| 1 | Character list for ''Literature/ParanoidMage''. Beware. Spoilers may be unmarked. |
| 2 | |
| 3 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 4 | |
| 5 | ! Protagonist and family: |
| 6 | |
| 7 | [[folder: Callum Wells]] |
| 8 | A 30-year-old widower of right years, he starts the story at the funeral of his nominal parents, who were pushing 60 when he was born, which even he finds weird. After the funeral, where he once again saw supernatural shenanigans nobody else noticed, he goes to his favorite gym, where his friend, and gym owner, Mr. Shahe tries to hook him up with a single female fellow gym member. Suddenly, a group of armed thugs storms in and fires on Mr. Shahe. Mr. Shahe retaliates with Dragon Fire. As Callum is trying to evacuate the now unconscious gym goers, the same Brownie Callum saw at his parents' funeral shows up, flashes a tattoo when asked for a badge and slaps him in handcuffs, dragging him to GAR's headquarters, where Callum is treated very, very roughly and they talked down to him like he's a brain-dead idiot. Callum is not amused, and after perusing the information GAR themselves gave him, where he notes a whopping 30% mortality rate if he '''does''' comply, decides to take his chances and bolts first chance he gets. GAR's been after him ever since. |
| 9 | ---- |
| 10 | * AfraidOfTheirOwnStrength: When he's rescuing Alpha Langley's daughter, he's terrified of what would happen if a mage like himself went on a rampage, as no mundane, or army of mundanes, would be able to stop him. |
| 11 | * AtrociousAlias: The fae have taken to calling him "The Ghost" and it stuck. He hates the alias, seeing it as nothing but cringe. |
| 12 | * BeardnessProtectionProgram: By altering his hair, beard, mustache, and other such minor changes, he goes through ''several'' false identities before GAR begins to even get a clue. Due to their extreme contempt for "mundanes" and habit on looking down on humans, it isn't the climax of volume 2 that GAR finally realizes there is no "organization" and it's just Callum Wells, and Callum Wells alone, that's wrecking their centuries' old house of cards. |
| 13 | * ChronicHeroSyndrome: Even if he's sick, hurt, and got a fever, and lacking basic supplies, with the last thing he needs being finding himself on GAR's radar, he will still put himself in harm's way to rescue people he sees as the victims of supernatural hate crimes. |
| 14 | * CombatPragmatist: He's an ambush predator. He has no choice, as in a straight-up fight, he'd be stomped, and he knows it. |
| 15 | * CoolButInefficient: Callum Wells would happily admit that he's a rank amateur when it comes to enchanting, being entirely self-taught from what he can crib together, and it shows. When the Enchanter's Guild finally gets ahold of the teleport pads he originally sold to Chester, but were confiscated by GAR, the guild analyzes them and found several issues that clearly demonstrate how big of an amateur Wells is, the most tongue-clicking among them being that Wells used pure Mordite where an alloy would do. When the guild fires off the portal, however, their breaths catch upon seeing how utterly ''perfect'' the teleport portal is between matched pairs. At this point, they consider him a legit threat to their monopoly and start taking measures to neutralize him themselves. |
| 16 | * CrazyPrepared: Whenever possible, before he goes into a fight, he lays out counter-measures and counter-counter-measures for every possible contingency, even extremely remote ones. This serves him very well, especially when dealing with a certain monstrous fae king... |
| 17 | * CrimeOfSelfDefense: For ''daring'' to rescue Langley's daughter, fight off a vampire armed invasion, and rescue a couple of innocent hikers from being hunted for sport by some arrogant fae nobles, GAR has dubbed him a "mass-murderer" and has mundane governments put out APB on him as a wanted "terrorist." |
| 18 | * EstablishingCharacterMoment: Chapter 6 of volume 1 tells you all you need to know about Callum Wells. He just wants to be left alone and left out of supernatural politics, but if people start being preyed upon for sport, or shits and giggles, he will retaliate with extreme prejudice at the very first opportunity and woe to they who are the targets of his ire. He thought he might have gone too far until he sees GAR actively collude with vampires to murder and hide bodies, and then became even more vindictive and brutal. |
| 19 | * ExpectingSomeoneTaller: He gets this a lot, from fae, mages, and even Lucy Harper when the two meet. |
| 20 | * {{Expy}}: Imagine John Wick with space-attribute magic. Scary thought, isn't it. Starting from Volume 3, he starts seeing himself as James Bond with space-magic gadgets. He even refers to Lucy as his Ms. Moneypenny. |
| 21 | * FantasticRacism: Justified. By the time volume 4 has come around, Callum Wells has come to the conclusion that Vampires on Earth shall not be suffered to live. He's right. Vampires ''know in advance'' that their precious Moon Water has a very short shelf-life on Earth, thus making it near impossible for them to live unless they actively hunt humans, but they're still pushing for entry visas and go around flaunting their kill sprees every chance they get, just for laughs. And the killings tend to be rather graphic. |
| 22 | * FromNobodyToNightmare: He starts the story as a common 30-year-old guy, aside from being able to see through GAR glamours, but since these "hallucinations" didn't affect his daily life, he considered them unimportant. After GAR wrecked his life in their self-righteous insistence that they, and only they, are qualified to handle magic and the supernatural, all dissidents must be converted or killed, he quickly grew to be a very, very dangerous operative that ''his allies'' fear to anger, and he's become a celebrity among the fae, as they love stories with good fights and good drama. |
| 23 | * HappilyMarried: He and Lucy get married off-screen, and come back from their honeymoon pregnant. |
| 24 | * HedgeMage: Callum regularly bemoans the fact that he hasn't had any of the basic education that most mages have. However, since that education involves a mandatory draft with a 33% casualty rate -- and most of the deaths are among those who don't join an established House or guild -- he chooses to flee and live undercover, picking up scraps of magical knowledge where he can find them, and practising his own techniques. As a result, when he does clash with other mages, his abilities are quite lopsided; he can surprise them with things they didn't think were possible, like firing guns through portals for instant [[BoomHeadshot headshots]], but he would be quickly overwhelmed in a straight fight, as he lacks shields and is slow, unskilled and weak at forming regular magical constructs. |
| 25 | * IGaveMyWord: He takes oaths very, very seriously. He is initially mistaken as a fae because he was willing to throw GAR's rules into a dumpster fire, literally, to help out the people of Winut when Levigne's gangs were engaged in an armed invasion and tried to provoke a war by kidnapping Alpha Langley's daughter, because he promised Mrs. Langley that if he could help, he would. |
| 26 | * ImmuneToMindControl: One of the quirks of his unique constitution is that mind control magics of all sorts have no effect on him. |
| 27 | * InUniverseCatharsis: He's wanted to bring justice to the Department of Acquisitions for at least a year, ever since he learned that they just shoved off teenage victims of a vampire kidnapping right to the very vampire faction that kidnapped them, but he had no way to act on it. Come chapter "Reap" and he finally gets the party most guilty, one Constance Earl, when he hears and records her ordering a hit on some ''children'' "to get his attention." He sighs with visible relief as she's punted into space without a space suit. |
| 28 | * ItNeverGetsAnyEasier: Even into volume 4, he still guzzles down antacids like candy when he has to go hunting supernaturals who treat hunting people like the best pass-time ever, ruminating in the guilt over all the people he ''could have'' saved if he acted sooner. Lucy is rightly worried by this. |
| 29 | * JustifiedCriminal: His actions, especially the part where he delivers vigilante justice on supernaturals who hunt people for sport are criminal acts, even in mundane courts. Problem is, his actions are ''entirely'' self-defense because the so-called victims ''are'' hunting people for sport, and are often attacked while they're caught red-handed in the act, which is ruled as ''justified homicide'' in any court of law and '''isn't''' a punishable crime, further, the enforcement agency, GAR, at best, turns a blind eye to these atrocities for cash and/or political favor, if they don't '''actively assist and participate themselves.''' |
| 30 | * KleptomaniacHero: Downplayed and justified. He doesn't steal from GAR institutions as he knows, thanks to Lucy, that there are people at GAR who are forced to work for the heavily corrupt, if not downright evil, organization, and he doesn't want to harm an innocent, even by accident, though destroying infrastructure is fine, as the organization is morally wrong, on a good day. He does, however, happily loot everything he can take from vampire nests and other supernaturals who are engaged in hunting people for sport, and he has no problem ''accepting'' goods his allies steal on his behalf. This is justified because, thanks to GAR's unjust manhunt, he can no longer earn an honest living, and his life does have expenses. |
| 31 | * OddFriendship: He and Gayle Hargrave get along swimmingly, despite being on opposite sides of GAR's laws. |
| 32 | * OneManArmy: The very, very first time he went into action, was an operation to rescue the Langley's kidnapped daughter, dragged to a vampire nest by mind-control. End result: The girl was rescued, the vampire nest was completely annihilated, no survivors, and the hotel they occupied burned to the ground. Then when Alpha Chester hires him to go after the remaining 5 nests, he has reservations until he sees GAR mages '''actively collude''' with the invading vampires by helping them hide the bodies of their victims. Within minutes, he destroys four nests by throwing flaming ''thermite'' at the vampires involved and dropping 20 ton wooden crucifixes on the collaborating mages. The only reason he didn't go after nest #5 is that Alpha Chester called him off, as Levigne had enough and begged to be given clearance to pull back his men. |
| 33 | * ProperlyParanoid: He once, at the age of 7, made the mistake of telling people about his "hallucinations" where he could see through GAR's glamours and could spot the supernatural. His presiding physician went with the quick and easy option of trying to medicate the problem away, drugging him stupid. Callum Wells Sr., a paranoiac in his own right, gave a flat "nope" to that idea and cut off the meds. Since then, Callum's been very, very touchy about trusting others. So when GAR shows up and tries pushing him around, he acts not like a normal man, but as a spook of a much, much bigger organization and engages in guerrilla warfare to protect his rights. |
| 34 | * RaisedByGrandparents: [[spoiler: His mother was a teenage trollop, according to Mr. Shahe. She had so many trysts that she can't identify the father. After a heated argument, she abandoned him with her parents and was disowned.]] |
| 35 | * RebelliousSpirit: He pointedly ''does not'' like getting bossed around and will retaliate with extreme prejudice to anyone who tries. |
| 36 | * ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight: While he's averse to breaking mundane law, he doesn't let GAR's rules and regulations stop him from doing what his conscience tells him to do, which makes GAR see him as a threat that can not be allowed to live come volume 3. |
| 37 | * SpaceMaster: As a space-attribute mage, he's always had better spatial perception than most and quickly learned to weaponize this. |
| 38 | * SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic: His greatest advantage against GAR is that the organization has ossified, especially as archmage houses, like Duvall, have a major berserk button that things must be done the "proper" way. So he, with his knowledge of modern physics and technology, constantly runs rings around their archaic practices. Case in point, he hides a home-bond deep in his body, as opposed to their practice of having implants just beneath the skin, allowing him to escape custody in one of the most secure BSE containment centers, and again, when he's cornered in France, just grabs his back-pack and uses gravity-kinesis, since gravity and space are linked, to completely outrun and outflank the entire squad trying to hunt him down. As to foci and magical enchants, he uses Computer Aided Drafting to build models and takes them to professional metal-workers to manufacture them, with much greater precision than GAR is capable of. |
| 39 | * SuperSenses: Even other space-mages, like Duvall, can't see through buildings, but he can. |
| 40 | * WeakButSkilled: He can't last more than a matter of seconds in open combat with even the weakest of GAR's mages, but because he's very, very talented in using his portals and spatial senses, he has numerous victories against GAR facilities and even completely steamrolled a fortified off-world BSE base guarded by an army, including ''two'' archmages, one of which was a SPACE-MAGE, who should, logically, have been able to counter him. The kicker is, they knew he was coming, and he '''still''' blindsided them. |
