As it turns out, Laurentius aided the church in treating some of the first plague victims, so she points them toward the church with a warning of its current danger.

Before they can set out though, the townspeople return. Unaware of their situation, Hugo makes noises while playing, causing Amicia to snap at him and reveal that their parents are dead by mistake.

Hugo runs off, leading to his capture by someone from the mob. To free him, Amicia kills them, giving Hugo time to escape.

They then run into the leader of the mob, who Amicia also has to kill. Seeing this, Hugo realizes the danger they’re in and agrees to obey Amicia’s orders. The two then flee the town toward the church for safety.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Chapter 3 – Retribution

After reaching the church, Amicia and Hugo encounter a monk. They ask him whether he knows where to find Laurentius, to which he gives them the location of his farm.

To reach it, they’ll need to escape the town via an underground catacomb beneath the church. The monk agrees to guide them to it, taking them to the entrance and leaving them for a moment to check on another monk that should have been there.

All the while, he tells them to stay in the light of a torch or fire at all costs.

Before they can go inside though, the sound of the creature Amicia heard before returns. The light near the cavern entrance is extinguished, and the creature reveals itself to actually be a swarm of plague-carrying, man-eating rats.

The rats kill and devour the monk, forcing Amicia and Hugo to go through the remainder of the catacombs alone. As they advance, Hugo has an episode from his illness while they’re in proximity to the rats.

After some time, the two reach the end of the catacomb, though the rats have encased much of it in a nest made of a strange substance composed of grime and human remains.

All the same, the siblings get through the macabre scene and come out on the exterior of the village.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Chapter 4 – The Apprentice

As Amicia and Hugo make their way to Laurentius’ farm, they run into Inquisition forces who have arrived to question Laurentius about Hugo’s location.

The two sneak past them, though as night falls rats emerge from the ground and begin to devour everything in their path. Hugo once again suffers some symptoms of his illness, but the two eventually manage to get past them and reach the farm.

The two then find Laurentius being cared for by his apprentice Lucas. Laurentius contracted the plague at some point between helping the townsfolk and arriving back home. As a result, he won’t be long for this world and can’t help them.

To that end, he says the tow should flee to the Chateau d’umbrage, a hidden fortress where they can safely hide from the Inquisition.

Lucas initially plans to help them set off toward this goal, but as the rats close in on and destroy the farm, he is forced to flee alongside them.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Chapter 5 – The Raven’s Spoils

As the children make their way toward the Chateau d’umbrage, they come to a battlefield filled with the corpses of English and French soldiers.

It is filled with surviving English soldiers looking to plunder corpses and rats alike, forcing the group to sneak their way through the scarred and bloodied land.

Along the way, Hugo has another episode but recovers quickly. Lucas reveals the name of Hugo’s disease to be the Prima Macula and that it manifests in his blood, though its cause is still a mystery to him.

Near the end of their trek across the battlefield, the children see a pair of thieves being arrested by an English soldier. The thieves give away the group’s position, and Amicia and Hugo are incapacitated as a result.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Chapter 6 – Damaged Goods

Amicia awakens the next day to find herself locked in a cage by the English forces. A guard reveals they’ve worked out a trade with Nicholas, selling her and Hugo to him for a ransom, and plan to hand them over within the hour.

Once he leaves, one of the thieves that turned them in sneaks up to Amicia’s cage and frees her. She reveals her name is Melie, and that she and her brother Arthur were convinced by Lucas to save the siblings in exchange for riches.

The two sneak through the english camp and rescue Hugo before they run into Nicholas. Arthur gives them an opportunity to escape him, allowing Amicia, Melie and Hugo to escape the camp together.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Chapter 7 – The Path Before Us

After escaping the camp, Amicia, Melie and Hugo make their way toward an abandoned mill Melie and Arthur have been using as a hideout.

Once there, they rest until they’re awakened by Inquisition forces arriving and are forced to flee further toward Chateau d’umbrage.

as they’re sneaking, they overhear that Arthur has been captured and sent to a prison, tortured for information on where to find Amicia and Hugo. Though angry and worried, Melie continues on with the siblings toward the Chateau.

The group then reunites with Lucas, who then joins them on their way to the Chateau. The group eventually reaches the ruins and, using its defenses to clear away the rats swarming within, decide to make it their new home.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Chapter 8 – Our Home

After resting for a short while at the Chateau d’umbrage, Amicia is awakened by Hugo and shown around the castle.

