K Corp. (Hangul: K사, K Sa), stylized as K-CORP, is one of the 26 Wings of the City, overseeing District 11.
They are renowned for their Singularity-based medical technology used in both civilian and military settings, capable of rapid regeneration. Due to their immense influence, K Corp's Nest has a noticeably greater quality of life, and is considered one of the safer and more comfortable places to live in, even compared to other Nests.
Border Patrol[]
For more information about the Checkpoint Security and other aspects of the Wing's security force, see K Corp. Security.
Outside of K Corp's Border Checkoint
The interior K Corp's Border Checkoint
Because the Nest overseen by K Corp. is comparatively "one of the nicer" places to live in the City, just getting to the border checkpoint is a dangerous task onto itself. It is not uncommon to get ambushed and killed by hooligans trying to rob visas or IDs to even obtain a chance of moving into the Nest.
The interior of the border patrol checkpoint is almost completely stark white, with the corporation's signature green decorating the scant signage. The entrance fosters an incredibly oppressive atmosphere as languid-but-uncaring armed guards mercilessly bolster security.
Taboos[]
K Corp. is especially harsh with their border control laws, as at least one Taboo is known to warrant lethal force when broken.
Don Quixote breaking Taboo K185
- Taboo K185: Upon damaging the glass barrier separating the Backstreet-resident line from the non-Backstreets line, the violation warrants a "Code Purple" where blaring purple lights begin flashing as metal shutters cover any remaining glass windows. Code Purple also prompts the deployment of Thrombocyte and Leukocyte security units.
On rarer occasions, K Corp's personal high-ranked Fixer, Siegfried, is dispatched for especially stubborn Taboo-breakers the checkpoint security has greater difficulty disposing.
Nest[]
K Corp's Nest
Being one of the affluent Wings due to their Singularity, Nest life in District 11 is one of the more coveted goals anyone in the City could obtain. While life in this Nest is one of the more "sterile" experiences in the City, it is very much preferable for most due to how K Corp's wealth is able to afford its residents a more sheltered life with little strife. Still for some, the oppressively mundane daily routine can be stifling to many of its citizens — becoming listless as if they "lost focus, spacing out and staring into empty spaces". As seen with the incredibly apathetic border guards, it seems many residents struggle to find meaning with their lives in the Nest. District 11's corporate life is highly unforgiving: despite being said to care about employee well-being, K Corp has 70-hour work weeks and severely punishes defects or disobedient guard units.
The Nest is also well-off enough to afford orphanages to house children who've lost their parents, in grave contrast to most Backstreets with their high child-mortality rates for orphans. It's implied that this happens because their Singularity only records suffering in the City, so there's no shortage of fuel for their Singularity in anywhere else and allows them to be more lenient towards people in their quarters.
Calw[]
The forest road overlooking the burning remains of Claw.
Calw (Hangul: 칼프, Kalpeu) was a small town located in K Corp’s Nest which was renowned for its prosthetic expertise, earning the nickname "The Holy Site of Nest K's Prosthetic Industry."
Due to the village specializing in the manufacture of high-end prosthesis components, it became a tradition in Calw to fully replace one's "outdated" body parts with prosthetics to become full-on cyborgs. The village was surrounded by scenic woodlands rarely found in the Backstreets, providing an almost idyllic landscape.
During the events of the game, Calw was destroyed on Christmas Eve, when the N Corp. Inquisition targeted the townspeople for their augmentations. Consequently, many inhabitants were executed or detained and tortured. The Inquisition then took refuge in the ruins of Branch K-02 buried under the burning mansion that was Sinclair's family home, transforming the ruined L Corp. facility into a base of operations on their hunt for the Golden Bough.
The Sinclair family mansion aflame.
Former Residents[]
- Sinclair - Escaped the Inquisition's massacre of his village.
- Demian - Non-native to Claw, implied to have come from the Outskirts; also survived the N Corp. purge.
- Kromer - An N Corp. spy and cult leader of the Inquisition; ordered the purge of the village.
- Sinclair's Parents - Killed by Kromer in the past.
- Sinclair's Sister - Killed by Kromer in the past.
Branch K-02[]
For more information, see Branch K-02.
The entrance to Branch K-02 in Sinclair's basement
Branch K-02 was the L Corp. branch facility located in the K Corp's Nest. Having once supplied power to the town of Claw, the ruins of the facility were located under the basement of the mansion belonging to Sinclair's family. Since Claw's destruction by N Corp.'s Inquisition, the facility has been converted into a torture chamber.