| 41 | --> '''Duvall''': "The portals are coming... FROM EARTH! HE MAY NOT EVEN BE IN THE FACILITY!" |
| 42 | * WeaponizedTeleportation: By fixing portals next to the heads of his enemies, dropping said enemies into a cave with no breathable air, accelerating multiple ton items to terminal velocity, or even plugging a portal directly into the lava flow of an active volcano, he's a force to be reckoned with. |
| 43 | * WrongAssumption: Growing tired of putting out fires by going after random vampire nests, especially after getting hit in the face with an inverse-healing trap, he decides to cut off the problem at the source, shutting down the Night-Lands portal, perhaps permanently, but leaving the GAR teleporters alone so the vampires can go back, figuring that if he just shut them down completely the ones already on Earth would go full-tilt CorneredRattlesnake if there's no way back. '''They go full-tilt Scorched Earth regardless''', and he has to help Taisen's group stomp them all out. |
| 44 | [[/folder]] |
| 45 | |
| 46 | [[folder: Lucy Harper]] |
| 47 | Head of IT at GAR and liaison to Alpha Chester, she first makes contact with Callum Wells on Chester's behalf when dealing with Levigne's invasion. She takes a real liking to our protagonist, and the feeling's mutual. |
| 48 | ---- |
| 49 | * BabiesEverAfter: She winds up pregnant with Callum's child, after they're married. |
| 50 | * BrainsAndBrawn: Though Callum is actually highly intelligent, she's even smarter and serves as the brains to his brawn, especially since she can do things with technology he can't even dream of. |
| 51 | * BrokenBird: Being on the receiving end of GAR's tyranny has left her deeply traumatized. She tries to hide it with her usual playful demeanor, but it's not fooling anybody. |
| 52 | * HappilyMarried: She gets married to Callum at one point, ceremony off-screen, and she's quite happy being married to the man and birthing his kids. |
| 53 | * MistreatmentInducedBetrayal: At first, helping Callum was just a lark, seeing as she was press-ganged into GAR as a "dud" and that was the ''least'' offensive thing she could have expected from House Harper. Then Agent Jahn got the "brilliant" idea to have Agent Black and some vampires use mind-control to march all the "dud" employees to interrogation rooms for questioning and compel answers. Due to being treated as a sub-human, Lucy turned on GAR in earnest. '''THEN''' Archmage Duvall learns what Jahn did and decides to go with the "brilliant" plan of using Lucy as bait, rather than let Jahn's investigation play out. With Lucy being captured, mind-raped, and put under a fae Geas, branded a traitor, disowned, and exiled, she happily signs on with Callum Wells full-time starting volume 3 and actively seeks the complete and total destruction of GAR as an institution. |
| 54 | * TheMole: Working with Alpha Chester, she feeds all the GAR information she can get to Callum Wells, for a price. |
| 55 | * MoralityChain: Amazingly enough. Her conversations with him were the only thing that kept Callum from really going off the deep end in his conflict with GAR. Choosing to torment her resulted in the near destruction of a GAR fortress base in the Wild Lands portal world. |
| 56 | * MuggleBornOfMages: She's a "dud," meaning both her parents were mages, but she didn't awaken the ability to use magic. Though come volume 3's events, that may change. |
| 57 | * PlaguedByNightmares: Her experiences in GAR custody has her waking up in the middle of the night with night-terrors, which makes Callum all sorts of enraged. |
| 58 | * PlayfulHacker: She starts out playing, but when GAR decides treating her as sub-human is the best way to get things done, she stops playing and becomes malicious in her hacking schemes. |
| 59 | * ReplacementGoldfish: Averted. Although her chemistry with Callum is excellent, she's nothing like Selena, his deceased wife. |
| 60 | * RescueRomance: She and Callum start dating after he rescues her from confinement at BSE's Garrison Two. |
| 61 | * RightForTheWrongReasons: When it's time to send an e-mail bomb exposing Fane's secret basement lab and all the horrors therein, Callum, Lucy, and Alpha Chester take to debating distribution methods. Lucy posits spoofing the e-mail address of one Constance Earl, since she's got her fingerprints all over Fane's nastiness and the gang is out to dismantle the DOA anyway. Lucy doesn't know it, but Constance was in the process of currying favor with some fae tribes by launching them against vampire tribes that exceeded their mundane hunting quota without giving her the proper bribes first. Naturally, when the e-mail bomb comes in, it's not likely to be as much of a crap-shoot as Alpha Chester expects, but rather the fae and vampires who get it are going to get it before Constance's official letters delivered by courier, so they're likely going to see what Constance tells them as orders and threats, and that has never gone well with either community. |
| 62 | * ShipTease: She and Callum's chemistry is so good, people on both sides of the fourth wall wonder if they're a couple. |
| 63 | * StepfordSmiler: She tries to hide the trauma of GAR's tyranny, especially the geas with her bubbly personality. He's not fooled. |
| 64 | * WackyCravings: While she didn't have any during her pregnancy with Alex, Callum's first born, she has them with a vengeance on the second pregnancy. |
| 65 | [[/folder]] |
| 66 | |
| 67 | [[folder: Alexander Wells]] |
| 68 | Callum's first born child. |
| 69 | ---- |
| 70 | * CallToAgriculture: He gets a literal kick out of tending the family garden, especially pulling weeds and punting them into the compost bin. |
| 71 | * CheerfulChild: He's a very happy and upbeat child, who borderline worships his parents. |
| 72 | * ChildrenAreInnocent: He has not a trace of malice in his body and adores the world of the magical. |
| 73 | * ComboPlatterPowers: Downplayed. When he's tested, he's found to have a major affinity to gravity magic, but has sub-affinities in light, metal, and fire. |
| 74 | * HeroWorship: He adores his parents so much, especially his dad Callum, that it's borderline worship. |
| 75 | [[/folder]] |
| 76 | |
| 77 | ! GAR: |
| 78 | |
| 79 | [[folder: Agent Jahn]] |
| 80 | Introduced inspecting the area at the site of the funeral of Callum's parents, hunting a supernatural corpse eater, he's the one who arrests Callum at the start of the story. |
| 81 | ---- |
| 82 | * CreateYourOwnHero: It is his very rough and demeaning treatment of Callum Wells that convinces the latter to ditch GAR at the first opportunity and go rogue. Furthermore, every time he tries to get a grip on Callum causes the latter to balk and engage in the very heroics that bring his organization ever closer to ruin. |
| 83 | * DoubleStandard: TruthInTelevision He's clearly biased against Alpha Chester and enforces GAR rules on a lop-sided basis. At first, he clearly backed Levigne's invasion, apparently in exchange for Mordite mining rights and other forms of favor-trading with the vampire community. Once he declared a manhunt against Callum, he orders Agents Black and Ray Danforth to harass Alpha Chester by going after the shifter leader with a bunch of rules and regulations that are clearly not being enforced for anyone else, hoping to bring the shifter community down via a DeathOfAThousandCuts (his words, no less). |
| 84 | * FeelingOppressedByTheirExistence: Justified. The longer Callum Wells stays at large, the worse things get. The vampires are butt-hurt that their favorite pass-time, hunting down and blood-letting humans for fun, may now come with a life-threatening price tag. The shifters under Alpha Chester, 2/3 of the shifter population in the US, is openly talking about seceding and declaring independence, citing a vote of No Confidence, after GAR openly sided with Levigne's armed invasion and are trying to punish them for daring to support the guy who protected them, and confiscate their duly purchased property, the teleport pads Callum provided them. The always cantankerous Fae are... restless, to put it mildy, with King Ravaeb in particular out for blood, since his nobles were killed in the course of a Wild Hunt, even if Ravaeb himself hates the practice. The draconians, and the dragons that spawned them, are just sitting back and laughing. House Hargrave has already decided to withdraw, and House Fane soon after. House Duvall has repeatedly made threats to shut down all the space-magic support. Grand Magius Taisen is taking the fiasco that happened in the BSE Wild Lands fortress as his cue to officially become an Archmage house in his own right, so he can work independently of GAR's red-tape and the shoe-string budget they try to force him to live by. In short, it sucks to be him. |
| 85 | * NeverMyFault: When '''all''' the Archmage houses tear into him for his foolish use of Agent Black and a bunch of vampires using CompellingVoice to interrogate all the "duds" working for him, the vast majority of them innocent, he tells himself and everyone who will listen that it's all Callum's fault. |
| 86 | * RabidCop: When he first greets Callum, as the latter is trying to rescue unconscious mundanes from the burning building that was Mr. Shahe's gym, he knocks Callum to the ground, demands to know if Callum has any idea how many laws he's broken, flashes a tattoo when asked to show a badge, and then just slaps Callum into handcuffs without explanation or charge. Callum doesn't have to pretend very hard to be offended in ignorance. |
| 87 | * ScrewThisImOuttaHere: When things at GAR get too hot, he goes into seclusion with Grand Magus Taisen, and offers the same to Ray Danforth and Felicia Black. |
| 88 | [[/folder]] |
| 89 | |
| 90 | [[folder: Agent Ray Danforth]] |
| 91 | The human of a pair of agents first tasked with investigating Callum Wells. |
| 92 | ---- |
| 93 | * BadassInDistress: While investigating the identity of the fae who dared to threaten Callum's son, he gets snatched by a Fae Prince in Faerie and held captive. It is then his turn to be rescued by Callum. |
| 94 | * BeingGoodSucks: Being a decent, law-abiding officer sucks for him. His partner, Felicia Black, is a TautologicalTemplar who sees completing her investigation as the epitome of morality and will break every rule she has to. His superiors are blatantly corrupt and biased, without a shred of self-awareness, at best. Finding unwelcome and inconvenient truths during his investigations has instigated blood-feuds, and resulted in an ever increasing number of enemies against himself and his partner. And now that he's learned the head of DOA in GAR France is proud of openly colluding with criminal elements among the supernatural, so long as they happily provide kick-backs, and reporting on it will just set off another round of unwelcome internal investigations, if he's luckier than he has any right to be, he's grown to really, really hate his job. |
| 95 | * BlowYouAway: He specializes in wind-based magic. |
| 96 | * GoodCopBadCop: The good cop to Agent Black's bad cop. |
| 97 | * NotQuiteFlight: He uses his wind magic on a glider to float around when he needs transport and doesn't have to worry about the Masquerade. |
| 98 | * RightForTheWrongReasons: He chews out Agent Black for using mind control on Langley's daughter, not because it's inherently wrong and against GAR's own rules, but because if Alpha Chester, her great-uncle, finds out, he can, and will, come after both of them, and GAR would have to help him! |
| 99 | * ScrewThisImOuttaHere: After getting the order from Supervisor Lane to try and enforce a warrant against Archmage Hargrave, he and Felicia deliver the warrant to the gate-keeper, give the Hargraves a heads-up and then take Agent Jahn up on his offer to go off the grid. |
| 100 | * ToBeLawfulOrGood: Lawful, always, and he suffers for it. |
| 101 | [[/folder]] |
| 102 | |
| 103 | [[folder: Agent Felicia Black]] |
| 104 | The siren of a pair of agents first tasked with investigating Callum Wells. |
| 105 | ---- |
| 106 | * CompellingVoice: As a siren, anything she says that can be construed as a command will cause whoever she's addressing to comply, even if that is not her intent, unless the target is ImmuneToMindControl. She's shocked and horrified when "Mr. Hall" shrugs off her suggestion "you don't need a lawyer." |
| 107 | * EntertaininglyWrong: For quite some time, she presumed Callum Wells and "Mr. Hall" were two separate people, because Callum was just that good at disguising his identity. Callum did nothing to disabuse her of this notion. |
| 108 | * EverybodyHasStandards: Implied. When she and Agent Ray Danforth are talking about Lucy being under a geas, she momentarily loses her cool and grabs him, seeking a CoolDownHug. Agent Ray Danforth is uncertain if she's aghast at the concept of a geas in general, a geas on Lucy specifically, as Agent Black's House is close to House Harper, or if Agent Black is scared of the coming fight with Callum Wells, who is expected to try a rescue. |
| 109 | * FamousAncestor: She's the daughter of not one but two famous and legendary Fae. |
| 110 | * {{Hypocrite}}: She has absolutely no problems with vampires breaking into peoples' homes, kidnapping and killing them, unless they exceed their quota, but when she learns the Fae King of Miami used Fae magic to erase all GAR records, including people's memories, of the Portmans, a couple that dared to survive a wild hunt, so GAR can never go after them again, she angrily decries "that idiot's going to get someone killed!" |
