Yi Sang

A Singularity is a unique, fantastical technology that a Wing possesses and exploits for power and profit. The details of a Wing's Singularity are a closely guarded secret, but its products (such as L Corp.'s Enkephalin or H Corp.'s Boluses) and side effects (such as T Corp.'s color desaturation) tend to be widespread throughout the District and play a major role in defining its culture.

While Singularities' true abilities are usually incredibly powerful, a Wing must convert them into a marketable product in order to make a profit. Singularities are the primary source of income for the Wings to sustain themselves in the harsh environment of the City, meaning creating new products from the same Singularity is incredibly important. For example, T Corp. makes use of its Singularity for various products, such as the TT2 Protocol (which allows for the control of time in a determined area), and the TT4 Protocol (which instead allows for the synchronization of different individuals' time).

In addition, Wings must be careful during the development process of new Singularities, to prevent information leaks and intellectual theft before a patent is received.[64] It is also common for Wings to make use of multiple Singularities, both by purchasing them from fallen Wings,[65] or through partnering with other existing Wings.

If a Wing collapses, the patents on its Singularity expire and any individual or group who discovers how to utilize the technology may do so. In addition, the technology's status as a Singularity is lost. A number of technologies of the City were previously considered Singularities in the past, such as augmentation tattoos.[66] Singularities, while technological marvels, are not all they're made out to be. In one way or another, every Singularity fundamentally requires human suffering in order to function, and no Wing can claim to have their hands clean of the blood of its citizens.

Syndicates are a type of organization in the City, and can be seen as the unregulated counterpart to Fixer Offices, being comparable to gangs with various goals and methods of operating. In general, the term Syndicate is used to refer to organized groups that aren't tied to the responsibilities and restrictions that come with being a Fixer.

Some Syndicates focus on extorting money from people for protection, while others abduct people, kill for fun and pleasure, or do anything in between. Syndicates mostly operate in the Backstreets, but are not restricted to them. They can be small groups that only exist in one corner of the Backstreets, or large enough to exist in every District in the City.

Syndicates can be hired to do contract jobs, although there is higher risk compared to contracting an Office or Association, as they are not bound to the same regulations Fixers are.[56] Sometimes, Wings will hire Syndicate members for criminal projects that cannot be handled officially.

Syndicates tend to have a culture unique to their group, and a way of living that distinguishes them from other Syndicates. Many Syndicates have a culture focused around replicating family dynamics and consider each other family, with some even referring to each other with familial terms.[57] This can result in Syndicates with a strict focus on respect for those who are higher ranked, or in Syndicates whose members care deeply for each other and protect one another at any cost.

Syndicates are graded through the City's hazard system, measuring their danger level and notability. Syndicates can grow under these aspects and gain power in many ways, with one of them being the practice of raiding and wiping out Fixers' Offices. The larger and more experienced an Office is, the greater the notoriety that is achieved by defeating it.[58]

Above all Syndicates are the Five Fingers, or "the hand of the Backstreets", five Star of the City-level Syndicates, whose power rivals that of the Wings.[27]

In the City, a common path in life for those without better options is that of the Fixer. A Fixer is a sort of handyman, who can be hired for everything from menial tasks to active combat. Fixers are subject to a grading system based on the missions they complete. A Fixer starts at Grade 9 and can be promoted to a higher grade, all the way up to 1; in the case of a Fixer being caught breaking work regulations, they can lose their status and be demoted to a lower grade.

A majority of Fixers congregate in Fixer Offices, small to mid-sized businesses led by and composed of Fixers. Offices process requests dedicated to whomever in their ranks may be best suited. Offices can work independently, or they can be associated with particular Associations of Fixers, which are larger professional organizations with City-wide influence, with particular interests aimed at the Fixers working beneath them.

There are thirteen Associations in the City, each of which manages certain types of requests common to Fixer work, such as the Zwei Association focusing on protection missions, or the Devyat' Association focusing on delivery across the City. Associations control and distribute Fixer tasks, and can take jobs from anywhere within the City, as they have individual branches set up in various Districts. Branches are divided into four groups corresponding to the cardinal directions of the City, and employees are further divided by grade into sections ranging from 1 to 6, with lower number sections corresponding to higher Fixer grades.

Every Association has its own rules, specialties, uniform, and agreements with other factions. The Associations are governed by the Hana Association, which oversees everything related to the Fixer system, including Fixer grades.

