Sekien no Inganock

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Sekien No Inganock or Inganock of the Brightest Flame is the second game in the What a Beautiful Steampunk series made by Liarsoft, which currently has four entries in the series.

In the city of Inganock, isolated from the outside world, many deformities and tragedies are occurring. These events started 10 years ago at the time of Revival, where malicious beings known simply as "creatures" and various mutations spread throughout the city. Humans began to mutate into something that does not look human at all.

The story follows Gii, an illegal doctor who travels across the city healing indiscriminately. Though he looks completely normal on the outside, his inside has been mutated, which granted him the equation phenomenon, an ability that allows him to manipulate other people's bodies in order to heal them.

His journey begins to change when he meets a mysterious girl named Kia, turning into one that will allow him to discover the true nature of the city.

The game received a translation patch by Amaterasu Translation in 2009, which is available here: http://amaterasu.tindabox.net/

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Tropes:

• Action Girl: Ati.
• Ambiguous Innocence: The Kikai are noted as being very pure and simple, but to have a rather childlike outlook. They draw their viewpoints from the people they stand behind. As such, they can turn out well like Porshion or turn out no better than Creatures. Fitting considering they're highly implied to be 41 unborn children who died in the university hospital.
• Arc Number: 41.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: The little you hear about them early on seems to point in this direction. However, examples like Mr. Klein seem to point in the opposite direction.
• Artificial Limbs: Quite common.
• Artistic Age: Ruaha should be physically twentyish but apart from slightly wider hips does not look much different from Kia, who is probably around ten. Then there are the orphan trio who have some vague age that's younger than Kia. Yet somehow Smith and Iru look like old guys.
• Berserk Button: If you don't call Alisa Greg by her full name, she'll attack you. Gii once saw her tear someone's face.
• Body Horror
• The Caligula: Astea is a fairly mild version. He enacted some fairly brutal laws to keep order, but they're probably necessary to halt the spread of things like Arboritis. However, you find out pretty early on that he went mad long ago and is doing... something. Also, he's dead and steals lives to make himself invulnerable.
• Catgirl: Ati.
• Chick Magnet: Salem says that Gii used to be one. Nowadays he never smiles and barely speaks.
• Cool Old Guy: Iru
• Curb Stomp Battle: Every battle Gii has apart from the very last, which should have resulted in him getting stomped but was instead merely even.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Ati notes that the Knights, who have had almost their entire body's replace for one reason or another, are often rather inhuman.
• Cyborg: Integration of the Engine Limbs tends to result in this, though they're called Engine Humans.
• Crapsack World: The titular Inganock, especially the Lower Tiers.
• Dead All Along: Astea died years ago. He continues moving on because his corpse is 'piloted' for lack of a better word. So did Petrovna, Lemure Lemure and Kia. Kia gets better, though.
• Dead Little Sister: Kia was Kerkan's little sister. He became a Traveling Murder to kill those who had were suffering. This makes him the exact opposite of Gii, who refuses to kill and always tries to heal the sufferers.
• Deceptively Human Robot: Gii notes that even expensive human shaped automatons are still nothing more than dolls. Not that 'Automaton' is one of them.
• Digitized Hacker: Bandersnatch.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Ruaha's 'conversation' while mostly naked with Kerkan in chapter 8. About his heat penetrating to the core.
• Dr. Jerk: Gii, sort of, though he's a nice enough guy. The doctor who is a jerk but not this trope would be Eralee.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Alisa Greg says this about herself with a bit of bemusement when she realizes that it would be wrong to continue asking Kia to work in her brothel.
• Everything's Worse with Bears: Behemoths (bear people) terrify people because they're huge and prone to going berserk.
• Everybody Lives: Apart from Magdall, Smith and Salem's early deaths, there are basically no casualties after that. The only ones who die are those who were already dead and things that were not alive to begin with.
• Evil Eye: Gii can analyze things like diseases and Creatures with his right eye. It also seems to have some X-ray powers.
• Eyes of Gold: Ati's golden right eye is constantly noted to be special.
