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Roland materializes within an unknown location, cursing his abrupt appearance within this mysterious place. He is quickly met by a darkly dressed figure who immediately begins questioning him on how he arrived within 'the Library' without an 'Invitation.' He explains hastily that he has no idea how he got there. He was simply wandering the backstreets looking for his favorite sandwich shop. The woman, unsatisfied with his answers, pulls his arms and legs off. He eventually blacks out from shock and blood loss.

Roland awakens a few days later to find that he is both alive and fully restored. His tormentor is still there, now clad far less threateningly. She apologizes for her actions earlier and explains that she has not only healed him but returned him to his physical peak. She introduces herself as Angela and explains that she is the Head Librarian of the Library (of which he has wandered into). Roland introduces himself, explaining he is a Rank 9 Fixer who had fallen on hard times. Angela offers him a job as the Patron Librarian of the Floor of General Works, explaining that the job is split between organizing books on the given topic and handling Receptions. Angela explains that she sends out Invitations which offer Guests books with information they desire if they can complete a trial within the Library. That trial is a duel to the death against the Librarians of that Floor. Roland, having few connections in the outside world, agrees to the offer.

Canard Receptions

There are four Receptions in Canard and they are thankfully mostly world-building so I can lump them together. I will not be so lucky later. The first Reception is the Rats, a trio of vagrants scraping by day-to-day. Rats is a term used to define any consistent group that isn't registered with a Fixer Office or Syndicate. Said Rats are organ harvesting in Zwei Association territory to build up the money and rep needed to join the Stray Dogs syndicate. While examining their current victim, they discover that he has an orange circle on the back of his neck and that his organs already seem scrambled. The group does, however, discover the Invitation with the man's stomach. Signing, a door appears before them. When stepping through, they enter the Library. The Librarians never lose a fight in canon so I won't go into details describing any of them unless something important happens during the fight. Assume every Reception ends with "and then everyone got turned into books".

The second Reception is Yun's Office, a Rank 8 Fixer Office that is struggling to make ends meet. They have fallen on such hard times that they have taken to doing the most banal of odd jobs like finding lost pets. The Invitation appears on Yun's desk but he pass it off to some of his employees to investigate. When they don't return but a second Invitation offering the books of his fallen comrades does, Yun sends his understudy Finn in his place. Finn is defeated and a third invite arrives. Yun finally enters personally and gets berated by Angela for exploiting Finn's loyalty and getting him killed. Yun callously explains that the City is built on people exploiting each other and, if he didn't exploit Finn, someone worse would. This angers the Director who leaves to let Roland do his thing. After the battle, Angela asks Roland during this encounter if he knew Yun since they were both Fixers. Roland retorts that not every Fixer knows every other Fixer and that there are a lot of Offices big and small.

The third Invitation is the Brotherhood of Iron, a trio of cyborgs. They pawned off their organs for their combat augments which allow them to disregard eating and sleeping while having drawbacks of their own that require addressing. The receive the Invitation and face the trials within. This is when we are introduced to the politics of AI within the setting. While full human transformation is considered acceptable, fully artificial beings are outlawed by The Head (the governing body of the City). Angela's existence stands in opposition to that decree, leading Roland to wonder what her creators were thinking defying such a crucial law with such heavy consequences.

The final Reception is of the Hook Office. While technically a Fixer Office, their specialty is murder and mayhem. Roland laments seeing criminals hiding their true intentions behind the legitimacy that comes with being an organized office. One of the Hook Office members takes a swing at Angela when she greets them. This does less than nothing since she is unto a god while within the Library. She sighs and leaves so Roland can do his thing.

The Suppression of Bloodbath

I am not going to go over every Abnormality Suppression because there are nearly 50 of them but I will go over at least the first one to explain why they are done.

