Characters / Erfworld

This character sheet assumes the reader is up-to-date. Unmarked spoilers abound.

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Gobwin Knob

Parson

Parson Gotti, Lord Hamster

"We try things. Occasionally they even work."

The protagonist of this story, Parson was a geeky gamer, fat slob, and all-around loser on this little world called Earth. He expressed a major desire to live in game worlds and command a real battle. Coincidentally, certain forces on Erfworld decided they needed a perfect general, and cast a spell to summon one from any plane of existence. And thus, his story begins.

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• A God I Am Not: He admits to Don King that no, he is not a Titan. He actually did consider bluffing this, but figured any resulting God Test would probably prove fatal.
• Anti-Hero: A Pragmatic Hero with a strong sense of morality, however he's a sucker for a good battle plan. And while he'll try to look after his forces and friends he won't hesitate to throw them and himself into deadly situations if it'll mean victory.
• Backup from Otherworld: Charlie lies to Don King that Parson is this, a dead Erfworld warlord and the greatest Erfworld has ever seen, summoned back to life by Charlie's enemies from the City of Heroes. Were this true, this would be an ultimate act of heresy, since Titanic scripture explicitly forbids returning from the Afterlife or acting as if the dead still impact the living.

• Be Careful What You Wish For: Maybe?
  Parson: I mean, then... what's the lesson supposed to be here, Wanda? "Be careful what you wish for?" This isn't what I wished for!
  Wanda: Ha! You didn't wish for this world, Parson Gotti. It wished for you.
• Believing Their Own Lies: When captured by Transylvito, he and Jack openly talk about how much of a backstabbing fiend Jillian is. While this is initially just a ploy to break a troublesome alliance, they both end up believing in and are genuinely surprised and apologetic when it turns out that Jillian was actually attacking them, not Transylvito. However, despite this, the remaining Transylvito leadership agrees that she's just too untrustworthy anyway and don't regret breaking alliance with her.
• Berserk Button: Despite insisting he doesn't love her, hurting or threatening Maggie will set him off. When Wanda suggested an incapacitated Maggie should just be croaked and Decrypted the look Parson gives her could cut steel, when Charlie demands Maggie be turned over to his side in the reparation claim he presents to Gobwin Knob after Lilith damages the Charlescomm tower he's so incensed that he almost rejects the entire demand outright without thinking, despite the fact that this would cause Very Bad Things to happen, and when Maggie tells him about how Bill sexually assaulted her while they were prisoners of Transylvito, this is enough to convince Parson to use guns to assassinate Don King and Caesar and end Transylvito as a side until Maggie herself stops him.
• Bigger Is Better in Bed: One of his worries regards his size relative to any person in Erfworld, after it came out that Erfworlders are capable of intercourse, though not sexual reproduction. Maggie had a blast after he told her. She tells him not to worry about it since, worst-case, his partner's injuries will heal at dawn and she'll never forget the experience.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: In the real world he neglects his job and every other aspect if his life to focus on designing games. Oddly, selling his designs and making that his career doesn't occur to him.
• Celibate Hero:
  • None of the women he has opportunity to be with can meaningfully consent or even understand why it's important, a level of power he's extremely uncomfortable with. It's not until he meets Janis that he finds someone who can actually say no to him and understands why he even cares. She points out that if he really wanted to he could get around this problem: Invite Maggie back to his tent, and order her to do whatever she most desires.
    Janis: I think she'd tear off your raiment so fast your Dollamancer would need all next turn to repair it!
• The Chains of Commanding: The reason he puts himself on the bench during the time-skip and for the first chunk of Book Two. When Maggie basically forces him back into the Chief Warlord spot, he chooses to join the battle rather than keep letting other people take all the risks.
• Character Development: Parson has had a bit of a Heel Realization regarding all the lines he has crossed in pursuit of victory, not to mention he comes to realize that the bigger enemy is the horrible nature of Erfworld itself. Maggie encourages this when they discuss it.