| 111 | * LaserGuidedKarma: Downplayed. During the rescue of Lucy Harper, Callum Wells uses weaponized high-speed, high-pressure lava to destroy several key pieces of infrastructure, among them the entry portal mechanism, to prevent reinforcements. She and Agent Ray Danforth were at the entry portal, guarding against Callum's arrival. They both get "lightly" splashed by the lava and are burned, but survive. |
| 112 | * MindRape: While interrogating Lucy Harper, she uses her Siren powers to delude Lucy into thinking the two are very close and intimate friends to get everything she knows about Callum out of her, and then drops the mind control when she's done. Lucy is rightly sickened and traumatized. |
| 113 | * MovingTheGoalPosts: When she's got Callum in custody for the "mass murder" of the invading vampires in Winut, he points out that said vampires were kidnappers and murderers, caught in the act, making his acts self-defense, in any court of law. She retorts that the vampires weren't criminals "because they haven't exceeded their quota" without specifying what that quota is, then tells herself that she doesn't have to justify herself to Callum in any way. |
| 114 | * RebelliousPrincess: [[spoiler: She's actually Fae royalty, Felicity Niflungr Blackblood, daughter of King Oberon and Queen Mab, who fled her obligations so she can play detective.]] |
| 115 | * ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem: She openly ignores GAR laws while she's on an active investigation, even using her CompellingVoice to make the clearly traumatized Langley's daughter give up information about Callum, her rescuer. Her partner Agent Ray Danforth rightly objects, stating that Alpha Chester, her great-uncle can, ''and will'', officially demand his pound of flesh from them for the affront, '''and he'll get it'''. And this is not likely a metaphor. |
| 116 | * SparedButNotForgiven: Callum and Lucy don't go after her for her role in Lucy's capture, MindRape, and imprisonment without trial, but they never forget it either, and Callum even has a brief moment of Schadenfreude when he learns that Felicia had to leave GAR as a result of the corrupt bureaucracy coming for her. |
| 117 | * TooDesperateToBePicky: To rescue her partner Raymond Danforth, she's not just willing to bow and scrape before Callum Wells and his wife Lucy, the latter of whom she grievously wronged, but she'll take up the very heavy mantle of her fae heritage that she'd been fleeing... |
| 118 | [[/folder]] |
| 119 | |
| 120 | [[folder: Agent Fane Sen]] |
| 121 | The GAR agent assigned to indoctrinate Callum Wells into the supernatural, extremely dismissive and rude, he completely neglects his work, preferring to boast about how he's a legit combat veteran. Callum, unimpressed, ditches him in the middle of the night, on day one. |
| 122 | ---- |
| 123 | * DumbMuscle: To put it simply, he's a blunt instrument. Point him at something you want smashed, with enough backing to do it, and he'll get the job done. Send him somewhere delicate and he's the stereotypical Bull in a china shop. [[note]]Mythbusters actually tested that concept and it was busted, to their confusion.[[/note]] |
| 124 | * EvilCannotComprehendGood: He can't, for the life of him, understand why Callum Wells would be averse to joining House Fane, after he boasted of leveling a café in France trying to get at him. |
| 125 | * TheFriendNobodyLikes: Nobody at GAR, or any of the sub-branches, actually likes him. In fact, even his own House wants him gone. Archmage Fane even sent him to be the point of contact to recruit Wells, purely for the purpose of having him killed when Wells realizes Fane Sen is the one responsible for the attack in France. |
| 126 | * HypocriteHasAPoint: He stares down his nose at mundanes because of the long history of wars on Earth, ignoring the long, long history of mage houses ''also'' engaging in war among themselves, but he is correct that if mundanes knew of the existence of magic, the rich and powerful would do everything in their power to try and exploit them, and the commoners would demand their services. After all, magic can be ''very'' convenient. |
| 127 | * KilledOffScreen: Mr. Shahey turns over his corpse to agents Ray Danforth and Felicia Black, with obvious signs of "Death by Dragonblood." |
| 128 | * MilesGloriosus: He loves to boast about having fought on the front lines in Portal Worlds, and he does indeed fight on the front lines. Problem is, he's never been in an a fight where he's in actual danger. He's always just one of many in a squad that brings overwhelming might to bear on every problem they face. If he's ever in an unexpected situation, he always screws the pooch. Case in point, he blows up a restaurant in France, just because Callum happened to be there, leaving who knows how many needless casualties, without a care, while Callum himself teleported away, with a torn ACL, and a grudge, but otherwise okay. |
| 129 | * NeverMyFault: Callum Wells escaped GAR custody the first time because this Fane was completely dismissive and didn't take his job seriously, yet honestly believes that Callum's escape was something completely beyond his control. |
| 130 | * PlayingWithFire: His aspect is fire-based magic. |
| 131 | * RevengeMyopia: He is dismissive to and pushes around Callum, provoking the latter to escape, yet he wants revenge for "being made to look like an idiot." |
| 132 | * SmugSnake: He's nowhere near as clever, creative, or skilled as he thinks he is. If he wasn't always part of a big team with overwhelming fire-power for what ever task he's up against, he'd crumple like a wet napkin, but refuses to believe it. |
| 133 | * TooDumbToLive: He '''actively boasts''' of blowing up a café in France trying to go after Wells while speaking to the latter, knowing that Wells takes any attack on mundanes very, very seriously. In fact Archmage Fane expected Wells to kill him when he found out, and was actively looking forward to it. |
| 134 | [[/folder]] |
| 135 | |
| 136 | [[folder: Archmage Serena Duvall]] |
| 137 | The archmage of space-magic. She controls all the teleportation systems of GAR, maintains the world portals, and holds top position in the organization. When she hears of Callum Wells, she proclaims him as "her apprentice" and absolutely refuses to heed his wishes in the matter, if she even heard them. |
| 138 | ---- |
| 139 | * BelievingTheirOwnLies: Yes, she genuinely believes the crap she spews about Space Magic being inherently unable to have any possible combat applications and even though Wells was able to subvert her "flawless" teleport system to deal with an archmage, she honestly tells herself and anyone who has to speak with her that there's no way the system itself has a problem, and then goes on to demonstrate '''and exploit''' that very same intentional vulnerability to disable her portal network, just because [[SelfDemonstratingArticle "If GAR can't use my system without suspicion, then they can't use it at all!"]] |
| 140 | * BlatantLies: She once tells Agent Ray Danforth that space-magic is entirely peaceful and completely incapable of violence... Despite Callum Wells consistently demonstrating that this is just not so. |
| 141 | * ControlFreak: She has an absolute strangle-hold on her space magic responsibilities and refuses to delegate. She demands that her 10 apprentices do things how she tells them, when she tells them, refusing to brook any independent thought. |
| 142 | * DidNotThinkThisThrough: Her "master plan" to use Lucy Harper as a hostage to draw Callum Wells out of hiding was doomed to failure for many reasons. The most glaring of which: 1.) Using Gayle Hargrave as bait only worked, by sheer accident, because "Professor Brown" did not see it coming. Having a GAR agent answer Lucy's phone to issue ransom demands only served to tip GAR's hand and piss Callum off. 2.) She herself had already railed at GAR for being "incompetent" after they failed to get results despite hunting Callum for a year. 3.) She should thank whatever deities she believes in that Alpha Chester was willing and able to help Callum find Lucy and plan her rescue because the alternative would be Callum doing even more extreme things to get that information, never mind the rescue attempt itself. 4.) She honestly expected Callum to just stroll right through the proverbial front door and let himself be caught, when she should be well-aware that Callum hunts by ambush and prefers to attack by remote-operation, since she herself went to the site of one of his attacks and saw his M.O. with her own eyes. 5.) Her back-up plan of planting a geas on Lucy Harper to compel her to betray Callum has its own pitfalls, not the least of which is that he's repeatedly demonstrated, quite spectacularly, that he can see active spells. How she expected him to not notice Lucy's been compromised is anyone's guess. |
| 143 | * EverybodyHasStandards: She, of all people, raked Agent Jahn over the coals for his initial abuse of Callum Wells, especially the part where Jahn literally shoved Wells into the mana chamber that intentionally overloads a mage to try and find out their aspect, rendering Wells unconscious and so badly injured he needed the services of a healer. She holds a grudge for Jahn antagonizing one of the very, very rare space attribute mages she desperately needs, even well into volume 2 where she's jumped on the "Hate on Callum Wells" bandwagon. |
| 144 | * FatalFlaw: Arrogance. She believes she's inherently superior to everyone on everything, except combat, as she honestly believes space-magic is inherently incapable of combat utility unless it's been "corrupted." As such, she's overconfident in the success rate of her plans and schemes, works herself to death trying to micro-manage her duties at GAR, managing all the space-magic tasks, including the other world portals and teleporters, resulting in a backlog that could be measured in ''decades'' because she doesn't believe her apprentices can do the job "right" unless she's there holding their hands, and she destroys her credibility with the other Archmage houses and the rest of GAR upper management because she's completely convinced that her screw ups can't possibly be her fault, thus shifting the blame to them. |
| 145 | * TheFriendNobodyLikes: She is a powerful, competent, and mission critical part of GAR infrastructure. Up to volume 3, she was also well-trusted. But she is such a bossy tyrant that even GAR personnel are loathe to be around her. When Agent Ray Danforth first learned of Callum Wells jumping ship, he openly stated that if Callum knew he was going to be Duvall's apprentice, that alone would justify fleeing for the hills. |
| 146 | * {{Hypocrite}}: Despite calling Callum Wells a heretic for his unusual methods of utilizing space magic, she emulates them, especially using a homebond inside her own body. After all, it wouldn't do for a recognized archmage like herself to fall behind "a mere heretic." |
| 147 | * IronicName: Her first name is Serena, and "Serene" is not a word that describes Archmage Duvall in any way. |
| 148 | * IWantThemAlive: Out of desperation at her massive backlog, she was desperate to have Callum collared, brought to heel, and all but MadeASlave as her "apprentice" to put him to work on her many, many projects. Until he had the unmitigated gall to show her up, and now she declares him a "heretic" and doesn't care how he's brought down, alive or dead. |
| 149 | * KnightTemplar: Her way of using space-magic is the only "proper" way. Anything else is "heresy." |
| 150 | * KnowNothingKnowItAll: She is absolutely convinced that she knows anything and everything related to space-magic... until she gets spanked at the end of volume 2, at which point she calls Callum Wells "a heretic" because he showed her ways to use space-magic that she never dreamed of, but could easily replicate. Since it wasn't something '''she''' came up with, it's "improper" and must be stamped out. |
| 151 | * KnowWhenToFoldEm: After she helps Teller Janry to lead a raid on Callum's bunker in Mexico, only to run face-first into a portal of [Null Magic], and she escapes by the skin of her teeth, she swears an oath to herself to never, ever go after Callum Wells again. It's just not worth the risk. |
| 152 | * LethallyStupid: She manages to sniff out one of Callum's teleport anchors in Fane's mansion, China, and ''immediately'' tries to activate it without any thought. She doesn't know where it leads, or what's on the other side. It's only as she's in the process of trying to wrest a portal into existence that she even thinks of calling for the capture specialists. Fortunately for her, she fails to connect as Callum just decided to destroy the anchor on his end. She remains blissfully unaware of how close she came to having an anti-materiel rifle round going off in her face. Now, Wells is even more on guard, and Duvall believes catching him is just a matter of time, refusing to remember that Callum Wells can and will resort to lethal force if he's sufficiently threatened. |
| 153 | * NotHelpingYourCase: When GAR comes to her in the aftermath of the portal network being temporarily hijacked by Wells, she first shrugs them off saying "there's no problem" when there clearly is, and when the GAR representative then politely and reasonably asks permission to have temporary custody over the network until proper safety measures can be implemented, she goes full-tilt MyWayOrTheHighway and completely disables every part of the network she controls, by teleporting all the cores back to her own warehouse and then showing the poor guy the door. Now, she just looks guilty as hell, but she's too arrogant to believe it. |