During the hunt for the Golden Bough, most of the E.G.O equipment was seized by the Inquisitors, who were voluntarily Corroding themselves into monstrosities.
Eunbong’s Bar & Fryers[]
Eunbong's Bar & Fryer
A family-owned restaurant in K Corp's Nest that was in competition with the Bodhisattva Chicken right across it. After losing customers to the neighbouring restaurant chain and having his secret recipe destroyed in a concept incinerator, the owner spiralled into madness and transformed into a Distortion known as Papa Bongy — sending out an army of raw chickens at Bodhisattva's customers.
The restaurant was named in memory after the owner's mother, Eunbong.
Bodhisattva Chicken[]
Bodhisattva Chicken
A popular restaurant chain famous for their six-legged, eight-winged poultry. Their chicken is advertised to be prepared "for every preference," with multiple cuts available. A location opened in K Corp's Nest a few months ago right across from Eunbong's Bar & Fryers, ruining their business. The manager of that location was indirectly responsible for creating the Papa Bongy Distortion after stealing Eunbong's secret recipe and destroying it in a concept incinerator.
Because of Papa Bongy's rampage, the Bodhisattva Chicken's Manager of the location became bedridden as the both businesses now suffered.
Singularity[]
K Corp's singularity revolves around Helapoiesis, a green fluid that allows for rapid physical regeneration. As long as the brain is intact, Helapoiesis can heal even the most fatal wounds. Helapoiesis is sold in the form of HP Bullets to be fired into injured combatants, injectable HP Ampules (up to 3 were needed to heal Dante's half-melted body), and ingestible Tablets that heal users overnight. Helapoiesis products also require cross-compatibility tests with its targets, or else they may suffer side effects.
Though said to be nanobot based, in reality, Helapoeisis are the tears of a "Tearful Thing" said by Dongrang to "cry in our stead". Implied to be an entity from the Outskirts, the Tearful Thing was found by someone named Stephanette during an excursion to the outskirts; she later became the founder and first executive of K. Corp. The "Tearful Thing" was made to endlessly cry: Stephanette originally read it heart wrenching stories, and later this duty was taken up by another executive when her health declined to the point of being unable to.
After Stephanette's passing, Alfonso became the next executive by discovering that the Tearful Thing would cry in exposure to torture and other grotesque happenings. The K Corp. drones film footage for this purpose, and K Corp. makes deals with syndicates and other parties (such as the N Corp., Inquisition) to obtain footage of their bloody acts. When other parties started noticing this and increasing the price of their footage, Dongrang was brought aboard to make use of the Glass Window technology from the League of Nine Littérateurs in order to produce a record number of tears. To facilitate production, the Tearful Thing's eye is forcibly held open and surrounded by monitors, and its unrefined tears are collected in a vat below. Only in the most dire of situations is production halted. There are also child entities descended from the original Tearful Thing; Dongrang was the caretaker of one such entity. Despite the brutality of their Singularity's new application, this exactly allows K Corp to become one of the most stable Wings and a formidable corporate superpower in the city.
The true nature of the tears is the ability to revert things to their original state, with one's injured parts being returned to the state they remember to be how it originally was. Because of this, the tears must be diluted and refined with human concepts, as tears lacking any "kind of interpretation" (likely as to how far back to revert) would revert a human back to the "original form of humanity" (presumably reduced to a cellular level or beyond, as Samjo was completely dissolved after immersion in unrefined tears)
K Corp laboratories also use ampule administration drones, though they only deliver ampules to eligible and/or heavily injured targets; thus K-Corp employees often injure themselves to receive ampules to fix preexisting wounds. Furthermore, these drones can fire decay ampules capable of melting human bodies at deserters leaving combat zones, or just for not attacking belligerents.
K Corp. had entered into various partnerships with other Wings due to their very potent technology, supplying SP Bullets which can heal sanity to R Corp's Reindeer Team and the HP-N Bullets for use in L Corp's main facility.
As shown by Dongrang, Helapoiesis is also used for meat production by repeatedly severing and regenerating parts of livestock. However, meat produced through this method seems to be unpopular.
Corporate Departments[]
K Corp. is split into multiple departments, at least two of which share a corporate building. Little is known about them, but a "department of the year" award exists.
