Tower of AbuseReport
English：Tower of Abuse · Locations
An ancient tech laboratory tower in Venge and the headquarters of the Thrall Masters. It holds the thralls made from decapitated Skeletons, and it holds Agnu, who resisted conversion for nearly a thousand years.
The Tower of Abuse is an ancient ruin within Venge and the headquarters of the Thrall Masters. It is also classified as an ancient tech lab, which means the Artifacts system applies to it and its loot quality is far above that of an ordinary ruin. Lore videos identify the tower as a thrall production facility used during the Second Empire, and as the place where Agnu was imprisoned[V1 0:02:27] — what it originally was in older times, the game still does not say.
Location and appearance
The tower stands in Venge — a scorched, cracked valley swept over and over by an orbital death ray. During the day the beam inflicts cutting damage on any organic character without 100% burn resistance, while Skeletons are entirely immune. That natural barrier has kept the Thrall Masters free of outside interference for a very long time: no nation is willing to march an army into a place where you cannot stand outdoors during the day just to wipe out a pack of thralls — non-mechanical bodies that stay there long enough simply die of their wounds.
Worth noting is that the faction name "Thrall Masters" makes it easy to mistake who the subject is: the bulk of the faction is in fact a group of enslaved Skeletons, who merely take orders from Screamer the False and Ponk at the top of the tower; and the reason they have never been wiped out from outside is exactly that natural barrier in Venge which makes daylight travel impossible[V2 0:19:17]. The ones actually enslaving their own kind are those two.
One detail that causes confusion: before the player reaches the building, the name shown on the map is "Old Control Tower". Venge does in fact also contain separate locations called Old Control Tower and Ruined Control Tower, which are easy to mix up.
What is inside
The garrison comes in two layers. The base layer is 10 Weak Thralls — Skeletons decapitated and then reprogrammed, with Strength 20, Toughness 15 and no armour. The upper layer is 5 or more Thralls, visually identical to Weak Thralls and distinguishable only by name, with combat stats close to double those of the former. Both attack anything living on sight.
The top floor holds the two Thrall Master leaders: Ponk and Screamer the False, each carrying a Meitou-grade weapon, with a 20,000-cat bounty per head issued by the United Cities and the Holy Nation.
The tower always contains one Ancient Science Book and one AI Core, plus randomised supplies, roughly in descending order of likelihood: Damaged Book, Leather, Skeleton Repair Kit, Robotics Components; Book, Copper Alloy Plates, CPU Unit, Electrical Components, Fuel, Gears, Generator Core, Hacksaw, Hinge, Iron Plates, Motor, Power Core, Steel Bars, Tools; Press, Spring Steel; and the rarest tier of Ancient Military Documents, Old Treasure Map and Engineers Map.
The top floor also has two Skeleton Repair Beds free to use — provided you clear the surroundings first.
A farmable source of income
In the player community, the Tower of Abuse is best known as a cash machine.
The method the wiki gives outright: go to Mourn or Flats Lagoon and hire two squads of mercenaries or tech hunters, take them to the foot of the tower and let them clear it while you stand at the back with a crossbow finishing things off. One run recovers about 100,000 Cats. More squads mean a higher success rate.
The key is the respawn condition: as long as either Ponk or Screamer the False is alive and free, walking a good distance away and waiting a while will cause the tower's non-unique inhabitants and its loot to regenerate. Which means the sustainability of this business depends entirely on whether you killed both bosses together.
Training ground
The sheer number of cages inside the tower creates another use:
- Assassination training — lock defeated inhabitants into the cages on the second floor and practise stealth knockouts repeatedly.
- Melee training — fill the cages with thralls and bosses, pull them out one at a time and beat them up; use the repair beds to heal while your opponent reboots, or bring plenty of repair kits and train Robotics while you are at it. Bring food and sleeping bags and the loop never ends.
- Skeletons only — lie a Skeleton character down on a repair bed and let the inhabitants pound away; this levels Dodge and Toughness with no input at all. The reason is a hole in the game's logic: when you are knocked out while using a bed, NPCs do not always register that you are down and will keep swinging until you regain consciousness.
The one that never converted
The second floor of the tower holds Agnu — a Second Empire security-model soldier machine, and the only recruitable Soldierbot in the game. Pick the lock on his cage and he joins for free, asking nothing in return.
He was kept beside a production line that ran for nearly a thousand years, and he was never turned into a thrall. The strongest message this tower leaves behind is not what it did, but the one thing it failed to do.
See also
Video citations
- Kenshi Base Building - Gate of VengenceHeroInHisHead
- History of Kenshi: Minor Powers | DocumentaryCivilizationEx