It began in summer 2020 with the development of a mod named Afterglow.
Afterglow "project" started when some individuals were unsatisfied with the game's difficulty and its lack of challenge. Therefore they decided to create a mod with, at the very least, "deeper" gameplay, which required the player to do something more than pressing same two keys repeatedly (P + Spacebar).
Initially, the main staff list resembled a joke rather than a development team.

We had
• Mizuki, Japanese (Vietnamese) ((???)) mod director and designer, also known as "Schizuki". Her reception concepts soon became notoriously known for being "cancerous", while she was rather unwilling to apply any balance fixes proposed by the testing team.
  
• NyaFairy, (nation - woman) patron coder who later stopped working on the mod and passed on her duty to other coders.
  
• drh, Russian (very drunk) patron coder, who coded over half the finished fights. His coding productivity was powered by drinking beer
  (~1 can of beer per reception).
  
• Nyabine, Russian coder-assistant, who was working while drh was out of beer and occasionally helped with testing.
  
• 1PerCent, Russian tester, who initially entered just for the memes, but ended up fixing most of Mizuki's "cancerous" concepts.
  (Mizuki explaining her new concept to 1PerCent)
  
• Dima Green,Russian tester, who promoted the mod by publishing some memes on Youtube. Rest in Peace
  
• Lyonyai, Russian patron tester, proud owner of 100 Afterglow dll copies on his hard drive. Later on, the CEO of the Nuclear Wasteland
  
• Calmamar (me), Russian tester, who also stayed around mostly for ♥♥♥♥♥ and giggles and created a good deal of local memes himself. Also was helping Mizuki to complete her Ruina savefile for some reason.

With this in mind, we can get to the point. During the testing of invitation of the Meckanian Remnants, 1PerCent and Lyonyai recalled a rather local Russian meme, which basically was just an audio track "Funky Russian Train" renamed into "Музыка под которую удобно ♥♥♥♥♥ чугун".
This is how the idea of Choogoon invitation appeared, which was initially a satyric exagerration of Afterglow invitations, which at the time mostly consisted of tanky enemies (Mekanian Remnants) and enemies who inflict you with a "garland" of debuffs (Arctic Office). And yes, Choogoon is literally translated as "cast iron".

After getting dealt with the origin of Choogoon, let's get started with the process of its creation. We needed to come up with a sprite for it and we couldn't help but use the toilet sprite from Steam workshop.
Then, 1PerCent and Lyonyai started working on the main concept of Choogoon. Considering the chosen model, name and intentions with which it was created, the main gimmick was that the player literally has to ♥♥♥♥ Choogoon straight up for several hours, while Chogoon himself stands by without being a serious threat and just extends those aforementioned "several hours". Since it would be too boring to base the entire invitation on defence, we added several meme pages, which were offensive, but still didn't pose any serious threat (e.g. "Toxic Gaze").
For page artwork we used some pictures created by the power of my unmatched editing skills and just "random" memes.
Originally, Choogoon was supposed to have second E.G.O. phase, but it was never implemented.
With the artwork and concept done, drh started forging Choogoon (with 3x beer treatment).

Even though Choogoon just appears to be a tanky toilet for average player, there actually is more to it. Many things in this invitation are totally not random and have a deeper meaning, at least for us.
The books for the invitation were chosen for a reason as well.

• Book of Mars was chosen to honor Dima's meme about Mars being the hardest enemy in the game, which he posted in Steam discussions several times.
  
• Book of Boris was chosen because Smoke Boris deck was quite powerful back to the day.
  
• Book of Distortion was chosen because lore-wise Choogoon is a giant Distortion.

Some combat pages also have a special meaning.
Even though the page's effect is meant to simply make Choogoon more Choogoon'ish (tankier), the name and artwork of the page are a reference to a Russian meme about Viktor Tsoi, or to be precise, his song "Пачка сигарет", in which the entire lyrics are replaced with its opening phrase "Я сижу"
("I am sitting").







https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIRyGFljJio

The page's art features a famous Russian actor Leonid Kanevski, however he is "Content aware scale"'d to a ridiculous extent with Arabic gibberish on top of it, hence why the name of the page: you cannot comprehend the language of Choogoon unless you are a terrorist.







