Characters / Dragon Quest IV

The cast of Dragon Quest IV. Alternate names for characters are in parentheses.

The Chosen

In General

Clockwise from the top: The Hero (both of them), Maya and Meena, Torneko, Borya, Alena, Kiryl, and Ragnar.

A party comprised of the legendary hero prophecized to slay the Lord of the Underworld and the seven people destined to guide them on their journey.

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• Can't Drop the Hero: Though the party recruits many Guest-Star Party Members throughout the game, at least one of the eight Chosen is required to be in the active party at any given time, with the game justifying this by explaining that the non-Chosen party members don't have a clear enough understanding of the quest to stake out on their own. Despite explicitly not being one of the Chosen, Psaro is exempt from this rule in the remakes and treated as a full-time party member.
• The Chosen Many: While only the Hero is fated to defeat the Lord of the Underworld, the other seven are all destined to assist them in doing so.
• Competitive Balance: The party is divided up in such a way that everyone fulfills a particular niche that makes them all useful in their own way:
  • The Hero is a Master of All with excellent strength and HP, the ability to equip the strongest weapons and armor in the game, and exclusive access to the strongest offensive (Zap, Kazap, and Kazapple) and healing (Omniheal) magic. This allows them to serve as a stable and flexible force in battle that can fill any role in a pinch. This is further emphasized in the original game, in which they're the only party member the player is able to control directly. Their weaknesses include their lackluster agility, the third-worst in the party after Ragnar and Torneko, and their MP pool, which is the smallest of any of the party's magic users.
  • Ragnar and Alena are frontline fighters with high strength growths that allow them to dish out excellent damage. Ragnar is a Mighty Glacier with the highest HP growth of the party but the lowest agility. He is also the only character other than the Hero who can equip heavy weapons and armor, giving him consistent access to the best attack and defense-boosting items in the game. Alena is a Glass Cannon with the highest strength and agility growths of the party and an excellent critical hit rate but middling HP. Unlike Ragnar, she is a Bare-Fisted Monk with a very limited selection of weapons and armor to choose from, forcing her to rely primarily on her own physical stats in combat. Ragnar excels at stably giving and taking high amounts of damage and is an ideal choice for drawn out battles such as boss fights whereas Alena is best at dealing sudden bursts of massive damage before the enemy has an opportunity to act, making her shine during Random Encounters. Both also require distinct amounts of investment in order to make full use of their strengths, with Ragnar gaining levels the fastest of any party member but requiring large amounts of money to be spent to keep him well-equipped and Alena being subjected to Magikarp Power that forces her to be leveled up substantially in order to take advantage of the unique scaling of her critical hit rate.
  • Borya and Maya are mages with poor physical stats and equipment options but access to powerful magic. While both are Squishy Wizards, Maya is superior to Borya in every stat other than agility and is able to equip powerful female-exclusive equipment lategame, making her sturdier overall. Maya's spell pool consists almost exclusively of powerful offensive magic such as Bang, Boom, and Kaboom, which can hit every enemy in battle at once for massive damage. While Borya lacks Maya's damage potential, he instead learns potent support magic such as Oomph and Acceleratle, which respectively double a party member's attack and agility. Maya is the ideal choice for both crowd control and dealing concentrated damage to a single target whereas Borya is better when it comes to maximizing the strengths of his allies.
  • Kiryl and Meena are both Combat Medics with the ability to cast healing magic and fairly balanced stats overall. Kiryl has better HP and MP growths than Meena and learns the spells Multiheal, which heals every party member at once, and Buff and Kabuff, which raise the defense values of the party member it is cast on. In comparison, Meena has better strength growths than Kiryl and learns the spells Insulatle, which improves an ally's resistance to fire and ice attacks, and Woosh and Swoosh, which deal high damage to groups of enemies. Kiryl has more consistent access to equipment throughout the game, but Meena is able to equip female-exclusive armor lategame that gives her superior resistance to fire and ice attacks than him. Kiryl is more defensively-oriented and better at acting as a pure support character whereas Meena is more flexible and can act offensively if the situation requires it.
  • Torneko is a Lethal Joke Character who is completely overshadowed by his fellow frontline fighters in terms of stats and equipment options. Despite this, he is able to randomly perform unique actions in battle that have a number of beneficial effects. Some of these abilities are completely unique to him and highly useful, such as protecting an ally from enemy attacks, silencing an enemy before it can cast a spell, and stealing rare items from an enemy. Outside of battle, he has a number of useful skills that make traversing through dungeons more convenient, such as reducing the rate of enemy encounters and nullifying the effects of hazardous terrain. He is a Difficult, but Awesome character who can potentially trivialize enemy encounters provided luck is on the player's side.
  • More broadly, the male party members (with the exception of Borya) have a wider range of weapon and equipment options while the female ones (with the exception of the female Hero) compensate by having exclusive equipment that is statistically superior to anything the men can use at the time it's obtained. Overall, the men lean closer toward being Boring, but Practical than the women, having more stability at the cost of less potency.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: Should the player choose the female Hero at the start of the game, then the final party will consist of four women (the Hero, Alena, Meena, and Maya) and four men (Ragnar, Borya, Kiryl and Torneko). The remakes' bonus chapter throws off the balance in favor of men with the addition of Psaro as a playable character.
• Multinational Team: The localization of the remakes transforms them into one: One Scottish guy (Ragnar), one Irishman (Taloon), three Russians (Alena, Kiryl, Borya), two dark-skinned French Romani with some Indian ancestry (Maya and Meena), and your Hero, whose nationality equivalent is a bit unclear.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: And how. If it wasn't for the fact they all oppose the same evil and are hunting the same villains, it would seem very odd that a soldier, a priest, a princess, a magic tutor, a merchant, two traveling entertainers, and some young boy/girl are all traveling together.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Each party member in IV is a direct successor to a vocation from Dragon Quest III, inheriting some or all of the skills, magic, and stat layout from their predecessor.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: The game automatically ends if all of the Chosen are wiped out in battle, regardless of if a non-Chosen party member is still available to fight. Despite explicitly not being one of the Chosen, Psaro is exempt from this rule in the remakes and treated as a full-time party member.

The Hero

The Hero

Male Hero voiced by: Jun'ichi Kanemaru (Drama CD), Takeshi Kusao (Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince), Joshua Wichard

The Chosen One whom the forces of evil are currently scouring the world for, in hopes of putting a premature end to that pesky prophecy. Until the day destiny comes a-calling, however, they're enjoying a peaceful, easygoing life, playing with their best friend Eliza and practicing their swordsmanship...

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• '80s Hair: Both of them sport some. While the female Hero's poofy green mane is the more standout example of this trope, the male Hero's feathered green mullet deserves some attention as well.
• Action Girl: The female Hero is no less capable than the male, and will go on serve as the party's strongest frontline fighter, mage, and healer by the end of the game if selected.
• All-Loving Hero: While their Doomed Hometown gives them more than enough reason to be motivated to defeat Psaro purely for the sake of revenge, dialogue from other characters makes it clear that they are doing so in the name of protecting the world and everyone in it and aren't letting their personal feelings cloud their judgment. Becomes even more apparent in the remake, where they choose to use a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to revive Rose rather than any of their own loved ones in the name of showing forgiveness to Psaro and joining hands with him to defeat Aamon.
• Ambiguously Gay: Eliza remains the Hero's Implied Love Interest regardless of their gender. The priest in Femiscyra thinks that the female Hero is jealous of him living in an all female realm and she can also try to go to the "puff-puff" room in Laissez-Faire, but she'll deny you.
• Ambiguous Situation: Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince reveals that Psaro was in fact framed by his older half-brother, Dolph, for the massacre of Solo’s Doomed Hometown. While Solo arrives to save Psaro from Dolph shortly after the latter mentions having done so, it’s unclear if Solo was within earshot yet and now aware of Psaro’s innocence. Though Solo declaring that he still intends to kill Psaro one day suggests that he wasn’t.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Kazapple is a powerful Combined Energy Attack spell with a flashy animation, but requires everyone in the active party to contribute a hefty 15 MP to use. Along with burning through MP reserves quickly, this also means that none of Ragnar, Alena, or Torneko (who don't have any MP to contribute) can be present for it to be usable, severely limiting party combinations. To make it even less practical, no one else in the party can take action during the turn it's used on.
• Battle Bikini: The male Hero wears long sleeves and pants, while the female Hero looks like she's wearing a swimsuit under a off-the-shoulder short tank, one detached sleeve, and a detached pants legs/tights... thing.
• The Call Knows Where You Live: They lived out the majority of their life in a small village being trained to eventually fulfill their destiny as The Chosen One. Chapter five begins with Psaro leading his forces in razing said village to the ground in an attempt to kill the Hero, which kickstarts their adventure to defeat him.
• Canon Name: The PlayStation port uses Solo for the male hero and Sofia for the female Hero in promotional screenshots, both of which are generally used whenever the characters appear elsewhere. Meanwhile the drama CD gives the male Hero the name Rei and the novel calls him Yuuril.
• Can't Drop the Hero: In an unusual departure for the Dragon Quest series, this trope is played with. While it's impossible to remove any of the eight main characters from the party, the Hero is only required to participate in the active party while exploring the Stairway to Zenithia and can otherwise be left on standby in the carriage if the player so wishes. The remakes also contain the only instance of party chat in the series that doesn't require the Hero to be present to be used, and in fact have several lines of dialogue that can only be seen if they aren't in the active party (and, conversely, several lines of dialogue that can only be seen if they are).
• Chekhov's Gunman: You begin the original version of the game by naming them, only for them to not make an actual appearance in the story until the start of the fifth chapter, which can take anywhere between six to ten hours of playtime to reach. Lessened considerably in the remakes, which add a short prologue that places you in control of them before moving on into Ragnar's chapter.
• The Chosen One: As the fabled offspring of a human and a zenithian, they are fated to wield the Zenithian equipment to defeat the Lord of the Underworld and save the world. Psaro's attempts to subvert this prophecy by killing them before they are able to live up to it is what inspires his actions for most of the early sections of the game.
• Combat Medic: Learns healing magic in addition to being a formidable frontline fighter, and is the only party member capable of learning the strongest healing spell Omniheal.
• Combined Energy Attack: Learn the spell Kazapple, which deals high damage to all enemies present in a battle at the cost of taking 15 MP from every party member participating.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince establishes that the male Hero, Solo, is the canon hero.
• Doomed Hometown: Their chapter begins with their village getting destroyed by Psaro's army in an attempt to kill them before they can rise against him. They manage to survive due to Eliza taking on their appearance and sacrificing herself and promptly set out into the world to fulfill their destiny as The Chosen One.
• Evil Overlooker: The male Hero is confusingly framed in a position reminiscent of this trope on the original game's box art, which has led to more than one person mistakenly assuming him to be the game's Big Bad.
• Foil: To Torneko. While they're both from small and unassuming villages tucked away from the rest of the world, the Hero is an orphaned youth raised from birth for the purpose of saving the world as The Chosen One whereas Torneko is a middle-aged man with a wife and son who works as an ordinary merchant. Their reasons for setting out into the wider world are also starkly different, with the Hero awakening to their destiny after having their hometown destroyed by monsters and Torneko simply following his dream of opening a weapon shop of his own. This is further reflected in their respective roles in battle, with the Hero being a Master of All with the strength and skills needed to reliably serve as substitute for any of the party's fighters, mages or healers in a pinch and Torneko being a Lethal Joke Character capable of randomly performing actions that no one else in the party can. The original version of the game makes this even more apparent, as while the Hero is the only member of the party the player is able to control directly, Torneko's goofing off makes him the member of the party the player has the least amount of control over.
• Game-Favored Gender: Downplayed in comparison to other installments in the series, but the female Hero is able to equip the very useful Pink Leotard armor, enabling her to have substantially better defenses than the male Hero during the mid-game. While this advantage goes away by the end of the original game, as the game's strongest armors can be equipped by either gender, the remakes introduce the female-exclusive Angel Leotard, which gives the strongest resistances to fire and ice attacks of any armor in the game in addition to having comparable defenses to the game's other best armors.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Their adventure begins with their hometown getting destroyed and everybody they've ever known getting killed by monsters, forcing them to set off on a quest to defeat the Lord of the Underworld with nothing more than the clothes on their back and whatever odds and ends they can find in the wreckage of their home. Fittingly, their Luck Stat doesn't start to grow at all until they reach level 11.
• Glacier Waif: The female Hero plays exactly the same as the male Hero, making her one of the party's heaviest hitters and the only female party member capable of equipping heavy weapons and armor at the cost of being fairly slow.
• Guest Fighter: The male Hero is one of the four Heroes that collectively make up the Hero DLC character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
• Half-Human Hybrid: They're the child of a zenithian woman and a human woodcutter that she fell in love with. Their status as such is precisely what enables them to be The Chosen One. The person implied to be their grandfather in the Woodcutter's hut is shown as a dwarf, as well, possibly making them 1/4 dwarven, 1/4 human and 1/2 zenithian.
• Heavy Equipment Class: The only party member other than Ragnar capable of equipping heavy weapons and armor and the only party member capable of wielding the Zenithian Sword and Armor.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Their name is chosen by the player at the start of the game.
• The Hero: A classic example: they're the main player character, The Chosen One destined to defeat the forces of evil, and the leader of the party.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: While their weapon repertoire also includes things like lances and axes, their unique weapon is the Zenithian Sword, and they're always depicted wielding it in both artwork and sprites.
• Heroic Mime: They're completely silent, unlike everyone else in the party.
• I Choose to Stay: They're offered the chance to live in Zenithia after saving the world, but refuse due to their reluctance to part from their companions.
• Legendary in the Sequel: Their victory over Estark makes them renowned the world over and strikes fear into monsters even beyond the story of Dragon Quest IV itself. This actually ends up being a bad thing in Dragon Quest V, as it leads to Grandmaster Nimzo calling for the slaughtering of all of their blood descendants out of fear of another legendary hero appearing to foil him.
• Magic Knight: Along with having excellent strength and HP and access to heavy weapons and armor, the Hero learns top-class attack and healing spells at later levels.
• Master of All: By late game, they have high HP and strength and access to the strongest equipment and offensive and defensive spells in the party, enabling them to competently fulfill any role during battle in a pinch. The only things keeping them from completely overshadowing everyone else are their lackluster speed, low MP pool, slow growth rate, and inability to act more than once per turn.
• Out of Focus: The female Hero is invariably featured in spin-offs and cameos much less often than the male.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Averted. Certain lines of dialogue change notably depending on your gender, and certain equipment options become available or unavailable.
• Random Effect Spell: Eventually learn the spell Hocus Pocus, which can cause one of a variety of effects to happen in battle, both positive and negative.
• Rookie Red Ranger: By the time their adventure begins, all of their destined allies are experienced travelers whereas they are a level 1 neophyte who's never set foot outside of their village. While they level up quickly enough to make up the difference around the time Alena, Borya, and Kiryl join the party, they'll spend the early stretches of their chapter completely dependent on the much higher-leveled Meena and Maya for protection.
• Schrödinger's Player Character: Whichever gender the player doesn't choose at the start of the game vanishes from existence for the remainder of it.
• Shock and Awe: They gain the Zap, Kazap, and Kazapple spells as they level up.
• Suddenly Voiced: The female Hero has an entire conversation with the protagonist of Dragon Quest VI if the "Near Future" version of Reaper's Peak is chosen in the remake's Fungeon, and reveals herself to be surprisingly eloquent to boot. Averted by the male Hero, who is too engrossed in a conversation with Eliza to pay attention to the protagonist and doesn't have any of his dialogue in said conversation shown.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: The female Hero is a tough Action Girl who can equip heavy weapons and armor and dresses in a fairly unfeminine fashion, but looking into a mirror with her as the party leader may occasionally have her think about wearing makeup.

Ragnar

Ragnar McRyan, Royal Soldier

Voiced by: Shinji Ogawa (Drama CD), Tomokazu Sugita (Dragon Quest Heroes series, Dragon Quest Rivals, and Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince), Gordon Cooper (Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince'') [EN]

A royal soldier who has served faithfully under the king of Burland for several years. Along with the rest of the knights, he is dispatched to investigate the mysterious disappearances of several children from Strathbaile.

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• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: The novelization version of Ragnar is an outcast among the soldiers of Burland due to both discrimination for being an ethnic minority and for being the adopted son of a minister assumed to have only obtained his position through nepotism. In the game itself, neither of these traits are present and Ragnar appears to mostly be well-liked by his fellow soldiers.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: The novelization depicts him as being from an ethnic minority in the mountains of Burland who was adopted by a minister that saw promise in him, which isn't even slightly alluded to in the game itself.
• Amazon Chaser: Admits that a female warrior who claims she'll only marry someone who can defeat her in battle may be his dream woman.
• Badass Normal: Possesses no magical abilities whatsoever and lacks either Alena's unique critical hit rate or Torneko's unique actions; his main strengths in battle are his high strength, health, and defense and his ability to wear heavy equipment.
• Book Ends: He's the first party member the player gets to control and the last one that joins the party during the final chapter. This is lessened somewhat in the remake, where a short prologue starring the Hero is added before his chapter and Psaro is made into a playable character in the bonus chapter.
• Boring, but Practical: He's the least flashy member of the party in terms of how he can contribute in battle; not only can he not cast any magic, but he doesn't have Alena's astronomical critical hit rate or Torneko's useful goof-off actions either. Despite this, as the party member with the highest HP and most consistent access to strong equipment, he can both reliably deal high damage and take much more of a beating than everyone else, which makes him really shine during boss battles. He also levels up the fastest out of the party, which prevents him from needing to be trained very much to remain useful. His status as this is particularly evident in the original release of the game, where a party member who is only capable of performing a few actions in battle is much less susceptible to the Artificial Stupidity that plagues everyone else.
• Brave Scot: Ragnar is a valiant soldier of Burland, where the people all speak in Scottish brogues.
• The Champion: His success in rescuing the missing children during his chapter earns him his king's favor, which in turn allows him permission to leave Burland in search of the Hero.
• Character Roster Global Warming: A rare non-fighting game example. In the original game, Ragnar's status as the slowest party member was counterbalanced by his ability to equip heavy weapons and armor, making him a Mighty Glacier with a distinct and useful role in battle. The remakes' introduction of Psaro as a party member effectively renders Ragnar redundant, as he can also wield heavy weapons and armor in addition to being much faster and capable of using magic and special techniques. While everyone in the party has their uniqueness decline somewhat after Psaro's recruitment, Ragnar has it the worst by far.
• Cool Old Guy: He's a middle-aged knight who is both dependable in battle and fairly laid-back when on the road.
• Covert Pervert: The remake gives him several lines of dialogue that imply he has a preoccupation with the ladies, such as him being fascinated with Femiscyra, lamenting that his rugged looks make him unpopular with women when inspecting himself in the mirror, and being envious of how beautiful Torneko's wife is.
• Crutch Character: As a no-frills warrior with high strength and HP, he can handle every enemy he comes across during his chapter without much trouble, which helps ease new players into the game's system before more complicated elements such as magic and party management are introduced. By the time he rejoins the party, while still a perfectly viable character, the enemy encounters have become difficult enough that the player will need to coordinate his strengths with those of the rest of the party to succeed.
• Foil: To Alena. Both are melee-oriented fighters affiliated with large kingdoms, but while Ragnar is a stern middle-aged soldier of humble birth and great loyalty to his king, Alena is a young Rebellious Princess who would much rather shirk her duties to live out her dreams. The arcs of their respective chapters also move in parallel but opposite directions, with Ragnar's beginning with him investigating the disappearance of citizens within his kingdom and ending with him leaving it to explore the world in search of the Hero and Alena's beginning with her leaving her kingdom to take part in a fighting tournament and ending with her returning to it to investigate the disappearance of its citizens. This difference is further highlighted by their respective roles in battle, with Alena specializing in taking out enemies quickly with her high speed and critical hit rate and Ragnar specializing in surviving drawn out battles through his high health and defense.
• Former Teen Rebel: While he's a loyal and dependable soldier as an adult, by his own admission he was a troublemaker who often wandered away from home to explore dangerous caves when he was a kid.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: He's the only trained fighter in the party, which makes it understandable why he's also the party member who levels up the fastest.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: While his lackluster starting equipment is given the justification of Burland lacking the budget to properly fund its military, it's still rather odd for a seasoned soldier like him to begin the game at level 1. Even if, as stated above, he levels up the fastest to compensate for this.
• Genius Bonus: Ragnar, a Scandinavian name, at first seems out of place for a resident of the Scottish-themed Burland. Unless, of course, you are familiar with Scottish history and the role the Vikings played therein, particularly in Orkney.
• Heavy Equipment Class: The only party member apart from the Hero who can equip the heaviest sets of weapons and armor.
• Hero of Another Story: He can be encountered in Alena and Torneko's chapters in the middle of his search for the Hero. He's notably the only one among the chosen who can be encountered outside of his focus chapter prior to the start of the fifth one.
• Informed Flaw: One of the soldiers in Burland describes him as a carefree dawdler, even after he has singlehandedly rescued the missing children and joined the Hero on their quest to save the world. Lampshaded in the remakes, where speaking to Maya and/or Meena in party chat after talking to this soldier has them acknowledge that his claims about Ragnar couldn't be farther from the truth.
• Irony: He's the first member of the party to learn of the Hero's existence, and can be encountered throughout the other chapters traveling the world in search of them, but ends up being the last one to meet them. If that wasn't enough, it's ultimately the Hero who finds him, not the other way around. He even acknowledges this irony if spoken to with party chat while visiting Mintos.
• Late Character Syndrome: Actively averted: he's given a boatload of free experience points at the end of his chapter to raise his level to be comparable to the rest of the party when it finally recruits him in the fifth chapter. On top of that, he gains levels the fastest out of the party, so he'll quickly clear the distance even if everyone else is a significantly higher level than him when he joins.
• Magically Inept Fighter: He fights solely using weapons. In his chapter, he relies on Healie for healing magic.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: While the king of Burland assigns all of the kingdom's soldiers to investigate the missing children, only Ragnar makes any meaningful progress. On top of that, he also has to provide his own equipment for the job, as the kingdom lacks the resources to properly fund their military.
• Manly Facial Hair: Sports a huge and bushy mustache befitting of a brave and burly warrior.
• Mighty Glacier: He has high strength and HP growth rates and access to heavy weapons and armor, giving him both a fantastic damage output and the sturdiest defenses of the party. As a tradeoff, his agility growth is by far the worst of the playable characters and he'll likely spend the entire game acting last during battle unless his speed is modified using items.
• Moe Couplet: A stern, manly soldier who kindly takes in the adoring and adorable Healie as his companion. The two form the perfect team in battle, with Healie's healing allowing Ragnar to stay fighting fit to clobber whatever enemies they come across. It should come as no surprise that almost all of Ragnar's appearances in spin-offs have him accompanied by Healie.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: The only member of the party with visibly developed muscles is also a Mighty Glacier with steady strength and defense growths and the ability to equip heavy weapons and armor.
• Odd Friendship: Develops one with Healie.
• One-Man Army: Probably literally, considering how incompetent the rest of Burland's military appears to be. He'll spend most of his introductory chapter fighting alone, with his eventual companion Healie primarily assisting him through healing rather than attacking.
• Only Sane Employee: The rest of Burland's military is of pretty suspect competence, with one soldier even becoming lost in a cavern that is only a single screen long. Thankfully for them, Ragnar has more than enough strength and smarts to get the job done by himself.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Out of the party, Ragnar is hit the hardest by Psaro's recruitment in the remake in terms of having his usefulness decline. In addition to sharing Ragnar's access to heavy equipment, Psaro also has the unique ability to wear cursed equipment without penalty and has his own set of Infinity Plus One Gear in the form of the Pandemonic Armor and Sword. Additionally, Psaro's more versatile stat distribution and access to spells and abilities not usable by anyone else in the party give him even more sharp edges over Ragnar.
• Perpetual Frowner: A comment he makes about his face if you look in a mirror, lamenting that it's probably the reason why he doesn't get much attention from the ladies.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: Holds the distinction among the party members for being the only one to appear across multiple chapters, making cameos in Alena and Torneko's after starring in his own and before returning as a party member in the fifth.
• Real Men Wear Pink: He's decked out in a full suit of pink armor and is among the party's toughest warriors.
• Recurring Element: Continues the legacy established by the Warrior characters in Dragon Quest III by wearing pink armor.
• Suddenly Voiced: In the remake, he's a Heroic Mime during his introductory chapter but becomes just as chatty as the rest of cast when he joins the Hero's party.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Ragnar stands in for the Warrior vocation from Dragon Quest III, down to the bright pink armor.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Party chat implies him to be this with Torneko. On the occasions when one brings up the other, it tends to be to insult them. Despite this, Ragnar is quick to state that he'll protect Torneko through thick and thin when he hears that he's been pursued by monsters in the past and the two appear together frequently in artwork and spin-off games.
• Younger Than They Look: Despite his grizzled exterior, the drama CD gives his age as 29. However, as an undisclosed amount of time passes between his chapter and the fifth one, there's room to argue that some years pass between his introduction and when he finally joins the Hero to justify his looks.

