I’m starting a second post on the Project Moon games because I want to add some additional thoughts and continued praises and gush about the lore a lil bit, stuff that wouldn’t reasonably fit in what is now the finished-and-submitted draft of the original piece. At the very start of writing this one, I’ve had the first post finished for two weeks, have still been deeply embroiled in Limbus Company and am still sort of hoping to finish up Library of Ruina before moving on from it fully.
This was originally intended to come out shortly after the first one but finally posting that displaced another post that was close to finished so this will trail it by a bit despite having also been 95% ready to go for months at this point.
Unlike the first post, I’m going to go into story and deeper lore spoilers, so beware if that’s something you’re trying to avoid.
First, commentary on the original post:
I definitely overedited it but I finished it with 2 months to spare and occasionally had time to reread it and the itch to carve on it a little was constant. There would have been way more footnotes if transferring them to the Google doc submission wasn’t a pain. That said, I did manage to clean up most of the most awkward writing in a way that I think will be less distracting.
I was tempted to add links to the soundtrack for each section as a “here’s the background music for this segment” bit, but figured that might be a little to gimmicky and distracting.
I’m fairly proud of how it turned out but do sort of feel that it’s inadequate as a review, I think making it on three games made me too tempted to rush through them to give them a full proper review treatment, but I think it does function well as described as a framing device for yapping out games a little bit more broadly than a specific game review might otherwise.
I think I probably screwed up by titling it like a regular blog post instead of being more up front about what I was reviewing and I’m also worried voting for the game reviews just came down to which games people had heard of more. It was sort of crushing to end up in the “these ones got the least attention, consider reading one” list.
At the end, I’m not especially surprised I didn’t make it in but I am surprised no game reviews made it in. Sitting on the post for three plus months was painful so my consolation prize was finally being able to schedule it to publish the next morning.
Second, more on my direct experience with the games, especially Limbus Company1:
I kind of quickly moved on from Lobotomy Corporation but having spent so much time on Limbus Company I’m unusually tempted to pick it back up. I’m still just before the last chapter of Library of Ruina and maybe need to put a bow on that as well.
I started playing in late February2 and had been basically caught up to the present level of content for at least a few weeks at the time I finished the review and the end of April shortly before the new season, which is kind of surprising. I reached the current story content up to Canto 8 with a disorganized team of high-tier characters and was only then putting together some proper teams. I almost got there without using support units as mentioned above. I managed to finish the Season 5’s Refraction Railway, which is something that could be thought of as endgame—even finished on the first attempt just barely below the 100-turn challenge goal, though I won’t have the resources or time (or desire, really) to optimize it. There’s not supposed to be a Season 6 railway so maybe I’ll give it another crack eventually but I’m not especially motivated to.
Cantos 6 & 7 were fantastic even in spite of how much they borrow from the characters’ inspiration. The two post-Canto-7 Intervallos were been delightfully lore dense but really rough in terms of general difficulty, the first one forces you into using small groups of specific Sinners and so I had to resort to support units for the first time, the second one is just a general ramping up of the difficulty with a repeat of a brutal boss fight and then a tricky endurance battle against the Sweepers.
Season 6 and Canto 8 started recently and my proper Bleed team was ready to go at the new level cap. As of starting this paragraph I made it through the first released chapters no sweat, using the surprise spare 7th slot for Hong Lu for flavor3. I’m enjoying being in on the start of a new season so far. Now having finished it, it’s been kind of a rough trip for Bleed, the level of difficulty has been sort of unsatisfyingly brutal4, and I ended up having to fall back on a general-high-tiers team for the final fight. More thoughts on these later.