• Fan Disservice: Seeing Petrovna's breasts pop out as her clothing ripped has the sexiness reduced by the fact that she's very crazy, trying to kill Gii and soon brings out the Youki/Milan hybrid kikai.
• Fantastic Drug: Amnerol.
• Fantastic Racism: Shelobs [insect people] generally have to live in their own communities because not even this city is really comfortable with bug people. The remaining foreigners have to deal with normal racism.
• Forgets to Eat: Gii, as a result of apparently having his appetite mutated away. Even when he remembers people practically have to cram food down his throat.
• Full-Frontal Assault: See Fan Disservice.
• Gender Bender What happened to Salem in Revival and drove him insane.
• Hair of Gold: Kia.
• Healing Factor: Gii can use his Phenomenon Equation like this.
• Healing Hands: Gii, thanks to his equation.
• Heroic BSOD: Gii has one when he thinks he's killed Lemure Lemure. He only meant to separate him from the Kikai, but since Lemure Lemure was a Kikai it 'kills' him instead. You find out immediately afterward that it's not as simple as that but Gii does not.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Smith draws out Youki the Blood Tree by cutting himself open and spilling lots of foreigner blood. Youki targets foreigners more than anyone else and can't resist coming out of its hiding spot inside Dorothy to try to get him. At which point Gii quickly kills it, but although he can stop Smith's bleeding he has lost too much blood and has no muscle mass left on his body to convert into blood, so the old man dies.
• Honey Trap: Ati occasionally has to pull this. She stops short of actually sleeping with the target, apparently, and seems to be slightly worried about being raped. She also doesn't think she does it well, claiming that a stray cat is a stray cat no matter how much you dress it up. All in all she prefers straight brawls.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Salem, an old friend of Gii's from medical school, has become one. Or so it seems: actually Salem has gone insane a long time ago and is behind the child-killings of the beginning.
• Immortality:
  • Immortality Inducer / The Ageless: Ati's golden eye halted her aging when it first appeared. She hasn't changed since then. Much later in the story she mentions offhandedly that the Phenomenon Equation can basically do the same thing.
  • The Undead: Astea has immortality similar to that of the undead, which is fitting considering he is dead. Also, multiple lives.
• Immune to Bullets: Whenever a Creature appears, the same text appears describing its invulnerability including their apparent immunity to bullets.
• Infant Immortality: Averted. The first chapter deals with a serial killer of children. Arboritis is also most common in the young, sick and elderly and is basically 100% fatal.
• Irony: Instory example. Gii used to be mostly interested in theoretical medicine and didn't care much for the practical applications. Ten years later he's the Traveling Doc, the only doctor around who actually seems to care about people at all.
• Jerkass: Eralee. It's indicated that he used to be nicer. Gii still gets along okay with him, though.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Gii.
• Knight Templar: Efforts to stamp out some of the diseases and mutations head right into this territory. There isn't much in the way of alternate options.
• Large Ham: The Grand Prince appears rather fond of theatrics for someone who never appears in public.
• Laughing Mad: Lemure Lemure. Though once he's no longer constrained he laughs a lot less.
• The Messiah: Kia.
• Mercy Kill: Kerkan's motivation.
• Mind Control: One of Wendigo's powers. It forms cults that serve it rather than wreaking havoc by itself.
• Mind Screw: The webnovels do clear some of it up though.
• Mismatched Eyes: Ati's golden eye is quite rare.
• My Name Is Not Durwood: Gii basically just gives up on correcting Kia when she calls him Doctor. She also insists on calling Ati his wife.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Bandersnatch tries claiming this when arguing with Gii. He doesn't buy it.
• Mysterious Waif: Kia
• Naive Newcomer: Kia
• Necromantic: Astea seems to have been doing everything he did in order to try reviving his daughter who died when the spiral staircase collapsed onto the hospital she was giving birth in.
• Nice Guy: Gii, who helps poor people, takes care of orphaned siblings, and accepts payments for healing only from rich customers... which is why he has so little money on him and hasn't eaten properly for a few days at the start of the game.
• Nigh Invulnerable: Creatures and Kikai. They all have one and only one weakness.
• Non Standard Character Design: Bandersnatch is depicted as a highly pixelated winged creature.