Alena

Tsarevna Alena

Voiced by: Konami Yoshida (Drama CD), Shoko Nakagawa (Dragon Quest Heroes series [JP], Dragon Quest Rivals), Denise Gough (Dragon Quest Heroes series and Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince [EN])

The Tsarevna of Zamoksva. Her father disapproves of her Tomboyish ways, and would much prefer she become a prim and proper lady. But Alena's more than ready to start adventuring, whether her father approves or not—nothing's going to stand in her way, not even the castle walls!

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• Action Girl: Stands out among the female party members for being the only one that is purely melee focused, and is a Bare-Fisted Monk with the highest strength growth in the party to boot!
• All Amazons Want Hercules: Played with. While Alena states that she'd only consider marrying a man strong enough to give her a good fight, she also refuses to marry someone strong enough to defeat her as it would hurt her pride too much. Basically, she's too childishly stubborn to want to marry anyone, regardless of how strong they are.
• Badass Normal: Along with Ragnar and Torneko, she's one of the only party members that is completely incapable of using magic. She makes up for it with her sky high strength and speed growths.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: While she's one of the game's main physically-oriented fighters along with Ragnar, she has much fewer equipment options than he does and must therefore rely much more on her own strength stat rather than the assistance of weapons to damage enemies. The few weapons that she is able to equip late game all tend to be Wolverine Claws.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The brawn to Maya's beauty and Meena's brains. She's the only one among them that is a purely melee-focused fighter, and is a "punch first ask questions later" type of gal overall.
• Blood Knight: She really enjoys a good brawl, and most of her party chat dialogue consists of her either expressing interest in fighting other characters, disappointment at not being able to fight other characters, or bafflement at why other characters would care about doing anything other than fighting.
• Chaste Heroine: Mostly expresses confusion about why anyone would be interested in marriage and is completely oblivious to Kiryl's feelings for her.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Her fixation with fighting and propensity for kicking down walls make her come across as a little bit loopy.
• Comic Trio: The clueless leader to Kiryl's hapless follower and Borya's ignored complainer.
• Critical Hit Class: She has the unique attribute of having her critical hit rate scale directly off of her level (to be exact, her chance of scoring one is her current level divided by 256). While this causes her to almost never land critical hits at low levels, by mid-game she'll be throwing them off with much more frequency than anyone else in the party. This makes her the ideal choice for Metal Slime hunting.
• Cute Bruiser: She's both petite and powerful.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: She's the only party member who doesn't show any wariness about dealing with Psaro, and instead angrily calls him a Dirty Coward for supposedly ducking out on their fight in the Endor Tournament whenever he's brought up around her.
• The Dreaded: The PlayStation version reveals that three of the five opponents she fights in the Endor Tournament develop traumatic fears of her after she beats them.
• Even the Girls Want Her: After her victory in the Endor Tournament, Princess Veronica mutters that she wouldn't mind being put into an Arranged Marriage with her.
• Fiery Redhead: She's outspoken and gung-ho, and has bright red hair.
• Flanderization: The remake's introduction of party chat makes her an out and out Blood Knight with a borderline obsession with kicking down walls, two traits that, while present in the original version of the game, are not otherwise suggested to be the defining aspects of her character.
• Flexing Those Non-Biceps: The artwork drawn of her for the DS version of the remake depicts her as doing this, conveying her status as a Cute Bruiser.
• Foil: To Ragnar. Both are melee-oriented fighters affiliated with large kingdoms, but while Ragnar is a stern middle-aged soldier of humble birth and great loyalty to his king, Alena is a young Rebellious Princess who would much rather shirk her duties to live out her dreams. The arcs of their respective chapters also move in parallel but opposite directions, with Ragnar's beginning with him investigating the disappearance of citizens within his kingdom and ending with him leaving it to explore the world in search of the Hero, and Alena's beginning with her leaving her kingdom to take part in a fighting tournament and ending with her returning to it to investigate the disappearance of its citizens. This difference is further highlighted by their respective roles in battle, with Alena specializing in taking out enemies quickly with her high speed and critical hit rate and Ragnar specializing in surviving drawn out battles through his high health and defense.
• Genki Girl: She's perky to an almost absurd degree.
• Glass Cannon: Her HP is only middling, with an equipment selection that often leaves her more vulnerable than your medics, but her strength and speed growths are through the roof, to the point where she'll hit the Cap for both well before reaching level 99. In addition, she has a unique attribute among the party that causes her critical hit rate to scale directly off of her current level, allowing her to score critical hits over a third of the times she attacks when at the maximum level.
• Heroic Mime: Averted. Possibly for the sake of maintaining the comedic potential of the trio, Alena speaks alongside Borya and Kiryl in party chat during her spotlight chapter.
• Hidden Depths: Admits while watching the dancers in Laissez Faire that she'd like to perform on stage in front of a crowd herself someday, but lacks any talent in the performing arts that would warrant her doing so.
• Improbable Weapon User: The Falcon Knife Earrings, which give the wielder the ability to attack twice per turn. It can be very useful for hunting metal slimes since Alena already has a high critical hit rate on her own.
• Inevitable Tournament: She participates in the tournament in Endor at the end of her chapter.
• Irony: Despite her reputation for being a tomboy, Alena's best equipment consists of a Pimped-Out Dress with jewelry to match—Alena's capable of Kicking Ass in All Her Finery with the Shimmering Dress, Falcon Knife Earrings, and the Golden Tiara all at once. Indeed, a Japanese player guide for the Nintendo Entertainment System version of the game features character art of her with this exact ensemble, and she's seen wearing it again in Dragon Quest Rivals.
• Magikarp Power: When the player first takes control of her, her stats are rather unimpressive compared to Ragnar's and she must rely heavily on the contributions of Kiryl and Borya to get by. The unique scaling of her critical hit rate also means that she's even less likely to score critical hits than the rest of the party when at low levels. Despite this, her sky high strength and speed growths ensure that she will quickly overtake everyone else in the party in those respective stats, while the scaling of her critical hit rate will grow progressively more in her favor as she gains more levels until she is practically guaranteed one every other attack, turning her into a bonafide Lightning Bruiser by the end of the game.
• Magically Inept Fighter: Unlike her allies, Borya and Kiryl, she has no magical abilities of her own.
• Meaningful Name: The letters "L" and "R" are interchangeable when spoken in Japanese, causing her name to be a homophone with the word "Arena", which ties in to her love of fighting and quest to take part in the Endor Fighting Tournament.
• Missing Mom: Her mother died during childbirth.
• Mr. Vice Guy: Alena is quite selfish and a bit too fight happy, but always puts people in need above herself. It also isn't hard to sympathize with her situation as someone being forced into a role they don't want to play.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: She's very petite, but has an even better strength growth rate than Ragnar. She holds the distinction of hitting the strength cap of 255 much sooner than anyone else hits the cap in any other stat. The player is first introduced to her after she has kicked down one of the walls of her room (which, might we add, is in a stone castle).
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: She's responsible for the bad guys acquiring the Armlet of Transmutation, a key item needed to complete the secret of evolution, due to giving it up as part of a Sadistic Choice to spare the life of her impersonator.
• Nice Mean And In Between: The in-between to Kiryl's nice and Borya's mean. She's selfish and stubborn, but also compassionate and courageous. When given the choice between handing over the Armlet of Transmutation or sacrificing the life of a girl who had been impersonating her for personal gain, she doesn't hesitate to give up the armlet to save the girl.
• Oblivious to Love: Kiryl's hopelessly in love with her, yet she doesn't seem to notice.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: She's short and slight but also one of the party's main damage dealers.
• Plucky Girl: Alena never lets anything get her down or stop her. Even though her kingdom has been destroyed and her father is missing, she is completely confident that she can find the culprit and punch it to death.
• Princess Protagonist: Her title is the Russian equivalent of a princess and she's one of the primary party members.
• Proper Tights with a Skirt: Well, more with tunic, but it fits.
• Rebellious Princess: Her father refuses to let her out of the castle. Her response is to knock down part of her bedroom's wall and leave the castle anyway, and when the wall is boarded up in Chapter 2 she knocks that down and ends up going on an adventure.
• Recurring Element: As a Bare-Fisted Monk with excellent strength and agility growths but limited equipment options, she resembles the Martial Artist class from Dragon Quest III.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: In addition to being royalty, she's the main character of Chapter 2.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: The energetic girl to Kiryl's savvy guy.
• Spirited Competitor: Enters the Endor Tournament for the thrill of the fight above all else and, at least in the PlayStation version of the game, is eager to have rematches with each of her former competitors when she reunites with them after her victory.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Said to be the spitting image of her deceased mother.
• Strong Girl, Smart Guy: The strong girl to Kiryl's smart guy.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Alena, stands in for the Martial Artist vocation from Dragon Quest III, with a similar stat layout and equipment selection.
• Tomboy: Repeatedly called this, perhaps because it flows well with Tsarevna.
• Town Girls: The butch to Maya's femme and Meena's neither. She's a Rebellious Princess with a love for fighting and no interest in things like makeup and marriage who functions as a Magically Inept Fighter in battle.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Has far and away the fastest natural strength growth of the party, but her equipment options are limited as far as weapons go. As such, the Hero and Ragnar will likely have a higher attack stat than her most of the time despite her strength growth eclipsing theirs simply because they have more consistent access to strong weaponry. She makes up the difference with her higher tendency to score critical hits.
• Warrior Prince: Alena is a princess who happens to be a formidable fighter.
• "Well Done, Daughter" Girl: She states in party chat that she wishes her father respected her fighting ability and would praise her a little. She gets her moment after curing her father of a curse.
• Wolverine Claws: Outside of the earliest stretches of her chapter, almost every weapon Alena can equip are sets of claws.

Borya

Borya (Brey)

Voiced by: Joji Yanami (Drama CD), Yuichi Nagashima (Dragon Quest Rivals and Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince), Paul Herzburg (''Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince") [EN]

The long-suffering Court Magician of Zamoksva. Originally, he was supposed to serve as Alena's tutor, only to find she was completely hopeless with magic. This may be just as well, however; they have enough trouble keeping her from getting into too much trouble as it is...!

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• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: After spending all of Alena's chapter complaining about her tomboyishness and trying to convince her to return to her castle, he offers her sincere encouragement before she participates in the Endor Tournament and is clearly proud of her after she wins.
• Characterization Marches On: His character description in the NES version's guidebook calls him "a gentle old man", a sharp contrast from the Grumpy Old Man the remakes portray him as.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Alongside Kiryl, he functions as this to Alena. Unlike Kiryl, he can almost be as much of a handful to deal with as Alena is at times.
• Comic Trio: Serves as the ignored complainer to Alena's clueless leader and Kiryl's hapless follower.
• Cool Old Guy: He's the oldest member of the party and, despite his complaints, has no trouble keeping up with his younger companions.
• Court Mage: His official position within Zamoksva.
• Foil: To Maya. While Borya is an old and obstinate man who serves as the magician of his kingdom's royal court, Maya is a young and free-spirited woman who travels around the world as a dancer. This also applies to their respective functions in battle, as while both are offensive mages, Borya specializes in ice magic and Status Buff and debuff spells whereas Maya specializes in dealing out high damage to enemies using fire magic.
• Fragile Speedster: While his other physical stats are atrocious, his agility growth is surprisingly high, which results in him being among the fastest members of the party late game.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Compared to the rest of the party, he is Alena's servant first and foremost and his top priority is to ensure her safety. As such, the spells he learns are more geared toward supporting other members of the party through Status Buffs than they are toward dishing out damage.
  • As an elderly man, it should go without saying that he requires more experience points to level up than than everyone else for most of the game and that his physical stats remain the worst from beginning to end.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Considering he holds the esteemed position of Zomksva's Court Mage, it's a bit troubling that he begins the game only knowing how to cast Crack. Extracanonical adaptations of the game actually make an effort to explain this, with the novel having him briefly experience a Heroic BSoD after realizing how much of his potential he had wasted across his life as he starts learning new spells and the Drama CD more simply explaining that old age and the relative peacefulness of Zamoksva have caused him to forget his repertoire over time, with the moves he acquires while leveling up being him remembering them.
• Grumpy Old Man: Party chat shows him to be an avid complainer who takes issue with almost everything, from how other people carry themselves, to how other nations function compared to Zamoksva, to how disrespectful it is for the rest of the party to make an old man like him have to work hard rather than rest in the wagon.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: Borya's purpose in Chapter 2 is to provide crowd-control, keeping enemies at bay with group-hitting spells like Snooze and Crackle.
• Hypocritical Humor: Despite his constant complaints about Alena's character, he exhibits much of the same stubborn pridefulness as she does in most conversations.
• An Ice Person: He exclusively learns offensive spells of the ice element, in contrast to Maya.
• Insufferable Genius: He's quick to brag about his wisdom when spoken to in party chat, as is he to boast about how superior his country is to others.
• I Was Quite the Looker: Claims to have been a ladykiller in his youth, though we only have his word to go off of.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Complains about almost everything and everyone, but is shown to have a caring heart deep down. This is most pronounced if he's taken to the final battle, where he asks the Hero if they are afraid and kindly reassures them to have faith in the power of their allies if they admit that they are.
• Lesser Star: While both he and Kiryl are considered members of the Chosen, neither of them get much individual focus of their own beyond being Alena's sidekicks. The Zenith Dragon even lumps the two of them together when congratulating the party during the ending and simply commends them for their hard work protecting Alena. The presence of party chat in the remakes allows both to receive substantial enough characterization to keep them from being outright Satellite Characters, however.
• Magic Staff: His character art shows him carrying a jeweled wizard's staff as a walking stick and the majority of Borya's weapon choices are various wands and staffs.
• Miniature Senior Citizens: Borya is roughly a head shorter than Alena and appears to be the shortest of all the main party.
• Nice Mean And In Between: The mean to Kiryl's nice and Alena's in-between. While not an outright Jerkass, he's a Grumpy Old Man who almost never has anything good to say about anything or anyone.
• Not So Above It All: For all his stuffiness, even he finds Tom Foolery to be hilarious.
• Old Retainer: He's Alena's elderly retainer and a chronic complainer and worrywart who wishes she'd act more "traditional".
• Old Windbag: Many of his party chat lines, particularly if Alena is also present in the party, consist of long-winded lectures about conduct that the rest of the party quickly turns their ears off to.
• Out of Focus: While Alena and Kiryl have appeared together in numerous spin-offs, poor Borya is left out of every game that doesn't make a point of including every party member from throughout the series.
• Perpetual Frowner: Almost every piece of artwork of him has him sporting an agitated frown.
• Personality Powers: He's an ascetic and restrictive old man, which is rather fitting for an ice mage.
• Punny Name: While a legitimate Slavic name, "Borya" also sounds very close to the phrase "Bore ya", which is a fitting reaction to an Old Windbag like him.
• Racist Grandpa: A sizable chunk of his complaints about other countries consist of comparing them unfavorably to his homeland of Zamoksva. To his credit, he also shows genuine respect for the king of Parthenia's willingness to live meagerly for the sake of improving the lives of his people, suggesting that these comments really are meant to be taken as constructive criticism.
• Recurring Element: As an elderly man dressed in green that functions as a Squishy Wizard in battle, he strongly resembles the male Mage character from Dragon Quest III. In fact, his stat growths are nearly identical to those of Dragon Quest III's Mages.
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: He's the oldest member of the party and also distinctly the most outwardly mean.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The manly man to Kiryl's sensitive guy. Borya is a cantankerous know-it-all who often bickers with Alena whereas Kiryl is a soft-spoken Nice Guy who is an Extreme Doormat to Alena's antics.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: For all of his attitude, a few party chat lines imply that he's actually quite lonely and regretful of the fact that he never settled down or had children of his own. With this in mind, his role as Team Dad to Alena and Kiryl takes on new meaning.
• Squishy Wizard: His HP and defense remain the worst in the party throughout the game, and he has limited armor options to remedy this. On top of that, he gains levels slowly and will likely drag behind the other characters by a level or two even if he's used consistently. He compensates by learning numerous useful offensive and supportive spells.
• Status Buff: Borya has access to many useful utility spells, including Oomph and Acceleratle to help the party out.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Spends most of Alena's chapter fruitlessly attempting to get her to return to her docile life as a princess, and often makes envious comments about other more "proper" princesses when the party interacts with them.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Borya inherits one half of the repertoire of the Mage vocation from Dragon Quest III, specializing in their ice spells. In fact, with his white beard and green clothes, he bears a notable resemblance to the male Mage vocation in particular.
• Team Dad: More towards Alena than Kiryl, often wishing he could do more to get Alena to act like a lady.
• Tsundere: A platonic example toward Alena. He's very vocal about how infuriated her behavior makes him and won't ever shut up about how he wishes she'd act more like a Princess Classic, but he sticks by her side through thick and thin and shows pride in her when she finally takes part in the Endor Tournament.
• Undying Loyalty: Towards Alena. No matter how much he complains about her behavior, he will follow her anywhere.
• Weak, but Skilled: His physical stats are terrible and the offensive spells her learns aren't nearly as strong as Maya's, but he compensates by learning a variety of very useful supportive and debuffing magic, making him more versatile than her.
• Wizard Classic: He's an elderly wizard with a long white beard and flowing robes who carries a staff and serves as the Court Mage of a prominent kingdom. His strict adherence to the standard wizard archetype further highlights just how far removed Maya is from it.

Kiryl

Kiryl (Cristo)

Voiced by: Daiki Nakamura (Drama CD), Hikaru Midorikawa (Dragon Quest Heroes series [JP], Dragon Quest Rivals and Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince), Alec Newman (Dragon Quest Heroes series and Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince [EN])

A childhood friend of Alena's who's currently training to become a priest. Despite her incredible strength, he can't help worrying himself sick over her safety, and just has to come along...

