Ordeals
Uncontrollable, outside forces that will invade Lobotomy Corporation at different times of the day to harass you and stop your progress. As the day goes on, their more dangerous units get deployed to cause further harm.In general
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: The least threatening Amber monsters are about the size of a person. Their biggest bugs are about the size of an entire room, or even a building, if you let the day drag on into Midnight.
- Fast Tunnelling: The critters get around the base by tunneling their way around so they can occupy more hallways.
- Horror Hunger: Their primary theme and motive; they invade your facility so that they can enjoy the buffet they assumed was set out for them. And if their quotes are to be believed, they began to cannibalize each other when there was no more food to be had.
The Perfect Meal
Amber Dawn. Man-sized insects who crawl in hallways to lunge at employees for a bite. Individually they're rather pathetic, but they always appear in huge groups to more effectively shred meals apart.
- Zerg Rush: To compensate for their individual weaknesses, they cluster in large groups to eat prey faster.
Food Chain
Amber Dusk. A much larger, hallway-filling version of The Perfect Meal. These sluggish beasts move lazily across hallways they appear in, biting anything in their paths. If they bump into the other side of the hallway, they will release more instances of The Perfect Meal and then burrow into a random hallway to complete the process.
- Advancing Boss of Doom: Food Chain will slowly but surely crawl down hallways, eating everything in their paths and likely killing most staff instantly. Even wearing the toughest Red damage resistant armor will leave the Agent in critical condition, so retreating away from the worm is most viable choice, aside from getting behind it to damage it safely.
- Enemy Summoner: Will spawn the smaller Perfect Meals every once in a while to help them.
The Eternal Meal
Amber Midnight. The apex predator among the Amber Ordeals, the Eternal Meal is a rocky, building-sized monstrosity that has planted itself into the ground and is capable of eating entire rooms with its giant teeth filled maw. When the timer reaches midnight, Eternal Meal will appear in a department room to devour anyone in there. It has no other direct method of attack, but it will spawn instances of Food Chain every once in a while so that they can invade the parts of the facility it could not. Once enough instances are spawned it will burrow back into the ground to reappear in another room, continuing until it’s been killed.
- Damage-Sponge Boss: Aside from its single, devastating attack it has when it makes its appearance known, it's mostly defenseless and serves as a stationary object that must be dealt with if you don't want to be overrun with worms.
- Dual Boss: Two instances of the monster will spawn.
- Enemy Summoner: One that creates other Enemy Summoning enemies periodically.
- Nested Mouths: Its already giant maw has a smaller, person size jaw hidden inside.
In general
- Defeat Equals Explosion: Killing one of the Crimson clowns will cause it to explode, spawning weaker versions of themselves found in the other times of the day.
- Evil Laugh: Complete a Crimson ordeal and the event ends with the clown horde laughing maniacally as their closing message is shown.
- Monster Clown: So monstrous, in fact, that only their smallest, least threatening unit actually resembles a humanoid clown. You'd need someone to tell you they're clowns for their later versions.
- My Death Is Just the Beginning: Their real destructive abilities only apply once they die, though they're certainly threats even before then.
Cheers For The Beginning
Crimson Dawn. Tiny jesters with brown demonic heads that smile constantly. When they teleport into the facility, they will ignore all employees and rush for an Abnormality's containment unit. Once there, they'll stop to constantly drain the E-boxes from that specimen and drain its Qliphoth counter by one, instigating that Abnormality into escaping.
- Action Bomb: Killing them will cause them to glow red before they explode, dealing a moderate amount of damage to those caught in its blast.
- Stone Wall: They have very little combat ability, but they can take one hell of a beating before they explode in the early stages of the game, even if you take their weakness to White Damage into account.
The Harmony of Skin
Crimson Noon. Three-headed, quadrupedal monsters that wear clown makeup on their many faces. The Harmony of Skin will spawn from a tent filled with teeth and will begin to roam around hallways, attacking anyone in its way. If defeated, they'll burst into smaller versions of Cheers For The Beginning who'll try to do their usual routine.