She learns that Melie is setting off soon to rescue Arthur, heading into the city where his prison is located, and that the Chateau d’umbrage hides clues to a larger order of alchemists – which her mother may have been a part of – once residing in its walls.

She also learns that it has an alchemic lab Lucas can use to try and make a cure for Hugo, though progress is slow going. To make real progress, he’ll need the Sanguinis Itinera, an ancient tome of alchemical recipes and knowledge.

As luck would have it, it’s hidden in a university in the same city as the prison Melie is going to. With Hugo’s illness visibly progressing, Amicia decides to join Melie in traveling to the city then split up to achieve their own goals.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Chapter 9 – In the Shadow of Ramparts

Amicia and Melie arrive at the city only to discover the Inquisition is evacuating its healthy citizens. The two split up, with Amicia making her way through the city on her own.

As she makes her way through its streets, she learns that the Inquisition intentionally unleashed swarms of rats upon the citizens ill with the plague who couldn’t leave.

This allowed the rats to build more of their nest, which the Inquisition is harvesting a material known as Episanguis from.

Before long, she reaches the university, only to see the leader of the Inquisition, a holy man named Vitalis, enter with his personal guard.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Chapter 10 – The Way of Roses

Amicia enters the university and begins to track down the location of the book down using a clue given to her by Lucas. As she sneaks past the Inquisition’s forces, she learns that Vitalis and his forces are looking for the Sanguinis Itinera as well.

Before long, she encounters Rodric, the son of the blacksmith in charge of building the library. With his father having been tortured to death, he is the Inquisition’s only source of information on how to find the book.

Amicia distracts his captors with a fallen chandelier and an ensuing fire long enough for him to fight back and kill them, and the two team up to progress further into a secret portion of the university.

The two find the book, but Vitalis arrives with his men shortly after. He reveals that he intends to harness the Prima Macula’s true power alongside Hugo, using it to establish a new world order under his command.

What the Prima Macula’s true power is remains a mystery however, as Amicia use his monologuing as a chance to cause a distraction and escape.

The fire they started earlier likewise starts to rage out of control, giving them enough cover to escape back to the Chateau d’umbrage with the book in tow.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Chapter 11 – Alive

The group have enjoyed a few weeks of peace since obtaining the book. Melee successful rescued Arthur, Rodric has joined the group comfortably enough and more of the castle has been uncovered.

The latter development allows Amicia to discover a symbol in the Chateau’s courtyard, hinting at a stronger tie to the location, Hugo’s illness and Invictus’ goals.

The Sanguinis Itinera has also helped Lucas make progress in developing a cure for Hugo, though he still hasn’t arrived at one.

These peaceful days continue until Arthur reveals that Amicia and Hugo’s mother is alive. Unfortunately, she too was imprisoned in the city, and far deeper in its depths than he was.

Though she wishes to save her mother, Amicia decides it’s too risky with Hugo to look after.

Unknown to her, Hugo listens in on this discovery, and the shock of learning his mother is alive and Amicia not going out to save her triggers a massive Macula episode. This puts him at death’s door, leaving the cure as his only hope for survival.

With no other option and limited time, Lucas suggests returning to the De Rune estate to see if combining his research with any left behind by Beatrice could lead to a full cure.

Amicia agrees, and together with Lucas she sets out toward her old home.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Chapter 12 – All That Remains

Amicia and Lucas make their way to the De Rune Estate only to discover that it has been overrun by rats. Amicia realizes they were the ones that attacked the guards and allowed her and Hugo to escape.

They continue on toward De Rune Manor, though the closer they get the more aggressive the rats become. They even begin to swarm in unnatural, swirling clusters, taking on a supernatural appearance.

With time though, they reach the estate only to discover a shocking revelation: The bodies of the De Rune household are untouched, even after weeks of the rats being on the property.

Things get even stranger when they reach Hugo’s room. While other portions of the house have been coated in the rat’s nesting material, his room has remained untouched.

All the while, Lucas searches for Beatrice’s research or creations to no avail. He surmises that she must have had a secret laboratory, which Amicia believes would be in the bathhouse at the other end of the property.

The two make their way across the property and reach the bathhouse. They discover fresco paintings within that tie back to another outbreak of rats and the plague centuries ago.

As they progress further, they discover more and more ties between the current outbreak and the one from the past, including a painting showing a child pushing the rats of the former plague back.

The child bears the same signs of the Macula Hugo does, revealing that Hugo could be the key to ending the plague and bringing peace back to the land.