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• Amazon Chaser: He's deeply infatuated with Alena, and calls watching her fight in the Endor Tournament one of the most beautiful things he's seen in his life. On the flip side, he's also worried that Alena's superior strength gives him even less of a chance at ever becoming an item with her.
• Artificial Stupidity: Probably the game's most infamous example of this trope: a healer who loves nothing more than to spam his insta-death spells rather than, say, heal your Mighty Glacier who's standing at 3 HP. Including against bosses! All future games featuring him, including the remakes of Dragon Quest IV, have acknowledged this in some way. In fact, the remakes push this trope even further by having him instinctively prioritize healing Alena over all other characters in battle regardless of how much damage she has taken in addition to not fixing his overuse of Whack. Thankfully, the remakes also allow him to be controlled manually, circumventing this problem entirely.
• Ascended Meme: Kiryl's crippling Artificial Stupidity has become an in-joke even among the development team. In response, the remakes' addition of party chat has him occasionally allude to his love of casting Whack while his appearances in spin-off games often feature him unsuccessfully trying to use Whack during the animations for his special attacks.
• BFS: Carries one on his back. Overlaps with Gameplay and Story Segregation, as while he is capable of wielding some swords, including the Liquid Metal Sword, the majority of his weapons are other things such as staffs.
• Bowdlerise: Starting with the DS version, the crosses on Kiryl's outfit were changed to a more generic shield in order to avoid any overt religious references.
• Butt-Monkey: Seems to be the designated one among the game's main cast: contracting an illness he needs to be healed of before joining the party, receiving no respect from either of his companions, regularly having his fear of heights exploited, and of course, remaining Alena's Hopeless Suitor from beginning to end. The developers also consciously chose to make his infamous Artificial Stupidity when under AI control even worse in the remakes because series director Yuji Horii believed it to be an indispensable facet of his character.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Kiryl seems completely incapable of telling Alena how he feels about her, something that has carried over to spin-off games where the two appear together.
• Characterization Marches On: His profile in the NES version's guidebook describes him as a cool guy who is popular with women, a far cry from the high-strung Butt-Monkey he is portrayed as in the remake and spin-offs.
• Chick Magnet: His profile in the original release of the game's guidebook describes him as one. While this seems to have mostly been phased out as his character was more firmly established, Maya does remark how excited she is to be traveling with a young man when he's recruited in the remakes.
• Childhood Friend Romance: It's painfully clear he has a huge crush on Alena... and just as painfully obvious that she doesn't have a clue.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Alongside Borya, he serves as this to Alena. While he's probably the most sensible of the three, his complete submissiveness to Alena doesn't make him a particularly good fit for the role.
• Combat Medic: He's pretty good with weapons in addition to being able to heal. Both his strength and weapon options start to drop off around mid-game, however, causing him to lean closer toward the "Medic" half of the trope.
• Comic Trio: Serves as the hapless follower to Alena's clueless leader and Borya's ignored complainer.
• The Comically Serious: He's quite straight-laced, which makes seeing him get flustered by Alena's antics and various other inconveniences across his travels all the funnier.
• Covert Pervert: A few lines of party chat imply that he has a rather dirty mind, such as when he gets caught fantasizing about Alena sunbathing. In typical form for this trope, these moments are even accompanied by Nosebleeds in the Japanese version.
• Cowardly Lion: Cautious to begin with and with a crippling fear of heights, Kiryl will nonetheless brave anything for the sake of protecting Alena.
• Crutch Character: On top of his healing being vital to the party's survival, his balanced stats and wider weapon and armor options make him a major asset during Alena's chapter, to the point where he may contribute as much or even more to the party's damage output than her if properly equipped. Where Alena's strength stat surges as she gains levels, however, Kiryl's plateaus relatively early on. As he is also incapable of equipping heavier weapons and armor, his potential as a frontline Combat Medic further declines around mid-game until he is more or less relegated to strictly serving as a supportive healer. Thankfully, his spell repertoire accommodates this new role nicely and he remains a useful party member for the rest of the game, albeit in a more specialized position than he had previously.
• Distressed Dude: When you meet Alena's party in chapter five, he's desperately ill and Alena is out searching for a cure.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Helps Alena disobey her father's orders on an adventure that regularly puts his life at risk solely for the sake of being close to her.
• Flanderization: The original version of the game does not suggest that he has feelings for Alena outside of him stating that he would be devastated if anything were to happen to her when he joins her on her quest, which is ambiguous enough that it can be taken to mean a number of things. All of his future appearances make his infatuation with Alena a defining aspect of his character. His bad habit of casting Thwack over healing when under computer control also becomes an Ascended Meme that is actually mentioned in-universe.
• Foil: To Meena. While both serve as the party's healers, Kiryl is a priest who works in the castle of a large kingdom and Meena is a traveling fortune teller. The two occupy similar roles within their respective parties as more sensible counterparts to their free-spirited companions, but Kiryl is largely submissive to Alena whereas Meena generally serves as the leader between herself and Maya. This is further reflected in combat, where Kiryl primarily focuses on supporting the rest of the party through healing and Status Buff spells and Meena leans more toward being a versatile Combat Medic with more formidable offensive abilities and spells.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Compared to the rest of the party, he is Alena's servant first and foremost and his top priority is to ensure her safety. As such, the spells he learns are more geared toward supporting other members of the party through Status Buffs than they are toward dishing out damage.
  • The remakes practically turn this trope into an art form when it comes to Kiryl's AI. In addition to adding multiple lines of dialogue that retroactively turn his love for spamming Whack into a character trait, he will always prioritize healing Alena above doing anything else if she is in battle with him. As the remakes also firmly establish him as being in love with her, this quirk is pretty self-explanatory.
• Good Shepherd: He's a priest-in-training and a goodhearted and pious guy all around.
• Heavy Equipment Class: In Chapter 2, Kiryl wears the heaviest armor and biggest weapons—on the other hand, he can't wear the heftiest things like the hero, Ragnar, or Torneko can.
• Hidden Depths: He's a pretty good artist, at least when it comes to drawing sketches of Alena.
• Hopeless Suitor: He's just as unlikely to profess his true feelings to Alena as she is to notice them.
• Jack of All Stats: His starting stats are relatively balanced across the board which, in conjunction with his varied equipment pool, allow him to cover a lot of bases in battle early on. He becomes progressively less of one as the game continues, gaining paltry boosts to his physical stats as he levels up and having fewer and fewer weapon and armor options available to him over time, essentially forcing him off of the frontlines and into the back row after a certain point.
• Lesser Star: While both he and Borya are considered members of the Chosen, neither of them get much individual focus of their own beyond being Alena's sidekicks. The Zenith Dragon even lumps the two of them together when congratulating the party during the ending and simply commends them for their hard work protecting Alena. The presence of party chat in the remakes allows both to receive substantial enough characterization to keep them from being outright Satellite Characters, however.
• My Greatest Failure: Remains apologetic about getting sick and requiring the party to make a detour for his sake from the time of his recruitment until the very end of the game.
• Nice Guy: All of Kiryl's dialogue is very polite and respectful, and he shows compassion whenever the party encounters people in need.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: The nice to Borya's mean and Alena's in-between. He's unfailingly polite to everyone he meets and is quick to take the blame when things go awry, even when he isn't the one at fault.
• No-Respect Guy: The occasions when Alena and Borya bring him up in party chat consist almost exclusively of them belittling him for being a weakling or a coward, with Borya consistently referring to him as "hapless comrade Kiryl".
• Only Sane Man: He's the most reasonable of the trio from Zamoksva, though his crush on Alena and Butt-Monkey status often foil whatever clarity this position would otherwise give him.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: The savvy guy to Alena's energetic girl.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The sensitive guy to Borya's manly man. Borya is a cantankerous know-it-all who often bickers with Alena whereas Kiryl is a soft-spoken Nice Guy who is an Extreme Doormat to Alena's antics.
• Strong Girl, Smart Guy: The smart guy to Alena's strong girl.
• Subordinate Excuse: He's in love with Alena but believes her status as Tsarevna and his pledge as a man of the cloth make them incapable of becoming a couple. Despite this, he has told himself that he is content simply being by her side and thus chooses to accompany her on her adventure for a chance to be close to her.
• Super Gullible: He's too straight-laced and kindhearted for his own good at times, and is the only member of the party to completely fall for the rip-off tour guide at Bath's scheme to overcharge you at the inn due to his desire to repay him for his service.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Kiryl receives half of the Priest vocation's repertoire from Dragon Quest III, inheriting their risky One-Hit Kill spells and more party-healing options.
• Tender Tears: Weeps in grief when the party arrives in the monster-occupied Zamoksva.
• Token Religious Teammate: While all of the party are implicitly followers of the Church of the Goddess (as that is where they all go to pray), as an ordained priest, Kiryl takes religion by far the most seriously and will often give small prayers if spoken to when moving through areas connected to the divine.
• Undying Loyalty: Towards Alena, and more than happy to remind her of that.
• Useless Useful Spell: Learns the Whack family of spells, which have a chance of causing instant death to enemies. While they have some situational use, he is infamous for repeatedly using them against enemies programmed to be immune to them when controlled by the computer.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Is deathly afraid of heights. Too bad for him the party has to climb several enormous towers.

Torneko

Torneko Taloon (Taloon)

Voiced by: Tesshō Genda (Drama CD), Chafurin (Dragon Quest Heroes series [JP], Dragon Quest Rivals, and Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince [JP]), Francis Magee (Dragon Quest Heroes series, "Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince" [EN])

A cheerful merchant who dreams of owning his own store, rather than working under his ill-tempered boss. After all, how can he support his loving wife and son on minimum wage? Thus, he sets out in search of the perfect place to settle down, hoping to find fortune and a little fame along the way.

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• Acrofatic: He's very hefty but has a respectable agility growth and is stealthy enough to be able to steal items from enemies during battle without them noticing.
• Action Dad: The only member of the party with a child.
• Action Survivor: While the rest of the party are all suggested to have a certain degree of training if not experience with combat prior to their focus chapters, Torneko is a portly middle-aged merchant with no business on the battlefield. This is highlighted in both his chapter, which greatly de-emphasizes combat compared to the rest of the game and encourages the player to hire bodyguards to keep him safe during the rare instances where he's required to fight, and his random mid-battle goof-off actions in the fifth chapter, which cause him to occasionally screw up doing what he's supposed to.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Along with trimming down his goof-off actions to make the beneficial ones greatly outnumber the useless ones, the remakes give Torneko a host of additional very convenient out of battle abilities, such as Padfoot, which reduces the rate of Random Encounters, and Whistle, which attracts monsters and makes Level Grinding more efficient.
  • By virtue of being made into the central Player Character, the Mystery Dungeon games make him much more versatile and consistently competent as a fighter.
• Anti-Frustration Feature: He is mercifully exempt from performing his random goof-off actions during his focus chapter, where he is the main and potentially only character at the player's disposal.
• Arab Oil Sheikh: More subtly done than most examples, but his kippah and hijab bring to mind middle-eastern merchants when paired with the rest of his character.
• The Artifact: His ability to appraise items is mostly made redundant in the remakes, which tell you about as much information about items in their menu descriptions as he would by appraising them. Since he has unique and in-character dialogue for appraising every item in the game, though, there's still some incentive to do it for no reason other than flavor text.
• Badass Normal: Like Ragnar and Alena, he can't use magic at all. Unlike them, he lacks a particularly impressive strength stat either; he's truly a Master of None when it comes to fighting.
• Beware the Nice Ones: While Torneko is a lovable Nice Guy most of the time, many of his party chat lines while visiting towns have him scheming up ways to exploit the surrounding environment to turn a profit. He is a merchant, after all, and he engages in very similar behavior while under the player's control during his chapter.
• Breakout Character: While Torneko was chosen to star in the Mystery Dungeon series of Roguelike spin-off games because the developers thought his Intrepid Merchant Action Survivor characterization made him a good fit for its gameplay rather than anything having to do with his popularity, his protagonist role in those games gave his profile a big boost, and he has since become one of the most recurrent characters in all of Dragon Quest.
• Breather Episode: His chapter functions as this relative to the others. The primary goal is simply moving between towns trying to find new ways of making money and then using that money to open new and more profitable venues to explore. There are no bosses and the one dungeon available is totally optional; it's possibe to beat the entire thing without taking part in a single fight. On top of that, enemies have a much higher item drop rate than they do in any other chapter, making farming equipment much easier than it otherwise is. Tonally it's also generally lighthearted and ends with a clear Happy Ending, whereas it comes sandwiched between the two chapters that end tragically.
• Charged Attack: One of his goof-off actions involves him mustering his strength, which increases the power of his next attack.
• Cloudcuckoolander: He seems to be a little bit out there, as he'll occasionally do things like tell jokes or sing lullabies to the enemy, do a weird dance, or simply space out and do nothing in the middle of battle.
• Composite Character: Blends together the designs and class attributes of the male Merchant and Gadabout characters from Dragon Quest III into a single character. The remakes give him several of the skills learned by the Thief class added in Dragon Quest III's remake to go along with his stealing ability.
• Cool Old Guy: He's a jolly, generous, and pluck-filled guy who successfully achieves his life's dream of opening his own shop through a combination of savvy and zeal. He's also gutsy enough to willingly tag along with the party on its world-saving adventure despite having no need to.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He's a chubby chap in a goofy outfit with lackluster stats compared to your other frontline fighters and has a chance of acting completely randomly during battle. However, several of these random actions actually prove to be highly useful and allow him to pull off things no one else in the party is capable of, such as stealing items and preventing enemies from doing anything. He also singlehandedly stops a war from happening during his focus chapter entirely through his wits, and expertly engineers the situation so that he makes a ton of money and fulfills his dream of opening his own weapon shop in the process.
• Cultural Chop Suey: While his outfit is distinctly middle-eastern inspired, the English localization gives him an Irish accent from the remakes onward.
• A Day in the Limelight: The first three entries in the Mystery Dungeon spin-off games have Torneko as the main protagonist and player character.
• Difficult, but Awesome: He can't use any magic and he's a much worse physical fighter than either Ragnar or Alena are. Luck also factors heavily into his playstyle, as he has a 1/4 chance of doing one of several special actions in battle instead of what he's ordered to. While these qualities have the effect of making him the least reliable party member by far, his special actions allow him to pull off some very useful feats that can benefit the player in ways no one else can. Most notably, his ability to steal from enemies allows him to obtain Rare Drops with shocking frequency, reducing the 1/256 chance of obtaining the Liquid Metal Helm from a Metal King Slime to a much more managable 1/40.
• Fairy Battle: During his chapter, he can sometimes run into other traveling merchants while exploring the world map who he can do business with.
• Famed In-Story: While every member of the party outside of the Hero has acquired some amount of reputation for themselves by the start of the fifth chapter, Torneko stands out for having multiple people across several cities sing his praises as the greatest merchant of his time. Of course, since his chapter ends with him financing a cross-continental transit system, it makes sense that he'd be more widely known than the rest of the party.
• Fat Comic Relief: It's no coincidence that the tubbiest party member is also the game's primary comic relief.
• Foil: To the Hero. While they're both from small and unassuming villages tucked away from the rest of the world, the Hero is an orphaned youth raised from birth for the purpose of saving the world as The Chosen One whereas Torneko is a middle-aged man with a wife and son who works as an ordinary merchant. Their reasons for setting out into the wider world are also starkly different, with the Hero awakening to their destiny after having their hometown destroyed by monsters and Torneko simply following his dream of opening a weapon shop of his own. This is further reflected in their respective roles in battle, with the Hero being a Master of All with the strength and skills needed to reliably serve as substitute for any of the party's fighters, mages or healers in a pinch and Torneko being a Lethal Joke Character capable of randomly performing actions that no one else in the party can. The original version of the game makes this even more apparent, as while the Hero is the only member of the party the player is able to control directly, Torneko's goofing off makes him the member of the party the player has the least amount of control over.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: The remakes give him several pieces of party chat dialogue that subtly acknowledge his status as a difficult-to-use Lethal Joke Character by suggesting that, even in-universe, he spends most of his time traveling with the party waiting in the carriage (as in, not being used). Being the Lovable Coward that he is, though, he's perfectly happy with this arrangement and will even complain if he's brought along to a major dungeon or boss encounter.
• Guile Hero: His focus chapter involves taking advantage of two feuding kingdom being on the brink of war by selling armor at a premium to the army of one of said kingdoms, using the money earned from selling the armor to buy property for himself in the other kingdom, and then preemptively ending the war by uniting the prince and princess of the two kingdoms to gain the legal documentation needed to convert his new property into a weapon shop.
• Happily Married: His wife Tessie seems to be perfectly happy with him (and apparently is attracted to his drive to follow his dreams instead of his looks), and his comments about her indicate that he's just as satisfied.
• Helpless with Laughter: One of his random actions is to tell a joke that might cause enemies to fall over laughing and miss their next turn. However, it has no effect if the enemy "doesn't get the joke."
• Heroic Sacrifice: In the final chapter of the original NES release, he would randomly intercept magical attacks against your entire party by taking the entire blast himself.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Mentions that he wanted to become a skipper when he was a child before awakening to his talents as a merchant. Perhaps because of this, he has a strong association with sea-faring vehicles and is responsible for commissioning the ship that the party uses to sail around the world.
  • He's apparently a pretty good singer, as he can put most enemies to sleep by singing a lullaby to them.
• Improbable Weapon User: His signature weapon is Astraea's Abacus, which is an abacus mounted on the end of a polearm.
• Intrepid Merchant: The central conceit of his character; rather than be a brave adventurer or a hero fulfilling some greater destiny, Torneko is simply a merchant in search of rare items to sell off at his shop. The focus of his chapter is figuring out the most effective means to make a ton of money as quickly as possible, while his eventual reason for joining the party is to find the Zenithian Sword in the hope of making a mint off of it.
• Lethal Klutz: One of his goof-off actions consists of tripping over while attempting an attack. As he falls flat on his face, his weapon accidentally slams into the enemy at just the right angle to be a guaranteed critical hit.
• Lethal Joke Character: Once you have the full party, he becomes more useful for what he can do outside your party (appraisal and treasure finding) rather than in combat. In Chapter 5, he begins doing random goofing-off much like Dragon Quest III's Gadabout class. However, some of Torneko's "goofing-off" actions include stealing items from the enemy (being the only way in the game to do so), performing a leg sweep to nullify some of the enemy's turns, calling in an army of fellow merchants he's befriended in his travels (who proceed to beat up on the enemy for a few rounds), covering an enemy's mouth to prevent spellcasting, and tripping over himself to score a guaranteed critical hit. The only thing keeping this power in check is that, again, these goof-offs are completely random.
• Lovable Coward: Speaking to him in party chat while in dungeons often results in him asking if he can go back to the carriage instead of venturing deeper.
• Magically Inept Fighter: He's completely incapable of using magic, with most of his special abilities having other purposes, such as calling or repelling monsters.
• Make Me Wanna Shout: One of his random actions is to "bellow loudly," which has a chance of causing enemies to become "paralyzed with fear" and miss their next turn.
• Master of None: When looked at purely through his stats and equipment options, he's painfully mediocre in every way. While he's good enough to remain a viable character throughout the game, his strength is inferior to Ragnar and Alena's and he can't use magic or equip much in the way of heavy weapons or armor. He makes up for it with his unique goof-off actions allowing him to do things no one else in the party can, such as stealing from and silencing enemies, as well as the fairly fast rate at which he gains levels. The remakes also alter his stats slightly to make him a bit tougher, with his HP in particular eventually growing to rival Ragnar's at higher levels.
• Mana Drain: He has a chance of performing a weird dance in combat that can cause an enemy to lose between 15 to 20 MP.
• Mr. Vice Guy: He's surprisingly greedy and pragmatic, but he's also otherwise an all-around Nice Guy trying to buy his way into a better life for his family.
• Nice Guy: He's friendly, generous, and a devoted family man.
• Oireland: He, his family, and the rest of Lakanaba's residents are given this kind of accent in the English localizations of the remakes onward.
• Only in It for the Money: While he's an affable guy, he makes it no secret that his primary objective is to find rare weapons to sell off at his shop. If spoken to after acquiring the Zenithian Sword, his stated reason for traveling with the Hero, he even tries to tap out of the adventure entirely only to backtrack and use a "Just Joking" Justification when it earns him a dirty look.
• Parent-Child Team: Develops one with his son Tipper in the third Mystery Dungeon game.
• Perspective Flip: His chapter allows you to experience what its like being the person at the counter of a weapon shop in an RPG rather than the adventurer buying things from them. At the time of the game's release, this was rather novel.
• Plucky Comic Relief: He's a goofy-looking fat guy who screws around in battle, along with being a Lovable Coward with plenty of funny party chat dialogue.
• Quirky Bard: He can't use magic, is pretty middling as a fighter, and randomly screws around in battle, but many of these random actions have positive effects that otherwise can't be performed by anyone else in the party.
• Recurring Element: His vaguely middle-eastern aesthetic follows the precedent set by Dragon Quest III's Merchant class while his random goof-off actions, flabby physique, and vertically-striped outfit mimic those of the male Gadabout class from the same game.
• Self-Made Man: Goes from a simple weapon shop clerk to one of the most famous merchants in the world over the course of his chapter, entirely through his own drive and ingenuity. And rather than rest on his laurels after becoming a successful merchant, he uses his wealth to finance the construction of a trans-continental tunnel system to expand trading opportunities across the world.
• Suddenly Voiced: In the remake, he's a Heroic Mime during his introductory chapter but becomes just as chatty as the rest of cast when he joins the Hero's party.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Torneko (a merchant, obviously) stands in for the Merchant vocation from Dragon Quest III, but his goofing off is a gift from the Gadabouts, and his random stealing is a trait of the Thief.
• Taking the Bullet: One of his random combat actions has him leap in front of a spell that would have hit the entire party, taking all the damage himself instead.
• The Team Benefactor: As one of the wealthiest merchants in the world, he provides the party with a ship he commissioned to sail around with as soon as he joins. And while it's impossible for him to carry over any of the money he acquires during his focus chapter into the fifth one (he's stated to have used it all to finance the ship), it is very possible for him to carry over hundreds upon hundreds of items purchased with that money, which can in turn be sold for a tidy profit in the fifth chapter and render money a nonissue for the remainder of the game.
• The Team Normal: Stands out among the party for having totally mundane origins and no particular strengths as a fighter; his mains asset is the savviness he built up living as a merchant.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: He's a rather frumpy fellow, but his wife Tessie is an absolute knockout. Both an NPC in his hometown and Ragnar wonder how he found such a good-looking wife.
• The Unchosen One: Downplayed. While he is by definition a chosen one for being among the Hero's destined party members, he is notably the only one among them who is not propelled into becoming one by outside circumstances. Both his reasons for leaving his hometown and his reasons for joining the party are entirely his own.
• Video Game Stealing: One of his random actions involves him stealing an enemy's treasure while it isn't looking, instantly giving the player whatever item that enemy is programmed to drop. This is notably the first ever instance of a stealing mechanic in a Dragon Quest game.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Party chat implies him to be this with Ragnar. On the occasions when one brings up the other, it tends to be to insult them. Despite this, Ragnar is quick to state that he'll protect Torneko through thick and thin when he hears that he's been pursued by monsters in the past and the two appear together frequently in artwork and spin-off games.
• Younger Than They Look: The Drama CD gives his age as being "around 35" when he could easily pass for someone well into his forties.

Meena

Meena (Minea (JP), Nara)

Voiced by: Hiroko Emori (Drama CD), Yōko Hikasa (Dragon Quest Heroes series [JP], Dragon Quest Rivals, and Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince [JP]), Mariam Haque (Dragon Quest Heroes series, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince [EN])

A composed, meticulous Fortune Teller who has been searching for Balzack, the man who betrayed and murdered her father Mahabala. After years of traveling under the radar, she believes it's time for them to make their move...