After having to solo an entire Fixer Office himself, Roland complains to Angela that the workload she has given him outstrips what one person can feasibly do. To his surprise, Angela agrees and says that there is a way to acquire additional help but it won't be easy. She explains that there are books within the Library that contain Abnormalities (monstrous manifestations of the human psyche) and the Lobotomy Corporation employees assigned to observe them. If he can enter those books and 'suppress' the Abnormality, she can reawaken the employee. Furthermore, suppressed Abnormalities can lend their aid to him through their boons. Roland accepts the offer and enters the book of the Abnormality 'Bloodbath,' a tub filled with blood that pulls in those who stare at it for too long. After defeating the monster, Roland gets his first assistant. Assistant Librarians are not named characters but create-a-characters you can customize yourself. Interestingly, if you have a Lobotomy Corporation save on your PC, the awakening employees will be pulled directly into your new game.

The Floor of Literature

Upon completing the battle with Yun's Office, Roland notices that the Library has expanded upwards to a new floor… and he can hear people arguing. Following the voices, he sees a woman arguing with Angela. She says that she has not forgiven Angela for what happened while Angela simply states that they don't have to like each other, so long as they each do their jobs. Once Angela leaves, the woman introduces herself as Malkuth, the Patron Librarian of the Floor of Literature. She used to be the department head for the Control Team at Lobotomy Corporation and one of the nine Sephirah (human brains put into robot bodies intended to run the departments of LobCorp's central branch). Roland asks how he can help her with her work and she responds that bringing in more books helps them progress Angela's goals and awaken the other Sephirah. Malkuth is generally a preppy ray of sunshine (except for when it comes to Angela).

Having a second floor means you can now field two sets of units in a reception, with the second taking over if the first falls. The returning Sephirah also help catch the player up on what happened in LobCorp and help give a sort of narrative parity between the two games. In their third conversation together, Malkuth explains what Angela did that pissed everyone off so badly. Speaking of...

What did Angela do that pissed everyone off so badly?

Explaining this kind of requires explaining how Lobotomy Corporation is played so- LobCorp is a base management sim where you have to run the world's most dangerous power company while a bunch of those robots from Borderlands yell at you. Over the course of 50 days, you have to complete a certain number of research goals and productivity quotas to generate an unknown substance referred to as Light that will supposedly help break everyone from the collective mental ennui that has gripped the world. This is broken up every so often by one of the Sephirah having a mental breakdown you have to talk them down from. If you find yourself in a dead end gameplay-wise because all your best employees were killed in a freak accident involving an inconspicuous button, you can rewind back to certain points in the timeline and go from there.

At the end of day 50, after all the Sephirah have their arcs and X (the player character who is a clone of another character called Ayin) confronts his creator, the LobCorp office has finally collected enough Light to fulfill the initial goal of spreading it over the City. It will take seven days, but it will be worth it to finally lift the malaise that has filled everyone's hearts. Ayin and what's left of Carmen (the other founder she will come up again later) enter the great pillar of Light and disappear from the world. The Sephirah prepare to earn their eternal reward (death) and shutter the facility. However, after everything that's happened, after everything that she's gone through, Angela did not wish to simply die and disappear from the world. She wanted to live. With Ayin gone and her programming fulfilled, she was finally able to act freely and did so by standing in opposition of the Department Heads. She would take the Light for herself to do with as she wished. Eight of the Sephirah stood against her, with only one taking her side. Angela released the Abnormalities into the facility, pushing the departments and their employees to the brink trying to contain them while two of the department heads (Gebura and Binah) had a climactic anime duel that was probably undercut by them being rhombuses.

After three days of fighting, Angela and the Sephirah called a truce and brokered a deal: Angela would release half the Light over the City and keep the other half to herself. The Sephirah would also be joining her, kept in stasis until she could construct new bodies for them. Thus we have the White Nights and Dark Days: the three days of Light and then the four days of its absence. During those four days of darkness, the Pianist emerges as the first Distortion. Roland finds his way into the Library not long after (though exactly how long is kind of up for debate).

And that's more or less what happens in Canard. Come back next time for Urban Myth, our third Patron Librarian, and Mrs. Lovett's Meat Pies.

This is the shortest one of these, btw.