In the case of a Grade 1 Fixer demonstrating great renown in any particular field of work, they may be considered beyond the grading system, and receive the title of Color from Hana Association.

Everyday life in the City is defined by a constant struggle to stay afloat. While the people of the Outskirts dream of living in the City, which they see as a safe place from the monsters that plague it, the people of the Backstreets strive to gain the wealth and power to gain access to a Nest, partially due to the influence of the Wings publicizing Nest dwellers' lives as the height of prosperity and comfort,[20] and the people of the Nest struggle daily to keep their place inside it, while being constantly exploited by the Wings.[39]

Regardless of their station, the people of the City are never free, and in order to survive, they typically tie themselves to various forms of organizations, seeking security and belonging in something larger than them.[40] In doing so, they're willing to exploit others beneath them and make use of all the City can offer them, without caring about anyone else's well-being, and often taking pleasure in their suffering.[35]

The people of the Backstreets must typically tie themselves to one of the Five Fingers or their subsidiaries to receive the necessary protection to carry on with their lives, while the people of the Nests depend on the Wings to shelter them. Because of this, Nest dwellers are colloquially known as "feathers". While the high level of security the Nest provides makes it the most ideal place to reside, its daily routine, which is often accompanied by overtime work[35] and the constant fear of losing one's job and place in the Nest,[41] can be stifling and oppressive to many of its citizens, with some recalling becoming listless as if they "lost focus, spacing out and staring into empty places".[42]

The necessity for a connection to a group also means that the people of the City try not to form strong connections between individuals, as personal bonds can become a hindrance in one's abilities in the case of a loved one's death, which proves to be especially dangerous for those involved in Fixer work.

The Backstreets are the areas of a District that lay outside the Wing's domain. The Backstreets are typically slums crowded with buildings, characterized by twisted and irregular roads, although there can be great differences between Districts.

Wings have differing degrees of presence, influence, and benevolence with regards to their Backstreets, although their relationship is ultimately exploitative. Citizens of the Backstreets are motivated to move up the ladder and into the Nests, while citizens of the Nests are motivated to maintain their statuses and preserve a more comfortable life under their Wing's protection. While not as secure as the Nest, residential areas are the safest parts of the Backstreets.[25]

Given how strongly Backstreets denizens wish for a life in the Nest, Wings tend to uphold strict divides between the sectors, including security checkpoints and physical divisions. Security of borders between Nests and Backstreets vary from plasma walls to mere chain fences, but the Wings' power is such that no one in the Backstreets dares to cross over into a Nest without express permission.[7]

As the Backstreets are not under the control and protection of the Wings, and even the Head's power struggles to reach within them,[26] various factions operate freely in their place. The Backstreets are home to the headquarters of both Fixers, a type of mercenary for hire, who typically operate their Offices in the Backstreets, and organizations and gangs called Syndicates. Among Syndicates, the most important are the Five Fingers, the five largest Syndicates of the City which most other Syndicates answer to, and whose power is said to rival that of the Wings.[27]

The Night in the Backstreets is another defining component of Backstreets life, as an 80 minute phenomena taking place from 3:14 to 4:34 AM. During this time period, nearly everything is allowed, as no one is held responsible for their deeds done during this time period.[28]

The Wings of the World are a group of the twenty-six largest, most powerful conglomerates in the City. Each Wing acts as the governing body of a Nest of the City's District, and is commonly referred to with a letter from A to Z, corresponding to the number of the District in their control. Wings generally oversee all facets of living in the Nest of their District, while leaving the residents of the Backstreets to fend for themselves.

A Nest is the urban center of a District, which is under the direct management of its Wing. The citizens and employees of a Wing are commonly referred to as "feathers"; the status of a feather is widely considered one of the best and most secure paths in life,[17] which the people of the Backstreets are often willing to go to great lengths to obtain. To gain access to a Nest, a corresponding Nest migration permit is required,[18] while to be granted temporary passage one must be in possession of a visa unique to the specific Nest.[19] Visas are implied to be relatively common, with corporate employees being provided with work visas that allow them as easy passage; Nest migration permits, on the other hand, are highly sought after, and implied to be expensive enough that even Grade 1 Fixers would struggle to obtain them. During the Smoke War, migration permits were offered as rewards to Fixers participating for K Corp. and I Corp., although by the end of the war the veterans were refused entry to the Nests.[20]

Each Wing has its own cultural style and social structure which are reflected in how it governs its Nest, and the policies that regulate the way of life in the District's Backstreets. The laws of a Wing are called Taboos, and are enforced by specialized Fixers called Taboo hunters that police both the Nest and the Backstreets. While all Wings have Taboos, the enforcement and punishment for breaking them varies.[21]

The Wings are directly ruled over by the Head, which bestows the status on a corporation.