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• Adaptational Badass: Her HP growth is the worst of the party in the original game, but is bumped up to being the second-worst after Borya's in the remakes. While this doesn't sound like much, her final HP value at level 99 in the remakes is more than twice what it was in the original, making her much sturdier.
• Ambiguously Brown: She and her sister both have noticeably darker skin than the rest of the party to go with their broadly Romani/South Asian influenced designs.
• Anti-Hero: While she's a very heroic character overall, she's motivated primarily by revenge and admits to twisting her predictions when telling fortunes for the sake of making money, giving her a slightly more morally gray portrayal than the rest of the party.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: While she often behaves as though she can't stand Maya, she is shown to act adoringly towards her on the rare occasions when she gets serious.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The brains to Maya's beauty and Alena's brawn. She's level-headed and goal-oriented whereas they're both flighty and short-sighted.
• Birds of a Feather: The remake has her express sympathy toward Borya and Kiryl for having to put up with Alena's antics after first meeting them, as she feels much of the same way about her relationship with her sister.
• Blow You Away: She learns the Woosh line of spells.
• Combat Medic: Although she falls behind Kiryl in terms of healing magic, her strength and defense growths are more consistent than his are and she is capable of using powerful wind magic, giving her more offensive potential overall. She also has a respectable enough equipment pool that she can function as a bonafide Magic Knight if given the right items.
• Cultural Chop Suey: She and her sister utilize aspects of both the Magical Romani and South Asian Mystical India tropes in their designs and abilities.
• Death Dealer: Her signature weapon is a deck of Silver Tarot Cards, which she can launch at enemies in addition to using to tell fortunes during battle.
• Disc-One Nuke: Her Silver Tarot Cards are acquired relatively early on in her focus chapter and can potentially provide the player with access to spells they shouldn't have until much later in the game, such as Oomph, Zap and Kasap, when used as an item during battle. The only catch is that it's totally randomized which of these outcomes will occur when the deck is used, and one of them causes Thwack to be cast on the entire party.
• Foil: To Kiryl. While both serve as the party's healers, Kiryl is a priest who works in the castle of a large kingdom and Meena is a traveling fortune teller. The two occupy similar roles within their respective parties as more sensible counterparts to their free-spirited companions, but Kiryl is largely submissive to Alena whereas Meena generally serves as the leader between herself and Maya. This is further reflected in combat, where Kiryl primarily focuses on supporting the rest of the party through healing and Status Buff spells and Meena leans more toward being a versatile Combat Medic with more formidable offensive abilities and spells.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The composed responsible sibling to Maya’s impulsive foolish one. Best demonstrated when the player first encounters them in chapter 5, where Meena is attempting to earn money for them by telling fortunes while Maya is blowing all of that money at the Endor casino.
• Fortune Teller: She reads people's fortunes and introduces herself by doing so before she joins in chapter 5. It even translates into gameplay if she's given the Silver Tarot Cards, as she is able to tell the party's fortune during battle to cause one of a number of outcomes to occur.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Despite being a healer, her primary motivation is to avenge her father's death by killing the man responsible for it. As such, she's more of a hybrid character geared toward dealing damage in addition to healing injuries than her counterpart Kiryl is.
  • As the responsible half of the Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling duo, she's a well-balanced Combat Medic capable of serving multiple roles in battle when needed whereas her sister can't stray far from her position as a Squishy Wizard. She's also the one of the two the player begins their chapter in control over, implying that she's the one doing the bulk of the decision-making between them.
  • She's a fortune teller by trade, and has the unique ability to tell tide-turning fortunes during battle if she has the Silver Tarot Cards in her possession.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: She's the smart, practical sister who often butts heads with the alluring and impulsive Maya.
• Heroic Mime: Averted. Possibly for the sake of conveying the dynamic between them, both of the sisters are fully capable of speaking during their focus chapter.
• Hot Gypsy Woman: While she dresses much more conservatively than her sister, she is also a strikingly attractive woman with a Romani influenced design.
• Improbable Weapon User: She's capable of equipping a unique weapon known as the Silver Tarot Cards, which is a deck of tarot cards that she can fling at enemies.
• Jack of All Stats: She's the most balanced member of the party outside of the Hero. While she's primarily a healer, she has respectable strength and defense growths, a decent equipment pool, and the ability to use offensive magic. To offset this, she's nowhere near as strong as a frontline fighter or spellcaster as the party's specialists are, can't learn the very convenient Multiheal spell that Kiryl does, and has the lowest total MP of the party's magic users.
• Magical Romani: Her design and abilities are inspired by Romani fortune tellers.
• Marriage of Convenience: Discussed. When the topic of marriage comes up around her she mentions that it's an attractive idea solely on the grounds that it would mean getting to be away from her sister.
• Mature Younger Sibling: Far more sensible than her older sister, and does most of the decision-making for both of them.
• Mr. Exposition: She informs the Hero of their mission to unite the Chosen during her recruitment in the final chapter.
• Mystical India: She and her sister are given Indian accents in the English localizations from the remake onward, and are both magic users with exotic, Romani-like designs. Meena in particular is heavily associated with mysticism due to her status as a fortune teller.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Downplayed, but party chat reveals her to be fascinated by monsters and fond of dank and dark locations such as caves and dungeons.
• Not So Above It All:
  • While she's generally mature and serious, she becomes positively giddy when the party gains the ability to transform into monsters using the Mod Rod.
  • Though she's shown to genuinely believe in the power of fortune and fate, speaking to her in party chat after talking with one of her customers reveals that she occasionally bends the truth in her predictions when doing so for money for the sake of generating more business.
• Not So Stoic: One moment in particular stands out for breaking her usual cool: when Oojam performs his heroic sacrifice, where she panics and forces Maya to step up and take charge. She also gets teary-eyed whenever Maya makes it clear the she's just as serious as she is about their mission of avenging their father.
• Only Sane Man: While she's not entirely without her quirks, she's generally much more reserved and serious than the rest of the party are.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue to Maya's red. While Maya is a flirtatious dancer who believes in luck, Meena is a quiet fortune teller who believes in fate.
• The Reliable One: Along with being much more focused on their mission to avenge their father than Maya is, party chat reveals that Maya usually leaves her in charge of negotiating work, food, and shelter for them during their travels while she plays around.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: She and her sister are polar opposites in nearly every way. While Meena is a healer, Maya is a mage. While Meena is a Combat Medic, Maya is a Squishy Wizard. While Meena is serious and task-oriented, Maya is playful and easily distracted. While Meena is a fortune teller who believes that all actions are predetermined by fate, Maya is a gambler who prefers to leave everything to luck. This is particularly emphasized in the remake's party chat system, where the two will often have the exact opposite reaction to whatever is currently happening.
• The Stoic: She stays very calm and collected most of the time, though her sister is good at getting a rise out of her. Notably, the majority of artwork featuring her depicts her with a serious frown.
• Strong Family Resemblance: While she and Maya aren't twins, they could very well pass for them.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Meena inherits the other half of the Priest vocation's repertoire from Dragon Quest III, specializing in their more aggressive wind magic and some Status Effects.
• Tarot Motifs: Each card in her Silver Tarot Cards has a different effect. This was actually rebalanced in the DS version to include many more positive effects. She can even give somewhat-accurate one-card readings if the Cards are used outside of battle!
• Town Girls: The neither to Alena's butch and Maya's femme. She's a reserved and sensible fortune teller who exhibits neither Alena's tomboyishness nor Maya's flirtatiousness and functions as a balanced Combat Medic in battle.
• Verbal Tic: From the English localization of the remake onwards, she and her sister tend to avoid using contractions and repeat adjectives for emphasis.
• Weak, but Skilled: She's a versatile Combat Medic who can competently serve as a healer, an offensive spellcaster, and a frontline fighter provided she's well-equipped, but her HP growth is the second worst in the party (the worst in the original version) and her MP growth is the lowest of the party's magic users by a fairly wide margin.
• You Killed My Father: Her primary motivation alongside Maya is to kill Balzack, the man who murdered their father.

Maya

Maya (Manya (JP), Mara)

Voiced by: Michie Tomizawa (Drama CD), Miyuki Sawashiro (Dragon Quest Heroes series [JP], Dragon Quest Rivals, and Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince), Anjli Mohindra (Dragon Quest Heroes series, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince [EN])

Meena's exuberant and far-flashier older sister, Maya has earned quite a reputation and a considerable fan-following as a belly dancer. However, she's also an incredibly talented spellcaster who's all about Stuff Blowing Up. Like Meena, she wants revenge on her father's murderer; she just tends to keep a brighter attitude about everything to offset her sister's serious nature.

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• Adaptational Badass: For whatever reason, the remakes make her already excellent stat growths even better, to the point where she has the highest overall stat total of the entire party when at her Level Cap. And yes, that's even including Psaro.
• Ambiguously Brown: She and her sister both have noticeably darker skin than the rest of the party to go with their broadly Romani/South Asian influenced designs.
• Anti-Hero: While she's a very heroic character overall, she's motivated primarily by revenge and prefers gambling over an honest day's work, giving her a slightly more morally gray portrayal than the rest of the party.
• Awesome, but Impractical: As noted in Magikarp Power below, her stat growths suddenly surge from around level 60 onward until she completely sheds her Squishy Wizard status upon hitting the Level Cap. The only problem is that she requires more experience points than anyone else in the party to level up and even the remake's bonus content can easily be beaten by a party with levels in the mid-40s, essentially making this aspect of her character more of an Easter Egg than a feature.
• Bag of Spilling: Hilariously invoked at the start of chapter 5. Even if you ended chapter 4 with tons of money, the sisters will have none of it when they join the Hero because, apparently, Maya goes through money like water.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The beauty to Meena's brains and Alena's brawn. She's a captivating dancer in a revealing outfit who is by far the most image conscious of the party's women.
• Big Sister Instinct: Conveyed through gameplay during the climax of the sisters' chapter in the original release of the game. After Oojam performs his heroic sacrifice, Maya is automatically made the party's leader as the sisters make their escape, suggesting that she's the one making the difficult decision to abandon him for the sake of protecting herself and Meena. Made more overt in the remakes where, despite no longer automatically being made the party leader, party chat shows her to be the one taking charge and calming down the panicking Meena during the escape.
• Black Magician Girl: She's the party's strongest offensive mage, in contrast to how Meena primarily uses healing magic.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: She's an excellent spellcaster who, if her stat growths are anything to go by, is incredibly gifted at pretty much everything, but she'd much rather push all of the hard work onto her sister while she indulges herself in vice.
• Chainmail Bikini: Downplayed. Her starting armor is the Dancer's Costume, which consists of the bikini top and slitted skirt she's shown wearing in all of her sprites and artwork. And while it gives inferior defensive bonuses than most of the game's other armor options, it's still inexplicably twice as sturdy as Plain Clothes are.
• Childish Older Sibling: Can't be trusted with money and leaves Meena in charge of almost everything in their day-to-day lives.
• Combat Hand Fan: Her unique weapon is the Iron Fan, which she tosses at enemies like a boomerang.
• Contrasting Sequel Protagonist: The scantily-clad female party member in the previous game was the female Warrior, whereas Maya is a Squishy Wizard.
• Cultural Chop Suey: She and her sister utilize aspects of both the Magical Romani and South Asian Mystical India tropes in their designs and abilities.
• Disappointing Older Sibling: Meena is very outspoken about her frustration with having such a wasteful and frivolous person for an older sister, and Maya is generally content at letting her call the shots for the both of them.
• Everyone Has Standards: While she's ordinarily a Lovable Sex Maniac who goes gaga over every handsome man she comes across, she draws the line at doing so for Psaro despite admitting that she finds him good-looking.
• Flanderization: In the original version of the game, she is recruited in the fifth chapter at the Endor casino after having wasted all of her and her sister's money gambling but otherwise is given no further association with casinos. The remakes outright turn her into The Gambling Addict who constantly talks about going to the casino when spoken to in party chat.
• Foil: To Borya. While Borya is an old and obstinate man who serves as the magician of his kingdom's royal court, Maya is a young and free-spirited woman who travels around the world as a dancer. This also applies to their respective functions in battle, as while both are offensive mages, Borya specializes in ice magic and Status Buff and debuff spells whereas Maya specializes in dealing high damage to enemies using fire magic.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The impulsive foolish sibling to Meena's composed responsible one. Best demonstrated when the player first encounters them in chapter 5, where Meena is attempting to earn money for them by telling fortunes while Maya is blowing all of that money at the Endor casino.
• The Gambling Addict: Gets so swept up in playing around at the Endor casino between chapters four and five that she ends up spending all of her and Meena's funds. Party chat reveals that this is hardly the only time that something like that has happened, and has her constantly bring up going to the casino regardless of how relevant it is to the current situation.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Her primary motivation is to avenge her father's death by killing the man responsible for it. As such, she's more strongly geared toward dealing as much damage as possible to the enemy than her counterpart Borya, learning stronger attack spells but much fewer supportive ones than he does.
  • As the foolish half of a Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling duo who prefers coasting on luck and her natural talents, she's strictly a Squishy Wizard compared to the more versatile Meena.
  • Late game, she suddenly begins requiring much more experience points than the rest of the party to gain levels. As a tradeoff, her stat growths upon leveling up become staggeringly high, far surpassing those of anyone else in the party. Both of these quirks are befitting of a Brilliant, but Lazy person with excellent potential but no real drive to pursue it.
• Glass Cannon: She learns the strongest offensive magic out of anyone in the party, but has poor equipment options to protect her from enemy attacks. Surprisingly, her HP growth is actually very good, enabling her to take a bit more of a beating than she otherwise could.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: She's the flirty and frivolous beautiful sister who often butts heads with the serious and asceitic Meena.
• Gold Digger: Makes it no secret that her primary concern for a potential romantic partner is how rich they are, and expresses willingness to marry old and ugly men so long as they have enough gold for her to swim in.
• Having a Blast: Learns the explosive spells Bang, Boom, and Kaboom, which allow her to hit every enemy in battle regardless of whether they're grouped together or not.
• Heroic Mime: Averted. Possibly for the sake of conveying the dynamic between them, both of the sisters are fully capable of speaking during their focus chapter.
• Hidden Depths: Despite normally coming across as flighty and irresponsible, she takes her mission to avenge her father by defeating Balzack and eradicating the secret of evolution from the world just as seriously as her sister does and, when she really needs to, is able to demonstrate a level of decisiveness and maturity that not even Meena can.
• Hot Gypsy Woman: She's a dark-skinned, scantily-clad traveling dancer in the style of a archetypal Romani woman.
• Hot Witch: As a natural consequence of combining the Magical Romani and Hot Gypsy Woman tropes.
• Lazy Bum: Party chat reveals that Meena does almost all of the hard work for the sisters during their travels, with Maya generally sleeping in during the day and playing around with their money during the night.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Maya is generally playful and carefree, but becomes appropriately focused whenever the situation gets serious, particularly when Balzack is involved. This is most pronounced during the climax of chapter 4, where she takes charge and leads herself and her sister to safety after Oojam's apparent death.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Party chat occasionally has her express excitement at getting to spend time with young and handsome men, and she's the only one among the party's women with any real aspirations of finding a husband (albeit primarily because she's a Gold Digger).
• Magical Romani: Her design takes a lot of cues from Romani dancers and she's one of the party's primary mages.
• Magikarp Power: The remakes turn her into a very unusual variant of this trope. While she's a perfectly good mage with respectable stat growths from the outset, she suddenly begins gaining tremendous numbers in every stat from around level 60 onward. Upon reaching the Level Cap, she'll have the highest overall stat total of the entire party, boasting maxed out luck and agility, nearly maxed out strength and wisdom, much more MP than her fellow mages (over 900 compared to her closest competition Kiryl's 670), and HP beaten out only by the Hero, Ragnar, Torneko and Psaro. When combined with her ability to equip the Gringham Whip and Angel Leotard, this enables her to completely discard any trace of being a Squishy Wizard and become a full-fledged Lightning Bruiser Magic Knight that can fight on the frontlines just as well as she can cast magic. The only catch is that she requires far more experience points to level up than anyone else in the party after she hits level 40, meaning that she'll reach the level cap much later than everyone else will. On top of that, the party is unlikely to have even reached level 40 by the end of a normal playthrough and both the Bonus Dungeon and True Final Boss can be comfortably beaten with a party in the mid-40s, giving there no real merit to Level Grinding Maya to this point beyond bragging rights.
• Mana Drain: She learns Drain Magic, a spell which absorbs MP from the target, at level 16.
• Morphic Resonance: The Battle Road spin-offs reveal that she retains her striking eyes and long eyelashes when transformed into a dragon using the Puff! spell, in addition to having purple scales to match her human form's hair.
• Mr. Vice Guy: She's The Gambling Addict, an outspoken Gold Digger, a Lazy Bum, and primarily motivated by revenge, but she's also friendly, easy-going, and ultimately caring as an older sister.
• Ms. Fanservice: She's a beautiful woman with a flirtatious personality and the first character in Dragon Quest history to ever wear the now-iconic Dancer's Costume.
• Mystical India: She and her sister are given Indian accents in the English localizations from the remake onward, and are both magic users with exotic, gypsy-like designs.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Drops her usual playfulness for unadulterated Big Sister Instinct after Oojam performs his Heroic Sacrifice.
• Personality Powers: She's a spontaneous and passionate dancer, which is rather fitting for a fire mage.
• Playing with Fire: She exclusively learns offensive spells of the fire element, in contrast to Borya.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The red to Maya's blue. While Meena is a quiet fortune teller who believes in fate, Maya is a flirtatious dancer who believes in luck.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: She and her sister are polar opposites in nearly every way. While Meena is a healer, Maya is a mage. While Meena is a Combat Medic, Maya is a Squishy Wizard. While Meena is serious and task-oriented, Maya is playful and easily distracted. While Meena is a fortune teller who believes that all actions are predetermined by fate, Maya is a gambler who prefers to leave everything to luck. This is particularly emphasized in the remake's party chat system, where the two will often have the exact opposite reaction to whatever is currently happening.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: Occurs in-universe when the Hero first encounters her in chapter 5. While passing through Endor in search of the Hero, she became so distracted by the local casino that she wasted all of her and her sister's money gambling. The remakes reveal that this isn't the first time something like this has happened. invoked
• Squishy Wizard: Downplayed. She's a powerful magic user, but has a limited equipment pool that doesn't give her much in the way of defensive options. On the other hand, she has a surprisingly high HP growth rate that will quickly surpass that of her more defensively-capable sister, making her sturdier than you might expect.
• Stripperiffic: She's the progenitor of the Dragon Quest series' famously revealing Dancer's Costume. Her outfit is in fact so risque that it had to be slightly toned down in its appearances in future games and spin-offs to maintain the age rating.
• Strong Family Resemblance: While she and Maya aren't twins, they could very well pass for them.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Maya inherited the other half of the Mage vocation from Dragon Quest III, specializing in fire spells to Borya's ice.
• The Tease: A sizable number of her party chat lines are flirtatious in nature and she often expresses interest in picking up men.
• Town Girls: The femme to Alena's butch and Meena's neither. She's an alluring dancer who would prefer to live in luxury with a rich and handsome man over adventuring and functions as a Squishy Wizard in combat.
• Verbal Tic: From the English localization of the remake onwards, she and her sister tend to avoid using contractions and repeat adjectives for emphasis.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Her Puff! spell, which lets her transform into a fire-breathing dragon.
• You Killed My Father: Her primary motivation alongside Meena is to kill Balzack, the man who murdered their father.

Allies

Healie

Healie (Hoimin)

Voiced by: Mayumi Tanaka (Drama CD)

A helpful healslime who hopes that one day he might become human. Takes a real shine to Ragnar and offers to help him out.

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• Advertised Extra: To an extent; promotional materials for Dragon Quest IV advertised the ability to have Monster Allies when in fact only Healie and Sparkie are playable and Healie is an Optional Guest-Star Party Member that is only in the party for a brief section early on into the game.
• Ambiguously Related: Several healslimes named Healie have appeared across the series since him, but it's never made clear if they're intended to be the same character or not. Of particular note is the Healie of Dragon Quest VI, who professes a desire to become a human during the remake's ending sequence.
• Amnesiac Hero: Has vague recollections of the Lord of the Underworld's battle with the Zenith Dragon, but is unable to recall them in detail. While he chalks it up to having bad memory, it's implied that an outside force is actually responsible.
• Attractive Bent Species: His human form uses a slightly altered version of the generic bard sprite, which depicts him as a handsome young man with long blonde hair. In The Dark Prince, he's given a personalized human design, though it's more of a "cute androgynous boy" than "handsome man".
• Badass Adorable: He's pretty cute, but he's able to tough it out alongside Ragnar.
• Become a Real Boy: His dream is to become a human. When he's encountered again in chapter five he's shown to have succeeded.
• Breakout Character: He's singlehandedly responsible for establishing the series' now iconic Monster Allies, and many healslimes appear in mascot positions in future games in tribute to him.
• But Now I Must Go: For whatever, reason, he seems to believe that his goal of becoming a human is incompatible with Ragnar's of finding the Hero, so they sadly part ways at the end of Ragnar's chapter. He briefly returns in chapter five to ask the Hero's party to help Ragnar defeat the Marquis de Léon, but leaves before they actually have a chance to reunite.
• Crutch Character: He can't do much, but his healing magic covers Ragnar's primary weakness of being a Magically Inept Fighter and enables him to coast through the rest of his chapter with relative ease.
• Cutting Off the Branches: While he's technically an Optional Party Member, his appearance in chapter five and dialogue in The Dark Prince confirms that Ragnar canonically recruited him.
• Developer's Foresight: While he's one of the game's two Monster Allies, the general public have no way of knowing that he's any different from the average Mook. As such, walking around towns with him as the party leader causes all NPCs to react with fear.
• Guest-Star Party Member: If you meet with him in the cave below the Strathbaile forest, he'll gladly tag along with Ragnar and serve as his healer.
• Hero-Worshipper: Most of his party chat dialogue in the remake consists of him fawning over how cool Ragnar is.
• Humanity Ensues: He wishes to become human. When you see him again later in the game, his wish is seen to have been granted.
• Informed Attractiveness: Played for laughs. According to him, he has a very gallant-looking face for a healslime but humans lack the necessary understanding of slime physiology to perceive it.
• Mascot Mook: Or at the very least a variation of the Mascot Mook.
• The Medic: He provides healing abilities for Ragnar, who has no magical abilities of his own.
• Moe Couplet: His cuteness and energy provide some much needed color to Ragnar's character. The two also form the perfect team in battle, with Healie's healing allowing Ragnar to stay fighting fit to clobber whatever enemies they come across. It should come as no surprise that almost all of Ragnar's appearances in spin-offs have him accompanied by Healie.
• Monster Allies: Holds the distinction of being the first ever playable monster in the series.
• Mysterious Past: The remakes give him multiple lines of party chat dialogue that imply he was around or at least has some sort of knowledge of the war between the Lord of the Underworld and the Zenith Dragon, but he's unable to recall any of the details for some reason.
• Nice Guy: He's sweet, polite, and totally adoring toward Ragnar.
• Odd Friendship: Would you believe this random Healslime is a loyal companion to Ragnar?
• One Degree of Separation: The remakes' party chat system reveals that he's old friends with Mary Curey, the friendly Cureslime that can be sent to the immigrant town later in the game.
• Optional Party Member: Ragnar's chapter can be completed without recruiting him, but he's a very useful companion to have around and he will appear as a human in the fifth chapter regardless.
• Riddle for the Ages:
  • Just how exactly did he manage to become human? Through the Secret of Evolution? Some other magical means? Or was he just that determined? The Dark Prince finally establishes that it was indeed the Secret of Evolution, performed on him as a test just before it was given to Psaro.
  • The remake adds another: just what does he know about the war between the Lord of the Underworld and the Zenith Dragon and why can't he remember it?
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: As a slime, he's an adorable little blue blob with a smiley face.
• Squishy Wizard: He's as weak as they come, but his healing magic more than makes up for it, particularly with a burly guy like Ragnar around to take the brunt of the enemy's attacks for him.
• Token Heroic Orc: One of many slimes in the series' long history to introduce himself as "not a bad slime, you know!" and the first to ever actually assist one of the heroes in battle.
• Undying Loyalty: Develops this toward Ragnar almost instantly, to the point of trying to tag along with him even after he completes his search for the missing children.
• Vague Age: He acts like a young child but takes on the appearance of a young man in his human form in the original games; though his redesign in The Dark Prince appears closer to being a young teenager. The remakes give him additional dialogue that suggests that he may even be Really 700 Years Old.
• Verbal Tic: As a slime, he litters his speech with slime, goo, and ooze puns and occasionally slurps at the end of his sentences. He retains this tic even after becoming a human.

Laurel

Laurel (Laurent / Laurence)

Voiced by: Shinobu Satouchi (Drama CD)

A wandering poet who dabbles in magic and is more than willing to lend his spells to anyone willing to pay the price. Just 600 gold nets you five days of traveling with your own personal minstrel!

