PonkReport
English：Ponk · Characters
One of the two leaders of the Thrall Masters. The wanted poster calls him a charlatan posing as a healer, but he spends most of his time sitting at a research bench, decapitating his own kind and rebuilding them into thralls.
Ponk is one of the two leaders of the Thrall Masters, the other being Screamer the False. Both of them keep to the Tower of Abuse in Venge — a building marked on the map merely as an old control tower until the player actually arrives there.
For the full background of this pair, the mechanics of thrall-making and the inferences drawn by the community, see The Voodoo Brothers. This entry deals only with Ponk himself.
The wanted poster
WANTED: Voodoo Brothers A pair of exceedingly clever and cruel frauds, wanted for gross malpractice after posing as medical and "ancient voodoo" practitioners in several cities. REWARD: 20,000 Cats per head
The poster circulates in both United Cities and the Holy Nation. The bounty can be claimed from three parties — the United Cities, the Rebel Swordsmen and the Holy Nation — each of which grants +2 relations; refusing the payment when handing him to the Holy Nation raises that to +5.
It is worth noting that the poster misses the point entirely. What the civilised world sees is a pair of quack doctors, whereas what is actually running inside the tower is a production line that decapitates conscious skeletons and rebuilds them into selfless thralls.
What model he is
Ponk is a Skeleton P4 MkII.
In game terms that model is almost exclusive to high-ranking units — General Hat 12, General Jang, the Minister of Agriculture and Cat-Lon himself are all P4s. These frames have relatively low torso durability, but their capacity to learn science and craft skills far exceeds that of ordinary models, and they are generally understood to have been designed for command and research.
The wiki's inference is that Ponk may have been a conservation scientist during the Second Empire, only later turning warlord alongside Screamer. By Screamer the False's own account, Ponk spends most of his time at the research bench.
Combat statistics
His four attributes — Strength, Toughness, Dexterity and Perception — all sit at 47 to 53; heavy weapons and blunt are notably higher at 56 to 64; and sabres, hackers, polearms, melee attack and defence, turrets, crossbows, precision shooting, athletics, swimming and field medic are all 47 to 53.
His weaknesses are tightly concentrated: Dodge is only 1.6 to 6.4, and martial arts 2 to 8. He cannot evade, and he cannot fight bare-handed.
With that Meitou Holed Sabre in hand he remains genuinely dangerous to a mid-game squad, but he is not the hardest thing in this tower to deal with — the real barrier is the thralls swarming inside it and around it.
Drops and returns
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Meitou Holed Sabre (made by Cross) | 31,478 Cats |
| Armoured rags (High Grade / Specialist) | 7,669 / 13,271 Cats |
| Skeleton repair kit | — |
| Head bounty | 20,000 Cats |
The tower itself additionally guarantees drops of ancient science books and AI cores, plus two skeleton repair beds on the top floor that can be used free of charge.
What changes in the world when he falls
Once both Ponk and Screamer the False are killed or imprisoned, Thrall Master patrols stop spawning in Venge, the Grey Desert and the Eye.
This is a world state bound to the pair: killing only one has no effect whatsoever.
The cage on the second floor of the tower holds the unique recruit Agnu — a Second Empire police-model skeleton, imprisoned for close to a thousand years, on whom the conversion failed utterly. He can be freed and recruited by the player.