| 154 | * RecklessPacifist: She is so opposed to fighting that using space-magic in combat, as anything but being a porter, is complete heresy, even in clear-cut self-defense. |
| 155 | * ScrewPolitenessImASenior: She often uses the fact that she's centuries old to excuse being rude, crude, and bossier than can plausibly be believed. |
| 156 | * YoureInsane: She sees Callum Wells as a complete lunatic for working with portals to an anti-magic dimension, and using [Null Magic] in combat. |
| 157 | [[/folder]] |
| 158 | |
| 159 | [[folder: Supervisor Lane]] |
| 160 | He took over the position supervision of Ray Danforth and Felicia Black after Wells became enough of a headache that Agent Jahn had to step down and be reassigned. |
| 161 | ---- |
| 162 | * AppealToAuthority: He doesn't listen to input from Ray or Felicia, just bosses them around, and if they object, abuses the power of his position to summarily silence them. |
| 163 | * LawfulStupid: Even after the video of Fane's secret basement becomes public, showing that the Fanes clearly don't believe in the law they wrote about "heretical forbidden magic," he still signs warrants for Gayle Hargrave's arrest on that very law, with the warrants demanding that Gayle be handed over to the Fane house, and he takes the Fane's complaint that the Hargraves killed Fane operatives as legit when the Fanes are the clear aggressors. Heck, he still signs off on the warrants even after the Hargraves have withdrawn from GAR precisely because of this injustice, despite the fact that by doing so the Hargrave house is no longer under GAR authority. Ray Danforth can only internally goggle at the man for being that closed-minded. |
| 164 | * MeanBoss: He's very passive-aggressive towards Ray and Felicia, constantly putting them on boring, degrading, and humiliating assignments, just because he can. |
| 165 | * MoralMyopia: Just from what's on-screen alone, there are three solid reasons under GAR law why he should be telling the Fane house to touch grass whenever they bring him an arrest warrant against Gayle Hargrave, and under which he shouldn't be writing arrest warrants against her either, but he still insists on doing it. |
| 166 | ** GAR has signed an arrest warrant against Archmage Fane for trying to extort assassination services from Callum Wells, and the archmage has eluded arrest. Under these conditions, the Fane house should be entirely blacklisted from GAR support, as shown with Alpha Chester, Fae King Ferrochar, and a few others. |
| 167 | ** With the video of Fane's secret basement lab now public, it's clear that the Fanes are also guilty of using "forbidden heretical magics" under the very law the warrants are meant to enforce. Demanding Gayle Hargrave be handed over to the Fane house is like demanding a pharmacist suspected of selling prescription drugs without a prescription be handed over to the custody of a Columbian drug cartel. |
| 168 | ** With the Hargrave house officially withdrawing from GAR as a result of the two above, writing any warrant against the Hargraves, at all, has no legal standing. Trying to do so anyway could easily result in armed retaliation. Justified armed retaliation. |
| 169 | * UriahGambit: In Book 3, chapter 18, he sends Ray Danforth and Felicia Black with an arrest warrant at Archmage Hargrave '''after''' the Hargrave house has seceded from GAR, after the Fanes launched an armed invasion and killed several Hargrave members and didn't tell either Ray or Felicia that the Hargrave house had seceded. Ray is smart enough to realize that even if he had GAR authority behind him, he wouldn't survive the attempt to actually enforce it. |
| 170 | * YouHaveFailedMe: Ray and Felicia believe he sent them at the Hargrave house with a warrant they can't possibly enforce because he's butt-hurt that Wells managed to repeatedly escape their grasp. |
| 171 | ** He also finds himself on the receiving end when Felicia flees the obviously suicidal mission and Constance Earl comes after him, because the Fae still have some unstated plans for Felicia and now Constance has to hunt her down. |
| 172 | [[/folder]] |
| 173 | |
| 174 | ! Shifters: |
| 175 | |
| 176 | [[folder: Alpha Langley]] |
| 177 | The first shifter Callum meets, and the town sheriff of Winut. |
| 178 | ---- |
| 179 | * ByTheBookCop: He patrols the streets of Winut with an even hand, enforcing the law fairly. |
| 180 | * ReasonableAuthorityFigure: When "Mr. Hall" first moves in, he has his reservations, but greets the man warmly and provides good hospitality. This turns around to reward him when his daughter is kidnapped by vampires looking to start something. |
| 181 | * TooDesperateToBePicky: When his wife, Leslie, brings in "Mr. Hall" to help rescue their daughter, he doesn't ask too many questions, and lets the man do what he must, as Alpha Chester, the only one strong enough to do something, is being bogged down by GAR red tape. |
| 182 | [[/folder]] |
| 183 | |
| 184 | [[folder: Alpha Chester]] |
| 185 | The leader of the shifter pack that is so big, it spread across 2/3 of the US. |
| 186 | ---- |
| 187 | * ExactWords: He weasels out of GAR allegations that he had men illegally retaliate to Levigne's armed invasion of Winut by saying that neither he nor any of his men had anything to do with the death of Levigne's forces. |
| 188 | * InUniverseCatharsis: He's had to endure Agent Jahn's DeathOfAThousandCuts strategy for months, with pompous GAR mages going through his records, back-biting and second-guessing all his decisions and policies, spying on him, living on his property, at his expense, and just generally making themselves a nuisance '''for months'''. When he yanks his pack out of GAR, listing their clear favoritism against him, twice, Levigne and Ravaeb, as a pretext, he takes perverse glee at grabbing these two and ''literally'' throwing them off his property, with them being foolish enough to try and resist until he growls at the one he's carrying and the other, who keeps trying to activate a hostile spell focus has said focus destroyed by a subordinate. |
| 189 | --> '''Chester''': "You should be grateful that I'm ''only'' throwing you out of my property...Tell your masters that they are not ''our'' masters!" |
| 190 | * LockedOutOfTheFight: For a big part of Volume 1, he's unable to help Alpha Langley in the face of Levigne's invasion because GAR bureaucrats are breathing down his neck, using selective enforcement to make '''him''' the criminal if he intervenes. |
| 191 | * PlausibleDeniability: He makes his raid of Levigne's nest look like an attack that Callum Wells would do and then pretends to know nothing about it. |
| 192 | * RoaringRampageOfRevenge: After DAI used compromised ATF agents to level his compound in the US, he schemes with House Taisen, House Hargrave, Felicia Black, and The Ghost to retaliate in kind. While Taisen and Hargrave are dealing with GAR US and GAR Paris, trying to take prisoners, only killing those who refuse to lay down and surrender, Chester and Pack raid DAI with the order LeaveNoSurvivors, and that's what they do, seeing as ''everyone'' at DAI is entirely complicit with acts of murder, either actively or by sheer malicious neglect. |
| 193 | * StartMyOwn: After withdrawing from GAR, he forms a loose alliance with Fae King Ferrochar and a few others, with only one clear mandate so far, thanks to '''The Ghost''', live ''with'' the mundanes, not ''on'' them. |
| 194 | * ATasteOfTheirOwnMedicine: Near the end of Volume 2, he finally gets even with Levigne. When the cocky vampire sent his second in command at the Langley home, only to face Alpha Chester instead, resulting in said second in command literally getting his head ripped off, Alpha had one of Callum's black-market portals smuggled into Levigne's building and had his pack storm the place. For a change, Levigne was the one being invaded with GAR being unwilling to help, focusing on Callum instead, ''at Levigne's own insistence.'' Naturally, the entire nest is destroyed, including Levigne himself. |
| 195 | [[/folder]] |
| 196 | |
| 197 | [[folder: Lisa Chester]] |
| 198 | Alpha Chester's mate. |
| 199 | ---- |
| 200 | * BadassPacifist: She doesn't like fighting, but if cornered is far more powerful and skilled than her mate. |
| 201 | * IWantGrandkids: Despite not being Lucy's mother, she acts as the latter's ParentalSubstitute and when Lucy, Callum, and Chester are having a meeting on how to deal with Ravaeb, she posts the question of when Lucy and Callum are going to start popping out kids and isn't willing to accept "not yet" as an answer. |
| 202 | * MoreDeadlyThanTheMale: She's the real powerhouse in the Chester home, not Alpha Chester. |
| 203 | * ShipperOnDeck: She thinks Callum and Lisa are an ''adorable'' couple and pushes, hard, for the two to get married and have kids. |
| 204 | * WhatWereYouThinking: She lets Alpha Chester make the rules concerning the pack, since that is his job, but she doesn't hesitate to question him, especially in regards to playing along with Callum Wells. For his part, Alpha Chester always answers those questions to her satisfaction. |
| 205 | [[/folder]] |
| 206 | |
| 207 | ! Vampires: |
| 208 | |
| 209 | [[folder: Victor]] |
| 210 | The vampire chosen to represent the nest in Winut. Alpha Langley has the distinct displeasure of trying to get him to stop said nest from openly murdering residents of Winut. Not only does the attempt get rebuffed, but the nest escalates to kidnaping Clara, trying to force the Winut shifters to try a rescue, so the vampires can claim "self-defense" and take over. Then Callum Wells gets involved... |
| 211 | ---- |
| 212 | * BringIt: When Alpha Langley pays him a visit to try and stop the murder of Winut citizens, he '''openly dares''' the local shifter pack to challenge his nest openly. |
| 213 | * CurbstompBattle: When an enraged Callum Wells came after his nest in a RoaringRampageOfRescue, ''not a single one'' of the vampires, thralls, or that colluding mage, had a chance. |
| 214 | * TheExile: On paper, he and his nest were exiled from Minneapolis and driven out of Sioux Falls. In practice, the nest is in Winut on Levigne's orders to try and start something, so he can have a PretextForWar. |
| 215 | * TheFace: He doesn't rule the nest, but he was the one chosen to be its representative to deal with the locals. |
| 216 | * HoistByHisOwnPetard: Callum uses the shotguns and other weapons he provided for the thrall bodyguards to kill every last member of the nest, and the gas-station he and his nest purchased to go with the hotel had some flares and the gas from the pumps used to burn the hotel down, both to make certain they're all dead and to try and eliminate the evidence. |
| 217 | * AnOfferYouCantRefuse: His nest used cash and a bit of mind control to "buy" the hotel that they used as a nest in Winut. |
| 218 | * SmugSnake: During the entire conversation with Alpha Langley, he's dismissive, rude, and condescending, but he's nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is. |
| 219 | * StarterVillain: He and his nest are the first menace Callum has to fight. |
| 220 | * TemptingFate: He openly flaunts vampires killing Winut citizens and kidnaps Clara to provoke Langley's pack to attack, presuming the pack would attack head on. Say hello to the new resident, Callum, who doesn't like having vampires going bang in the night or messing with his friendly new neighbors. |
| 221 | * UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: By kidnapping Clara, Langley's daughter, by mind-control, the nest gave Callum Wells more than just cause to go in and wipe his entire nest out, the dozen vampires and the 25 or so thrall guards, and what's worse, the act gave Alpha Chester the opportunity to hire Callum to go after four other allied vampire nests doing the same despicable acts. |
| 222 | [[/folder]] |
| 223 | |
| 224 | [[folder: Levigne, Master of Minneapolis.]] |
| 225 | The leader of a vampire clan operating in Minneapolis, with aspirations to rule the world. He and Alpha Chester ''loathe'' each other. |
| 226 | ---- |
| 227 | * AmbitionIsEvil: He's not satisfied with taking over and controlling Minneapolis, he thinks it's nowhere near enough, and has ambitions to take over the world, by any means necessary, loathes the fact that Chester's in his way, and honestly believes that GAR's not obeying their own laws if they don't actively help him in every way. |
| 228 | * AssholeVictim: Callum doesn't mourn this guy's death, at all. He just doesn't want to be labeled as the killer when he wasn't. |
| 229 | * BadBoss: He routinely smacks around his thralls, subordinates, and messengers when he's given unwelcome news, they fail him, don't tend to his whims fast enough, or he just feels like it. |
| 230 | * TheBully: He acts like a high-school bully, a MUNDANE high-school bully. Loves to throw his weight around, but when he faces actual resistance, runs and hides behind an authority figure. |
| 231 | * EvilGloating: When Chester retaliates to his repeated armed invasions with an armed invasion of his own, wiping out Levigne's own personal nest, Levigne taunts Chester from the other side of a magical barrier that would only allow Chester to pass through, for a 1 on 1 duel. Chester responds by bringing in shooters armed with mordite rounds, killing him like the trash he is. |
| 232 | * FeelingOppressedByTheirExistence: He views Alpha Chester's very existence as an affront and is desperate to eliminate the "mangy mongrel" at any cost. |
| 233 | * ForTheEvulz: He kills humans by drinking their blood, simply to savor seeing the humans die. |