As a new player, I spent perhaps more time than most might digging into which IDs are considered better and angling towards those early; made a couple key decisions that carried me well and got insanely lucky on some early pulls5. I also spent a lot of time puzzling over resource efficiency, including with the cash shop, and I wrote some of it up in a Steam guide here (I also started a second guide for team composition). Have had some whacky luck at other random times. I think they must be boosting your pull chances after you spend, I’ve been drip buying weekly extraction ticket packs when there’s a banner that’s favorable and only a few times have I not gotten at least a single gold extraction (and on the times I didn’t it gave me a ton of oranges), and have had several with multiple. I’ll occasionally get some wild pulls from the daily single cheap 13 Lunacy single extractions6. Got a 3* from a single pull after renewing the super-efficient monthly Lunacy packs. Recently I’ve gotten a little lucky after a long drought and have had a short streak of single pull EGOs. I’m having the inverse paranoia lately though, the above luck seems to have dried up and now I’m wondering if it stops when you stockpile too much Lunacy since I’ve been sitting on a ton waiting for the next Walpurgisnacht.
I’m still enjoying the game, which makes it sort of tragic that there isn’t much to work towards once you’re caught up on the story. Mirror Dungeons are just barely not boring enough to play around with and experiment with different team comps. I finally started doing Hard mode Mirror Dungeons7, which is just barely completable with my High Tiers team but will need a real team comp to finish all the way to Floor 10, so I’ve got that to work towards.
To get started on yapping about the lore, let’s start by pondering some of the biggest unknowns related to Limbus Company (the actual company):
Who or what is Limbus Company?
Who are the Sinners, what are their backgrounds and what are their relationships to the world and each other and what exactly connects them to Limbus Company via the Golden Boughs?
Who or what is Dante and what is the nature of his resurrection abilities?
We can glean some very important clues on what Limbus Company might be based on certain circumstances that occur through the first 8 chapters so far. The company is powerful enough that they have some amount of leverage over Vergilius8, a powerful color fixer9. They are might be getting not-insubstantial support from the Head, either materially or, at least, informationally (for example, whatever it is about Rocinante that is able to suppress Sancho’s Bloodfiend powers was supposedly supplied by a First Kindred associated with B Corp1011). “Limbus Company” as a name implies they’re supposed to be the new L Corp but I don’t think we’ve had confirmation that there’s actually a new Nest in District 12. They have at least one physical headquarters, but its location is a closely guarded secret (or at least it’s being deliberately obscured to the LCB12).
It also seems unclear to me whether they’re directly affiliated with the former Lobotomy Corporation, although in some cases they seem to have recovered some of its former personnel and maintained some of LobCorp’s important Wing alliances (eg K, T, and W Corps). And also, they’re conspicuously well-informed about where LobCorp branch offices are located despite, in theory, LobCorp being capable of subverting observation from the Head. In either case, they seem to be operating with the Head’s sanction, and again possibly with their material support; LCA agents seem to be unusually powerful (it’s mentioned and implied that a team of them could take down the Pallid Whale no sweat if the LCB expedition failed), though like Vergilius they’re always being held in reserve for unknown reasons.
I also definitely recommend reading Leviathan, as it’s sort of a prequel to Limbus Company (available on archive.org here) and bridges to it from Library of Ruina. It introduces and gives us some insight into Vergilius and a few other important characters in Limbus Company, as well as concepts related to sin affinities and mirror identities13. Given Leviathan, we also have a lot of insight into why Vergilius intervenes in Canto 6; the scene in the mansion’s basement was a partial rerun of Leviathan’s climax, including the Ring’s involvement, the appearance of Aseah, and there being mirror refraction shenanigans important to the plot. If you read it, be forewarned that there’s an awkward format switch midway through (not strictly intentional, but deliberate after the fact in order to finish the story14).
There aren’t many solid clues so far who Dante might be. There was a character named Dante in Library of Ruina but he was a lower level mook and isn’t very likely to be LC’s Dante.
Other random bits:
Genuine resurrection is a Head taboo, and yet there are multiple things that sort of resemble it that are allowed. You have Dante’s abilities, which are apparently fine, but you also have stuff like W & K Corp’s Singularities. AI is also an important Head taboo, which is why it was such a big deal to keep secret in Lobotomy Corporation, but also has certain exceptions; for example the courier trunks the Devyat Association use have a special, restricted on-board AI.
Night in the Backstreets has a Purge-esque period of anything-goes lawlessness from 3:13 to 4:34 AM. In practice, since this is when the Sweepers operate, most people will remain off the streets since the Sweepers won’t enter buildings designated as residential. Supposedly they also operate with explicit head sanction, and are used deliberately by them on occasion.