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• Ambiguously Related: A bard resembling him appears in the fifth chapter in the same location he was in, but is not credited by name and doesn't seem to recognize Torneko, making it unclear if it's intended to be the same character. Furthermore, the English localization of the remake doesn't have him speaking in rhyme, making it even more confusing.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Downplayed somewhat, but his gentle exterior hides the fact that he is just as money-hungry as Hardie is. In fact, he's arguably the greedier of the two considering that he requires more gold to hire for the same number of days.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: While he's terrible at his chosen career as a poet, he is very competent at his side job as a magic-using mercenary.
• Crutch Character: Since Torneko begins his chapter fairly helpless, Laurel's magic can be a major asset to him until he levels up and becomes well-equipped enough to take care of himself. In particular, Laurel's ability to cast Heal greatly takes the pressure off having to stay stocked up on recovery items.
• Dreadful Musician: Along with having a lot of trouble coming up with rhymes, Borya claims that his singing voice is terrible after hearing it in chapter 2. It's no wonder why he has to work as a mercenary to make ends meet.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The nameless bard that appears in his usual spot in chapter 2 is implied to be him in the remake, as Borya makes a comment about him being capable of using magic and having a terrible singing voice if spoken to in party chat after interacting with him.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Can be recruited into Torneko's party during his chapter but will leave after five in-game days pass. Even if the chapter is beaten with him still in the party, he won't carry over into the main party once the fifth chapter roles around.
• Master of None: Compared to the game's other magic users. He can use both offensive and healing magic, but he only knows the weakest versions of both.
• Mauve Shirt: He's an Optional Guest-Star Party Member who uses the same set of sprites used to represent all bard NPCs, but the remake's implementation of party chat enables him to receive a fair bit of characterization of his own.
• Meaningful Name: Along with comprising one half of a Shout-Out, "Laurel" can also be used as a verb for bestowing praise in recognition of a great achievement, which is quite fitting for a wannabe poet.
• Only in It for the Money: While he's a bit more discrete about it than Hardie is, much of Laurel's dialogue after he's hired makes it clear that he's eager to run out the clock until his contract expires. Justified in that he's a mercenary whose only motivation for accompanying Torneko in the first place is because he's paying him.
• Optional Party Member: Chapter 3 is entirely beatable without him, but he's a useful addition.
• Painful Rhyme: As a consequence of his Rhymes on a Dime vocal tic, a few of his lines are pretty cringe-worthy. This is almost always lampshaded by having Laurel hesitate before making the bad rhyme, as though he's struggling to come up with one to say.
  Laurel: I wish it wasn't true, but you and I are through! My five days is up, I regret. Farewell, my...pet?
• Red Mage: He's notably the only playable character capable of casting both Sizz and Heal, which enables him to serve double duty as a mage and a healer while in the party.
• Rhymes on a Dime: All of his dialogue is spoken in rhyming couplets. A few pieces of party chat dialogue show that he often struggles to do this, leading to some awkward pauses and Painful Rhymes.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The sensitive guy to Hardie's manly man. While both are hired hands that can assist Torneko during his chapter, Hardie is a burly mercenary who does bodyguard work for a living whereas Laurel is an aspiring poet who is simply moonlighting as a bodyguard to make some extra money. Hardie is also blunt and very outspoken about being Only in It for the Money whereas Laurel is polite and a bit more subtle about it.
• Shout-Out: The localization of the remake turns the mercenary duo into a joint Laurel and Hardy reference.
• Squishy Wizard: He's physically frail but capable of casting the spells Heal, Sizz and Snooze, and has enough MP to cast them frequently.
• Starving Artist: He's a struggling poet who has started up a side business as a bodyguard to help support himself.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Assuming he isn't the bard seen in the Endor inn in chapter five, Laurel isn't seen or mentioned again after Torneko's chapter.

Hardie

Hardie (Strom / Scott)

A mercenary for hire who's currently between jobs. 400 gold equals five days of his services. Not a bad trade, if you need a good lance on your side...

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• Adaptational Comic Relief: Turned into an idiot with a hick accent in the novelization.
• Ambiguously Related: A soldier resembling him appears in the fifth chapter in the same location he was in, but is not credited by name and doesn't seem to recognize Torneko, making it unclear whether it's intended to be him or a separate character.
• Badass Normal: He's can't use magic and isn't any sort of Chosen One; he's just a very tough mercenary.
• Boisterous Bruiser: He's very proud of his strength and a sizable portion of his party chat dialogue consists of bragging about how capable he is.
• Crutch Character: Since Torneko begins his chapter fairly helpless, Hardie's strength can be a major asset to him until he levels up and becomes well-equipped enough to take care of himself.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Can be recruited into Torneko's party during his chapter but will leave after five in-game days pass. Even if the chapter is beaten with him still in the party, he won't carry over into the main party once the fifth chapter roles around.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's very open about being Only in It for the Money and will mock Torneko for making his job easy if he allows the five days he's hired for to pass without doing anything, but he also sincerely praises Torneko for having the initiative to achieve his dreams and admits if he's in the party near the end of the chapter that he'll always look back on his time working for Torneko with pride.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He'll often chide Torneko for taking him to locations they don't need to go to if spoken to in party chat, but does so with the very reasonable justification of not wanting Torneko to waste the allotted time he's hired him for.
• Mauve Shirt: He's an Optional Guest-Star Party Member who uses the same set of sprites used to represent many soldier NPCs, but the remake's implementation of party chat enables him to receive a fair bit of characterization of his own.
• Meaningful Name: Along with comprising one half of a Shout-Out, "Hardie" is a homophone for the adjective "Hardy", which is used to describe something that is strong and sturdy.
• Only in It for the Money: Very outspoken about the fact that he's only helping Torneko out for as long as he's payed him for, and will promptly book it as soon as that time expires. This is truly cemented if he's in the party by the end of the chapter, where he drops this gem:

  Hardie: I'll stick with you through thick and thin. Until my time's up, that is. Then I'll be scarpering sharpish.

• Optional Party Member: Chapter 3 is entirely beatable without him, but he's a useful addition.
• Sensing You Are Outmatched: For all his bravado, he has no problem admitting that he wouldn't stand a chance against Ragnar after meeting him.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The manly man to Laurel's sensitive guy. While both are hired hands that can assist Torneko during his chapter, Hardie is a burly mercenary who does bodyguard work for a living whereas Laurel is an aspiring poet who is simply moonlighting as a bodyguard to make some extra money. Hardie is also blunt and very outspoken about being Only in It for the Money whereas Laurel is polite and a bit more subtle about it.
• Shout-Out: The localization of the remake turns the mercenary duo into a joint Laurel and Hardy reference.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Assuming he isn't the soldier seen near the west entrance of Endor in chapter five, Hardie isn't seen or mentioned again after Torneko's chapter.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: He's afraid of dogs, and thus will refuse to work for Torneko if Fido is with him.

Oojam

Oojam (Orin)

Voiced by: Hiroyuki Shibamoto (Drama CD)

An apprentice alchemist who used to work with Meena and Maya's father. Like them, he's set out in search of revenge, hoping to track down his master's killer and bring him to justice.

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• Adaptational Wimp: Downplayed, but he goes from tearing open doors with his bare hands to simply lockpicking them in the remakes.
• Age Lift: Goes from a relatively young man in the NES version to a middle-aged man in the remakes.
• Badass Normal: He has no magical abilities to speak of but more than enough strength to carry the sisters through most of their focus chapter.
• The Big Guy: He's a large, muscular man with excellent strength and HP. This aspect of his character is particularly evident in the original version of the game, where he breaks open the locked doors at Palais de Léon through sheer strength.
• Big Guy Fatality Syndrome: As the muscle of the party he forms with Meena and Maya, he's naturally the one to perform a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Cool Old Guy: The remakes depict him as a middle-aged man, but he's no less strong and reliable than he was in the original.
• Covert Pervert: Taking him to see the dancing girls perform in Laissez Faire has him briefly fantasize about watching Maya do the same before quickly regaining his senses.
• Crutch Character: He provides some much needed muscle for the Mahabala sisters during their chapter, but is permanently removed from the party after the first encounter with Balzack.
• Determinator: The man shrugs off death in the name of avenging his mentor. Twice!
• Disney Death: He's assumed to be dead after sacrifices himself to hold off the Marquis de Léon's minions, but eventually resurfaces in chapter 5, where he's found recovering at an inn in Vrenor.
• Game-Breaking Injury: While he survives his Heroic Sacrifice, the injuries he sustained performing it leave him out of commission for the remainder of the game.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: It's rather strange for the apprentice of a famous alchemist to be completely incapable of using magic.
• Good Counterpart: To Balzack. While both were apprentices to Maya and Meena's father, Balzack betrayed and killed his mentor in the name of gaining more power for himself whereas Oojam dedicates his life to avenging his death and preventing the secret of evolution he discovered from falling into the wrong hands.
• Guest-Star Party Member: He accompanies Meena and Maya throughout their chapter, but is permanently removed from the party after performing a Heroic Sacrifice to buy them time to escape from the Palais de Léon.
• The Hermit: He's first encountered living in the depths of Gupta Gupha, where he had been hiding out to recover from the injuries he sustained during his first fight with Balzack. Meeting the Mahabala sisters again inspires him to set out into the world with them to avenge his mentor.
• Heroic Sacrifice: After their revenge attempt goes awry, he elects to stay behind and hold off the Marquis de Léon's guards to buy Meena and Maya time to escape. While he's later revealed to have survived the encounter, the injuries he sustained during it keep him from taking action again.
• Made of Iron: Managed to narrowly survive the same fight with Balzack that killed their mentor, albeit with serious wounds that required extended rest to recover from. Later, he does the same after being beaten to a pulp by the Marquis de Léon's guards, even gaining a Heroic Second Wind to muster enough energy to save a captured woman.
• Magically Inept Fighter: He's very tough physically but is completely incapable of using magic.
• Master of Unlocking: The remakes change his ability to break down lock doors through brute strength into a talent for lockpicking.
• Mighty Glacier: He has high strength and HP, but low agility. His status as this stands out when paired with the comparatively squishy Meena and Maya.
• Rescue Romance: When he's encountered again in chapter five, it's revealed that he was awakened from near-death after hearing the cries for help of a woman who had been captured by the Marquis de Léon. After saving her life and escaping to safety, she took his body to an inn in Vrenor and nursed him back to health and the two fell in love.
• Sacrificial Lion: His Heroic Sacrifice marks the Marquis de Léon as the most dangerous enemy the player has had to contend with yet and ends Meena and Maya's chapter on a somber note.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Pretty much everything that happens to him is tragic, but he's last seen alive, having found love, and overjoyed that his mentor's killer was finally defeated.
• Undying Loyalty: To his late mentor Mahabala. He will do everything in his power to avenge his death, protect his daughters, and ensure that his legacy isn't used for evil.

Hank Hoffman, Jr.

Hank Hoffman, Jr. (Hector)

The son of an innkeeper, Hoffman is sharp-tongued and short-tempered at first, refusing to help anyone out. Poor guy has some serious trust issues, though there's a pretty good reason for that... Perhaps he just needs a little help, and a little more information about what exactly happened to him — surely then he'd be willing to return the favor, right?

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• Acquired Situational Narcissism: Turning the immigrant town into a King's Castle in the PlayStation version of the remake causes Hoffman to began acting like he's royalty, going from being grateful to the Hero to treating them like a subordinate.
• Ascended Extra: The remakes make him the focus of the immigrant town sidequest, greatly expanding his screentime. To go along with this, he's given his own unique set of sprites rather than simply reusing the generic sailor sprites he did in the original. Ironically, this has the added effect of reducing the amount of time he actually gets to spend as a party member, as he leaves as soon as the party enters Mintos rather than after Alena and Kiryl are recruited.
• Badass Normal: He isn't among The Chosen Many and can't use any magic, but is still a strong and reliable party member. And, as shown in the remakes, he has the business accumen needed to successfully build an entire town provided the party is able to bring him some townspeople.
• Character Development: Goes from a distrustful misanthrope to a hard-working and generous Nice Guy with the party's assistance. Becomes particularly apparent in the remakes, where he founds an entire town made up of people from all over the world.
• Charged Attack: Can randomly muster his strength during battle, increasing the power of his next attack. He is notably the only party member other than Torneko capable of doing this.
• Chick Magnet: In addition to the below-mentioned Ship Tease with Maya, turning the immigrant town into a Ladies' Town in the PlayStation version of the remake causes Hoffman to become sought after by many of the town's residents due to being one of the only men around. While he's excited by the attention, he's too nervous to act on it and becomes self-conscious about appearing proper around them.
• Crutch Character: Bolsters the party's numbers and serves as a much-needed second frontline fighter alongside the Hero early on. Even after Torneko is recruited, you may feel inclined to continue using Hoffman due to him being less erratic and therefore more reliable in battle. As a Guest-Star Party Member, however, his time in the party is limited and he can't level up or change his equipment during it.
• Cynicism Catalyst: He was a perfectly cheery lad until his best friend seemingly betrayed him and left him for dead when they went treasure hunting in the Con Cave. Proving to him that things weren't what they seemed back then is the key to gaining his help.
• Developer's Foresight: While the actual amount of time he is required to be in the party is relatively short (just two towns and a dungeon), it's possible to explore a significant chunk of the map with him due to the party acquiring the ship and Opening the Sandbox just before he leaves. The remakes give him several unique lines of party chat dialogue for those willing to go out of their way to travel around the world with him.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Used the same set of sprites as sailor NPCs in the original game, but was given his own unique set in the remakes.
• Et Tu, Brute?: The reason why he's so hostile to the party when they first meet him is that his best friend seemingly betrayed and left him for dead while they were out treasure hunting, giving him major trust issues. The party eventually discovers that the place they were exploring, Con Cave, is home to monsters that impersonate the companions of passing travelers to psychologically toy with them and that his friend didn't betray him at all.
• The Gambling Addict: Turning the immigrant town into a Grand Slum in the Playstation version of the remake has him remark in his diary that he can't keep himself away from the casino and is wasting all of his money.
• Good Old Boy: The localization of the remake gives him a thick southern drawl, and he's nothing but polite and hard-working after he joins the party.
• Guest-Star Party Member: He fills in as a fourth party member until you land in Mintos, where he chooses to stay behind to study under the legendary businessman Hilton.
• Hero-Worshipper: Holds Torneko in high esteem due to admiring and wishing to emulate his reputation as a Self-Made Man.
• Jack of All Stats: Compared to his fellow Magically Inept Fighter Guest-Star Party Member Oojam, Hoffman has slightly inferior strength in exchange for slightly superior resilience and agility, overall making him more flexible and well-balanced in battle.
• Last-Name Basis: While the localization of the remakes give him a full name, he is still primarily referred to as Hoffman in-game.
• Madden Into Misanthropy: Getting betrayed by his best friend turned Nice Guy Hank into an abrasive misanthrope who has isolated himself from the rest of the world and distrusts everyone he meets. Being shown the Symbol of Faith by the party reawakens his former kindness and returns him to his old self.
• Magically Inept Fighter: He's totally incapable of using magic.
• Nice Guy: Once the party restores his faith in humanity, he becomes a polite, chipper, and overall really likable guy.
• Restored My Faith in Humanity: When the party first meets him he's completely lost faith in his fellow man due to believing that his best friend turned his back on him out of greed. When the party finds said treasure, a magical jewel said to be able to open up anyone's heart, Hoffman returns to his senses and learns to trust in others, which he makes good on by joining the party and lending them his horse and carriage.
• Ship Tease: Receives some with Maya of all people in the remakes, with her being happy to have a young man in the party if spoken to in party chat when he first joins and later expressing regret and not having pursued him after the immigrant town he founds becomes a thriving metropolis. Downplayed in that both of these examples are done more to express Maya's status as a Lovable Sex Maniac and Gold Digger than to suggest any particular attraction to Hoffman.
• Small Role, Big Impact: He isn't in the party for very long but is responsible for providing it with both a horse and carriage, both of which serve as key items for transporting party members throughout the game.
• Vague Age: His father is depicted using the generic "old man" sprites and years are said to have passed between his ill-fated trip to Con Cave and when the party first meets him, implying that he's at least a young man. Despite this, his official artwork in the original game depicts him as a downright tiny little guy who could easily pass for a child. The remakes give him new artwork that seems to split the difference by making him look like a baby-faced teen.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Entrusts the party with finding people to serve as residents in his immigrant town in the remakes, hoping to eventually build it into a center of industry. If the player makes the effort to seek out merchants to send to the town in the PlayStation version, his wish comes true.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Entrusts the party with finding people to serve as residents in his immigrant town in the remakes, hoping to eventually build it into a center of industry. In the PlayStation version, there's nothing stopping the party from recruiting a bunch of thugs to transform it into a slum or monsters to turn it into a mysterious tower. Hoffman is very upset with both outcomes, and mentions in his diary in the former instance that he gets mugged on a regular basis despite being the ostensible leader of the town and has developed a gambling addiction.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Though it's eventually revealed that his best friend didn't betray him while they were exploring Con Cave, it's never made clear what actually happened to him. While most would assume that he was killed by monsters while separated from Hoffman in the cave, the PlayStation version of the remake has him appear as a potential resident of the immigrant town who is in a similar slump as Hoffman was before the party revealed the truth to him. Since this character isn't featured in any other version of the remake, it's unclear if this is still the case.
• Young Entrepreneur: Looks up to accomplished businessmen such as Torneko and Hilton and eventually decides to leave the party to study under the latter in hopes of becoming a success in his own right. In the remakes he's able to achieve his dream by striking out on his own and founding the immigrant town, which grows into a booming hotspot of industry with the party's help.

Tom Foolery

Tom Foolery (Panon)

A wandering entertainer reputed to be one of the best comedians in the world. The party eventually recruits his help in cracking up a certain country's king...

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• Adaptational Badass: While the Dream Blade was Nerfed so that it no longer ignores enemy immunities to the sleep status effect in the PlayStation remake, Tom's access to the otherwise enemy-exclusive Sleep Attack still gave him the ability to. This feature was unfortunately removed from the DS version of the remake onwards.
• Ambiguously Human: For whatever reason, he's included in the "special" characters category in the PlayStation remake's Immigrant Town sidequest, which otherwise consists mostly of monsters and Zenithians.
• Ambiguously Related: A comedian named Tom Foolery appears in Dragon Quest VI, though whether he's meant to be the same person, his distant predecessor, or little more than a reference is never made clear. Notably, the remake does not depict him with the unique sprites given to Tom in Dragon Quest IV's remakes.
• Bait-and-Switch: He's a famous comedian that the party recruits for the express purpose of making the king of Canalot laugh to obtain the Zenithian Helm, but when he actually appears before the king he forgoes any kind of wisecracking and instead speaks with utter sincerity. Despite this, his words manage to get through to the king and secure the helm for the party.
• Cool Old Guy: He's a middle-aged man who, on top of being a famous comedian, can potentially be a long-lasting and reliable party member.
• Developer's Foresight: The window in which he actually needs to be in the party is ridiculously short: literally all you need to do is take him to Canalot and talk to the king, which can be accomplished in about three minutes. Despite this, he can potentially be taken all over the world depending on what point in the game you choose to recruit him, and the remakes give him unique party chat dialogue for every single location that the party can access prior to entering the Stairway to Zenithia. That even includes taking him to fight Estark.
• Disc-One Nuke: He can be recruited as soon as you obtain the ship, and his ability to put any enemy to sleep regardless of their resistances makes him shockingly effective at dealing with bosses.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Used a slightly altered version of the sprites used by martial artist NPCs in the original game, but was given his own unique set in the remakes.
• Forced Sleep: His speciality. Along with being equipped with a Dream Blade, which has a chance of putting every enemy it strikes to sleep, he can also cast the spell Snooze, which has the same effect, and has access to the normally enemy-exclusive Sleep Attack, which is an attack that can also put enemies to sleep.
• Fragile Speedster: His agility is fairly high, but his HP is lackluster and his attack and defense are only middling. And as a Guest-Star Party Member he's incapable of leveling up to improve his shortcomings. His main asset in battle is being able to act quickly enough to put an enemy to sleep before it gets a chance to attack.
• Fun Personified: He's a world-famous comedian who always has a joke at the ready for whatever situation he finds himself in, and everyone in the party (even Borya) is quickly endeared to his presence.
• Guest-Star Party Member: A rather interesting example. You need to recruit him to obtain the Zenithian Helm from the king of Canalot, after which he leaves the party permanently. This can be done at any point in the game after the ship is obtained, and can be accomplished quickly enough that it's entirely possible for him to leave the party without taking part in even a single fight. On the other hand, there's nothing stopping you from holding off on taking him to Canalot to bring him along on other tasks. If he's recruited as soon as the ship is made available, then it is potentially possible for him to be in the party for a significant chunk of the game's content, including major boss fights such as against the Marquis de Leon, Baalzack, and even Estark.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Despite being recruited by the party to tell a joke funny enough to make the king of Canalot laugh and give up the Zenithian Helm, Tom instead chooses to drop his usual buffoonery when the moment arrives and instead earnestly tells the king to trust the party with the helmet for the sake of bringing the peace to the world and letting everyone be able laugh again. It works instantly, and proves that he's a good-hearted and astoundingly sensible guy beneath his joking.
  • Speaking to him in party chat reveals that he has a good singing voice, which he occasionally incorporates into his act by putting his puns to a tune.
• Informed Ability: For a guy touted as a legendary comedian, his material seems to consist entirely of lame puns. One NPC in Laissez-Faire actually Hand-waves this by claiming that it isn't the jokes themselves but how he delivers them that make him so funny.
• Joke Character: The DS and mobile versions of the remake remove his unique ability to put any enemy to sleep, eliminating his one saving grace as a party member and making him more or less useless in battle.
• Lethal Joke Character: He's a goofy-looking comedian who isn't particularly formidable in battle but can nonetheless be a major asset due to his ability to put even bosses to sleep. This attribute was unfortunately removed from the DS remake onwards, reducing his usefulness substantially.
• Magic Knight: Technically. While he's one of the only party members capable of both being a frontline fighter and using magic, the only spell he knows has the same effect as the weapon he's permanently equipped with at the cost of not dealing any damage, essentially making it a weaker version of his regular attack that costs MP.
• Mana Drain: He has a chance of performing a weird dance in combat that can cause an enemy to lose between 3 to 7 MP.
• Mr. Vice Guy: He's somewhat obnoxious and has a few lines of party chat dialogue that suggest he steals some of his comedy material, but his actions within the story paint him as a goodhearted guy nonetheless.
• Nice Guy: Not only is he an upbeat comedian, but his speech to gain the Zenithian Helm reveals that he's a thoughtful person who is truly concerned about the future of humanity.
• Non-Ironic Clown: Artwork depicted him as one in the original version of the game. The outfit he wears in his redesign in the remakes also resembles that of a jester.
• Only Sane Man: While everyone else in Canalot (the party included) play along with the king's challenge to make him laugh in exchange for the Zenithian Helm, only Tom has the common sense to tell him outright that the most effective way to get people laughing again is to let the heroes have the helmet so that they can save the world.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: After spending all of his screentime cracking wise, it's downright shocking to see him drop it all when he asks the king of Canalot for the Zenithian Helm.
• Plucky Comic Relief: As a professional comedian, it's a part of his job description. In the remakes, speaking to him in party chat when visiting a new town will always elicit a joke about the surroundings.
• Pungeon Master: All of his jokes consist of really lousy puns and wordplay. Most of his dialogue when spoken to in party chat is making puns about the names of the locations the party is currently in.
• Punny Name: The English localization of the remakes turn his name into a play on "tomfoolery", which is another word for acting like a clown.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: While it's possible to have him in the party for most of the game, it's impossible to bring him into the endgame since the Zenithian Helm is needed to enter the Stairway to Zenithia.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: His only use as a party member is putting to sleep enemies that are ordinarily immune to being put to sleep. This is much more useful than it sounds, as it can trivialize most bosses by making them unable to act for several turns. Unfortunately, he's no longer able to do this in later versions of the remake.
• Useless Useful Spell: Most of his abilities. To whit:
  • His ability to use the monster-exclusive Sleep Attack would be noteworthy... if it weren't for the fact that he's permanently equipped with a sword that gives normal attacks a chance of putting enemies to sleep that makes it completely redundant. Subverted in the PlayStation version of the remake, where, due to it being coded as a monster skill, Sleep Attack has a chance of working against enemies that would otherwise be immune to other sources of the sleep status effect, including the Dream Blade.
  • Any benefit that using Snooze would have can already be accomplished by attacking with his Dream Blade, which also deals damage and doesn't cost any MP to use.
  • His Mana Drain dance gets rid of such paltry sums of MP that it's closer to a waste of a turn than a skill.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Vanishes from the game after he leaves the party. Averted in the PlayStation version of the remake, in which he has a chance of reappearing as a recruitable citizen for the Immigrant Town.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: With the exception of Weird Dance, all of his abilities revolve around putting the enemy to sleep.