| 234 | * MuggingTheMonster: He sends his second in command at the Langley's house, expecting the Langley family to be helpless before their might. He doesn't know that Chester bought some black-market teleporters from Callum and that it will be Chester waiting instead. Que the invading vampires being on the wrong end of the CurbstompBattle. |
| 235 | * RevengeMyopia: He views Callum as a "mass-murderer" for killing off five vampire nests, but refuses to acknowledge that it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't sent those nests to invade Winut, kidnapping and murdering along the way, and kidnap Chester's great-niece first. |
| 236 | * SuperLoser: Yes, he is a powerful vampire, but he's so cocky and full of himself that when he's actually in a fight, he cracks like a raw egg. |
| 237 | [[/folder]] |
| 238 | |
| 239 | [[folder: Master of Weltentor]] |
| 240 | The most senior of the vampires shown to date. |
| 241 | ---- |
| 242 | * DespairGambit: In addition to guarding key vampire infrastructure with foci featuring negative healing, his primary counter-measure to Callum Wells is to command every vampire he has sway over to attack mundanes en masse, until Callum gives up fighting. At the end of volume 4, this has resulted in tens of thousands of casualties. Callum does feel guilty, believing he's responsible for so much carnage, but he's also monumentally '''pissed'''. |
| 243 | * PowerfulButIncompetent: He starts off UnskilledButStrong, being a centuries old vampire with monumental strength, able to overpower Felica and Ray with repulsive ease, after smashing through the wall behind them, but he's careless and impatient, allowing them to escape via homebond. When he hears they're no longer hidden away in a safehouse, he storms off after them without any preparation or planning. He winds up taking out a couple of body doubles, who volunteered for the task and then all he can do when The Ghost comes after him is run for his life, and not very effectively at that. When he's got nowhere left to run, Callum Wells spanks him like he's an unruly toddler. |
| 244 | * RevengeByProxy: In retaliation to Wells killing Earth based vampire nests for hunting mundanes for sport and Wells himself, he has all the Earth based vampires launch all-out attacks on human settlements, where they're most vulnerable, hospitals, fire-departments, police stations, trying to rack up so many casualties that Callum gives up. |
| 245 | * RevengeMyopia: He and his vampire hordes are responsible for murdering thousands upon thousands of humans every year for centuries, and starting the fight by attacking Callum and his allies in the first place, but he, especially, sees the vampires who died as a result as innocent victims and orchestrates bloody vengeance. |
| 246 | [[/folder]] |
| 247 | |
| 248 | ! Fae: |
| 249 | |
| 250 | [[folder: King Jisarel]] |
| 251 | The fae king who goes to investigate a bunch |
| 252 | of fae nobles going missing in his territory. Using Fae magic, he quickly learns they launched TheWildHunt, against his wishes, and ran afoul of Callum Wells. Despite hating the nobles in question, he is still honor-bound to try and avenge them. |
| 253 | ---- |
| 254 | * AintTooProudToBeg: Played with. He is indeed very proud and would prefer to avoid begging, but because Callum Wells was travelling through the territory of other fae kings in search of a portal world where he could collect bane-metals to play with, King Ravaeb had to beg permission from the other fae kings to continue hunting Callum down. |
| 255 | * ExactWords: On the wrong end. Because he lets GAR capture the hiking couple who were rescued by Callum, Callum was able to go to the Fae King of Miami and have the latter's help in breaking them out and ''permanently'' keeping GAR from going after them again, seeing as the original promise was that if the couple could survive until sunrise, they would be free, but being in GAR's holding cell violates that. |
| 256 | * FriendlyEnemy: Fae politics are just as odd as their magic. He welcomes Callum to his throne with open arms when the latter comes looking to do business, despite trying to kill him earlier for dealing with some arrogant nobles in his enclave. In fact, he's rather grateful Callum removed them, as it keeps his own hands clean and he can still MakeAnExampleOfThem. |
| 257 | * RefugeInAudacity: He respects Callum for walking right up to his front door and greeting him face to face, in order to do business, despite previously hunting him. |
| 258 | * SeriousBusiness: As a Fae King, oaths and story telling are deeply important. |
| 259 | * SomethingOnlyTheyWouldSay: To confirm Callum is The Ghost, he asks where the nobles Callum hunted earlier are. Callum answers honestly, telling that the fools are dead in a cavern a hundred or so meters from where they fought. |
| 260 | [[/folder]] |
| 261 | |
| 262 | [[folder: Fae King Ferrochar]] |
| 263 | The fae who helps Callum break the hiking couple out of GAR custody. |
| 264 | ---- |
| 265 | * ExactWords: Even though he admits it's pure sophistry, he helps Callum by making the hiking couple completely untraceable by GAR agents ever again, thanks to the fae nobles' promise that if they survive TheWildHunt until sunrise, they would be free, but GAR broke that promise by holding them for questioning. |
| 266 | * ItAmusedMe: He helps Callum out because he finds the idea of spiting GAR and King Ravaeb amusing. |
| 267 | * PlausibleDeniability: GAR can't have proof of their involvement, no sir, but if the hiking couple goes missing while GAR's security devices are down... |
| 268 | [[/folder]] |
| 269 | |
| 270 | [[folder: King Ravaeb]] |
| 271 | The Fae king who put Lucy under a Geas. Callum doesn't think that alone is worth the risk of taking him on, but when Callum hears that he's been hunting Chester's people, shifter and mundane alike, it's war. |
| 272 | ---- |
| 273 | * DeadlyDecadentCourt: His Fae court is ''literally'' knives out, all trying for supremacy. Chester explains that his death would end all aggression from his direction as all his underlings would be far too busy fighting each other to bother anyone else. |
| 274 | * FeelingOppressedByTheirExistence: He feels constricted and "pushed back" by having shifters from Alpha Chester's pack as neighbors. Come chapter 10 of volume 3, he decided to "Hunt" them. As if Wells doesn't have enough reason to go after him already... |
| 275 | * FrankensteinsMonster: He's got a deer skull for a head, a gorilla's chest, lanky yet muscular arms and legs, and all other sorts of animal body-parts just stitched on at apparently random. |
| 276 | * IControlMyMinionsThrough: Power and fear. He keeps his court stable by simply outmuscling anyone who would dare oppose him, and keeps the scheming out of sight by terrorizing anyone who would get his attention. Callum points out such a system shouldn't be even remotely stable, but Chester just shrugs and says "fae king." |
| 277 | * MakeThemRot: As expected of a being known for being a king of death, he can summon some kind of black ooze that causes stuff to decay, and it even works on non-organic objects, melting Callum's anti-tank rifle to sludge on contact. |
| 278 | * RasputinianDeath: Of the desperate "I hope this works because if it doesn't, nothing will" variety. [[spoiler: He's hit in the chest and flank with high explosive rounds from an anti-tank rifle, takes a hit of lava to the face, while he's trapped in solid rock as a result of fighting off the lava, takes multiple hits of thermite to his skull, upon breaking out, takes some flashbangs to the face, and lastly is blown to pieces by a ColdIron dart hitting him in the chest at super-sonic speeds so immense it has gale force winds in its wake.]] |
| 279 | * RedBaron: King of Cold and Death. |
| 280 | * SkullForAHead: Callum sees him through a portal, and among all the other supposedly impossible bizarre biology, this fae king has an empty deer skull for a head. |
| 281 | * WakeUpCallBoss: He's the first to actually retaliate through Callum's portals, when Callum was elsewhere. Fortunately, Callum was CrazyPrepared and had Chester's core pack acting as bodyguards to deal with whatever came back. |
| 282 | * TheWildHunt: On a massive scale. He launches his entire army of monsters at Chester's holdings, shifter and mundane alike, to seize as much territory as possible. |
| 283 | [[/folder]] |
| 284 | |
| 285 | [[folder: Toclerane]] |
| 286 | A fae who calls in Callum, claiming he's all but powerless to deal with his {{Archenemy}} who is targeting mundane children with lethal force, and needs help to remove the threat. Callum investigates, finds out the account is wildly embellished, '''at best''', and borders on murderous slander, which is actionable in many a court. [[note]]Some courts consider slander that leads to murder first degree murder, as the lie is the murder weapon [[/note]] |
| 287 | ---- |
| 288 | * DisproportionateRetribution: His charge was at a school dance where his rival Abraxis set off a fart-bomb for a laugh. He retaliates by trying to get Abraxis killed through embellishing the act to a terrorist threat with attempted lethal force and reporting said embellishment to Callum. Wells is not amused when he learns the facts. |
| 289 | * EvilIsPetty: He sells out Chester's alliance, and Callum especially, to Constance Earl, because Callum retaliated to his attempt to murder by slander by placing a sign around his neck "I tried to lie to The Ghost", bound with a wire of ColdIron, and teleporting him right into Fae King Jissarel's court. |
| 290 | * PrinciplesZealot: He's honor bound to protect at least one teen, but he sees every ''inconvenience'' as demanding a response with lethal force. |
| 291 | * TheQuisling: As lampshaded by Callum. He doesn't actively collaborate with Constance, but he does provide intel he thinks "will take Callum down a peg or two" just because he's personally butt-hurt by a little embarrassment. |
| 292 | * RevengeMyopia: He wants Callum Wells to suffer for humiliating him by making him a laughingstock in a Fae court but refuses to acknowledge it wouldn't have happened if he didn't try to trick Callum into being his murder instrument first. |
| 293 | * SayingTooMuch: This fae is a compulsive talker who just can't shut up, and rambles on and on. |
| 294 | [[/folder]] |
| 295 | |
| 296 | [[folder: Abraxis]] |
| 297 | The fae that was the first on-screen target of Toclerane's wrath. |
| 298 | ---- |
| 299 | * CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Implied. Toclerane claims he would have killed the guy himself but isn't powerful enough to do it, and Toclerane leads a fae enclave. |
| 300 | * ThePrankster: This guy loves pranks. It's what he does. |
| 301 | * SitcomArchnemesis: He and Toclerane just rub each other the wrong way and near-constantly bicker and back-bite. It's only recently that Toclerane has tried to escalate to lethal force over a harmless prank. |
| 302 | [[/folder]] |
| 303 | |
| 304 | [[folder: Prince Jusael of the Court of Roses]] |
| 305 | The fae prince who forcefully takes Ray Danforth as a "guest" when the latter was investigating who in the hell sent a video e-mail threatening Callum's son. |
| 306 | ---- |
| 307 | * BigBadDuumvirate: After Callum rescues Ray from being his "guest," he opens a portal between Faerie and The Night Lands to get vampire aid in going after Wells. |
| 308 | * CompellingVoice: He kidnaps Ray by using a verbal compulsion for the man to follow. It didn't actually work, but Ray was smart enough to play along. |
| 309 | * DroppedABridgeOnHim: Once Callum's got clearance to go after him, he tracks this fae vampire wannabe to an observation deck where he sends his missives by the faerie equivalent of carrier pigeon and then hits him with some cold-iron slugs accelerated to the point they've got enough momentum to rival a low-yield nuke, after locking him down with an anti-mana portal. For some strange reason, fans found this immensely gratifying. |
| 310 | * EntitledToHaveYou: To Felicia. Since he sees himself as "worthy" to exploit Felicia's secret status, he will go to any means, no matter how foul, to lay claim to her, and woe to whoever gets in the way. |
| 311 | * FangsAreEvil: He loves to show off both his impressive fangs and his despicable character. |
| 312 | * GildedCage: His favorite way to entertain "guests" is to use compulsion magic to make them follow him and then locking them up in a room full of luxuries. |
| 313 | * ObviouslyEvil: He decided to base his "story" upon looking, and acting, like the Hollywood portrayal of vampires, pre-twilight, giant fangs, bat wings, bulging torso and biceps, the works. |
| 314 | * PercussiveTherapy: The instant Ray and Felicia are out of his grasp at the end of volume 5, chapter 2, he goes through Ray's GildedCage smashing everything he dares, even smashing out a few windows. This doesn't help calm him down, but just makes him angrier that Felicia would dare spurn his "worthy" advances. |
| 315 | * VirtueIsWeakness: He thinks Felicia is a moron for going with a "Heroic" story over his own CardCarryingVillain story, where he starts out ObviouslyEvil in exchange for raw power. |
| 316 | * WoundThatWillNotHeal: When Callum attempts to free Ray Danforth, this fae prince locks down the mana in the area. Callum responds by opening a portal of Null Magic in such a way that it pierces his chest with a pin-prick. He howls in pain and rage until the mic on Callum's drone overloads, and even after Ray is spirited away, the wound is a nasty scar. |
| 317 | [[/folder]] |
| 318 | |
| 319 | [[folder: Prince Galivrick]] |
| 320 | The prince that rules the Court of Leaves and the host for the Archmage summit. |
| 321 | ---- |