This in turn leads the two to Beatrice’s secret laboratory where they manage to finish her research using the Sanguinis Itinera. Lucas creates a cure, which then causes the rats to stop attacking and allow them to return home without issue.

They then give Hugo the cure, and Amicia falls asleep hoping for good news when she awakens.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Chapter 13 – Penance

Amicia wakes up the next day to find Hugo missing. Frantic, she sets out to search for him around the castle grounds only to slip and knock herself out in a ditch.

She then hallucinates, seeing phantoms of the people she met in her efforts to keep Hugo safe. They chide her for lying to Hugo about their mother being dead, and say she didn’t do enough to keep him safe.

She eventually escapes these hallucinations and finds Hugo, only to realize she still hasn’t woken up. Her Nightmare ends with Hugo going off alongside Nicholas to an unknown location.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Chapter 14 – Blood Ties

As Amicia goes through this, Hugo is at the Inquisition headquarters. He wandered off in search of them, and when they found him he agreed to do what they asked so long as he could see his mother.

After having his Macula-infected blood drawn though, they refuse to take him to her. As a result, he decides to sneak through the facility toward the dungeon where he heard she’s being kept.

Along the way, he overhears that Vitalis has been injecting himself with the Episanguis his soldiers harvest into his body to make himself a suitable host for the Prima Macula.

This has caused his mind to break however, with his ambitions of saving the world and ruling it becoming more twisted and deranged with each treatment.

He’s even gone so far as feeding human beings to rats, developing a new breed of the vermin that only follow his orders and are even more ravenous for human flesh.

His only hope for surviving his madness, and for obtaining the true power of the Prima Macula, is to inject himself with Hugo’s blood, hence why he so violently pursued the siblings throughout the game and sent Nicholas and his forces after them.

Eventually, Hugo finds his mother. Once reunited, Beatrice coaches Hugo in how to use the Prima Macula’s true power. With this knowledge, Hugo can control rats at will, even able to force them back underground should he desire.

He uses this to see himself and Beatrice out of the dungeon, but they’re surrounded by Vitalis, Captain Nicholas and the inquisition.

They then force Hugo to summon rats to kill, exhausting him long enough to be captured.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Chapter 15 – Remembrance

Several weeks after Hugo’s disappearance, Amicia is distraught and seeks to hold onto the loved ones she still has.

However, as the group is working to shore up their defenses for the night, Hugo appears alongside Captain Nicholas and attacks them.

The group flees, but before long Amicia is trapped in the courtyard with Nicholas and Hugo. They nearly kill her before Arthur springs a trap on Nicholas, giving Amicia a chance to break through to Hugo and convince him to stop attacking them.

Nicholas then reveals himself to still be alive, killing Arthur and pursuing the children; but, by working together, Amicia and Hugo are able to lure rats over to Nicholas, which drag him down underground and (possibly) kill him.

The rest of the group then reunites with the siblings. Melee is furious at the loss of her brother and proposes a suicide mission to kill Vitalis and save Amicia and Hugo’s mother.

The group agrees to the plan, and sets out toward the city where the Inquisition now resides.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Chapter 16 – Coronation

The group arrives at the city and fights their way through the inquisition’s forces. Though they make it through most of the city without trouble, Rodric dies protecting Amicia and Hugo by pushing a cart past a bridge as cover from archers.

Shortly after, they reach the cathedral where Vitalis resides. Now in full control of the Prima Macula thanks to Hugo’s blood, he can freely control mass numbers of rats and plans to unleash them on the world.

The group attacks him using Hugo’s powers, but he proves too evenly matched to be killed by Hugo alone. To that end, Amicia faces him down, sniping Vitalis when Hugo leaves him open with attacks from his rats.

Vitalis dies, but he gives a mad smirk to Hugo before he dies.

A Plague Tale: Innocence Chapter 17 – For Each Other

Three days after Vitalis’ death, Amicia and Hugo make their way through town after buying supplies. The rats are gone, either because Vitalis no longer controls them or because Hugo used his powers to push them back.

Melie has gone off on her own, still dealing with the loss of her brother.

The siblings, meanwhile, plan to move to a new region, as they’re wanted for the murder of Vitalis and his men. Though some citizens view them with fear for this, they still respect what they’ve done.

Together with Lucas and a recovering Beatrice, they set off for a new land.

That’s the complete story summary of A Plague Tale: Innocence. For more on the game, check out our guide wiki as well as our full review of the title.