Firearms exist but are rare for two major reasons: most high-level combatants (and even many lower-level ones) are resistant to them due to either technique or technology (being able to deflect bullets is just ubiquitous in this world) and also the Head keeps ammunition so artificially scarce that using them is extremely expensive15.
I had the idea for a section highlighting how Library of Ruina & Limbus Company do some interesting theming with music and sound. The Pianist is the first major distortion and is important for shaping Roland’s story, “distortion” plausibly being a reference to sound, the Reverberation Ensemble, etc; Limbus Company has cantos and resonance. What spoils this is that, well, Library of Ruina also can’t seem to decide if it’s trying to be literature- and/or stageplay-themed to a degree where I think it’s more to do with the PM games being just aggressive on the artistic and literary references across all kinds of spectra.
I think this comes from Lobotomy Corporation taking inspiration from SCP, where, by the nature of open collaborative fiction, everything is a tongue-in-cheek reference to something else. So for example several Abnormalities are references to fairy tales or folklore, and quite a few are at least done in that style. Over time we can see how this has been finely honed; LoR and early Limbus Company chapters are playing with the idea of a story inspired by a referenced source material and I think they’ve only gotten better at that structure over time.
Time for a couple for-fun info collection sections:
To rehash from the footnotes of the first piece, the Sinners backgrounds come from:
Yi Sang — the author and presumed first-person main character of the Korean novel, The Wings
Faust — of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s play on the classic German legendary character
Don Quixote — The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes
Ryoshu — based on the subject of a Japanese short story by Akutagawa Ryunosuke called the Hell Screen
Meursault — the main character of a French novella The Stranger by Albert Camus
Hong Lu — Hong Lu’s given name seems to be a reference to the title of the relatively obscure Chinese novel Xiùxiàng Hóng Lóu Mèng (Dream of the Red Chamber) by Cao Xueqin, but his proper name, Jia Baoyu, is also shared with its main protagonist
Heathcliff — of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Ishmael — from the American classic Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Rodion — from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment
Dante — of the Divine Comedy
Sinclair — from a bildungsroman by Herman Hesse titled Demian: The Story of a Boyhood
Outis — a reference to the pseudonym used by Odysseus when confronting the Cyclops
Gregor — from The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
If you’ve played the game you may or may not have noticed, but the characters featured by Canto are in a particular order as well, which matches both the order in which they introduce themselves to you in prologue and the order in which they were originally teased and announced outside the game. That order being: Gregor, Rodion, Sinclair, Yi Sang, Ishmael, Heathcliff, Don Quixote, Hong Lu, Ryoshu, Meursault, Outis, and Faust. This is something that’s common knowledge, and maybe even canon in world16?
There’s speculation that there will be a second round of chapters partly to make up for Gregor’s and Rodion’s first chapters being sort of light on character-focused content. The first two Cantos only feature them at the last possible minute, compared to every one from the third on having a chunkier story with a certain character being much more central. I think it’s a nice bit of clever writing that everyone picks up on this and starts noticing whose “turn” it is after Canto 4.
Canto 1 & 2 seems to me like they started trying to conventionally tell the story of Limbus Company (or rather, the LCB) but then either decided last minute, or had pre-decided at the time, that the Sinners’ stories would enter into each chapter late. 3 feels like there was a switch to focusing centrally on the chapter’s subject with a stronger direct link to the Sinner’s source material, and 4 & 5 felt like practice runs on setting up the style of character-centric in-world mysteries which use the Sinner’s source material as a framing device that would become the norm for 6 on. I was thinking on how the Sweeper intervallo has a really subtle setup for Hong Lu whereby he implies there’s nothing he wants from his contract with Limbus Company—like come on that’s either flat not true or at least not literally true. We have the setup for what could be an interesting character arc, and it’s easy to have faith in that because of how strongly this was executed on for Cantos 6 & 7. It’s one of the weirdest joys of Limbus Company that I now have opinions on Wuthering Heights17.