The page's artwork is edited 2017 photo featuring Lyonyai covered in Nutella.
Generally, the artwork and name are referencing Lyonyai constantly being toxic.By the way, this page's animation was later updated to include both Furioso and Serum W.







The Russian text on the artwork simply means "ass hacking", and this is the best way to explain what the page does. Basically, this page is Choogoon Junior taking his turn in being offensive and it is used only the scene after his ally is defeated. Since this page also uses Furioso animation, but now 100 times, one Vendetta lasts for ~20 minutes.





The full power Vendetta played by Choogoon himself, which uses the Castigation animation and lasts for ~35 minutes. However, this one is a way bigger deal, since it cannot be cancelled by any means and clashing it with a counter-die forces the game to crash. That is why you have to wait for its animation to play every time a Чугунёнок (Choogoonling) is defeated.







Nevertheless, Choogoon is actually beatable in vanilla LoR, Yes, we've tested the entire thing. Lyonyai has completely beaten it twice. Though to make it more accessible, there is a hidden interaction between Choogoon and Tanya's exclusive page - Beatdown. Using Beatdown against Choogoon or Choogoon Junior makes one of their speed dice permanently sealed and in turn inflicts you with 10 permanent bleed.

Also, attacking Choogoon one-sided while he's inflicted with Smoke causes him to counter-clash your attack with Discipline.
Moreover, using Dark Flame against Choogoon will remove the abnormality from the player and apply "White Flame" to Choogoon. White Flame sets all of Choogoon and Choogoon Junior resistances to Immune and all of the player resistances to Fatal and disables Honor of Choogoon.

https://youtu.be/mqLIdqDW6d4
Choogoon has spurted brain activity and was eventually expanded into an unfinished multiverse called Library of Urina, but drh ran out of beer and so the coding efforts were ceased. So here are some of the scrapped concepts and artworks.

Since the best strategy to kill Choogoon turned out to be using Bleed and Greta's exclusive page Tackle Mount, and its animation is Greta consuming Cast Iron Toilet (Choogoon), which was extremely hilarious, we decided to reskin Greta into yet another Russian meme person Stas Baretski, recognised by this video in particular.








(Timecode 1:22)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGpu7S9bpjQ&ab_channel=%D0%90%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BD

While working on one of the scrapped invitations, we noticed Distorted Argalia's head looks like a certain something













A scrapped artwork for one of the guests' abnormality pages - Take a ♥♥♥♥ Before ♥♥♥♥ Takes You.

Right before Afterglow dissolved into nothingness the final version was posted, which was essentially a non-functional build which displayed the following message when you tried to enter any of its receptions:

Connection terminated.

I'm sorry to interrupt you, Mizuki. If that is really your name.

But I'm afraid you and this fellow Afterglow challenger have been misinformed.

You are not here to play a mod. Nor, have you been called here to have fun.Although, you have indeed been called.

You have all been called here. Into a labyrinth of pain and suffering, misdirection and misfortune.
A labyrinth with no exit. A maze with no prize.Mizuki, you don't even realize that you ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up. Your greed has driven you in endless circles. Chasing a finished mod, always seeming so near.

Yet somehow out of reach.

But, you will never find it. None of you will.

This is where your story ends.

And to you, my brave volunteers, who somehow joined their efforts together.Although, there was a way out planned for you, I have a feeling that's not what you want. I have a feeling that you don't care for it anymore.

I am remaining as well. I am nearby.

This place will not be remembered and the memory of everything that started this, can finally begin to fade away. As the agony of every tragedy should.

And to you author trapped in your delusions. Be still. And give up your spirits.
They don't belong to you.

As for most of you, I believe there is peace and perhaps, warm, waiting for you after the smoke clears.
Although, for one of you, the darkest pit of Hell has opened to swallow you whole. So, don't keep the Devil waiting.

My baby tank, if you can hear me, I knew you would return as well.It's in your nature to blast off the innocent. I'm sorry that on that day, the day you were made, we were blinded by our own carelessness.

And then, what became of you, I should have known, you wouldn't be content to disappear. Not my Terra. I couldn't save you then.
So, let me save you now. It's time to rest, for you, and for those who have followed on...
This ends.

For all of us.