- Body Horror: They're a combination of clowns that take the form of something resembling a scorpion; their anatomy is two vaguely human clown heads up front, with a smaller featureless head between them, and a tail with the third head at the end of it. Inside of the tail's mouth is some kind of organ with a thin spike protruding from it. Its body is blood red, with tears and boils bursting from its sides.
- Enemy Summoner: Killing them will create three Cheers For The Beginning.
- Stone Wall: Like the Cheers For The Beginning, they're sturdy creatures who can be a hassle to get rid of. Unlike them though, they're rather happy being in the hallways they claim and don't drain energy, so it might be a wiser idea to leave it be if you don't have the resources to kick them out.
The Struggle at the Climax
Crimson Dusk. A giant, stitched-up beefy monster who wields a spear, spiked mallet and a meat cleaver, and its gaping mouth has a tongue with a clown's head on the end of it. When it appears, it will take up a hallway and start rolling down it, damaging anyone in its way. Killing it will cause it to burst into two Harmony of the Skins.
- Overly-Long Tongue: With a clown's head at the end of it, apparently.
- Rolling Attack: After picking a hallway, it'll roll itself down it to hurt anyone in its way.
In general
- Be Careful What You Wish For: The Greens created a tower to find the answer to their existence. Sadly, once they did complete their building and climbed the top, they found nothing, nothing but the end of life.
- Freudian Excuse: The Green Ordeals' lives were nothing but pain existed only to express despair. They made a tower to find the answers to their lives, but nothing but dismay and the end of life; now, they live to inflict the same pain onto others.
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: If their quotes are to be believed, they are robots who began to question their unexplained existence, and built a tower in an attempt reach the heavens for answers.
- Killer Robot: 2/4ths of them are killer robots, with the other half being a tool to deploy more killer robots and a massive stationary weapon.
- Nothing Is Scarier: According to Where We Must Reach, they literally found nothing to their existence when they reached the top of their tower.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: They sport glowing red eyes that angrily search for targets to exterminate.
- Shout-Out: Their backstory seems to invoke the tale of the Tower of Babel, with them attempting to build a massive tower to meet their creators. Only this time, they were able to complete their structure and discover the nihilistic disappointment that defines them today.
- Straw Nihilist: After discovering the disappointment and nothingness of their existence, the Greens decide to inflict that same pain they've experienced on others.
Doubt
Green Dawn. The first robots that are encountered, they're tall black machines - that vaguely resemble skeletons - with spikes at the ends of their arms. They will slowly shamble around the facility as they look for targets to stab to death.
- Mighty Glacier: Slow and sturdy robots who can take a beating just as well as they can deliver one.
- There's No Kill like Overkill: When they finish off an employee, they'll enter an animation when they pin the target down and repeatedly stab them in the chest until they're nothing but mush; any employees in the room will take White damage from watching this happen.
Process of Understanding
Green Noon. Boxy, armored robots with a buzz saw on one arm and a gun on the other. They're similar to the Doubt in that they'll slowly shamble across hallways in search of hallways, but they're much harder to take out, thanks to their gun that fires at anything in its path.
- Mighty Glacier: Even more than the Doubt, as this one is even sturdier and doesn't need to get close to lay down the pain.
- More Dakka: They come with machine guns that never stop firing until they box themselves up to recharge briefly.
Where We Must Reach
Green Dusk. Boxes of deployable robot factories. They have no attacks of their own, but letting them sit around means that you'll have to face an endless wave of robots as long as they sit.
- Mook Maker: Their sole purpose is to do nothing but spawn waves of killer robots to end you.
Helix of the End
Green Midnight. A stationary, inanimate weapon sporting giant laser cannons. If you allow the day to reach midnight, then the Helix of the End can be deployed to put a permanent end to your day. It will take a few moments to charge its cannons before fire at a slowly turning 360 degree sweep across the whole facility to liquefy everyone in the building.
