Sekien no Inganock (Inganock of the Brightest Flame) is the second Steampunk game in the What a Beautiful... series made by Liarsoft, which currently has seven 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/
Tropes:
- Accidental Misnaming: Gii basically just gives up on correcting Kia when she calls him Doctor. She also insists on calling Ati his wife.
- 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 newborns who died in the university hospital.
- Animorphism: Though played differently than normal: Not only the body is warped, but the mind starts to change as well.
- 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.
- Ruaha does look twentyish in her sex scene with Kerkan, though, complete with breasts that are larger than Kia's.
- Bears Are Bad News: Behemoths (bear people) terrify people because they're huge and prone to going berserk.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Cynicism Catalyst: 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.
- 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.
- Death of a Child:
- The first chapter deals with a serial killer of children.
- Arboritis is most common in the young, sick and elderly and is basically 100% fatal.
- Deceptively Human Robot: Gii notes that even expensive human shaped automatons are still nothing more than dolls. Not that 'Automaton' is one of them.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 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.
- 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 Inducer: 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.
- Immune to Bullets: Whenever a Creature appears, the same text appears describing its invulnerability including their apparent immunity to bullets.
- 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.
- 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.
- Magical Eye: Gii can analyze things like diseases and Creatures with his right eye. It also seems to have some X-ray powers.
- Mind Control: One of Wendigo's powers. It forms cults that serve it rather than wreaking havoc by itself.
- My Greatest Failure: Only brought up for one chapter, but it counts. Gii at first refuses to treat Dorothy at all because her particular disease is one that he previously failed to cure the last hundred or so times he tried. Of course, the fact that he didn't even try before giving up this time royally pisses off Ati and Kia enough that they insist on sleeping in a separate room from Gii, although Kia does tell Ati to forgive Gii. Gii comes to his senses later and at least attempts to treat Dorothy, and thanks to a heroic sacrifice from Smith and Gii's powers, this time it works.
- 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.
- Surprisingly, there's an aristocrat in the upper tier like this. His name is Kurtz, and he's such a nice guy Gii starts regretting that the lower classes think the upper-class people are all universally evil.
- Nigh-Invulnerable: Creatures and Kikai. They all have one and only one weakness.
- Nonstandard 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. He accepts Ati's love eventually and they have sex. It doesn't last, no thanks to Lemure Lemure.
- Older Than They Look: Gii suspects Kia is older than she appears because of her mature 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.
- 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. Near the end of the game, Ati does become Gii's girlfriend complete with sex scene, making Kia right...for an extremely short time, and then Lemure Lemure messes with her head and turns her into a monster, causing Gii to have to reset Ati.
- 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.
- Supernatural Gold Eyes: Ati's golden right eye is constantly noted to be special.
- Superpowered 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.
- 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'.
- The Undead: Astea has immortality similar to that of the undead, which is fitting considering he is dead. Also, multiple lives.
- 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.
- 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 for instance cleaning Gii's apartment, cooking for him and nurturing him after the encounter with Wendigo. She nurtures him again after Gii goes into a HeroicBSOD upon having to "reset" an out-of-control Ati. Only Kia goes much further with the nurturing this time; they cuddle up naked together...but they don't have sex, she just comforts him and tells him he's wonderful and Ati's death wasn't his fault and they fall asleep. Lemure Lemure manages to magically overlook the scene, and the sheer sap of it makes him think he's going to be sick.
- Also, Kia cheers up and brightens the attitudes of everyone in the city she interacts with, which Gii at least once comments on in his inner narration.