Orifiela

Orifiela (Lucia)

A beautiful Zenithian, the winged-residents of the celestial city of Zenithia, who has found herself stranded from home atop the world tree. With the party as her escorts, she'll guide them to the land above the clouds...

Voiced by: Claire Morgan (Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince EN)

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• Adaptational Dye-Job: Artwork of her from the original game depicted her with pink hair, whereas she's a brunette in the remakes.
• Adaptational Personality Change: Her few lines in the original game paint her as a mature and serious young woman, whereas the remakes make her naive and Constantly Curious about the human world.
• Angelic Beauty: A member of the angelic Zenithian race and a beautiful, virtuous woman.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Frustratingly invoked in the original version: she is for whatever reason the only party member who doesn't automatically go to the carriage if she's recruited when all four active party slots are already filled, and will refuse to join unless you talk to her with a party of three people or less. What makes this especially annoying is that she's found at the top of a dungeon, which is the last place you'd ever think of entering without all the manpower you could muster. Thankfully averted in the remakes, where she heads to the carriage like everyone else if the party is full.
• Boring, but Practical: Her main utility is simply being able to cast Full Heal, which, while hardly anything novel, is always an asset to have, particularly since it frees up your other healers to use their MP for other purposes.
• Constantly Curious: The remakes' party chat feature reveals her to treat every new sight she encounters while traveling across the human world with wide-eyed curiosity and enthusiasm.
• Cool Helmet: Wears one resembling a Roman Centurion's in her original artwork, possibly to bring to mind a Valkyrie.
• Crutch Character: Joins the party before it enters the Stairway to Zenithia, one of the longest and toughest dungeons in the game, as a much-welcomed extra healer who can help take some of the load of keeping the party's strength up off of the Hero, Meena and Kiryl. Unfortunately, she leaves almost immediately afterward, meaning she can't serve this role during the Very Definitely Final Dungeon (although, at least in the NES original, she actually can, provided a Good Bad Bug is exploited).
• Damsel in Distress: First encountered by the party injured atop the World Tree after being attacked by a monster while trying to pick some of its leaves.
• Developer's Foresight: As in the cases of Hoffman and Tom Foolery, taking her around the world in the remakes rewards you with several pieces of unique party chat dialogue, including in places you have no reason to return to by the point in the game when you recruit her.
• Ditzy Genius: She's an experienced Dragon Tamer and, as a Zenithian, is knowledgeable about the history of the world (not to mention rather verbose), but speaking to her in party chat reveals her to be flighty and completely oblivious to what life on earth is actually like. Many players coming from the original game believing her to be reserved and wise were shocked to see how far from reality this was in the remakes.
• Dragon Tamer: Her main profession in Zenithia is raising baby dragons. It's with her permission that the party is able to have Sparkie tag along with them.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: Damaged her wings after being attack by a monster, stranding her on top of the World Tree before the party rescues her and keeping her from simply flying back to Zenithia.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Joins the party after being encountered at the top of the World Tree but will leave it as soon as you enter Zenithia. In the original game it's possible to stop her from leaving the party simply by keeping her in the carriage whenever you go to Zenithia, allowing her to be brought along into the endgame. She's a surprisingly effective choice to bring as a healer against the final boss, as she has higher HP than Meena and better resistance against its breath attacks than Kiryl thanks to the Flowing Dress she's equipped with. This is unfortunately no longer possible in the remakes.
• The Ingenue: She's a gentle and kindhearted angel in all but name who spends her days caring for baby dragons and shows nothing short of wonder for everything she encounters while traveling the world with the party.
• Intrigued by Humanity: Having never seen more of the human world beyond the World Tree, she is fascinated by how human civilization has shaped itself and takes pleasure in the most basic aspects of nature such as the ocean or rivers.
• Mana Drain: She's permanently equipped with a Somatic Staff, which drains an enemy of its MP when used to attack.
• Mauve Shirt: She uses the same set of sprites as every female Zenithian, but is the only Zenithian that gets a name and (apart from the Hero's presumed mother) that receives any kind of significant characterization.
• Mundane Object Amazement: She gets giddy whenever she's brought anywhere near large bodies of water since she's never seen anything like them living in the clouds.
• Mutually Exclusive Party Members: Since Sparkie can only be recruited by speaking to her as an NPC in Zenithia, the two can never be in the party at the same time even if you exploit the Good Bad Bug to keep her from leaving in the original version of the game.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: While she's a respectable healer in her own right, she lacks any of the spells that make Kiryl and Meena stand out (Multiheal, Buff and Kabuff for the former; Insulatle, Woosh and Swoosh for the latter) and isn't as sturdy as either of them, so she's the worst choice of the three in most situations.
• The Smurfette Principle: The only female among the game's cast of Guest-Star Party Members.
• Squishy Wizard: Her offensive abilities are minimal and her physical defenses are poor, but she knows several potent spells including the ever-useful Full Heal and comes equipped with a Flowing Dress that gives her an innate resistance to elemental breath attacks.
• White Magician Girl: Compared to the more well-balanced Kiryl and Meena, Orifiela is a Squishy Wizard whose main use in combat is using Full Heal to replenish her allies' health. She also has the gentle, nurturing personality typically associated with the archetype.
• Winged Humanoid: As a Zenithian, she's a beautiful winged humanoid highly reminiscent of an angel.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: The English localization from the remakes onward make her speak archaically, though she becomes noticeably less formal when spoken to in party chat.

Sparkie

Sparkie (Doran)

A bouncing baby dragon bred by Orifiela, whom she loans to the party after arriving in Zenithia. Packs a punch, in spite of his size.

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• 11th-Hour Ranger: Recruiting him comes immediately before the Doorway to Nadiria: the game's semifinal dungeon.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: While he's drawn as a chubby, almost Chibi-esque little guy in his original artwork, the remakes instead portray him as larger, slimmer, and more impressive-looking.
• Adaptational Wimp: His Breath Weapon is no longer able to damage Metal Slimes in the remakes, making him significantly less useful for Level Grinding.
• Advertised Extra: To an extent; promotional materials for Dragon Quest IV advertised the ability to have Monster Allies when in fact only Healie and Sparkie are playable and Sparkie is an Optional Party Member that the player is only able to recruit immediately before the endgame.
• An Ice Person: His Breath Weapon is ice-based rather than fire.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: For whatever reason, he leaves the party after Rose is revived in the remakes to make room for the Promoted to Playable Psaro. Particularly strange, as every version of the game allows you to have a ten-person party if you choose to do Tom Foolery and Orifiela's events concurrently.
• Breakout Character: To a lesser extent than Healie, but Sparkie also helped usher in an interest in the Monster Allies that have since become a series signature. His Japanese name is even used as the basis of the default name for the first Small Fry you recruit in Dragon Quest V (Doran—>Kodoran).
• Breath Weapon: He's capable of using the Cool Breath attack that is otherwise exclusive to enemies, which deals defense and magic resistance-ignoring elemental damage to all enemies regardless of how they're grouped together. It doubles as an Always Accurate Attack, and can be used in the original version of the game to reliably damage Metal Slimes.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Nowhere to be seen when Zenithia is revisited in Dragon Quest V, with no word being given on his whereabouts.
• Critical Hit Class: The way that his AI is programmed means that he will always score a critical hit whenever he decides to use a physical attack, which gives him a higher critical hit rate than most other characters and makes him a good choice for hunting Metal Slimes.
• Crutch Character: He's respectably strong even for how late into the game he's recruited, and can be handy to have around for a player lacking in offensive power, but the number of situations where he's the superior choice over a well-equipped Ragnar or Alena are very limited since he can't level up or wear any equipment.
• Delightful Dragon: He's a helpful baby dragon who looks to be about the size of a dog that joins the party to defeat the forces of evil.
• Developer's Foresight: While he's one of the game's two Monster Allies, the general public have no way of knowing that he's any different from the average Mook. As such, walking around towns with him as the party leader causes all NPCs to react with fear.
• Goo-Goo-Godlike: As a baby dragon, he's strong enough to keep pace with an endgame party.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Turned into one in the remakes' bonus content. While he remains in the party up through and after the final boss, and can even accompany it on its first trek through the Bonus Dungeon, he will automatically leave it as soon as Rose is revived in order to tell the Zenithians the news. And since reviving Rose is necessary to face the True Final Boss, it is impossible for Sparkie to take part in the final battle.
• Mighty Glacier: He has high physical stats and strong attacks, but his agility is pretty lacking.
• Monster Allies: The second ever playable monster in the series after Healie.
• Mutually Exclusive Party Members:
  • Recruiting him requires speaking with Orifiela after she returns to Zenithia. Therefore, it's impossible for the two of them to be in the party together even if you exploit the Good Bad Bug to keep Orifiela in the party in the original game.
  • He automatically leaves the party after Rose is revived to inform Zenithia about the situation, meaning it's impossible for him to be in the party at the same time as Psaro.
• Non-Indicative Name: With a name like Sparkie, you'd be forgiven for assuming that he breathes fire or lightning. Nope, just ice.
• Older Than They Look: Reading Orifiela's diary indicates that he was born in the same year as her, despite him still being a baby. Presumably justified by dragons being Long-Lived and thus taking longer to physically mature.
• Optional Party Member: In order to recruit him, you need to speak with Orifiela in Zenithia after she leaves the party. Ignore her, and Sparkie won't join you.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: He's smaller than the rest of the party but packs a mighty wollop, being a dragon and all.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: He's a chubby baby dragon, so it's a given.
• Team Pet: Unlike fellow Monster Ally Healie, Sparkie is completely incapable of speech and is treated like an animal rather than a person. In fitting with this trope, he's also a Ridiculously Cute Critter.
• The Unintelligible: Communicates exclusively through growling.
• You Don't Look Like You: While his sprite set in the remakes resembles the Small Fry enemy type seen in later games, his artwork looks closer to a Komodo.

Secret Character (ALL SPOILERS UNMARKED)

Psaro the Manslayer (Necrosaro / Death Pisaro)

A hidden additional party member added in the game's various remakes, though not considered a Guest-Star Party Member like the others, and can level up and be directly controlled by the player. This character by nature is a Walking Spoiler par excellence.

For more information about his character, see Psaro's entry in the 'Villains' section.

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• 11th-Hour Ranger: Takes it a step further by being a 13th-Hour Ranger. As the original game's Final Boss, it is only possible to recruit him after beating the game. Even after that, the player still needs to complete the Bonus Dungeon at least once before he can join the party, meaning the only truly new content left to do afterwards is face the True Final Boss.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: He is by far the most powerful playable character, completely subverting the Competitive Balance established by the rest of the party to be a Master of All with excellent stats and a variety of useful and unique special abilities. However, he is only recruited immediately before the True Final Boss, making the actual number of things that can be done with him in the party fairly limited.
• Adaptational Heroism: Downplayed. While the remakes allow him to be recruited by the player and join the main party in defeating his Dragon with an Agenda, he still performs the same Kick the Dog moments he did in the original (in fact, it's made more overt that he is directly responsible for destroying the Hero's village) and he makes it clear as a party member that he has no interest in befriending the party or showing regret for his past actions.
• Awesome, but Impractical: While he possesses a whole host of unique skills when recruited as a party member, many of which boast impressive attack animations, the majority of them are learned through extensive level grinding, and he joins the party so late into the game that there is little point in taking the effort to do so, particularly since he is already strong enough to face the True Final Boss at his starting level. Even the unique skills he joins the party already knowing are far less useful than they normally would be, simply because there is too little left to do in the game for them to be meaningfully incorporated into the player's combat strategies.
• But Now I Must Go: After Aamon is slain, Psaro leaves the party before they are returned to Zenithia, stating that a monster like him won't be welcome. Ironically, the Zenith Dragon instead commends Psaro for his role in saving the world.
• Call-Forward: He is capable of learning skills introduced in later games in the Dragon Quest series such as Hatchet Man, Lightning Storm, and Magic Burst.
• Combat Medic: In addition to having powerful physical abilities and offensive magic, he joins knowing how to cast Fullheal and Multiheal.
• The Comically Serious: While he's as cold and dignified as a party member as he was as an antagonist, it still bears noting that the only bosses he's able to fight alongside the party other than Aamon are the very goofy Foo Yung and Chow Mein. Speaking to him in party chat while bringing him along to fight the two even has him acknowledge how beneath him the whole situation is. Examining mirrors with him as the party leader also has him engage in the same goofy antics as the rest of the cast, including making a funny face at his own reflection and then feeling self-conscious for doing so.
• Easily Forgiven: Nobody in the party appears to have any objections to working with him during the sixth chapter, with some such as Maya, Ragnar, and Torneko even making cheerful jokes about the situation. This despite him being responsible, either directly or indirectly, for all of the problems and trauma they've had to endure throughout the game.
• Enemy Mine: His joining the party is depicted as being closer to this than a complete Heel–Face Turn. While he is grateful to the Hero for reuniting him with Rose, he makes it clear that he has no interest in changing his stance on humanity or befriending the party and is very irritated if he is brought along to do anything other than fight Aamon. After Aamon is defeated, his parting words to the Hero have him state that he has no idea if they will be enemies or allies when their paths inevitably cross again.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: As a demon, Psaro is immune to the negative effects of cursed items and can equip them without penalty when made a party member.
• Hates Small Talk: The majority of his dialogue when spoken to in party chat consists of him showing either annoyance or indifference to the party trying to make small talk with him.
• Heavy Equipment Class: As a playable character, he is not only able to equip heavy weapons and armor like the Hero and Ragnar can, but he's also able to wield cursed equipment without penalty.
• Holy Burns Evil: Speaking to him in the church in the Bonus Dungeon has him mention that being in places like it make him feel ill, and he outright refuses to accompany the party into Zenithia if they go there with him in it.
• Interface Spoiler: Speaking to him in the Hero's village at the start of Chapter 5 (the only time in the game when he appears as an NPC outside of cutscenes) from an angle reveals that he has diagonal movement sprites: a privilege that is otherwise reserved for permanent party members.
• Jerkass: Don't expect him to be any more pleasant as an ally than he was as an enemy; the majority of his party chat dialogue has him rudely dismiss any and all attempts at bonding.
• Love Redeems: He is able to regain his original form, memory, and sanity during the sixth chapter of the remakes after the party brings Rose to him and she begs him to go back to normal. While it's actually Rose's ruby tears that cause the Secret of Evolution to be undone, the fact that it was her love for him that made her shed them still puts this trope in effect.
• Magic Knight: He has access to many of the strongest spells in the game in addition to having several powerful sword skills no one else in the party can use.
• Master of All: As a playable character, he boasts top-class stats across the board (along with maxing out his strength and agility by the time he hits the Level Cap, his final HP value is only a few points lower than Ragnar's and his final MP value is second only to Maya's), he can also use many of the other party members' strongest spells (including Maya's Kaboom and Puff!, Kiryl's Thwack and Multiheal, and Borya's Oomph) along with many of his own (including the almighty Magic Burst) and is the only playable character capable of using sword techniques introduced in later games in the series such as Hatchet Man and Harvest Moon. Overall, he's a better frontline fighter and magic user than the party's specialists are. Even his one drawback of leveling up the slowest of any playable character is effectively nullified by him already being strong enough to outclass the rest of the party at his starting level.
• Master Swordsman: He's the only party member capable of using sword skills introduced in later games in the series, like Harvest Moon, in battle.
• Mutually Exclusive Party Members: As Sparkie automatically leaves the party as soon as Rose is revived, it is impossible for him to be in the party at the same time as Psaro.
• Mythology Gag: He was intended to become a party member in the original game, but was cut due to memory limitations. The remakes finally allow him to join the party.
• Promoted to Playable: Goes from the Final Boss of the original game to a playable character in the remakes.
• Purposefully Overpowered: As a playable character, Psaro completely shatters the carefully-crafted Competitive Balance that exists between the rest of the party by being a Master of All with access to abilities the game wasn't originally designed to even account for. Despite likely being a good 10 levels lower than the rest of the party when he's recruited, he will immediately encroach on everyone else's usefulness by virtue of how incredibly strong he is and will only continue to eclipse them as he levels up. Considering that he's the former Big Bad and Final Boss, though, being obscenely strong should be expected.
• The Quiet One: Has much less party chat dialogue than the rest of the party, and what little he does have is often terse and to the point. Slightly justified by him being an 11th-Hour Ranger who is in the party for far less time than anyone else.
• Required Party Member: Aamon will only fight the party at Diabolic Hall if Psaro is present in it, meaning that he must participate in the True Final Boss battle.
• Secret Character: He can be recruited after beating the game if the player completes the Bonus Dungeon at least once, grabs the newly-bloomed Yggdrasil Flower from atop the World Tree, uses it at Rose's grave in Rosehill, and then takes the resurrected Rose to Psaro's lair in Nadiria. While he's required to face the True Final Boss, the game only provides a small amount of prodding to get the player to do all of this, leaving it up to them to figure most of it out.
• Spared by the Adaptation: The remakes allow him to regain his original form and sanity and join the heroes to defeat Aamon provided special conditions are met.
• Stuck Items: Averted. As a party member, he is fully capable of using cursed weapons and armor with no penalty.
• Super-Senses: Bringing him to the Bonus Dungeon has him reveal in party chat that his Pointy Ears aren't just for show: he can hear Foo Yung and Chow Mein arguing several floors away from their actual location. Considering that each floor in the dungeon seems to be completely disconnected from the rest by magic, this is very impressive.
• Token Evil Teammate: As a party member, he maintains his stance that Humans Are Bastards, refuses to show any remorse for his past actions, and acts like a jerk when spoken to in party chat. His parting words to the Hero also have him suggest that he may still one day attempt to rise up against humanity even after all it has done for him.
• Token Non-Human: He's the only non-human character that can be permanently recruited into the party.
• Triumphant Reprise: Making him the party leader while walking around the world map causes a more upbeat and bombastic version of his theme music to play, changing its overall tone from somber to heroic to signify his newfound status as an ally.
• Tsundere: Remains cold to the rest of the party after he's recruited, but still watches contentedly with Rose as they fly off during the ending.
• Walking Spoiler: As a Secret Character, every aspect of their existence counts as a spoiler.

Villains

Psaro the Manslayer

Psaro the Manslayer (Necrosaro / Death Pisaro)

^{Click for his Final Form.}

Voiced by: Shūichi Ikeda (Drama CD), Daisuke Ono (Dragon Quest Heroes series [JP], Dragon Quest Rivals, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince), Gwilym Lee (Dragon Quest Heroes series [EN], Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince [EN])

A powerful swordsman. He is a demon and bears the title "Master of Monsterkind" despite having a very humanoid appearance.

For information about his appearance as a party member, see the 'Secret Party Member' entry in the 'Allies' section.