Now that Canto 8 is fully out my thoughts on it are a little mixed. I think it ended strong but wasn’t as fully enjoyable start-to-finish as 6 & 7. We got some great lore nuggets throughout, but it doesn’t feel like the needle has moved too far on Hong Lu’s character. However, what sort of redeems it for me was that I saw someone point out that it was akin to Yi Sang’s arc where the critical change in-chapter was small and we’re likely to see the lasting effects of it going forward. There’s maybe yet another long post thinking through every character’s arc so far.
I think Canto 8 simply didn’t resonate with me, but Hong Lu’s tortured apathy seems to have struck a chord with many others. I’ve seen one argument that Canto 8 is about breaking down cycles of generational trauma and I don’t think this one quite fits. The elders seem to be, metaphorically, a stand-in for a narrow, subsuming obsession with the permanence of legacy; Hong Lu’s arc seems to be more of a movement from pessimistic nihilism to optimistic nihilism. Certainly, witnessing the slaughter of old H Corp and several other tragedies in his youth has traumatized Hong Lu, leaving him in a state of paralysis at the apparent meaninglessness of life18, however over the course of the chapter Hong Lu is finally moved away from apathy and towards willing action despite its apparent meaninglessness on a cosmic scale, and the elders’ obsession with longevity is the foil for this. We’re meant to see them clinging to life as grotesque and distasteful, it’s transformed them into literal monsters who are only able to find stimulation in the deliberate suffering of others, something that we’re motivated to rescue our new friend from.
But frankly I’m with the elders. I got into a heated conversation on this where I accidentally said, in the presence of people I didn’t know very well, that I think society should orient itself around conquering death. Most people would still rather surrender to time than embrace the challenge of longevity. I’m extremely unconvinced by a stubborn suggestion that the only entertainment in eternity is sadism19.
Anyways, another thing that I sort of like to see is writers not leaning on romantic love stories. Every Canto so far except Heathcliff’s—where it’s the direct focus of the chapter—has had something that you could interpret as a soft, implied romance at most. Even in Canto 8 where it might have made sense for Hong Lu to be romantically entangled with Jia Xichun20 as a motivation, there’s modest restraint in just not doing that.
Fixer Associations are named as sequential numbers in different languages:
Hana (1 in Korean) — Oversees all other Fixer Associations and manages Fixer grading
Zwei (2 in German) — Primarily involved in public safety assignments
Tres (3 in Spanish) — Oversees Fixer Workshops
Shi (4 in Japanese) — Handles covert assassination missions
Cinq (5 in French) — An association that specializes in dueling requests
Liu (6 in Chinese) — Specializes in all-out warfare
Seven — Specializes in information gathering, intelligence operations, and investigations
Eight (supposedly the reason there’s two of these in English is because they represent British and American dialects) — (has heretofore only been mentioned once by Ahab)
Devyat (9 in Russian) — Specializes in delivery and courier services, members use a hi-tech courier container that also serves as a weapon
Dieci (10 in Italian) — A quasi-religious organization that is primarily concerned with accumulating knowledge and relics
Oufi (11 in Swiss German) — Specializes in enforcing contracts
(There’s supposedly a secret twelfth Association.)