| 322 | * BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: He ''dares'' Felicia to break free some human slaves bound by magic chains that he brings forth as entertainment for the archmage houses. Cue one anti-mana portal right over the human slaves' heads. |
| 323 | * TheBet: He wagers his entire human slave retinue vs. Felicia's royal title on the premise that she can't free some human slaves he brought in to provoke the Ghost. |
| 324 | * TemptingFate: He brought human slaves to the archmage summit, knowing The Ghost would be in attendance and dares Felicia to break them out. Expecting SacredHospitality to protect him. He has the gall to consider Callum Wells freeing them an attack. |
| 325 | ---> '''Galivrick''': "How was that not an attack?!" |
| 326 | ---> '''Callum''': "You are not dead." |
| 327 | [[/folder]] |
| 328 | |
| 329 | ! House Hargrave: |
| 330 | |
| 331 | [[folder: Gayle Hargrave]] |
| 332 | Callum meets her in a book-store, studying for a test to try and get out of being Fane's apprentice. Callum does his best to help, not knowing about Fane's laws against inverse healing. Naturally, Gayle suffers for it. |
| 333 | ---- |
| 334 | * BirdsOfAFeather: She and Lucy have many things in common, and especially bond over their mistreatment by GAR. |
| 335 | * BlueBlood: She's the direct descendant of a magical aristocrat and she's a sweetheart. |
| 336 | * BothSidesHaveAPoint: She not only experienced GAR's corruption first hand, but also heard several cases of how GAR either turned a blind eye to blatant law-breaking, if not actively participated, but still points out that GAR '''should''' go after Callum because he's a criminal. |
| 337 | * BrokenPedestal: After being screwed over by GAR double standards and seeing up close and personal that some criminals, like Callum Wells and Lucy, have reasons to rebel against GAR's rules, regulations, and laws other than simple malice as she was taught in the Academy growing up, she's become more suspicious and cynical of GAR's bureaucrats, and at the perfect timing too as Fane's house is still trying to spirit her away from her own, even after Archmage Fane has "gone missing." |
| 338 | ** Once she sees what Fane's lab is all about, not only is GAR's pedestal hit with a nuke, but the Healing Mage program to go with it! |
| 339 | --> '''Gayle:''' "I am so glad I never met Archmage Fane!" |
| 340 | * {{Foil}}: To Callum. Both of them got screwed over by GAR's tyranny, but she had an Archmage house to help her out, while Callum had no one. |
| 341 | * HealingHands: She has the rare healing attribute magic. |
| 342 | * MisplacedRetribution: It was BSE and Archmage Fane that set her up to fail, but she blames Callum for suggesting she learn inverse healing magic. Fortunately, when the two meet again at the end of volume 2, they talk things out and reconcile. |
| 343 | * MortonsFork: Though she doesn't realize it, the test to get her out of being an apprentice was rigged to have her fail. If she fails to master all aspects of the test, she will be forced to become Fane's apprentice, with her grandfather Archmage Hargrave unable to complain. If she ''succeeds'' at all the test elements, which has an '''attack magic''' component, she's considered "corrupted", shoved into BSE for having "forbidden knowledge" and put under the apprenticeship of Fane lackeys, with Archmage Hargrave unable to do anything. Callum helps her succeed and the latter happens, to her horror. |
| 344 | * OddFriendship: She and Callum get along swimmingly, even though they have polar opposite positions regarding GAR policy. |
| 345 | * ProperlyParanoid: Just like with Lucy, being exposed to Wells has taught her to watch out for conspiracies, and she realized that if Wells can subvert the portal network to deal with an Archmage, then someone else with far, far more experience could too, especially since she's had to deal with the casualties of her house coming under attack from its rivals as GAR continues to self-destruct. |
| 346 | * ReluctantRuler: Since she's the Hargrave's one and only healer, she's shoved into the leadership circle of the family and has to scramble to learn leadership skills to keep from flailing around helplessly. She's not particularly thrilled at the process, but she does get to play RenaissanceMan and bring the house into the 21st century with a "mundane outreach" program that incorporates modern tech into their magic, with very, very justified reasoning. |
| 347 | * WideEyedIdealist: She does her best to live life seeing the best in people and in GAR's legal system. |
| 348 | [[/folder]] |
| 349 | |
| 350 | [[folder: Archmage Hargrave]] |
| 351 | Gayle's grandfather. |
| 352 | ---- |
| 353 | * CrimeOfSelfDefense: DAI sends Agents Ray Danforth and Felicia Black after him with an arrest warrant for daring to fight off Fane Chen, who murdered several Hargrave persons in the attempt to enforce a self-written arrest warrant on one Gayle Hargrave. |
| 354 | * EnemyMine: He and Archmage Fane temporarily put aside their differences to hunt Callum after the latter taught his granddaughter how to use inverse healing by introducing her to modern biology. |
| 355 | * HopeIsScary: When Gayle is returned to him, alive, well, and completely unmolested by Archmage Wizzy, at Callum's request, he's grateful but concerned, as Callum turning her over without demanding concessions is unheard of, and considering what he saw Callum pull off at the BSE compound, now he's worried about all the anchors Archmage Duvall set up in his territory. |
| 356 | * HumblePie: As an archmage capable of leveling a city block, he's grown quite haughty over the years and thought capturing Callum by using Lucy as bait would be a cinch, especially since Duvall was (supposedly) watching his back. Callum completely steamrolling the entire facility, snatching away Lucy '''and''' his granddaughter and then returning Gayle to him without making any demands made him strongly rethink just how much of his bravado is truly deserved. |
| 357 | * PapaWolf: He's deeply and greatly concerned about his granddaughter's happiness and well-being. |
| 358 | * ParentsAsPeople: Yes, he cares about Gayle's well-being immensely, but he also sees her as a valuable strategic armament for House Hargrave that they can't let anyone else get ahold of. |
| 359 | [[/folder]] |
| 360 | |
| 361 | ! House Fane: |
| 362 | |
| 363 | [[folder: Archmage Fane Xu]] |
| 364 | The archmage in charge of healing magic. |
| 365 | ---- |
| 366 | * AlwaysABiggerFish: A literal example. Chapter 9 of volume 3 has Wells drop him into the oceans of Portal World 5 and he winds up being seen as lunch by '''two''' Leviathan. |
| 367 | * AssholeVictim: The fanbase cares not a bit about him, but actively mourns the two Leviathan that died to "food poisoning" by trying to eat him. |
| 368 | * CreateYourOwnHero: Volume 3 reveals that it was his agents attacking Mr. Shahe that kicked off the plot, awakening Callum's magic and putting him on GAR's radar. |
| 369 | * DeathByIrony: He spend his whole tenure as Archmage looking down at all the other archmage houses, even Duvall. [[spoiler: When he's the victim of Callum's ambush, finding himself deep in the waters of Portal World 5, the homebond he got from Duvall fails, stranding him so far down in the ocean that it's miles beneath the Mariana Trench on Earth. And then 2 Leviathan try to eat him for a light snack.]] |
| 370 | * DystopiaJustifiesTheMeans: He justifies all his nastiness by saying "When you are powerful, all you care about is getting more power!" |
| 371 | * EnemyMine: He and Archmage Hargrave temporarily set aside their differences to help each other hunt Callum Wells down after Galye Hargrave winds up studying modern biology to learn inverse-healing magic, to meet the requirements to get out of being an apprentice of the Fane house. |
| 372 | * EntertaininglyWrong: In Chapter 7 of Volume 3, he comes to the conclusion that Wells '''can't''' breach the Vis bubbles of any mage, and the ones he killed were simply "caught napping" when he recalls the report on what occurred in Garrison Two. He fails to realize that killing the mages there wasn't Callum's goal, rescuing Lucy Harper was, and Wells doesn't kill needlessly. In short, it wasn't that Wells ''can't'' do it, it's that ''he didn't want to.'' |
| 373 | * EvilCannotComprehendGood: He is insulted and sees Callum as an idiot for daring to spurn his offer of WeCanRuleTogether. |
| 374 | * FantasticRacism: Chapter 4 of volume 3 reveals that he is human supremacist, looking on all the other races with contempt. |
| 375 | * ForScience: He has spent generations trying to learn the mechanism for building specific mage types, just to see how it's done, and has done plenty of human experimentation in the process. |
| 376 | * HealingHands: His aspect is healing. |
| 377 | * KarmicDeath: He spent centuries seeing other people as nothing but mere tools for his agency, consuming them in his mad experiments. [[spoiler: He gets EatenAlive by ''two'' Leviathan. He manages to kill them, but the inertia of their teeth the size of houses closing in on him crushes his "Sphere of Authority" allowing the massive water pressure to crush his body like a tin can.]] |
| 378 | * LackOfEmpathy: He doesn't care about anyone or anything, aside from completing his research. |
| 379 | * MadScientist: He has absolutely no ethical scruples in his experiments. The only person he sees as a person is himself, and all his test subjects have gone through unspoken and unspeakable horrors. It's a known fact that none of them have very long life-spans once they wind up in his lab. |
| 380 | * RightForTheWrongReasons: He put his ancestral mansion on Earth, both because he's human supremacist and because he doesn't want to give up his ancestral lands. This still proves validated because without Duvall stabilizing the space, human dwellings and biology can't operate in portal worlds for an extended period of time. Furthermore, he's opposed to doing experiments with the 6th portal world, Mitclan, not because Archmage Wizzy is watching, but because it's too dangerous, even for him. |
| 381 | * ShootTheMessenger: It's an open secret that it's not a good idea to bring him unwelcome news. |
| 382 | * SmugSuper: He's powerful and knows it. He also knows he can kill any mage, fae, shifter, or supernatural simply by making contact with their vis. He has grown extremely haughty as a result. The fact that he likes to surround himself with yes-men doesn't help. |
| 383 | * StrawHypocrite: He uses inverse healing magic to bypass the barriers of other mages and monsters to harm and kill them, and is famous for it, yet he writes laws that it's "heretical" and "obscene" for healing mages who aren't his direct apprentices to do it, and even then, his apprentices can only do so under his direct orders. |
| 384 | * TheyJustDontGetIt: He started this mess by attacking Mr. Shahe, and thinks he can capture Callum Wells by attacking Mr. Shahe again... |
| 385 | * UnderestimatingBadassery: He's so smug and haughty that he sees Callum Wells as just a tool, in every sense of the word, and when Callum politely turns down his "offer," he goes apoplectic, determined to destroy the town of Tanner for the affront. [[spoiler: Cue a one-way trip to portal world 5's oceans and the maw of two leviathan.]] |
| 386 | * VillainTakesAnInterest: After Callum Wells's raid on Garrison Two, he becomes fascinated by the protagonist and wants to know just how the guy came about. To that end, he decides it's once again time to visit Callum's nominal birth-town, to try and find out. |
| 387 | * VirtueIsWeakness: He thinks he can draw Callum Wells out of hiding by attacking someone Callum cares about, for being "foolishly sentimental." |
| 388 | * WrongAssumption: He figured sending agents to harass the town of Tanner would lure Callum Wells and then having Fane Sen be the point of contact would cause Callum to attack, at which point he would have cassus belli and GAR's support. While he did manage to get Callum's attention, Callum is a man who can see the bigger picture, showing far, far more restraint than Archmage Fane expected, and now he doesn't know what levers to pull, not realizing that Callum intends to resolve the HostageSituation first and ''then'' settle the score with Fane Sen. |
| 389 | * XanatosGambit: He's always rigged GAR's rules and laws to force healing mages into his service, so he can monopolize healing magic for his own ends. He's more than a little upset that Callum Wells managed to take Gayle out of BSE's Garrison Two and hand her over to Archmage Hargrave through Archmage Wizzy. |
| 390 | [[/folder]] |
| 391 | |
| 392 | [[folder: Fane Chen]] |
| 393 | For the house of Fane, he's the closest equivalent to a prime minister. |
| 394 | ---- |
| 395 | * AmbitionIsEvil: He thinks he's the best man to take Archmage Fane's place as leader of the house and will do any nasty thing he has to in order to gain the post. |
| 396 | * BlamingTheVictim: After beating the gate's guard to the brink of death, and then forcefully breaching the shields on the Hargrave estate, he blames the guard turning his crew away, politely, for "provoking the attack." Archmage Hargrave doesn't buy it. |
| 397 | * MyMasterRightOrWrong: He's entirely in-line with Archmage Fane's agenda, as horrific as it is, and thinks it's all okay, since everyone outside of House Fane are just savage barbarians anyway. |
| 398 | * NumberTwo: The only person with more authority in the house is Archmage Fane himself. |