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• A Day in the Limelight: Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince shows his childhood and how he became the Master of Monsterkind as a Monster Wrangler.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: Downplayed. He received no character art in the original release of the game, leaving determining his appearance dependent entirely on interpreting his 8-bit sprites, but the remakes give him artwork that explicitly depicts him as a gorgeous Long-Haired Pretty Boy and include multiple new lines of dialogue that describe him as being attractive in-universe to match.
• Adaptational Dye-Job: His sprite in the original game has spiky black hair, whereas from the remakes onwards he's depicted with long white hair.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: The remakes explicitly show him to be the wandering bard who allowed monsters to invade the Hero's village at the beginning of the fifth chapter, whereas the original game uses a generic bard sprite to represent the character.
• Adaptational Personality Change: He's made to speak in a less old-fashioned, more youthful way in the remakes compared to the original, though this is more obvious when comparing the Japanese scripts.
• Adaptation Expansion: The remakes include a flashback scene not seen in the original game that reveals how he and Rose first met. The Dark Prince is an even more elaborate expansion, showing all of what Psaro was up to during the course of IV.
• Alas, Poor Villain: When confronted as the Final Boss, he has turned himself into a raging monster in the name of avenging Rose, only for doing so to have caused him to completely forget who he is or why he is doing it. Considering that the rest of the game depicts him as a charismatic leader who genuinely wants to protect and improve the lives of non-humans, it's a sorry state to see him be reduced to.
• Ambiguous Species: Despite leading the monsters, he looks far more humanoid than any of his followers. His species is officially listed as "demon", though what exactly that means within the setting of the game has never been elaborated on. The Dark Prince subverts this, making it clear that he is both a human and monster hybrid, being born to a monster father and a human mother.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: Most of Alena's chapter builds up the expectation that she will confront him in the final round of the Endor tournament, only for him to unexpectedly drop out before she even gets a chance to meet him in person.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: A meta example. It's no coincidence that the most humanoid of the Dragon Quest series' Big Bads is also a Tragic Villain that is treated with sympathy.
• Big Bad: The leader of the monster forces terrorizing the world, the person spear-heading the operation to resurrect the Lord of the Underworld, and the man responsible for destroying the Hero's hometown. Subverted in the remakes, where the hidden chapter has him join forces with the party against his Dragon with an Agenda.
• Bishōnen Line: Zig-zagged. While he, the leader and most powerful member of the monsters' forces, has the appearance of an attractive humanoid, the One-Winged Angel form that he faces the party as is a hideous beast no different from his minions. This sudden subversion is likely deliberate, as it highlights how he has discarded his original motivation in the name of empty revenge.
• Body Horror: While the final boss fight contains many instances of him spontaneously growing limbs, one moment stands out: after having his arms and head knocked off in his first form, a second face suddenly grows out of his limbless torso, with his pecs forming the eyes and his abs forming the mouth.
• Breakout Villain: As the first villain in the series to be more than a generic Evil Overlord, he is one of the Dragon Quest series' most beloved antagonists. Along with getting an expanded role in the remakes, he is a frequent presence in spin-offs, far more so than any of the series' other villains. He even gets his own video game where he's the starring role in Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: The brooding boy to Rose's gentle girl. The two are deeply in love with each other, but Psaro is a cold and haughty demon who desires to exterminate humanity in retaliation for its persecution of non-humans whereas Rose is a kindhearted elf who just wants to live in peace with Psaro away from the rest of the world.
• Captain Ersatz: His appearance from the remakes onward strongly resembles Sephiroth, though whether this was a deliberate homage or merely a coincidence (attractive white-haired men are hardly rare antagonists in Japanese media) has been the subject of great debate for years.
• Cleavage Window: His shirt has a low neckline that exposes his chest and abs.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: While the main villains of previous games in the series were all monstrous Card Carrying Villains with the shallow motivation of taking over the world, Psaro is a humanoid with a more complex desire to eliminate humanity for the sake of protecting his non-human loved ones. He also notably defies the Orcus on His Throne trope by playing a proactive part in accomplishing his plans and antagonizing the party, to the point where he isn't even in his lair when the party infiltrates it.
• Create Your Own Hero: The Hero was already destined to fight him, but Psaro (or rather, Dolph) going out of his way to slaughter the Hidden Elf Village raising them in secret certainly made sure It's Personal.
• The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: After using the Secret of Evolution on himself, he loses all memory of who he is or what he wanted to do and instead chooses to attack the party in a blind rage.
• Depending on the Artist: Prior to having his design solidified in the remakes, Psaro was never depicted in any official artwork. As such, his appearance varied wildly whenever he was shown in ancillary materials such as tie-in manga, drama CDs, or novels. The Dark Prince changed his design again, giving him a younger appearance and a different outfit.
• Devil in Plain Sight: Sneaks into the Hero's village posing as a human bard at the beginning of chapter 5 to allow monsters to break into it. While he wears a disguise consisting of the sprites used for all generic bard characters in the original game, he doesn't wear one at all in the remakes. One wonders how the people of the Hero's village could believe that a sword-carrying man dressed in black with Pointy Ears and red eyes was anything other than bad news. The Dark Prince would Retcon this back to the original version, re-establishing that he was in disguise with the Morph spell at the time.
• The Dreaded: His participation in the Endor Tourney clearly left a bad impression on the people of the kingdom, as talking with any of them about him causes them to freak out. Even before he is formally introduced, speaking with party members about him shows that all of them (other than Alena) are unsettled just from hearing his name.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: His sprites in the original game depict him with spiky black hair and a red cape. It wasn't until the PlayStation remake onwards that his design was solidified.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To the Hero. Both are young people who have set out on journeys to defeat an enemy race and avenge their loved ones, but the Hero is a human who fights monsters and Psaro is a monster who fights humans. The Hero is The Chosen One destined from birth to save humanity from the Lord of the Underworld while Psaro is directly attempting to subvert destiny by killing the Hero before they are able to do so and uses the Secret of Evolution to instate himself as Lord of the Underworld after Estark is defeated. The Hero is also an All-Loving Hero who never allows grief or anger to distract them from their goal of saving humanity even after their village is destroyed, whereas Psaro completely loses himself after Rose is killed and transforms into a rampaging monster with no memory of his past or motivation in the name of revenge. The remakes further this when Psaro is made a playable character, where his combat abilities mirror the Hero's own Magic Knight status and he is given his own unique set of equipment known as the Pandemonic Armor to serve as a counterpart to the Zenithian Armor.
  • To Terry as of Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince. Both were Monster Tamers in their youth, both are motivated to protect the one they cared about (Milly and Rose), both have Lightning Storm as one of their abilities, and both succumbed to the worst of monsterkind (Terry making a deal with Dhuran and Psaro being manipulated by Aamon to become the new Lord of the Underworld). However, while Terry only made a deal with Dhuran in order to gain more power and eventually joined the party after being defeated, Psaro used the Secret of Evolution in a fit of rage after Rose was murdered by human thugs arranged by Aamon so he could become the new Master of Monsterkind.
• Evil Makes You Ugly: Using the Secret of Evolution on himself causes him to go from a handsome swordsman to a hideous monster. His use of it coincides with him Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and discarding his original plans in the name of avenging Rose's death.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: He wears only one spiked pauldron on his left shoulder.
• Final Boss: The final opponent the player faces in the story.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: His final form is so enormous that it starts to overlap with the status and message windows in the original game. This became a tradition for the series' final bosses from then on.
• Frame-Up: Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince reveals that he wasn’t responsible for the massacre of the hero’s Doomed Hometown but rather his older half-brother, Dolph, framed him for the deed by pretending to be him when carrying it out.
• Freak Out: He completely loses it after Rose's death, abandoning the measured pragmatism he displayed throughout the rest of the game in favor of using the Secret of Evolution on himself to turn into a monster and go on a rampage.
• Friend to All Living Things: Provided the things aren't human, at least; visiting Rosehill shows that Psaro treats elves, dwarves, and animals just as well as he does monsters and is beloved by them in turn.
• The Ghost: His name comes up in every single chapter of the game, but he only starts to appear in person during the fifth one.
• Green and Mean: The form he eventually takes after using the Secret of Evolution on himself is a humongous, double-headed green monster.
• He Who Fights Monsters: While he's driven to destroy humanity by his outrage at their cruelty toward non-humans, he engages in plenty of comparably heinous behavior himself over the course of the game. It's hard to really take his side when he freely slaughters innocents in the name of accomplishing his goals.
• A Hero to His Hometown: Visiting Rosehill, a hidden colony of non-humans where Psaro acted as the leader, or rather, as a Monster Wrangler prior to becoming Master of Monsterkind, shows him to be beloved by the citizens. In particular, there are numerous Uplifted Animals he imbued with the ability to speak human language via the Secret of Evolution who never waste a moment to talk about how grateful they are to him for doing so.
• Humans Are Bastards: His primary motivation for attempting to destroy humanity is his disgust at its perceived arrogance and mistreatment of the other race of the world. In particular, he's enraged that humans hunt elves, his lover's species, for profit. The Dark Prince adds that he and his dear mother had also been personally victimized by humans.
• Idiot Hair: His updated look has one strand of hair conspicuously afloat.
• Informed Ability: While he's ostensibly a Master Swordsman, he never gets to show off his skills onscreen. In The Dark Prince, he's been cursed to be incapable of harming a monster, meaning he only occasionally gets to draw a sword when he's given an excuse to do so against a human. Averted in the remakes, where his time as a party member clearly demonstrates his skill.
• Irony: Befitting a Well-Intentioned Tragic Villain, Psaro's life is filled with many ironies:
  • He despises humanity for its brutality towards nonhumans, yet engages in just as much brutality himself in his crusade against it.
  • He organized an attack on the Hero's village with the intent of killing them before they could fulfill their destiny and defeat the Lord of the Underworld, only for doing so to be the inciting action that pushes them to begin their adventure.
    • The Dark Prince adds two layers to it, being that monsters on orders from his father, Randolfo, tried to bring him in, yet that very action is what motivated him to start his quest to become the Master of Monsterkind. And the attack on Solo's home village wasn't his doing at all!
  • His primary motivation for waging war on humanity is his fear that its greed and cruelty will drive it to hurt the woman he loves. Said woman is ultimately killed by one of his own monster subordinates as part of a scheme to usurp him as leader of monsterkind and, in the remakes, is brought back to life by the selflessness of the Hero, a human.
  • Among his plans for crippling humanity was destroying Yggdrasil, the World Tree. In the remakes, it is only through Yggdrasil's power that he is able to reunite with his lost lover and regain his original form and senses. He even notes this irony himself if he's taken to Yggdrasil and spoken to in party chat afterwards.
• It's Personal: He's directly responsible for the monster attack that destroyed the Hero's village and killed all of their loved ones. Or not, according to The Dark Prince, but the Hero thinks he is.
• Karma Houdini: Psaro leads his forces to massacre The Hero's hometown; NPC chatter in Chapter 2 indicates that he fights enemies to the death, which further implies that he's taking advantage of the Endor Tourney—which is specifically trying to attract the strongest fighters in the land—to murder any potential competition to his plan. While he is ultimately slain by the party in the main story, the remakes sweep his mass murder under the rug in the post-game content once Love Redeems him. The Dark Prince further softens him, revealing that he wasn't responsible for the attack on the Hero's hometown but was in reality framed for the deed by his older half-brother, Dolph, and that he didn't kill his Endor opponents either.
• Kick the Dog: While he is a far more sympathetic character than most other villains in the series, he is still given multiple moments that keep the player from siding with him. In particular, his willingness to harm children and slaughter an entire village of innocent people in the name of keeping the Hero from appearing to foil him are both inarguably monstrous actions. However, the latter WAS technically a frame up done by his older brother Dolph, according to The Dark Prince, so that can be excused.
• Magic Knight: He's both a powerful wizard and a skilled swordsman.
• The Magnificent: "The Manslayer", which conveys both his great strength and hatred of humans.
• Marathon Boss: Psaro's Final Boss fight has the distinction of being a One-Winged Angel that averts Transformation Is a Free Action. While he originally presents himself as a clone of Estark, you have to sever each of his arms and then his head... only for his torso to sprout a face and keep fighting. He then proceeds to grow back each arm, elongate his legs, and finally manifest a second head atop his body before finally going down for good. Mechanically, it's a boss fight with seven phases.
• Master Swordsman: His participation in the Endor Tournament has numerous people remark on his incredible swordsmanship. The remakes demonstrate this when he's recruited by having him be the only party member capable of using sword skills like Harvest Moon in battle.
• Meaningful Name: 'Psaro' is phonetically identical to the word 'sorrow', befitting a Tragic Villain with more depth than the series' usual antagonists.
• Mr. Fanservice: The remakes turn him into this by making him a tall, handsome man with long, silky hair and an open tunic that exposes his chiseled chest and abs.
• Named After Somebody Famous: His Japanese name is derived from the Spanish Conquistador Francisco Pizarro, whose invasion of Peru, which led to the destruction of the Incan Empire, parallels his own crusade against humanity.
• Official Couple: He and Rose are already an item by the start of the game.
• One-Winged Angel: Uses the Secret of Evolution on himself at the end of the game to replace Estark as the Lord of the Underworld; beginning as a recolored clone of him before steadily evolving his body into a towering green monstrosity with two heads.
• Palette Swap: His first form during the final boss fight is a brown recolor of Estark. Particularly noteworthy as this color scheme would go on to become Estark's default look in all of his future appearances.
• Pet the Dog:
  • He used the Secret of Evolution to uplift the animals around Rosehill, giving them the ability to talk. This wasn’t done out of pragmatic means, as they’re not hostile towards you when they visit (although they're still wary of humans), so apparently he did this for no other reason other than to make their lives easier. Speaking to him in party chat after talking with the Queen of Femiscrya in the remakes has him remark to himself that the days he spent living in Rosehill were the happiest of his life.
  • For all of his abrasive attitude when working with the party in the remake, he is shown watching them float through the air above Rosehill during the credits, suggesting that he came to care about them on some level by the end.
• Pointy Ears: Possesses a set of pointy ears that signify him as a non-human.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: He's the game's Big Bad and wears an outfit composed almost entirely of blacks and reds.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Has red eyes that signify that he is a demon.
• Rescue Romance: The remakes, as well as The Dark Prince, reveal that he first met Rose after rescuing her from a human attempting to capture her to profit from her ruby tears.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: While the exact details are never fully disclosed, he seems to be on a crusade of revenge against humanity for its mistreatment of the other races of the world. It only gets worse once Rose dies.
• Spikes of Villainy: The spiky pauldron worn on his left shoulder.
• The Stoic: Not much phases him. Rose's death, however...
• Tragic Villain: He engages in many despicable actions over the course of the game, but all in the name of making the world a better place for non-humans. After his lover is killed, he loses himself to grief and rage and becomes a mindless monster.
• Trauma Conga Line: In rapid succession, he learns that the Hero he thought he had killed was still alive; that they and their party have already succeeded in killing the Lord of the Underworld; and that his lover was lynched by humans while he was away. The deluge of stress causes him to completely lose it and willingly discard his sense of reason in the name of taking over as Lord of the Underworld and having his revenge on humanity.
• The Unchosen One: A rare antagonist example. While Psaro is the game's Big Bad and leader of the monsters, he isn't the Lord of the Underworld spoken of in the prophecy - he's just the person trying to revive him. His evil plan also involves trying to kill the Hero before they can fulfill their destiny and he later forcefully makes himself the new Lord of the Underworld using the Secret of Evolution after Estark is defeated, meaning that he's actively trying to subvert what is prophecized.
• The Unfought: After considerable build-up, he is not encountered at all in the Endor Tournament and the second chapter ends with Alena not even managing to meet him. As he transforms into a monster during the Final Boss battle, he is never fought in his humanoid form.
• Unwitting Pawn: The remakes alter the story slightly to reveal that Psaro's Freak Out and ensuing behavior after Rose's death were very much intended by Aamon, who desired to have him eliminated so that he could take over as ruler of monsterkind. Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince reveals that path was already in motion when he cleared Rank G of the Maullosseum, and it only gets worse from there.
• Villain Has a Point: From what we see, many humans really do treat elves like disposable sources of revenue despite them being peaceful, intelligent creatures.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He genuinely wants to make the world a better place for non-humans, but believes the solution for doing so is exterminating all of humanity.
• White Hair, Black Heart: He has flowing white hair and evil ambitions in mind. That being said, his motives are very understandable despite his antagonistic nature, and he treats all creatures that aren't humans very well.
• Worf Had the Flu: The remakes establish that he used an incomplete form of the Secret of Evolution on himself, causing him to lose his mind after evolving his body. As such, he wasn't as effective against the party as he would have been in a clearer state of mind.

Aamon

Aamon (Radimvice / Evil Priest)

^{Click for his Ashtaroth form.}

^{Click for his Ashtaroth form's full power.}

Voiced by: Tomomichi Nishimura (Drama CD), Bin Shimada (Dragon Quest Rivals, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince [JP]), David Annen (Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince EN)

One of Psaro's four strongest minions. An ambitious monster with lofty plans that may or may not be in his master's best interest...

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• Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: His dialogue in the original game has him state the he killed Rose so that Psaro would become the new Lord of the Underworld in Estark's place, suggesting that he is genuinely loyal to his master but in a twisted way that disregards Psaro's actual thoughts and feelings. The remakes instead position him as a Dragon with an Agenda who manipulated Psaro into becoming the new Lord of the Underworld with the intent of having him get killed off so that he could usurp him as leader of monsterkind.
• Adaptational Villainy: While he is responsible for Rose's death in every version of the game, his dialogue in the original indicates that he believes doing so to be a necessary step for Psaro to awaken as the new Lord of the Underworld. The remakes completely change his dialogue to instead portray him as The Starscream who killed Rose with the intent of driving Psaro to madness so that he would be killed by the heroes and create a power vacuum among monsters that Aamon could fill.
• An Ice Person: Casts Kacrack in his initial boss fight, as well as Kacrackle during the Barrier Guardians boss fight. He can also breathe a C-C-Cold Breath in his Ashtaroth form.
• Ascended Extra: Only appears once in the original game as a part of the four end-game bosses that need to be defeated in order to face Psaro, but is made into the True Final Boss and ultimate villain of the remakes.
• Big Bad Wannabe: From The Dark Prince: For all his scheming and manipulating Psaro, he falls short of usurping Randolfo's throne, since Randolfo already found the Secret of Evolution and was already aware that Aamon was scheming behind his back.
• Blow You Away: Cast Kaswoosh in his initial boss fight, as well as Kaswooshle during the Barrier Guardians boss fight.
• Breakout Villain: He is no more prominent than Psaro's other three Co-Dragons in the original game, and can in fact be defeated the earliest among them if the player so chooses, but easily stands out the most for revealing himself to be responsible for Rose's death and Psaro's ensuing Freak Out. As such, the remakes elevate him to the position of True Final Boss and tweak his motivation to make it clear that he is The Starscream. He also becomes a recurring monster in the series itself, and is the Greater-Scope Villain for Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince...at first.
• Casting a Shadow: Casts Kazammle, as well as Continuous Dolmadon, when faced in Dragon Quest X.
• The Chessmaster: His schemes ensure that Rose is murdered, Psaro uses the Secret of Evolution on himself to destroy the humans, and survive his run in with the Chosen at Castle Nadiria so he could become the new Master of Monsterkind. It works, had Rose not been revived with a Yggdrasil Flower and helps the Chosen save Psaro from himself. The Dark Prince reveals he has a hand in getting Psaro to fight in the Maullosseum so the future Master of Monsterkind can become strong enough to fight Randolfo and take his throne.
• Co-Dragons: He's one of Psaro's four strongest servants entrusted with guarding the towers that generate the magical barrier around his castle. While all four must be defeated before the party can face Psaro, they can be fought in any order. Unlike the other three, he's a Dragon with an Agenda.
• Dark Is Evil: His final form when fought as the True Final Boss in the remake is a black-colored version of his Ashtaroth form.
• Dragon with an Agenda: Secretly arranges for Psaro's lover to be killed to push him into using the Secret of Evolution on himself to become the new Lord of the Underworld. In the original game, this is done out of a misguided desire for Psaro to replace Estark, but in the remakes, it's done with the intent of having the heroes kill Psaro off so that he may take his place as the Master of Monsterkind.
• Elite Four: He's one of Psaro's four strongest servants entrusted with guarding the towers that generate the magical barrier around his castle.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Chronologically in The Dark Prince, Aamon is pleased that Psaro has cleared Rank G of the Maullosseum, but notes that the future Master of Monsterkind is still too weak to usurp his father's throne and he must grow stronger to succeed. Those 2 sentences show the scheming Chessmaster he will later be to Psaro himself in due time, while cluing players to the fact that Psaro's Unwitting Pawn status to Aamon has just begun.
  • When first confronted by the Chosen at his Barrier Den in Nadiria, he says that Psaro is evolving and will destroy humanity before he ceases to exist, before revealing himself as Rose's killer and makes it clear that Psaro will no longer be the Master of Monsterkind, showing that his schemes to become the new Master of Monsterkind are finally bearing fruit and he was behind the humans killing Rose.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": His name in the Japanese version is 'Evil Priest', which seems to also be his profession.
• Evil Sorcerer: A ruthless and powerful wizard.
• Evil Sounds Raspy: Aamon's voice, provided by David Annen, in Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince has a low old-sounding rasp.
• Faux Affably Evil:
  • After Psaro rescues Duffer, the monster who would later become Psaro's Pawn, he commends Psaro for his efforts in Nadiria and tells him about the Secret of Evolution as a means to overthrow his father, though it's plainly obvious to anyone who played IV that's it's NOT a good power to use on oneself.
  • If Psaro is not in the Chosen's party or the Chosen themselves have not begun the quest to obtain a Yggdrasil Flower to revive Rose, Aamon commends them for their bravery in visiting Diabolic Hall and doesn't fight them, instead opting to tell them that Psaro is still evolving in Nadiria and will destroy humanity if not stopped in time, though he's still hoping that either the Chosen or Psaro are killed in battle.
• Flunky Boss: He's flanked by three Drooling Ghouls when first fought, which is retained in various spinoff-appearances. Dragon Quest X also has Fire, Ice, and Earth Converges aiding him in battle, as well as Barbatos, Rashaverak, and Pruslas during the Barrier Guardians boss fight.
• Foil:
  • To Pruslas. While both are the more scheming and villainous members of Psaro's Elite Four, Pruslas is merely a Combat Pragmatist who uses cheap tricks to gain the upper hand in combat whereas Aamon is a Chessmaster with goals beyond his master's and whose elaborate plot drives the endgame. In battle, Pruslas is a Mighty Glacier reliant on physical attacks for damage while Aamon is an Evil Sorcerer that utilizes various spells.
  • To Rashaverak. While both are a part of Psaro's Elite Four, Rashaverak possesses Undying Loyalty toward his master whereas Aamon is a Dragon with an Agenda.
• I Need You Stronger: Outright says he needs Psaro to become more powerful to defeat Randolfo in Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince after clearing Rank G of the Mausoleum.
• Karmic Death: In The Dark Prince, Aamon is killed by Dolph, the same person who he planned to use the Secret of Evolution on to go berserk.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: In the remakes, he inexplicably survives his defeat at the heroes' hands and takes Psaro's place as the new Master of Monsterkind after he loses his mind. If the player makes the effort to revive Rose and restore Psaro's sanity, then he and the party join forces to finally defeat Aamon for good.
• King Mook: He's a recolored version of the Vis Mager enemies encountered in the late game.
• Manipulative Bastard: Exploits his master's hatred of humans and love for Rose by arranging for a group of human criminals to kill her, causing Psaro to become so grief-stricken that he uses the Secret of Evolution on himself.
• Minor Major Character: In the original game, he is directly responsible for the Trauma Conga Line that pushes Psaro into using the Secret of Evolution himself. Despite this, he is no more prominent than any of the other members of Psaro's Elite Four and is killed off by the party in his first encounter with them (which is also the first and only time he ever appears in the game). While the remakes remedy this to an extent by making him the True Final Boss, he still maintains the abrupt introduction he has in the original.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Aamon is one of the demons in Ars Goetia. Ashtaroth, an alternate name for Astaroth, is also one on top of being one of the Great Dukes of Hell.
• One-Winged Angel: Uses the Secret of Evolution to turn into Ashtaroth, a monster that resembles Psaro the Manslayer's green monster form, but retains his own memories.
• Optional Boss: He and his Ashtaroth form can be faced in Dragon Quest X as Coin Bosses.
• Palette Swap: His Ashtaroth form he takes during the second encounter with him in the remakes is a recolor of Psaro's final form.
• Playing with Fire: Casts Frizzle in his initial boss fight, as well as Kafrizz and Godspeed Melagaia in his Ashtaroth form, in addition to breathing Inferno and Scorch.
• Purple Is Powerful: His Ashtaroth form's second coloration during Phase 6 of the True Final Battle against him, as well as reaching half health in other appearances such as X and Of the Stars.
• The Starscream: Aamon pretends to be Psaro's loyal servant while plotting to destroy him and become the new Master of Monsterkind. This also extends into The Dark Prince where he's using Psaro to defeat his father to become the Master of Monsterkind. Unlike Psaro, however, Randolfo sees through his scheming and has Dolph kill him.
• Status-Buff Dispel: Just like other Dragon Quest villains, he uses Disruptive Wave in his Ashtaroth form to remove the Chosen and Psaro's buffs, which is retained in X and various spinoff appearances.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Casts Kaboom during the true final battle, as well as Kaboomle in Dragon Quest X.
• The Pawns Go First: During the Barrier Guardians boss fight in Dragon Quest X, he sits back and lets Pruslas, Barbatos, and Rashaverak do the fighting while he's protected from spells and skills by a barrier until the 3 of them are defeated, causing him to fight.
• Took a Level in Badass: Not only does the remakes of IV have him use the Secret of Evolution during the true final battle with him,^note Granting him more spells and abilities, such as Magic Burst.but Dragon Quest X gives him more spells and abilities, such as Kaboomle, Kazammle, and Spooky Curse Ball, while allowing Magical Converges to aid him in battle. In addition, his Ashtaroth form has more spells and abilities in various spin-off appearances, such as Chaos Stream.
• True Final Boss: The remakes feature him as the final boss of the added sixth chapter.
• Unexplained Recovery: The sixth chapter in the remakes has him recover from his prior defeat without any explanation. The Dark Prince reveals an idea of how he recovered: He simply walks away while pretending to curse his defeat.

Pruslas

Pruslas (Gigademon)

One of Psaro's four strongest minions. A devious monster willing to use dirty tactics to get ahead in battle.

For tropes relating to the Pruslases themselves as normal enemies, along with their Night Clubber relatives, see here.