• Obliviously Evil: More amoral and selfish than evil, but Eralee is firmly convinced that Gii is the one that's doing the wrong thing. Not charging money? Actually healing people? What's wrong with you! That's against the law!
• Oblivious to Love: Despite some rather pointed hinting from Ati Gii just never seems to get it. It's also implied that David felt the same about Ati and she's just as oblivious.
• Older Than They Look: Gii suspects Kia is older than she appears because of her behaviour and the fact he has a vague feeling he might have seen her ten years ago.
• Ominous Fog: It never goes away. Due to people's fractured memories some don't even believe the sun exists anymore.
• Petting Zoo People: Though played differently than normal: Not only the body is warped, but the mind starts to change as well.
• Porn with Plot: Honestly, the porn part can hardly be called porn sometimes.
• Replacement Goldfish: Gii speculates that an automaton he comes across is one while taking a request.
• The Reveal: Porshion was the viewpoint character for the entire story.
• Robot Girl: But the truth of the above is that the automaton is Ruaha and that her personality has been mostly devoured by Bandersnatch.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Salem
• Scenery Porn: One of the most consistently praised aspects of the game is the art. It's very pastel and stylized.
• Serial Killer: In the first chapter. The truth is slightly more complicated and a lot worse.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Kia keeps calling Ati Gii's wife despite his protests. Ati, on the other hand, doesn't seem to mind at all.
• Smoking Is Cool: Kerkan.
• Snake People: Alisa Greg, one of the orphans and Smith. Smith also has some gnoll bits, though.
• Steampunk
• The Stinger: M and Moran have a conversation at the end of Inganock's webnovel epilogue.
• The Stoic: Gii rarely shows much emotion. Salem notes that he used to smile a lot more, and Ati is quite shocked to see him actually smile for once
• Stuffed Into the Fridge: Non lethal version. Ati has to have all her memories erased in order to save her from becoming a monster right when she and Gii had basically hooked up. This fuels the final chapter.
• Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: Averted for the most part, but the Automaton from chapter 4 is noted to have way more physical power than it needs to. The last thing that Klein could do for his daughter, perhaps?
• Super Speed: Coeurls, Creatures, Engine Humans and Kikai.
• Super Strength: Ati. Apparently her stamina is poor, though, and she prefers to rely on her speed. It actually causes a near Can't Have Sex Ever effect because it's difficult for her to hold back her strength. Even when she does, Gii has to use his healing factor pretty much constantly. Behemoths have even greater strength, but they're a lot slower.
• Talkative Loon: Randolph.
• Technicolor Eyes: Kia's are bright pink.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Gii refuses to take life. He becomes quite upset with what he does to Astea because by one way of looking at it the Grand Prince was merely a corpse, yet he was still moving around and speaking.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Apparently the reason people only have few, scattered memories of 'The Revival'.
• Urban Segregation: Gii basically lives in the middle tier (which is still incredibly poor and horrible) and frequently ventures into the lower tier. The upper tier is fabulously wealthy, has all the power and is guarded by super killing machine cyborgs. They also have protection against mutation. Bonus points for actually calling them all Tiers.
• Verbal Tic: Iru says "meow" ("nya") every now and then. Apparently Ati does not.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Where did Dorothy go? At least Kurtz and Sara's story was pretty intentionally left unresolved.
• What Is This Thing You Call Love?
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Ati was initially upset that her golden eye halted her aging, but she came to like it when she realized that Gii's Phenomenon Equation could stop his own aging.
• Winged Humanoid: Avorals, the most important of whom is David. The overall effect is less angel and more bird people. Appropriately enough.
• Wretched Hive: It's so bad you have to wonder why the city hasn't collapsed entirely yet. How is it still going with half the population dying off ten years ago, catastrophes like the Golem five years ago, constant Monster and Creature attacks and all the horrible diseases?
• Yamato Nadeshiko: Despite her (possible?) young age, Kia has aspects of this, for instance cleaning Gii's apartment, cooking for him and nurturing him after the encounter with Wendigo.
• Yandere: Lemure Lemure.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Dorothy's green hair is apparently only notable for being bright and pretty.