The Head is the leader of the Wings and the central governing body of the City. It is in direct control of A Corp., B Corp., and C Corp., the three Districts at the very center of the City. The Head's identity is completely unknown, although it appears the term refers to a group of people rather than a singular entity;[7] any detail regarding it is a closely guarded secret.

The Head, through A Corp., retains control of the entire City. It is responsible for authorizing Wings, managing patents, and the minting of Ahn, the currency used in the City.[8]

Despite this, it does not typically interfere directly with the affairs of the various Wings in their own Districts; rather, the Head's greatest involvement in the life of the City consists in establishing and enforcing the rules that relate to the overall ethics of the City.

The Head's will shapes the image of the City, as it wields the ability to decide when a part of it no longer fits in the vision, and to chase it outside its confines. Some speculate the Head's decisions in these matters aren't aimed at maintaining order, but rather that the Head wishes to preserve its ideal image of the City, and that for this reason they allow the various Stars of the City to keep existing.[9] This is corroborated by the agents of the Head themselves referring to their work as cultivating the ecology of the City.[10]

To preserve this vision, the Head retains the unique power to assign the highest risk level in the scale of hazards of the City, that of Impuritas Civitatis, or Impurity of the City. The risk level of Impurity signifies a hazard that violates the ethics of the City,[11] and that must be either destroyed or physically expelled from the confines of the City expeditiously.

At a certain point in history, sapient beings that weren't humans were driven out of the City and into the Outskirts, and their existence within the confines of the City was deemed a Taboo. This marked the beginning of the City's "age of humanity"

The City is divided into twenty-six Districts, quite diverse in culture and aesthetics, each of which is governed by a Wing, a corporation that has ascended to claim complete control of said area. All Wings respond to the Head, the supreme governing power of the City. The arrangement of the Districts seems to be static, as there has been no mentioned case of a District expanding into a fallen Wing's territory.

Each District is split into a Nest, a territory directly governed and protected by its Wing, and the Backstreets, expansive spaces of wilderness or slums, largely neglected by the Wings, where the Syndicates of the City run free.

Districts tend to have similarities to their neighbors, and are typically grouped into four sections: the northern, eastern, southern, and western quarters.[4][5] These quarters may be distinguished by commonalities including culture and temperature, such as the same Fixer Associations differing in garb and fighting style across different quarters, or the northern quarter having colder weather.

District 26, while confirmed to exist in current times,[6] is not visible from the map.

The City is a massive urban complex the size of a small country,[1] and has a population of around 7 billion.[2] The City is bordered to the south by the Great Lake, and to the other directions by the Outskirts. Underneath it lie the Ruins.

Limbus Company is somewhat of an enigmatic company, with goals still unknown. However, keeping the Golden Boughs out of enemy hands is considered to be of the utmost importance for Limbus Company, and at one point, Faust equates the end of the LCB to the end of the world itself.[2] The company's only known corporate officer is its Chief Executive Director Dias.[3] The company is said to have zero budgetary concerns,[4] and have backing from shareholders from a wide array of fields,[5] allowing it to operate under expensive conditions including offering company cards without spending limits to teams with notable performance.[6] The company's various departments are said to lack a common goal,[7] yet they tend to behave in means benefiting the LCB's amateurish adventures, such as planning out their missions or cleaning up their messes after the fact. As a result, the Sinners are generally disliked by competent members of other departments.

While the LCB's specific objective is to capture the Golden Boughs, the greater company finds its cause in the Distortion phenomenon, and considers itself an enterprise specializing in the research and maintenance of Distortions.[1] However, Abnormalities, E.G.O, Peccatula, and Monoliths are additional points of interest for Limbus Company. Limbus Company is also noted to be talented in the realm of information-gathering.[8][9]

Furthermore, Limbus Company operates as a business on the side, and possesses a purchase catalogue which seems to be offered to potential buyers.[10] Through this, the director of T Corp. could buy all of the Monoliths Limbus Company had in stock at the end of Intervallo IV: Timekilling Time, regardless of Faust or Vergilius' personal feelings on the matter. It was also around this time that Limbus Company began making a small name for itself, to the point of P Corp.'s Cesara having heard rumors of the group before meeting them.