The Backstreets Syndicates, The Five Fingers/The Hand (if it’s not obvious, they’re all literally named after a different finger):
The Thumb — A mix of western and eastern traditional honor mafias
The Index — A quasi-religious Syndicate, they issue “Prescripts” which are seemingly random commandments that are required to be followed out for protection, Prescripts are transcribed from “the heart of the City” and it’s unclear how metaphorical this is
The Middle — Warhammer Fantasy dwarves; family- & vengeance-themed, everyone carries their own big book o’ grudges, members heavily use augmentation tattoos
The Ring — A group with art-based gimmicks, with multiple factions represented by different art styles
The Pinky — Has yet to appear substantially, but we’re learning more as of Canto 8; they apparently have a number of sleeper agents everywhere and their identities are hidden even from other Pinky members, it may be implied they’re not as consolidated, territorial, or as criminal-enterprise-focused as the other Fingers; it could be that their status as a Syndicate is simply that they’re organizationally rebelling against the City’s status quo
Disorganized notes on the Districts:
District 1 / A
Referred to as the Head (distinct from “the Head” as it relates to the collective A, B, and C Corps)
Responsible for managing patents and authorizing the creation of new Wings
Agents of A Corp are “Arbiters”
District 2 / B
Referred to as the Eye and is responsible for surveillance, managing the Wings’ credentials, and establishing rules for each Wing’s Singularities
Agents of B Corp are “Beholders”
District 3 / C
Referred to as the Claw and is the military branch of the Head
Agents of C Corp are “Claws”
District 4 / D
Backstreets location of Canto 1, has dense forests
District 5 / E
E Corp was part of the Old L Corp alliance during the Smoke War
District 6 / F
F Corp’s Singularity involves manufacturing “Fairies” which are capable of opening anything in a literal or metaphorical sense
F Corp was part of the Old L Corp alliance during the Smoke War
District 7 / G
G Corp produces spheres that can control gravity Mass Effect-style
Old G Corp created biologically augmented soldiers with bug-like appendages
Old G Corp was part of the Old L Corp alliance during the Smoke War
District 8 / H
H Corp is Hongyuan Bioengineering Group, their Singularity is the “Bolus” which are used primarily as healing medicine but can also cause a variety of other biological effects (eg every Heishou branch has a unique secret bolus recipe responsible for their Chinese-zodiac-inspired mutations)
The entirety of District 8 is contained in a single large superstructure which contains regular buildings and both the district’s Backstreets and Nest
Location of Canto 8
The previous H Corp was wiped out by Garion just prior to her assault on the Seed of Light research facility
District 9 / I
Heavily destroyed by the Pianist in between Lobotomy Corporation and Library of Ruina
I Corp was part of the Lobotomy Corporation alliance during the Smoke War
District 10 / J
J Corp Singularity produces “Locks” which can keep anything locked in a literal or metaphorical sense
Location of Canto 2
Well-known for gambling and trading “luck” as a currency
District 11 / K
Location of Cantos 3 and 4
K Corp Singularity is commonly believed to involve nanomachines for healing but that is actually derived from the tears of the “Tearful Thing” which is processed into various products such as HP Bullets
Part of the Lobotomy Corporation alliance during the Smoke War
Alfonso is one of the Executive Directors
District 12 / L
Old L Corp manufactured energy but was replaced by Lobotomy Corporation following the Smoke War
Lobotomy Corporation’s Singularity was Cogito
District 13 / M
M Corp is MDM Enterprises, their Singularity is or produces moonlight stone, which protects the user from mental harm
Home of the famous HamHam PangPang sandwich restaurant
District 14 / N
N Corp is Nagel und Hammer, they manufacture “Canned Experience” and are well-known for “suicide vending machines”
All buildings in District 14 are completely white and N Corp taboos are known to be harshly against mechanical prosthetics
District 15 / O
District 16 / P
P Corp’s Singularity is unknown, but they’re known for producing food preservation and storage technologies and for having buildings constructed with a bendy, flexible material and whose interiors don’t match their exteriors
Location of Canto 7
District 17 / Q
Mentioned a few times briefly in Canto 8, may be an important location for the Pinky
District 18 / R
R Corp’s Singularity is their Clone Hatcheries; because the Head has strict taboos on cloning, R Corp uses this to manufacture elite soldiers by having 1000 clones of an individual fight to the death battle royale style until there is a single survivor
R Corp squads are R-animal themed (Reindeer, Rhino, Rabbit)
Part of the Lobotomy Corporation alliance during the Smoke War
District 19 / S
S Corp is Salpippyeo Agroindustries, whose name implies they’re involved in food production
District 20 / T
T Corp is TimeTrack, their Singularity is able to control and “repackage” time, something about it also drains color from light within the district
They also seem to require cooperation with W Corp to harvest time via the warp trains
The district is also very steampunk-themed and citizens are required to carry a watch as identification
TimeTrack’s Chief Executive Director is Hubert
Location of Canto 6
District 21 / U
U Corp’s Singularity uses whale oil to fuse and unfuse the essences of objects together such as with Resonance Tuning Forks, they also make stasis preservation boxes for keeping food or materials fresh
U Corp taboos prohibit recording Great Lake laws, with the information being held for limited sale by U Corp
Location of Canto 5
District 22 / V
Home of Vergilius’ Seven Association affiliated fixer office during Leviathan
District was devastated by the Crying Children Distortion during Library of Ruina
District 23 / W
W Corp is WARP Corp., their apparent Singularity allows for near-instantaneous teleportation, however this was actually inherited from a previous W Corp, the present W Corp’s Singularity is a “save point” functionality that allows them to restore something to a previous condition
District 23 is infamous for having many cannibals
District 24 / X
X Corp is known for manufacturing especially durable materials
District 25 / Y
District 26 / Z
Conspicuously absent from official maps
Friend ID: W549587749
I think? Based on my spending history at least, but in retrospect it feels insane that I could have gotten there in only a few months.