- Made of Iron: It is incredibly sturdy and almost impossible to get rid of through regular means.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: Originally invoked in previous versions of the game, where only the toughest of Agents can survive a brief second inside its laser. However, later updates changed the games elevators to instantly transport people to different floors, meaning you can stuff people into an elevator as the laser passes to bypass it safely and then move in to deal damage while it recharges. However, actually attempting to destroy it without this trick is bound to get the entire building killed quickly.
The Sweepers
- Gas Mask Mooks: The Sweepers all sport metal gas masks.
- Heal Thyself: If they find a dead body, they'll consume it to heal themselves.
- Hooks and Crooks: Their weapons involve orange hooks to slash at people with.
In general
- Eldritch Abomination: Their units are just flat-out bizarre, with the only things that are usually able to be seen of the whole beast are their giant purple tentacles.
- Purple Is Powerful: Their signature color is violet, and they wield some of the most disruptive attacks and effects in the game.
The Fruit of Understanding
Violet Dawn. Vaguely worm-like creatures with a glowing purple core, which has an unknown, ancient language written across it. The Fruit of Understanding are sturdy creatures that will try to last long enough to detonate in a sanity-draining burst. This burst will also anger all Abnormalities in its radius into escaping containment instantly.
- Action Bomb: Unlike other examples in the Ordeals, they have other methods of attacks to defend themselves. Blowing up is their main objective, however, and is their best attack.
Grant Us Love
Violet Noon. A giant black monolith that sprouts tentacles when it sets itself up. These artifacts will teleport from the roof to crush any employee unlucky enough to be standing under its shadow. Their tentacles will constantly whip around at anything around them to deal a constant 1 Black Damage per hit. After a period of time, they'll stop moving to send out a pulse of energy that makes one random Abnormality escape containment before they start to resuming slapping everything around them.
- Combat Tentacles
- Death from Above: When they spawn in, they don't just appear in a room or hallway — they appear from the roof and hit the ground, crushing anyone who might in their way. Evacuate everyone from the main department rooms immediately if the day is about to move into Violet Noon, because it's almost certain that they're going to be flattened when the monoliths make their drop.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: The tentacles deal a low, but constant, amount of Black Damage so as long as they're in the same room with the monolith. This attack only ends when they begin to charge up their energy attack that enrages an Abnormality into escaping, which is arguably worse than being whipped by tentacles.
The God Delusion
Violet Midnight. The main entity can't be seen, but it attacks with portals that summon its appendages to swipe, crush and claw at employees with randomly. When the Ordeal starts, the God Delusion will spawn its monoliths in random hallways of the facility. They are colored red, white, purple, and blue (Physical, Mental, Black and Pale Damage respectively), which all control its different elemental attacks. Attempting to destroy one will have the God retaliate by focusing its attention on that one spot, but succeeding to destroy it will disable it of that damage type.
- Area of Effect: The God Delusion's attacks will encompass the entire facility, with certain attacks covering a quarter of it. The attacks also hit very hard and could wipe out whole armies of weaker employees almost instantly.
- Attack of the Monster Appendage: 3/4 of its attacks are portals that reveal the beast's giant appendage. The other is a giant eye that moves from hallway to hallway.
- Battleship Raid: Defeating the God Delusion means that you'll have to shatter each of its monoliths until it’s unable to attack anymore.
- No-Sell: The God Delusion's monoliths all absorb attacks that correspond to their element.
- Percent Damage Attack: The eye that floats between hallways does this to your employees in addition to slowing them down to prevent their escape.
- Shout-Out: To the book with the same name The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.
While in Library of Ruina there are numerous types of Fixers with various aspects as their domains, these all appear to represent Fixers directly aiding the Head a.k.a A Corp.
- Ambiguously Human: The Red Fixer is at least robotic; the White, Black, and Pale Fixers are all humanoid, but their powers may hint otherwise. And later it turns out that many of these are required to have prosthetic body parts just to ensure they can fight, because Fixers can't brute force without these powers or parts.