| 399 | * SnobsVsSlobs: Clearly the snob. As far as he's concerned, China, under Archmage Fane, is the height of civilization, and the rest of the world are just savage barbarians. Especially the Hargraves and GAR for daring to set up shop on the other side of the planet. |
| 400 | * StrawHypocrite: He fully colludes with all of Archmage Fane's illegal and unethical experiments, but when he writes and signs his own arrest warrant on Gayle Hargrave, he has the gall to ask "Are you going to defy the law?" when Archmage Hargrave retaliates to a Fane armed invasion, and comes for him personally. |
| 401 | * TheyJustDontGetIt: Prior to going after House Hargrave himself, he sent at least three other teams at them and all of them have been sent back with a clear, resounding "no," the last of which was sent back with heavy casualties after they tried to force their way in. He thinks he's clearly superior to all of them and leads the charge himself, shocked that he meets armed retaliation after beating up the gate's guard. |
| 402 | [[/folder]] |
| 403 | |
| 404 | ! Others: |
| 405 | |
| 406 | [[folder: Mr. Shahey/Ensharrehael]] |
| 407 | Callum's friend and the owner of Callum's favorite gym. He kicks off the plot by retaliating to armed gunmen with dragon fire. |
| 408 | ---- |
| 409 | * ActuallyADoomBot: The draconinan body he sports at the start is just a remote drone. The real body is in the dragon's portal world and he's a real dragon. |
| 410 | * ActuallyPrettyFunny: He laughs himself silly when he learns how Callum knocked over GAR's apple-cart and decided to park himself in the dragon realm until things cool down a bit. |
| 411 | * BlueAndOrangeMorality: Human sensibilities are quite alien to him, but he's spent enough time among them to fake it convincingly. |
| 412 | * DidYouJustHaveTeaWithCthulhu: He's the cthulhu, and he throws Callum a tea-party in the dragon ream when he recognizes the latter, instead of roasting him on the spot for trespassing. |
| 413 | * GetOut: Though he's very gentle and polite, he does throw Callum out of the dragon portal world when his time's up. |
| 414 | * IntriguedByHumanity: The reason he sends "draconian" drones through the portal to Earth is just that he's curious about human society. |
| 415 | * InvisibleToNormals: Unless he and other dragons ''want'' to be seen, they are completely undetectable. The fact that Callum can see their shadows, if nothing else, impresses him. |
| 416 | * LargeHam: When he catches Callum trespassing in the dragon realm, he's really bombastic about it... until he recognizes Callum and becomes more sedate. |
| 417 | * OnlyKnownByTheirNickName: "Mr. Shahey" is an alias. His real name, Ensharrehael, is rarely mentioned, and even then, never in mixed company. |
| 418 | [[/folder]] |
| 419 | |
| 420 | [[folder: Archmage Wizzy (Huitzilin)]] |
| 421 | The very first archmage, already centuries old at the foundation of GAR. |
| 422 | ---- |
| 423 | * BadassBystander: He's powerful enough to stomp any other archmage, but he only fights back if he's attacked. |
| 424 | * BloodyMurder: His magic affinity is blood magic, and he can kill with blood. |
| 425 | * IgnoredExpert: He's been warning GAR's top management that the organization isn't just a house of cards using a sand-dune as a foundation, but the cards themselves are all moldy and rotting away. Insisting they know better than a guy who has apparently seen the rise and fall of civilizations, they ignored him. Now he's advising Callum Wells, the guy tearing down said house of cards, and Callum listens. |
| 426 | * InUniverseNickname: He goes by "Wizzy" because most people can't pronounce his true name properly. |
| 427 | * YeOldeButcheredEnglish: His way of speech is very archaic, calling himself "This one." |
| 428 | [[/folder]] |
| 429 | |
| 430 | ! BSE |
| 431 | |
| 432 | [[folder: Grand Magius Taisen]] |
| 433 | The leader of the BSE fortress in the Wild Lands, and nominal ruler of the BSE branch of GAR. |
| 434 | ---- |
| 435 | * GracefulLoser: After Callum steamrolled his fortress, he didn't swear holy vengeance like Duvall, nor rant and rave like Hargrave, he took it as a well-intentioned and well-needed wake-up call that his fortress isn't as secure as he thought. |
| 436 | * IgnoredExpert: He warned Archmages Duvall and Hargrave that their plan to capture Wells was doomed to failure. He was ignored, but he didn't press the issue because even though he has the authority, on paper, to stop it, GAR would just summarily remove him from office and replace him with someone who would blindly support them. |
| 437 | * OnlySaneMan: According to the narration, he's the only one, aside from Archmage Wizzy, that remembers GAR's original mandate is to protect Earth from super-natural threats, not play politics just for the sake of being in control of everyone at all times. |
| 438 | * TaughtByExperience: He himself states that he long, long ago learned the whole "there is only one proper way to use magic" thing the archmage house teach is pure pin-feathers and poppy-cock. After countless battles with supernatural threats, his motto is "what works works, and what doesn't doesn't." In fact, he's duly impressed that Callum, only at this for a year, is able to blindside him, his entire army, and both Hargrave and Duvall. |
| 439 | [[/folder]] |
| 440 | |
| 441 | ! DAI |
| 442 | |
| 443 | [[folder: Constance Erle]] |
| 444 | The head of DAI in GAR France. |
| 445 | ---- |
| 446 | * AnimalMotif: A spider. She has webs and threads everywhere and even knits when she's frustrated until the solution comes to her. |
| 447 | * BadIsGoodAndGoodIsBad: She calls Chester "a degenerate" because he wouldn't break GAR laws and give her bribes, but calls Levigne "a pillar of the community" because the now dead vampire did. |
| 448 | * BerserkButton: She's the one who bosses people around, not vice versa. Every time somebody gives her orders, she internally goes apoplectic. |
| 449 | * DirtyCop: She's on the take and proud of it. |
| 450 | * EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: She's utterly monstrous, but she's got great nieces and nephews that she dotes on, keeping them in the dark as to her job and ... hobbies. |
| 451 | * FatalFlaw: Overconfidence. She honestly believes she's infallible, and her plans will always work out. She's not quite as careful, diligent, or thorough as she thinks she is. |
| 452 | * ForWantOfANail: Her plan to crash Taisen and Wells into each other ''could'' have worked, if she waited until she removed all traces of her interference before sending out the alerts of the innocents that were presumably killed. But because she was impatient for results, Callum caught her in the act. |
| 453 | * GodhoodSeeker: Her greatest desire is to shake off her "cage of clay" and ascend do a higher plane of existence. |
| 454 | * GoneHorriblyRight: After meeting with Fae Toclerane, who is butt-hurt that Callum didn't straight up murder his ancient rival [[DisproportionateRetribution over a fart bomb at a school dance]], Constance comes up with the plan to get Callum's attention by murdering innocent mundanes and then framing Taisen's allied European shifters. She '''gets''' Callum's attention alright, and he tracks her vampire agent right back to her, where he hears her order some children be killed, to provoke him. Both Callum and Lucy, who now has a child of her own on the way, decide at that very moment that Constance needs to die. |
| 455 | * GreaterScopeVillain: Volume 3 reveals she's got her finger-prints on plenty of GAR nastiness. She backed Levigne's clear over-reach. She routinely provides "test-subjects" to Fane's lab. She's pushing to cover-up copy-cat crimes by vampires in Chicago. The list goes on. |
| 456 | * HatedByAll: When the video showcasing Fane's lab of horrors goes public, and her fingerprints of approval are all over it, just about everyone at GAR, supernatural, mage, or mundane alike absolutely loathes her, but until whatever mechanism that can get her out of office can be used, there's nothing they can do about it. |
| 457 | * HateSink: She is so odious, the fanbase is demanding her death '''on her very first appearance.''' |
| 458 | * InformedAttribute: She's supposedly a metal mage, but the only magic she ever uses is either through foci or tools that wield fae magic. She never uses her magic affinity on screen. |
| 459 | * ItsProbablyNothing: She manages to escape Callum's first attempt by sheer chance, waking up in the middle of the night, short of breath, when Callum tries using carbon monoxide and argon poisoning to take her out. She just shrugs it off as "stress" and goes right to her office to engage in further villainy. Callum and Lucy consider trying again in her office but then consider that it's too problematic, morally and pragmatically, to do that again, so come up with sending her to space without a rocket. |
| 460 | * LackOfEmpathy: She doesn't care about anyone or anything, unless it's somehow directly benefiting her at that very moment. When Agent Black, of all people, points out that DOA's own paperwork clearly shows Levigne exceeding his mundane hunting quota, Constance retorts "as long as TheMasquerade is unaffected, the lives of mundanes don't matter!" |
| 461 | * LetsYouAndHimFight: Attempted but averted, combined with FrameUp. She tries to set Taisen and Wells on a collision course by framing the latter for murdering mundanes and duds. Callum investigates and not only finds her vampire lackey planting evidence, but tracks the vampire back to her and ''records'' her ordering the hit on some school-children. |
| 462 | * MeanBoss: She's introduced yelling into an earpiece at one of her subordinates. |
| 463 | * ObstructiveBureaucrat: As much as she loves to harp about Levigne being a "pillar of the community," she can't be bothered to even pronounce the city he ruled, Minneapolis, correctly. So when Agents Ray Danforth and Black arrive at her office, investigating if Levigne had dirt on Chester, his suspected killer, the moment pleasantries are over, Constance's response is "are you here to make a deal? No? (Sigh) Fine. There's the door." |
| 464 | * PunchedAcrossTheRoom: Up to eleven and breaking the knob off. She's punched ''off the planet''. Callum considers several methods to try and bring vigilante justice, and settles on hitting her with a boulder going at Mach 2 to ideally crush her mage bubble, but had a portal open to outer-space, should the bubble hold. The bubble does indeed survive the impact, but she's pushed through the space-borne portal before it can be closed, and with no homebond, and even if she had one, there's no mana in space to draw from. |
| 465 | * ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem: Seems Agent Black owes Callum an apology, as Levigne was a criminal, even by GAR standards, as he was clearly exceeding his mundane hunting quota, but Constance, in her role as the chief of DOA, simply ignored it in exchange for bribes, and responds "It’s my department. So long as I keep things so that the mundanes don’t notice and cause trouble, it’s none of your business. Shut the door on your way out." |
| 466 | * SevenDeadlySins: Just from what she's shown on her first appearance, she seems to be trying for the whole set. |
| 467 | ** Greed: Her generous salary as Chief of DOA is not enough. She actively solicits bribes. |
| 468 | ** Pride: She sees herself as superior to ''everyone'', just because she's chief of DOA. |
| 469 | ** Sloth: She actively avoids doing her job as much as possible. |
| 470 | ** Wrath: Anything that interferes with either her greed or sloth drives her into a rage. She yells at a subordinate for asking her for help, and screams "Do your job!" so she doesn't have to lift a finger, and gives an icy DeathGlare to agents Danforth and Black as they're leaving her office both because they didn't come offering bribes and dared to present Levigne's over-reach, asking her to deal with it. |
| 471 | ** Gluttony: Chapter 12 of volume 3 shows that she's always ravenous in her desire for command and control, to hell with the lives of her victims as a result of her actions. |
| 472 | * StrawHypocrite: She clearly acts as if she's deathly allergic to doing her job, telling Agents Felicia Black and Ray Danforth to take a hike because they're not there to give her a deal, and clearly neglects to investigate the glaring fact that Levigne obviously exceeded his "mundane hunting quota" but she's introduced red-faced yelling into her earpiece at a subordinate "What?! Are you allergic to work? Do your job!" |
| 473 | * TautologicalTemplar: She sees herself as an un-thanked and underappreciated crusader for justice because she's maintaining the masquerade and keeping the peace. Who cares how underhanded and unethical her methods are, or how many victims result from her actions. The "big picture" is all that matters. |
| 474 | * UnderestimatingBadassery: She thought she and her vampire lackeys were perfectly safe in her swanky GAR Parisian neighborhood, and she can do her villainy unchallenged, hiding behind her bureaucratic machine. She was dead wrong. |
| 475 | * WouldHurtAChild: Her final act of villainy is ordering her vampire lackey to have his nest wipe out some school-children as "that should get Callum's attention." Callum responds by wiping out the vampire nest in question and then launching Constance herself into space via portal before she can even react to the news. |
| 476 | [[/folder]] |
| 477 | |
| 478 | [[folder: Teller Janry]] |
| 479 | After several false starts, he takes the reigns of DAI following Constance's removal. |
| 480 | ---- |