Completed a real Bleed team at the 11th hour end of Season 5: La Manchaland Don, Rodion, & Outis (have Gregor too but on the bench), KK Heathcliff & Ishmael, and Ring Yi Sang. Also decided at the last minute when updating everyone to level 55 to go with that team instead of the rag-tag random-high-tiers story team I’d used before. I have Tingtang Gang Gangleader Hong Lu, which is an ID whose name is too hilarious to abbreviate, which is extremely decent and even synergizes somewhat with Bleed but it would be nice to have something stronger to work with for the Canto. Right now the optimal 7th would probably be something like Kurokumo Ryoshu, whom I’m missing.
I’m conflicted here because I’m pro-Project-Moon-games-being-brutal for ludonarrative harmony reasons but also it’s a gacha and I kind of wish they’d just made the difficult versions for Railway or Mirror Dungeons and toned it down for the Canto chapters.
I got W Corp Ryoshu and Pequod Heathcliff on some of my first pulls; the former was an extremely lucky early grab and the latter is a high tier tank and good to have both short term and long term as he fits into a couple important teams. The new player daily login track gives you multiple Season 1 3* IDs (NCorp Sinclair and Faust are easy picks here) and both a Season 1 EGO and a free Threadspin 4 for it—ensuring anyone who does their research gets their hands on an early juiced up Fluid Sac Faust, which has definitely carried more than a few times (using it turn one with the free-EGO Durante basically single-handedly solved 8-33 for me). I passed Molar Outis for Molar Ishmael from an early guaranteed 3* ticket, which left me all the way to the free Heishou Pack Mao Branch Outis from the Nocturnal Sweeping event without good 3* ID for her (otoh I did have a Ring Outis, which is probably the single best 2* ID), but Molar Ishmael is still really good and ended up being clutch for a few key story battles because she has an insane base dodge roll. Dumped most of my early story Lunacy into a well-timed Faust banner that got me MultiCrack (I didn’t realize this at the time but it was a very-not-unwise thing to do since she was a Season 4 Event ID and wasn’t craftable during Season 5) and all of her best EGOs, and almost enough shards to craft all of her remaining non-Walpurgisnacht IDs.
Pulled Cinq East Don from the banner that introduced her on the first random single pull (but after already having gotten T Corp Don, which had mostly replaced Pequod Heathcliff as my tank), ditto for R Corp Hong Lu.
It took me embarrassingly long to figure out the rewards were superior; I’d have been able to finish them for quite a while now otherwise but I mistakenly thought it was faster and better to do three Normal runs per week.
Vergilius seems to be contracted with Limbus Company in some important way vaguely similar to how the Sinners are, but we don’t have much clue what for or what the terms of his employment are, except that his interference during Canto 6 cost him some important provision of that arrangement. We can guess his reluctance to get directly involved in recovery of the Golden Boughs is probably one of those conditions even though he kind of plays it off as not desiring to get involved. I’ve read Leviathan since writing this footnote.