Department of Food Resource Development[]
The Department of Food Resource Development oversees restaurant inspections within its Nest and conduct research and development on using K Corp's singularity in the food industry. However, the scope of their research also includes Abnormalities and they are aware of the existence of the Golden Boughs. They are known to drain K Corp's welfare budget but consistently win the "department of the year" award.
Employees[]
- Alfonso (Executive Manager)
- Dongrang † (Former member of the Nine Litterateurs, now a high-ranking employee)
- Samjo † - (Dongrang's secretary)
- Shrenne † (manager of unnamed department)
- Ran † (former)
Smoke War[]
In the Smoke War, K Corp. was one of the Wings which opposed the stingy Old L Corp. responsible for the human-smelling smoke that polluted the City.
K Corp. alongside I Corp. and R Corp. colluded with Lobotomy Corporation to supersede the Old L Corp, who formed an alliance with E Corp, F Corp, and the Old G Corp.
I Corp. and K Corp. also lured in the employment of Fixers with the promise of Nest Migration Permits to naive Fixers who fought for them in the patent-war. These promises were eventually annulled when absurd amounts of money were put on the table to to rescind such agreements, leaving Smoke War veterans banned and snubbed from ever becoming Nest inhabitants due to their involvement.
Relationships with other Corporations[]
Lobotomy Corporation[]
Giovanni, a former resident of K Corp's Nest, became an employee to Lobotomy Corporation after being recruited by Carmen, later becoming the Sephirot known as Netzach. His previous affiliation and research in the Safety Department allowed L Corp. at its main facility access to K Corp's signature HP Bullets.
While K Corp. places exorbitant prices on its HP Bullets, with even 3 bullets being too valuable to waste for most consumers, the main facility of L Corp. was able to afford 20 bullets per day, and potentially more during its tenure of 10 years. This implies L Corp's great influence in comparison, and how beneficial the relationship was for both Wings.
N Corp.[]
Meursault's N Corp. Großhammer Identity and Guido's regeneration implies N Corp. uses K Corp. technology. As revealed by Dongrang, Nagel und Hammer's inquisition against Claww granted K Corp a massive energy yield.
Trivia[]
- A noted by Yi Sang, the Thrombocyte and Leukocyte guard units are named after platelets and white blood cells respectively produced by the immune system.
- "Excision" units are also mentioned in Canto IV. In surgical contexts, excision refers to the partial removal of tissues, organs, bones or tumours from a body.
- Helapoiesis is likely a portmanteau of "Hela" and "poesis".
- Hela may refer to the HeLa/hela cell line, the oldest and most commonly-used human cell line in scientific research derived from a cancer patient. It is noted to be immortal; due to a mutation, HeLa cells can proliferate indefinitely.
- poiesis means "formation" or "production" and is frequently suffixes medical terms pertaining to cellular or tissue development and creation.
- The Nest's green-colored infrastructure and its usage of acidic liquid in its Singularity is likely a call-back to Lobotomy Corporation's Netzach, who also has the primary color of green and is heavily associated with acid.
- Claw was named after the German birth town of Hermann Hesse, the author of Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth, the short novel whom Emil Sinclair and Demian are directly based on.
- This may also be due to the fact that the name "Emil Sinclair" was also a previous pen name used by Hermann Hesse in his political essay, If the war goes on for two more years (German: Wenn der Krieg noch zwei Jahre dauert), before it was repurposed for the main character of Demian (1919).
- Since "Emil Sinclair" was the literary double of Hesse, the author's real-life background was integrated into the Limbus Company character's backstory as a sort of conflation between both iterations of "Emil Sinclair".
- The real-life Claw is located in the northern region of the Black Forest in southwest Germany. The Black Forest provided the name of The Black Forest located in the Outskirts of the City, whom the Abnormalities: Punishing Bird, Big Bird, and Judgement Bird, resided in before being contained by L Corp. after its destruction.
- Like Nagel und Hammer, K Corp. is also heavily inspired by Germany.
- Siegfried, K Corp's pro-fixer, is based on the mythological Siegfried (Middle High German: Sîvrit), otherwise known as the German heroic legend, Sigurd.
- Sinclair's hometown of Claw is also based on the German town of the same name, as stated above.
- Despite the K Corp ampule administration drone's significant combat utility (which according to research could raise the odds of victory by 23.5% in simulated battles), their high value (far surpassing 10 class 2 staff members) prevents their deployment outside of corporate buildings.
- HP tablets are only mentioned in the Project Moon webnovel The Distortion Detective.