| 481 | * BeleagueredBureaucrat: Rather than taking over immediately after Constance's death, he lets a few others try their hand at it, so they feel the heat. They retaliate by leaving him a mess of disorganized files and inventories, no documentation of their actions, and no proof of any kind of law-enforcement or recordkeeping, and he still has to play politics with the vampire and fae factions, both of which are pressuring him to try and rein in both Callum Wells and Chester's American Alliance. |
| 482 | * UnderestimatingBadassery: After somehow being tipped off by the Torres cartel regarding Wells, he just presumed his strike-team with several vampires and mages would easily storm Callum's bunker as long as he had Duvall lock the guy down to prevent escape. Callum had been working for at least 2 years with Shahe to try and open inter-dimensional portals and had greatly increased his options, including finding a portal to a world of {{Antimagic}}. The entire strike team, including Teller Janry himself, were crippled and immobilized by an outpouring of anti-mana and teleported into space, dying. Only Duvall herself escaped, because she's enough of a hypocrite to copy Callum's tactic to place a homebond inside her body, despite calling him a heretic for doing the same. |
| 483 | [[/folder]] |
| 484 | |
| 485 | [[folder: O'Keefe]] |
| 486 | Teller Janry's replacement at DAI. |
| 487 | ---- |
| 488 | * CurbstompBattle: He makes a valiant effort to defend himself by trapping Chester in a ball of water and ice, but Chester's faced far worse mages, and tears through the guy's defenses to crush his neck. |
| 489 | * DentedIron: All GAR mages are required to have combat experience in the portal worlds, but sitting behind a desk pushing papers has dulled him. When Alpha Chester storms his office in retaliation for having his compound leveled and many of his pack unjustly harmed, he doesn't really stand a chance. |
| 490 | * KarmicDeath: He used compromised US Federal agents, either by corruption, mind-control, or both to storm Chester's compound under the pretext of tax evasion, of which Chester's innocent, purely to try and murder Chester's entire pack. Chester comes for him and squeezes his throat so hard, his head pops off like a PEZ dispenser. |
| 491 | * LegalizedEvil: He rewrote all of GAR's laws and regulations so they'd purely favor House Janry, even going so far as to give aid and comfort to the Master of Weltentor's attempts at mass murder and targeting Felicia Black. |
| 492 | * MakingASplash: Combined with AnIcePerson. He's a mage who specializes in water and ice magic. |
| 493 | * OffWithHisHead: He ends his life having his head popped off like a PEZ dispenser by an enraged Alpha Chester. |
| 494 | * SmugSnake: He collaborated with Archamge Janry on the premise that The American Alliance would never retaliate, for fear of blowing their cover. '''Suprise'''. Chester breaks through the door to his own office and comes for his head, literally. |
| 495 | [[/folder]] |
| 496 | |
| 497 | ! Enchanters Guild: |
| 498 | |
| 499 | [[folder: Grand Magus Lorenzo Rossi]] |
| 500 | The chief in charge of the enchanter's guild. |
| 501 | ---- |
| 502 | * HoistByHisOwnPetard: His own attempts to smoke out Wells by spreading parts of enchanting guild designs among mundane authorities and marking them as "the work of a terrorist" tips off Wells that they're after him. |
| 503 | * KnowWhenToFoldEm: After learning that Wells took down Archmage Fane, he has his organization go from "Bring him in" to "Let's make a deal!" |
| 504 | * ReasonableAuthorityFigure: When he and Wells finally manage to sit down and have a chat, all he asks is for Wells to stop spreading around Enchanting Guild Intellectual Property, startled, Callum asks for specifics and agrees to it, then the guild offers to ''hire him'' to prepare space-attribute enchantments and pays Lucy royalties for her work with enchanting obsidian glass from Portal world 6. Wells still doesn't trust the guild as far as he can throw them, but he's happy to work ''with'' them, as long as they pay him appropriately. |
| 505 | * SkewedPriorities: Of all the things he could object to in regards to Wells, the thing that gets his panties in knots is ''copyright infringement'' because Wells cribbed together several enchantments he scouted from observing portals in action to make his own. |
| 506 | * VillainHasAPoint: Even in the most free and open society, protecting intellectual property rights is a well-established facet of law, so he's right in wanting to protect Enchanting Guild secrets. |
| 507 | [[/folder]] |
| 508 | |
| 509 | ! House Janry |
| 510 | |
| 511 | [[folder: Archamge Janry]] |
| 512 | The leader of the nominally "Pro GAR" faction. GAR self-destructing actually doesn't matter to him or his allies, as he and his faction were just using GAR as a front. With its destruction, he and his allies convince themselves that they are righteousness incarnate for pushing forward their own interests regardless of the cost for everyone else. |
| 513 | ---- |
| 514 | * AristocratsAreEvil: As with most archmage houses, he's centuries old, from a time with a feudal culture and thinks like an aristocrat. As such, serving his interests, regardless of cost, is the height of righteousness, and everyone who opposes him is, at best, "misguided" and has to be brought into line by force, or the very definition of evil for daring to oppose him. |
| 515 | * AssumedWin: During the entire conflict with Wells and Chester's American Alliance, he presumed he would always come out on top, because the latter preferred the peaceful solution. So he tries to bury Chester with bought and geas'd politicians and when that doesn't work, has the ATF storm Chester's place, again under a pretext of a warrant for his arrest, which they never present, and has one of his own mages attack the federal officers in order to frame Chester as the criminal, resulting in Chester's compound being reduced to a smoking hole in the ground, and he presumed Chester's death. Chester retaliates by his own standards and completely annihilates DAI, or GAR-Paris, no survivors. |
| 516 | * EvilCannotComprehendGood: Like all tyrants throughout history, since he can only see people as either useful assets, pawns, and tools, or as obstacles that must be removed, he is incapable of believing that there are some people who don't want anything more than to be left alone to live their lives in peace, so he goes out of his way to bring everyone under his control or kill them if he can't. |
| 517 | * FalseFlagOperation: He is '''obsessed''' with trying to vilify and delegitimize the American Alliance by painting them as the villains through frame-ups, and committing atrocity in their name and leaving the evidence at their feet, in order to make mundane authorities too weakened to resist his and his allies' invasion and conquest. He's even willing to instigate a nuclear war to do it. |
| 518 | * FlatWhat: He can only respond with a stunned "What." when fae from The Court of Roses inform him that Prince Jusael is dead, removed by Callum Wells. He proceeds to inform The Master of Weltentor who then decides to go after Felicia, thinking that Felicia is giving The Ghost legitimacy, as opposed to the truth that it's the other way around. |
| 519 | * FrameUp: He uses a mix of corrupt and mind-controlled federal agents to launch an ATF raid on Chester's compound, claiming they have a warrant for Chester's arrest, presumably on tax evasion charges, but never present the warrant. One of his own mages, using a glamour, opens fire on the ATF, provoking an armed confrontation, resulting in the destruction of Chester's compound. |
| 520 | * IgnorantOfTheirOwnIgnorance: Even after Duvall has flat out told him of the pitfalls of Portal World searching, he still thinks it's an easy task just because he knows Wells is doing it, unaware of all the safeguards Wells has to use and the close calls he's had, like seeing an eldritch entity '''the size of a solar system'''. Furthermore, after Wells used a bane-metal slug accelerated to relativistic speeds to simulate a nuclear blast as a show of force to dissuade a Faerie invasion of Earth and to make it clear that open warfare is a bad idea, he thinks it's a grand idea to ''actively instigate'' a nuclear Armageddon, and try and frame the American Alliance, especially Wells, for it, completely and willfully unaware of the aftermath of such an action. |
| 521 | * MoralMyopia: With 100% certainty, every vampire that came to Earth was a murder-happy monster who hunted humans, mundane and mage alike, for sport, every chance they got. Fae King Ravaeb was the aggressor attacking all his neighbors, shifter, fae, human, indiscriminately. Constance was corrupt as hell and saw nothing wrong with violating every law in her way for money, even targeting helpless children for death when it suits her. Yet, he sees Callum as the bad guy for stopping them by any means necessary, including shutting down the portal to the Night Lands, because his personal interests might, just might be adversely affected. |
| 522 | ** He's spent his entire screen presence either trying to kill Callum himself or having agents and allies kill Callum on his behalf, but the instant he sees that Callum wants to kill him in return, he sees Callum as nothing more than a deranged psychopath. |
| 523 | * MurderIsTheBestSolution: His go-to response to any power bloc, agent, or person(s) that he can't bring to heel is to murder them, and he sees that as A-ok. If they retaliate, they're psychos who are too dangerous to live. |
| 524 | * PsychologicalProjection: He tries to convince Archmages Hargrave and Taisen that Chester's North American Alliance will not tolerate the existence of any power except their own, immediately after Callum Wells removed the heavily corrupt Constance Earl and her vampire allies, before Callum could publicly reveal his motive, never mind investigate the mountain of corruption in the paperwork he seized from her office as he booted her to space. At the end of Volume 4, it's revealed that he's the one guilty of this mindset, scheming to pressure the Guild of Enchanting to cut off all "rogue" Archmage houses (read: Those not affiliated with him), destroy Chester's Alliance, and above all else, eliminate Callum Wells because they aren't under his control. |
| 525 | [[/folder]] |
| 526 | |
| 527 | ! Mundane Authorities |
| 528 | |
| 529 | [[folder: Agent Daniel Lowry]] |
| 530 | An IRS hitman, he's accustomed to doing the organization's dirty work, and shouting "IRS" into terrifying his targets into a panic. He approaches the Chester compound in Nebraska, unannounced, and is beside himself with rage when Chester barely reacts, shouting "assaulting Federal Agents" when his men draw guns and are harmlessly disarmed. |
| 531 | ---- |
| 532 | * TheBully: He lives for the thrill of terrifying people with the most dreaded acronym in the world and watching them panic. When he tries this on Chester, only for the latter to lawyer up, he goes into an apoplectic fit. |
| 533 | * {{Expy}}: A government bureaucrat who loves to bully people and goes into apoplectic fits when his self-proclaimed authority is challenged? [[Franchise/GhostBusters Walter Peck]] anyone? |
| 534 | * HollywoodLaw: Attempted and averted. He's been figuratively kicking in doors and shouting "IRS!" so long that he's utterly clueless how to act when he's up against someone who knows his rights, has read IRS.GOV, and knows the IRS doesn't send official auditors to people's homes unannounced. |
| 535 | * MuggingTheMonster: On his way to the Chester Compound, he thinks he's dealing with some back-water hick, or maybe a cattle rancher who would be easy pickings for his self-proclaimed authority, surprised to even get cell-phone coverage on the way. When he sees the strongly walled off compound, he's thinking he's dealing with maybe some backwater cult. He goes full-tilt StayInTheKitchen with Lisa and talks down to Chester himself. He is utterly flummoxed and confused when Chester shows he's actually smarter than he is, and disarms his men when they foolishly draw their guns the moment he so much as starts shouting "I'm a Federal Agent, you have to let me see your records! It's a legal order!" |
| 536 | * RulesLawyer: Invoked. He's specifically sent by his superiors to try and "knock Chester down a dozen pegs or so" so he writes down in a notepad everything he thinks he can use to quote some obscure, or even non-existent, law with which to harass Chester. He's utterly flummoxed when Chester goes for his lawyer, and calls in ''The District Attorney'' to deal with him. |
| 537 | * ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem: He hires a taxi to drive him to the Chester compound unannounced, writes a bunch of things in a notepad he'll try and use as "violations" that he can fine and harass Chester with, demands entry without warrant nor subpoena, and then just summarily insists on seeing Chester's most private financial records after barely showing a badge, and when Chester calls his lawyer, not only flies into a tantrum, but his men draw guns. He pointedly refuses to believe that's not how the IRS, which he claims to work for, does things, and fails to comprehend that he's in Nebraska, not Washington DC, the latter of which seems to view the citizens as the criminals if they dare defend themselves against armed intruders, while the former favors the Second Amendment more favorably and has stronger "Stand Your Ground" and "Castle Doctrine" laws, where Chester's men would have been well within their rights to gun him and his associates down, for rightly believing he's a IRS fraudster and threatening them with lethal force when challenged. |
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