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• Art Evolution: Originally shared the same appearance as Balzack's second form before the Playstation 1 remake onwards gives him his current appearance, which sticks for all future appearances, save for Battle Road II Legend and Battle Road Victory.
• Combat Pragmatist: He tells the Chosen to face away from him with the promise of treasure before the battle with him, and inflicts a sneak attack if they fall for it. The Dark Prince instead has him tell Psaro to go to the middle of the room as a reward for defeating Massimus, though the same result will happen if the future Master of Monsterkind falls for it.
• Co-Dragons: He's one of Psaro's four strongest servants entrusted with guarding the towers that generate the magical barrier around his castle. While all four must be defeated before the party can face Psaro, they can be fought in any order.
• Degraded Boss: Goes from one of Psaro's four strongest servants to a generic Elite Mook in future titles from Dragon Quest X onwards, with the big guy himself still appearing as a trickster in Dragon Quest Heroes II.
• Dirty Coward: Speaking to Maya in party chat after defeating him in the remakes has her accuse him of being one - claiming that his reliance on cheap tricks to fight the party suggests that he lacked confidence in his ability to do so through his own power. In Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, he flees when Massimus attacks him, yet when his future master defeats the Bilhaw, he finishes him off.
• Elite Four: He's one of Psaro's four strongest servants entrusted with guarding the towers that generate the magical barrier around his castle.
• Fat Bastard: He's a hulking brute with a massive gut and is also a devious Combat Pragmatist who attempts to use dirty tactics against the party.
• Faux Affably Evil: When the Chosen encounter him, he praises their strength and claims that he will give them treasure as a reward if it faces away from him. If they do what he says, he reveals this to have been a ruse and instead uses the opportunity to attack them while their backs are turned.
• Foil:
  • To Aamon. While both are the more scheming and villainous members of Psaro's Elite Four, Pruslas is merely a Combat Pragmatist who uses cheap tricks to gain the upper hand in combat whereas Aamon is a Chessmaster with goals beyond his master's and whose elaborate plot drives the endgame. In battle, Pruslas is a Mighty Glacier reliant on physical attacks for damage while Aamon is an Evil Sorcerer that utilizes various spells.
  • To Barbatos. While both are the most physically-oriented members of Psaro's Elite Four, Pruslas is a Dirty Coward who prefers to cheat over relying on his own abilities whereas Barbatos takes pride and his strength and faces the party without any gimmicks.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • He's characterized as a Combat Pragmatist who prefers cheating to get the upper hand over his opponents. Fittingly, his tower requires the player to navigate through a maze of Terracotta Warriors before it can face him. Furthermore, falling for his trick upon reaching him in the remakes causes the battle to begin as an ambush, granting him a free hit.
  • Maya accuses him of being a Dirty Coward whose reliance on cheap tricks suggests that he has little confidence in his own strength. This is supported by his tactics during the actual battle, which are more frustrating than they are effective, making him arguably the easiest of Psaro's Elite Four to defeat.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In the original version of the game, he will never ambush the party during the battle against him even if it falls for his trick beforehand. This was fixed in the remakes.
• Minor Major Character: While he's one of Psaro's Elite Four, his role in the story begins and ends when the players confronts him to break the barrier protecting Psaro's castle and he only speaks two lines of dialogue.
• Stone Wall: He has very high HP and can defend against the party's attacks to reduce the damage he takes from them. While his attacks aren't weak, however, he is only able to hit one party member per turn with them, making his damage output lackluster and very easy to counteract by the time you fight him. The battle against him isn't necessarily hard, but it will certainly take a while.
• Undignified Death: The only one among Psaro's Elite Four who doesn't get to have any last words, instead merely gasping in pain as he dies.
• Unskilled, but Strong: When fought as a boss, his stats are as high as you would expect from an endgame boss but all he can do is a basic attack, cast Kasap on the party to lower its defenses, and defend to improve his own. He also only has 8 MP to burn, meaning that he can only cast Kasap twice before having to rely entirely on his basic attack to get by. The remakes give him a high critical hit rate to make said attack more threatening.

Rashaverak

Rashaverak (Anderoug / Andreal)

One of Psaro's four strongest minions. A loyal monster willing to lay down his own life for his master's sake.

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• Art Evolution: Originally had a gray coloration before VII onwards gave him his current look, which sticks for all his later appearances, even the remake of his debut game.
• Breath Weapon: Befitting of a dragon monster, he can breathe Scalding Gas, as well as Flame Breath, Inferno, Freezing Blizzard, and Burning Breath.
• Co-Dragons: Pun aside, he's one of Psaro's four strongest servants entrusted with guarding the towers that generate the magical barrier around his castle. While all four must be defeated before the party can face Psaro, they can be fought in any order. Fittingly, he also comes across as the most loyal to him of the bunch.
• Degraded Boss: Goes from one of the Big Bad's Elite Four and a unique character to a run of the mill Mook in later titles from Dragon Quest VII onwards, though he regains his boss status in Dragon Quest X.
• Flat Character: While none of Psaro's Elite Four outside of Aamon receive much in the way of characterization, Rashaverak gets by far the least. His one standout character trait is his loyalty toward Psaro, which the others outside of Aamon can also be assumed to possess to a lesser degree.
• Foil: To Aamon. While both are a part of Psaro's Elite Four, Rashaverak possesses Undying Loyalty toward his master whereas Aamon is a Dragon with an Agenda.
• Given Name Reveal: Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince reveals that Rashaverak is actually just the name of his monster species and that his actual name is Blaise.
• The Leader: He is the leader of the Brimstone Boys, a gang consisting of himself and his two identical younger brothers, Ash and Bernie.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: While he's still a villain, he demonstrates Villainous Valor through his loyalty toward Psaro, making him more admirable than the likes of Aamon and Pruslas. The remakes even have Borya praise him for this if he's spoken to in party chat after Rashaverak's defeat.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Drops the very useful Dragon Shield upon his defeat, which reduces the damages its wielder takes from breath attacks.
• Me's a Crowd: Can summon clones of himself in IV, IX, and X, as well as summon Healslimes in VII. Possibly subverted, as Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince heavily implies that his 'clones' were actually just his two identical younger brothers, Ash and Bernie.
• Minor Major Character: While he's one of Psaro's Elite Four, his role in the story begins and ends when the players confronts him to break the barrier protecting Psaro's castle and he only speaks two lines of dialogue.
• Redemption Earns Life: He, along with his other siblings are the only member of Psaro’s Elite Four that redeemed and survived in Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince
• Undying Loyalty: What little dialogue he has paints him as being incredibly loyal to Psaro, declaring it to be his duty to defend his barrier with his life before his battle with the Chosen and using his final breaths to praise him after his defeat.
• Villainous Valor: Speaking to Borya in party chat after defeating him has the old wizard commend Rashaverak's devotion to Psaro even up to his final moments.

Barbatos

Barbatos (Infurnus Shadow / Hellbattler)

One of Psaro's four strongest minions. A valiant monster who takes great pride in his strength.

For tropes relating to their relatives, Moosifers, Abullddons, and Master Moosifers, as well as Barbatoses as normal enemies themselves, see here.

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• Beard of Evil: Sports a thick beard and is one of Psaro's top enforcers.
• Boring, but Practical: Doesn't have any particular gimmicks like the rest of Psaro's entourage, but compensates by being the strongest of the four of them individually, in terms of both stats and abilities.
• Breath Weapon: Uses both Inferno and Chilly Breath in battle.
• Brutish Bulls: Has the appearance of a demonic bull-man.
• Co-Dragons: He's one of Psaro's four strongest servants entrusted with guarding the towers that generate the magical barrier around his castle. While all four must be defeated before the Chosen can face Psaro, they can be fought in any order.
• Cool Sword: Drops the very useful Miracle Sword upon his defeat, which heals a portion of its wielder's HP when used to attack and can be equipped by most of the Chosen, such as Ragnar.
• Degraded Boss: Goes from one of the Big Bad's Elite Four and a unique character to a recurring end game Mook in later Dragon Quest titles, though he's a boss once again in Dragon Quest X.
• Elite Four: He's one of Psaro's four strongest servants entrusted with guarding the towers that generate the magical barrier around his castle.
• Foil: To Pruslas. While both are the most physically-oriented members of Psaro's Elite Four, Pruslas is a Dirty Coward who prefers to cheat over relying on his own abilities whereas Barbatos takes pride and his strength and faces the Chosen without any gimmicks.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: What little dialogue he has depicts him as being confident in his strength and eager to take on the Chosen. Fittingly, he is the only member of Psaro's Elite Four who does not use any sort of trickery in either the design of his tower or during his boss fight.
• Graceful Loser: Accepts his loss against the Chosen without any fuss.
• King Mook: He's a recolored version of the Moosifer and Abullddon enemies encountered in the game.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: While he's still a villain, he employs no dirty tricks against the party when he fights against it, isn't suggested to have any agenda of his own, and genuinely praises the heroes after he's defeated. For what little screentime he gets, he comes across as something of a Noble Demon.
• Mighty Roar: Has War Cry to try and scare the Chosen in battle to make them lose their turn.
• Minor Major Character: While he's one of Psaro's Elite Four, his role in the story begins and ends when the Chosen confronts him to break the barrier protecting Psaro's castle and he only speaks two lines of dialogue.
• Villain Respect: After he's defeated, he praises the party for its strength but still insists that it stands no chance against Psaro.

Balzack

Balzack

^{Click for his Balzackian form.}

^{Balzack as he appears in Dragon Quest X.}

Voiced by: Bin Shimada (Drama CD)

A former alchemist student working under Mahabala, Maya and Meena's father. When his teacher rediscovered the Secret of Evolution, he murders him and presents it to Psaro, becoming one of his henchmen.

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• A God Am I: When fought again at Castle Zamoksva during Chapter 5, he brags that his new body would be more god-like than Psaro himself, though he does not have the Armlet of Transmutation to do so.
• An Ice Person: Spews out Chilly Breath and cast Crackle in his Baalzack form, while later appearances give him Freezing Blizzard, Gavelanche, and Crackcrackle.
• Arch-Enemy: For Maya and Meena, since he murdered their father to obtain the Secret of Evolution.
• Bad Boss: When given Castle Zamoksva to rule over, many monsters in Psaro's army complain about his arrogance of working them to the bone, with one Minidemon feeling peckish due to not having a decent meal.
• Depending on the Artist: His Balzackian form has different colors depending on the game, with the original NES coloration being used in the 3DS remake of Dragon Quest Monsters 2 and Super Light, while the PS1 coloration is used in other appearances, such as Of The Stars and Dragon Quest Tact.
• Heal Thyself: Casts Fullheal to regain his HP, though it can be neutralized with the Sphere of Silence.
• King Mook: His first monster form, Balzackian, is this for the Humbabas, Wild Beasts, and Wilder Beasts, while his second monster form, Baalzack, is this for the Night Clubbers.
• Meaningful Name: He's named after the French playwright, Honore de Balzac, who like him, turned his back on a professor to achieve a higher purpose, though Balzac himself didn't have to resort to murder.
• Playing with Fire: Casts Sizz and spews a Fireball to hurt Maya, Meena, and Oojam in his Balzackian form. Dragon Quest Tact would give that form Hypno Fireball and Firewall during the game's True Dragon Quest IV event.

Estark

Estark

An ancient Demon known as the "Lord of the Underworld" and one of the most powerful beings in the series. Psaro and his forces seek to reawaken him upon human miners discovering his tomb.

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• Achilles' Heel: Sleep inducing spells, skills, and weapons such as the Dream Blade can put him back to sleep,^note Fitting, since he was sleeping prior to his awakening though it's not a good idea during his fight in IV, since he can spew out an Eerie Light that deals a lot of damage to the party.
• An Ice Person: Breathes out a Freezing Blizzard in his debut, and C-C-Cold Breath in Dragon Quest V and Dragon Quest IX.
• Blood Knight: Lives for battle from Dragon Quest V onwards, and has to be defeated in a certain amount of turns to unlock some post game content, such as the Stark Raving Mad Treasure 'n' Trapdoors board that allows the party to recruit Starkers upon completion and other rewards such as the Lord's Bracer and 10 each of stat boosting seeds such as Seeds of Agility and Strength in the 3DS remake of Dragon Quest VIII.
• Blue Is Heroic: Nope! Even with his initial blue coloration, Estark is NOT a good guy and he terrorized the world long ago after discovering the Secret of Evolution before the Zenithians and the Zenith Dragon sealed him away beneath Mamon before miners in the present day dug too deep into his crypt. However, said form is actually his weakened state, since the Chosen were able to defeat him before he could terrorize the world further. Despite this, however, it is a semi-recurring coloration for him in addition to his now usual coloration he is seen with from Dragon Quest V onwards.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Zoma, the previous game's "Lord of the Underworld". Zoma doesn't use weapons while Estark is a dual sword user. Zoma wears garments, trinkets, and a helmet while Estark is effectively "naked". Zoma is the Big Bad and Final Boss of his game that actively terrorizes the world while Estark in IV is a secondary antagonist that spends most of the game in a sealed slumber and is dealt with prior to confronting that game's Big Bad and Final Boss (though the threat of his return does send the people of the world into a panic).
• Dual Wielding: He wields two large Underworld Sabres that he plunges into his foes.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Remakes of Dragon Quest V onwards introduces his son Starkers, who can be recruited to the party after clearing the Stark Raving Mad Treasure 'n' Trapdoors board, but he doesn't remember him.
• The Fog of Ages: Living for so long coupled with his long slumbers has resulted in Estark being quite forgetful in installments outside of IV. In V, when encountered as the game's bonus boss, he outright admits he doesn't remember what he's supposed to do anymore or whether he's supposed to be good or evil, and only fights the party out of self-defense the first time and to test both their strengths each subsequent time.
• I Am Who?: Due to Estark sleeping for ages, he doesn't remember his original name of Dumah, one of Azabel's foul creations.
• Large and in Charge: He's pretty freaking enormous when you encounter him, it makes all too much sense why his minions would want to reawaken him.
• Playing with Fire: Casts Kafrizz in V and VIII and Kafrizzle in IX, and breathes Scorching Flame in V, Scorch in VIII and IX, and Hellfire.
• Predecessor Villain:
  • He was the progenitor of The Secret of Evolution and used it on himself to become a being so powerful that the combined might of the Zenithians and the Zenith Dragon was required to defeat him and seal him away (he had become too powerful to be killed at that point, despite The Secret of Evolution being incomplete at the time he used it). Though he remains sealed in slumber for most of IV, The Secret of Evolution is acquired by fellow demon Psaro the Manslayer, who plans to follow in Estark's footsteps by using it on himself to become powerful enough to destroy humanity.
  • Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince reveals his origins are more complex than the above example. He was once named Dumah, one of 3 monsters created by a rouge Zenithian named Azabel who wanted to create a new world free of sin.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: For a long time he slumbered under the mines of Mamon, until the native miners accidentally dug him out.
• Status-Buff Dispel: Uses Disruptive Wave in all of his appearances to remove buffs from his enemies, wether it be the Chosen, Madason and his family, Eight and his party, and Guardian Nine and their party.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Casts Kaboom in V, VIII, and IX, as well as Kaboomle.
• Superboss: Not in IV itself, but rather in every subsequent appearance. He is often one of the toughest battles in every game he appears in.
• Ultimate Life Form: The Secret of Evolution effectively turned him into this, though it's stated to have been incomplete at the time. The final forms of Psaro and Aamon imply that he would have assumed a similar form had The Secret of Evolution been complete when he used it.
• Villainous Legacy: He was the one that first discovered and used The Secret of Evolution, turning himself into a powerful superbeing. Zenithia's books describe The Secret of Evolution as the root of all evil and suggest that Estark using it corrupted the evolution of life with an evil streak that allowed for it to eventually reemerge, falling into the hands of Psaro the Manslayer.
• Worf Had the Flu: The justification for why the Chosen are able to defeat him if he is supposedly even stronger than the Final Boss is that he's still not at full strength due to just waking up.

Other Important Characters

Eliza

Eliza (Celia / Cynthia)

Voiced by: Maria Kawamura (Drama CD)

The Hero's best friend, who's training to become a magic user. Lighthearted and mischievous, she loves playing pranks on the whole village, and particularly likes jerking the Hero's chain.

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• Ambiguously Bi: The Ship Tease between her and the Hero exists regardless of their gender.
• Ambiguously Human: Depending on the Artist. While she uses the same sprite as Rose, distinctly making her look like an elf, her original Famicom artwork depicts her as an ordinary human and there's no dialogue that suggests her to be anything more. She is explicitly an elf in the drama CD adaptation, and was also made to look unmistakably like an elf when she was finally given updated artwork for her appearance in Dragon Quest Walk.
• Chekhov's Skill: The remakes add a prologue where she uses the Morph spell to transform her appearance and play pranks on the Hero. By the time the fifth chapter roles around, she uses Morph to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to take on the Hero's appearance and die in their place.
• Childhood Friend: She's the Hero's oldest friend, and seemingly the only person in their village of a similar age to them.
• Depending on the Artist: Rose's old character art, which depicts her as human, has nothing in common with her elfin depiction in any of the games themselves.
• Disposable Woman: Exists for the sole purpose of dramatically sacrificing herself to save the Hero's life at the start of the game and give them motivation to fight against Psaro's forces. Downplayed somewhat in that the Hero can also be a woman if the player so chooses.
• Emergency Impersonation: Takes on the Hero's appearance to prevent the monster attacking their village from finding the real thing.
• Foil: To Rose. While she isn't explicitly the Hero's Love Interest like Rose is to Psaro, Eliza is the Hero's closest friend and is portrayed as being of similar importance to them. They also have directly inverse roles and circumstances in the story, with Rose being protected by Psaro and kept separate from her community and Eliza protecting the Hero alongside their community, and are represented by the same set of sprites in-game. Their deaths are also keenly felt by both Psaro and the Hero. The drama CD adaptation further strengthens the resemblance by indicating Eliza cries ruby tears exactly like Rose does.
• Girl Next Door: She's the Hero's Childhood Friend and a beautiful, kind, and coquettish girl.
• Heroic Sacrifice: When the monsters raid the Hero's village to kill them, she uses Morph to take on their appearance and sacrifice herself, knowing that the monsters will leave once they believe the Hero has been killed. She gets better in the ending. Without explanation.
• Implied Love Interest: Her interactions the Hero have pretty heavy romantic undertones, but they aren't ever stated to be anything more than best friends.
• Like Brother and Sister: If the female Hero is chosen, she compares their relationship to that of sisters, presumably to justify how eyebrow-raisingly close they are with each other. An equivalent to this line is notably absent if the Hero is male.
• Mirror Character: Her character art notwithstanding, the game itself depicting her as an elf of the same type as Rose establishes a parallel between them, hints at her importance to the hero, and anticipates Rose's eventual death later in the game.
• Riddle for the Ages:
  • Is she a human or an elf? If the latter is the case, how did she come to be a part of the Hero's village when elves are otherwise shown to be persecuted by humans?
  • Just how does she return to life at the end of the game?
• Sacrificial Lamb: Sacrifices herself along with the rest of the Hero's village to save them from the monsters at the beginning of the fifth chapter. Their deaths serve as the Hero's motivation to set out to save the world.
• Tempting Fate: With as much as she talks about wanting to spend forever living together with the Hero in their village, it should come as no surprise that the village is destroyed and she is killed just a day later.
• Tragic Keepsake: Searching the part of the flower field where she always played after the Hero's village is destroyed gives you a Feathered Cap, with the implication being that it once belonged to her.
• Unexplained Recovery: Magically returns to life without explanation at the end of the game, seemingly for the sole purpose of allowing the Hero to have some kind of happy ending.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting:
  • She's introduced practicing using the Morph spell, and takes advantage of its powers to play pranks on the Hero. She later uses it to perform an Emergency Impersonation of the Hero to save them from being killed by monsters.
  • In the 3DS and Definitive version of Dragon Quest XI, Eliza is still learning how to use the Morph spell; she has turned herself into a Slime, but hasn't yet figured out how to change back. This results in the entire village chasing after her thinking she's an enemy monster until the Luminary dispels the magic with a Supreme Sage's Staff.

Rose

Rose (Rosa)

Rose's appearance in the Dragon Quest Walk mobile game

Voiced by: Reina Ueda [JP], Emma Balantine [EN]

A beautiful girl in a tower who can see that the world's well on its way to ruin... thanks to the efforts of her misguided lover, Psaro.

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• A Day in the Limelight: Just like her lover, Rose has a role in Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince.
• Body to Jewel: Her tears turn to rubies, though they crumble away when touched.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: The kindhearted girl that serves as Psaro's conscience.
• Damsel in Distress: She was kidnapped by Psaro for her own good and does not want to leave her tower.
• Gilded Cage: Rose being well taken care of does not change the fact that she was a prisoner.
• Girl in the Tower: Psaro locked her up in a tower to protect her from greedy humans.
• Last Request: Before dying, she requests Psaro to not hate humans. Tragically, her request goes ignored.
• Morality Chain: Though she has trouble actually functioning as one, since Psaro tends to ignore her protests about his Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Still doesn't help when you help shatter her. Go, team. She gets better at it after she is brought Back from the Dead, though.
• Pointed Ears: Being an elf, she naturally has these.
• Rescue Romance: Psaro introduced himself to her by vaporizing a human thug threatening her.
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Rose has dark-green eyes and pink hair. Averted in Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, where her eyes are bright blue.
• Solid Gold Poop: Her tears turn to rubies. It's for this reason Psaro has her locked up in a tower to keep her out of harm's way from greedy humans.
• They Were Holding You Back: The various monsters in Psaro's army ^note Most loyalists to either Psaro and/or Aamon. consider her to be this, ESPECIALLY Aamon, who brainwashes human thugs to murder her so Psaro would destroy humanity in a fit of rage.

Zenith Dragon

Zenith Dragon

The ruler of the heavenly city Zenithia and one of the most powerful creatures in the series. He was responsible for sealing away Estark in ancient times.

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• Big Damn Heroes: He swoops in to save the party from the crumbling peak where Psaro is fought.
• Big Good: He is one of the most powerful beings in the series, and he was the one who initially defeated Estark and sealed him away. In the present day he prefers to act as a greater force for good.
• God Is Flawed: He isn't as all-powerful and omnipotent as he may seem, and he does seem to have a slight bias against humans initially. He's still the Big Good in spite of this, but he's certainly not the most perfect one out there.
• Good Is Not Nice: While his objectives are good, the Zenith Dragon is also domineering and absolutist in his views, as well as racist against both humans and monsters alike. This ends up causing him problems in The Dark Prince, where it's implied the Zenith Dragon's attitude fails to endear him to Psaro and thus Psaro refuses his request to join forces with Solo.
• Holier Than Thou: He puts himself and the Zenithians on a much higher pedestal than humanity. In The Dark Prince, he doesn't think much of monsters either.
• Restored My Faith in Humanity: He starts to mingle in human affairs post IV, which implies he's softened his opinion on them after seeing the Hero/Heroine's deeds.

Foo Yung and Chow Mein

Foo Yung and Chow Mein

A pair of squawking and shouting thugs who dwell in a strange cave.

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• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Chow Mein resembles a humanoid chicken, and Foo Yung is rotund like an egg.
• Chicken-and-Egg Paradox: The pair are always arguing over this and are so obsessed with their respective beliefs on which is better that they don't even notice the party's approach and only fight because they're being interrupted. After being defeated so many times that they don't have any more prizes to give, they finally calm down and agree that both chickens and eggs are equally important.
• Hurricane of Puns: Practically every word they say is some kind of poultry-related pun.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Among the prizes awarded for defeating them is the Pandemonic equipment, used exclusively by Psaro.
• Perpetual Molt: One of Chow Mein's attacks is to molt black feathers all over the field. When he casts it, all of the party's physical attacks are nullified for the turn.
• Punny Name: In the English localization, they're named for Chinese dishes. Chow mein can be prepared with chicken, while foo yung is made with eggs.
• Superboss: From the PS1 version onward, they appear in Chapter 6 as the bosses of the new Fungeon. Defeating them the first time is mandatory for the plot, after which they can be rematched for bonus prizes.
• Time-Limit Boss: As they get defeated more and more, the duo starts setting turn limits like other bonus bosses in the series. They must be defeated within the limit if any more prizes are to be won.
• Unexplained Recovery: No matter how many times they're defeated, they get back up like it's nothing and go back to their arguing.

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