- Elite Mooks: The Fixers seen in-game and the Claws were deployed by the Heads of the World as one of their best weapons.
- Final Boss: The Ordeals of White serve as the last obstacles before the end of the game.
- Futureshadowing: The intro and post-text of the Dusk of White references what will happen in Library of Ruina.
- Final-Exam Boss: Hope you've managed to get the hang of all the intricacies of combat when you reach them, since they'll be testing how well you can divide up numbers and do damage efficiently before they rip your staff apart.
- Hired Guns: While it was later revealed that there are many types of Fixers, the ones sent to the Library appear to be this, and serving the Heads of the World.
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: In Lobotomy Corporation, the Fixers are the strongest set of ordeals before the Claw, and are capable of mowing through your ranks without issue. In Library of Ruina, these guys would likely be Grade 1 at best; still very strong, but compared to the bars set by Color Fixers, Distortions, and the various abominations populating the city, it's technically a blessing it's just these and a Claw you must deal with, and not someone on the leagues of, say, Argalia. It's well Justified (and Downplayed) however, since these Fixers are directly from the Head, which means that they would have all sorts of singularity-enhanced weapons or otherwise illegal technote that would let them go hand to hand with your E.G.O.-ridden elite agents.
- Taking You with Me: When Fixers die, they all unleash a burst of their respective damage.
Red Fixer
- Arm Cannon: It also has a blade attached to it.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: A red, retractable one on its Arm Cannon.
- Cyber Cyclops: Has a single red, glowing light behind its visor.
White Fixer
- Braids of Action: The White Fixer wears its hair in braids, and it is quite a menace.
- Holy Is Not Safe: They appear to be an angel who uses light and White Damage to test you.
Black Fixer
Pale Fixer
- Hidden Eyes: His eyes are obscured by shadow.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: Is dressed in a formal suit and tie.
The Claw
A man clad in a helmet and gauntlet, with three syringes stabbed into his body, ranked ALEPH. He appears only during a White Midnight.
- Antagonist Title: The White Midnight is also just known as The Claw.
- The Blank: His head essentially amounts to a metallic hunk of wood with gashes cut into it.
- Bodyguarding a Badass: A pair of Claws served as this for Garion during her raid on the facility, but both of them were killed by Kali.
- Humanoid Abomination: He's seemingly a perfectly normal person, up until you get to his arm and his face (or lack thereof), which are metallic and worn with syringes jabbed into them. What he is is another topic, as Claws are among the top enforcers for the Heads of the World, alongside Arbiters and Tax Collectors.
- Lightning Bruiser: The Claw can deal a high amount of damage at a fast rate, especially given how fast he is. It also has more health than the Fixers, whose HP range from 1,000 to 1,300.
- Non-Standard Character Design: He's more realistically proportioned and drawn compared to his fellow Fixers, or even any other human character, for that matter.
- Playing with Syringes: Has three syringes on his body, which he will use, triggering different abilities depending on which is injected. Noticeably, when he uses Blue Injection, the ten traumas of the Sephirah are shown as symbols.
- Red Right Hand: His entire left arm is armored, and ends in a clawed gauntlet.
- The Spook: Just what is The Claw? Little information is given about their roles or their identities, other than they are feared, merciless enforcers that aid the Heads of the World and are indeed human. It can be surmised that The Claw in the Midnight of White was a leftover by the Heads of the World sent after you, much like the Fixers, but also leaves the question of what happened to any other Claws, if they at all exist besides the two that Kali killed.
- In Library of Ruina, it is stated that Claws are employees of one of the three Corporations that make up The Head, C Corporation.
- True Final Boss: He only shows up during the last Ordeal of White, Midnight of White, which only occurs during days 46-49 in Keter's Meltdown. Unlike the Fixers, who are classified as WAW, The Claw is classified as ALEPH.
- Turns Red: When he's knocked down to 25% of his HP, he stabs all three syringes into himself and prepares a hard hitting Pale attack against six of your employees.
