Prologue: Selva Oscura

Overview

Story Episodes

Battle Chapters

Prologue: Selva Oscura
Canto I →
Season	Season 1: Orientation
Story
Location	D Corp. (District 4)
Date	984-01
Involved Factions	Limbus Company Unnamed Group Hooligans
Involved Factions	Limbus Company Unnamed Group Hooligans
Character Debuts	Dante The Sinners Vergilius Charon Lion Wolf Panther
Character Debuts	Dante The Sinners Vergilius Charon Lion Wolf Panther

Selva Oscura is the prologue chapter of Limbus Company. This chapter serves both as an introduction to the mechanics of the game, such as Battles, Extraction, and Identities, as well as its world and characters.

Summary

In a dark forest, a person has been cornered by three people who have been hunting them down for some time on the orders of their master. The person was interrupted by them while engraving something, though name of the object is censored. The three who had been hunting the person, Lion, Wolf, and Panther, discuss to themselves how it appears as if this person can no longer speak. When the person talks, all that they can hear are the ticking noises of a clock coming from this person's new, prosthetic head. During this, the person realizes that they are losing their memories. Panther is disappointed by the fact he is unable to ask where their star is, unaware that the person has already lost their memories of its location. The three decide to kill the person, but before they can a bus emerges from the woods and hits Lion at full speed, knocking her away.

A woman named Faust exits the bus and approaches the person, asking them to imagine their star, then follow it. When the person does so, chains painfully penetrate their chest, but Faust urges them to relax and explains that a pact has been made that binds the person to the group she traveled with. Faust tells the person, who she refers to as Dante, that she hopes they will be a good leader. Several more people exit the bus, the ones who were part of the pact Dante had just made with Faust, and Faust explains that they will fight for Dante as a part of their contracts.

A fight begins between the strange people from the bus and the three who were trying to kill Dante, but the three make short work of the group and kill them swiftly without taking any injuries. Soon, only Faust and Dante remain alive, and it doesn't seem like the two will survive much longer. Suddenly, a man with red eyes appears and saves Dante by dismembering Lion and Wolf, telling them to relay a message to the Serpent that "this flow cannot be stopped". The man orders Panther to drag the other two out of there, threatening to kill him if he does not comply. With the threats out of the way, the man tells Dante that they need to rewind time and they become overwhelmed by horrible pain. As they pass out from the pain, they become aware that the group of people from the bus who had just died were being reconstructed and brought back to life, as if time was flowing backwards for them.

Dante awakens on the bus and is informed that they are now the manager of twelve Sinners, the people they had just formed a contract with and brought back from the dead, and that these Sinners are able to understand Dante's ticking as words. The man who had saved them, Vergilius, acts as a guide for the group and is not one of the Sinners. He appears to have known who Dante was before their amnesia. After introductions are finished, Dante is still reluctant to accept this job, especially after learning the goal is to travel to the Inferno. Even promises that they will reclaim their memory and original head back do not convince them, but Faust tells Dante that upon completing all their missions, they will be able to engrave the Aspect. Those words strike something within them, and they follow their instincts and finally agree to cooperate.

Realizing that Mephistopheles, the bus, hasn't been moving during this exchange, Vergilius asks he bus driver Charon why they haven't yet departed and she points out the group of Hooligans that have surrounded the bus. Dante, with help from Faust, orders the Sinners through combat, successfully chasing off the Hooligans and allowing Charon to begin driving them towards their destination. They run into a few more groups of Hooligans, leading to Faust introducing Dante to Mephistopheles' ability to access the Mirror Worlds and extract Identities that can be utilized in combat. Now fully equipped to handle anything that could stall them further, the group sets off without further delay.

Enemies

• Unknown Faction:
  • Lion
  • Wolf
  • Panther
• Hooligans

Trivia

• Both the title of this chapter and the story structure of its first story episodes are references to Canto I of Dante Alighieri's work, the Divine Comedy. In the poem, Dante (serving as both the narrator and protagonist of the story) finds himself in a dark forest where his path is blocked by a lion, she-wolf, and leopard, which drive him to despair as he realizes that they are driving him into darkness and away from salvation. He is soon rescued by the poet Virgil, just as Vergilius in Limbus Company drives away Lion, Wolf, and Panther before they succeed in killing Dante.
• The naming scheme of later story chapters similarly follow the naming scheme of Cantos in the Inferno section of Divine Comedy compilations and translations. For example, many Cantos in the original have titles such as "The Gluttonous" or "The Violent", while story chapters in Limbus Company are named, for example, "The Unloving" and "The Unconfronting".