Yi Sang is a former member of the League of Nine Littérateurs, a society of inventors and scientists, alongside Gubo, Dongrang, Dongbaek, Aseah, Young-ji, and many others. The members of this society were all from S Corp., having emigrated to T Corp.'s Nest to avoid corruption and to seek research opportunities. Yi Sang picked up a job as an architect, designing factories for producers in T Corp., which allowed him to comfortably fund the League. During his time there, he developed the Mirror, a device capable of reflecting the alternate worlds and timelines of the viewer, modeled after a concept (the "Glass Window") by Young-ji.

Yi Sang became engrossed in his invention, which he dubbed "Yeonsim", and within it, he encountered and befriended his alternate self, Sang Yi. The Mirror provided Yi Sang a comfort from the reality of his situation, allowing him to dream of a distant world in which he did not need to submit his abilities to the will of the City, that would only twist his inventions to hurt others. As the fate of his compatriots and the League began to be threatened by various Wings, that had taken interest in his and Young-ji's inventions, Yi Sang found himself relying more and more on Yeonsim and Sang Yi, while starting to lose interest in the painful truth of the League's internal problems.

After a raid by T Corp., the League fell apart. Yi Sang, shocked from the experience and unable to shake himself out of the feeling of apathy that seized him, was taken by Gubo, who wished to keep making use of Yi Sang's abilities, and together they escaped through the T Corp. Backstreets. Gubo whisked Yi Sang away to safety to an N Corp. laboratory, where Hermann and Gubo would attempt to gather a new League of Nine to further research the Glass Mirror. After spending an amount of time confined in a featureless room, sedated daily and interacting only with his Mirror, Yi Sang eventually defected.

Yi Sang is a particularly quiet, mellow man. At the beginning of the game, he fails to stand out much among his fellow Sinners due to his tendency to stay silent and watch rather than actively contribute to discussions. When he speaks, his words are often obscure and riddle-like with a monotone delivery, and his expression rarely changes.

In Canto IV: The Unchanging, more is revealed about Yi Sang little by little, such as his extremely low self-esteem and suicidal thoughts. After his initial confrontation with Dongbaek, Yi Sang confesses that he considered the day he met Dante and gained immortality against his will to be his greatest moment of despair, as he instead quietly wished for his own eternal rest. Following this interaction, Dante resonates with Yi Sang's mental state, where they see Yi Sang with a large, cracked void in his chest with no signs of mending. It comes to light that the disbanding of the League of Nine Littérateurs, which had provided him with comfort and safety amidst the chaos of the world, had ultimately left him grief-stricken, hopeless, and alone. In his depressive state, Yi Sang was the type to grow slothful, finding it easier to go along with what other people wanted of him rather than deciding for himself.

He also displays a strong sense of morality for a City citizen, disgusted at Dongrang's callous behavior concerning the death of his fellow K Corp. employees and saddened by the Wings' exploitations of their people. Later, he is similarly upset to see Aseah utilizing his Mirror Technology to experiment on humans. Here, Yi Sang is unsettled by N Corp.'s unethical use of his discoveries and the group's plans to manipulate Nelly and Catherine into the creation of the laboratory, believing the resulting experiments to be too high a price when compared to any human life.

Yi Sang is a man of average build and pale complexion. He has short black hair which frays slightly at its ends, and dead-looking black eyes adorned with heavy eye-bags underneath. He wears the long-sleeved version of the Limbus Company coat around his shoulders, which appears to have been tattered and burnt at the bottom. Underneath his coat is the regular long-sleeved white shirt and red tie, and then a black vest, both of which are tucked into his belt. Written on the left breast of his coat is 'NO.1', and 'YI SANG' on the side.

Yi Sang wields a saingeom (사인검, lit. Four-Tiger Sword) in the shape of a dagger kept in a sheath strapped to his left hip. He is confirmed to be left handed. Yi Sang also possess a gray leather notebook labeled '하융' or Ha Yung — as seen on his base E.G.O, Crow's Eye View. The notebook and the dagger are at times visible in various Mirror Worlds.