Some people seem to think it’s somehow particularly important that he’s the “red” fixer as it relates to Kali the Red Mist from Lobotomy Corp & LoR but I don’t see this as something that’s automatically important, from the City’s perspective she would have been missing since before the events of Lobotomy Corporation, long before even the Smoke War.
I used to think it was obvious that Vergilius is a bloodfiend but this is apparently controversial. He “has the eyes of a higher generation [than Sancho, a Second Kindred]” and I personally think there’s enough circumstantial evidence to suggest he probably is, but it’s definitely unsettled. All bloodfiends have red eyes but not everybody with red eyes are bloodfiends (notably: Ryoshu).
I actually can’t recall precisely where I got the idea there’s a First Kindred associated with B Corp, I replayed the scenes for the LCB Checkup before the new season and it’s not clearly implied who Rocinante came from, Vergilius mentions something about the shoes being a binding artifact “gifted by a First Kindred” and it occurs to me that this might just simply be the subject of Canto 7 (wup, turns out Priest Gregor’s uptie story definitely confirms this). The B Corp thing might have been mentioned somewhere in the epilogue for Canto 7 but I’ll have to go looking for that some other time, although supposedly there’s a different First Kindred active in every District anyways.
According to the big Steam guide that I’m pulling a bunch of info from, there’s an in-universe misunderstanding of the blood curse, that it can be overcome by any sufficiently strong passion or “dream” replacing the psychological need for blood but I’m not sure what the source of that info is. This might be a misinterpretation of some stuff mentioned during the LCB Checkup where it’s implied this only suppresses the blood craving under normal circumstances but does not replace it.
Quick note since this is an initially confusing detail: LCB is your/the Sinners group, the “Limbus Company Bus” team. LCA are the mysterious elite cleanup agents and LCC is the more conventional scout (LCCB, Before) and cleanup (LCCA, After) crews. LCE is the lab department that shows up in the LCB Checkup Intervallo.
Also, apparently, Shin and Mang!
Also also, and this isn’t something I’m prepared to comment on because I’m not quite that deep in on the Library of Ruina background, but apparently Iori is everywhere in bits and pieces despite not having appeared chronologically since the start of Leviathan, and there’s lots of speculation that she’s been the mastermind behind quite a lot of things through the whole series. She’s at least directly responsible for much of the events of LoR via Roland, she definitely knows and may have also trained Vergilius, and the three strange also-non-recurring characters in the tutorial/prologue seem to be her proteges as well.
From what I understand, Project Moon has had a pretty severe falling out with one or more of its artists, which is why Wonderlab is no longer considered officially canon and some of the earlier art in Limbus Company is slowly being replaced. Though afaict in the case of Leviathan specifically, the artist working on it withdrew for unrelated mental health reasons.
Apparently for some reason the Head deliberately wants most combat to be close range and brutal.
During the LCB Regular Checkup Intervallo, Gregor conspicuously mentions (though possibly sarcastically, since this comes up when they’re ranking power levels) that it was weird that he was made to introduce himself first.
From what I understand of the novel, Heathcliff becomes more vindictive and destructive towards Catherine after she dies, but it's sort of an interesting, unusual take on tragic romance where he has aspects of "I'm responsible for this and must literally suffer across all time and space", and then it's a clever twist that Catherine also mistakenly feels the same way. But you have the unique instantiations that are ultimately like "yeah I may be responsible for this but we're not helping things by (literally) beating ourselves up over it", our Heathcliff triumphs by realizing it's a stronger act of love to live on to keep her memory alive in defiance of her existence literally being wiped out. That’s amazing stuff, some outstanding ludonarrative harmony, and now every time I use Bodysack (or even Le Sangre de Sancho) I get a lil emotional.
On today’s internet, it’s not especially surprising that this resonates with a lot of people.
Though I think it’s possible that this was beside the point; there’s a throughline with pretty much everything in the City that it is all somehow and somewhy an engine that runs on suffering and there’s hints that much of the Head’s purview is to ensure as much of it is going on as possible. It’s possible the elders’ fixation on suffering is a beat on that storyline.
Despite this being kind of a wild upset from the source material, where he’s betrothed to Xue Baochai and his true love is Lin Daiyu.