• The Chosen One: After the battle of Gobwin Knob, Wanda believes he is this, to the point she refuses to make tactical decisions without him. It is later revealed that he really is The Chosen One, having been summoned as a plot by the Hippiemancers to end war, the Thinkamancers to defeat Charlie, and the Predictamancers at the behest of Fate itself.
  Parson: Great. How many prophecies am I fulfilling?
  Isaac: Three. Well, four.
• Combat Pragmatist: Parson isn't afraid to break the rules of engagement, to the point of repeatedly committing what are war crimes on Earth.
  • Close to the end of his battle with Ansom, he croaks him with a false parlay that was supposedly meant to negotiate his surrender.
  • During another parlay, he has his yellow dwagons poop acid battlecrap over Jetstone, croaking many troops and causing a lot of damage, before using other rules mechanics to get a large number of his troops into the Jetstone Atrium.
  • In chapter 2, he uses the Magic Kingdom as a Portal Network, an act that most Erfworlders consider unconscionable since this involved the neutral Magical Kingdom in the fight between Gobwin Knob and Jetstone.
  • He breaks the Magic Kingdom's neutrality into little pieces by smuggling in a decrypted army of non-casters.
  • Book 3 reveals that thanks to all of this most sides refuse to even talk to his side, considering him completely untrustworthy.
  • While perfectly normal by Erfworld standards, and provoked by Charlie who was himself planning to use Loophole Abuse against Gobwin Knob, Parson admits that attempting to assassinate an enemy ruler while under truce was still in bad taste.
• Deadpan Snarker: Hamstard is a major one, but Parson himself qualifies from time to time.
• Death Glare: First when he acquires Ruthlessness in Book 1, and then when he decides to start fighting personally in Book 2.
• Death Seeker: Charlie interprets him as wanting to die after actions like the volcano. Whether or not he's right, it is a fairly reliable predictor of Parson's behavior.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: First with the gaming scenario he had been setting up which the battle for Gobwin Knob essentially duplicates, then with pretty much EVERYTHING else he encounters. He spends most of first hours in Erfworld snickering at all the little puns and shout-outs to our world that nobody there is even aware of.
  • This turns out to be Signamancy at work. Parson swiftly realizes that these Shout Outs are valuable clues.
• The Dreaded: Charlie is one of the greatest casters alive and by far one of the most deadliest opponents in the game. And he is scared out of his mind of Parson, to the point of be willing to give information for free.
  • Later, when talking to Don, Charlie refers to Parson as something "beyond nature." He's even willing to play along with the idea that he's a fallen titan if it means that Don will take Parson that seriously too.
• Evil Costume Switch: During the arc in which Lilith caused havoc in Charlescomm, and after parley with Charlie, Parson changed sides and joined him in order to avoid sacrificing key GK cities and troups to him. This resulted in him donning Charlescomm's colors.
• Fist of Rage: After Charlie traps Parson in a city to burn to death and starts taunting him, Parson's fist clenches.
• Genre Savvy: In Book 3, Parson finally notices that he can actually use the many Shout Outs in Erfworld for his advantage, using his Earthly knowledge to read the pop-culture references and to gain insight.
• Heroic BSoD: After he see the destruction of what his plans brought, he nearly snapped. But coming back from the brink was his last crowning moment in Book One.
• Honor Before Reason:
  • Parson is seen as having this by Charlie, however Parson's actions somewhat zigzag this. He doesn't want to put his troops into any position he wouldn't be willing to do himself, but at the same time, he's a ruthless Combat Pragmatist and part of the reason he violated the Magic Kingdom's neutrality was to give his troops a much needed Chief Warlord bonus after Maggie refused his orders to promote one of their warlords at the battle to the position. Meanwhile, when he realized the city was on fire, he was willing to abandon his troops with Jack but stayed when King Slately's double changed the capital.
  • He Lampshades the fact that he shouldn't put himself in a position Charlie could shoot him in, but plans to do so anyways because he himself had ordered Lilith to draw Charlie's fire to trigger the penalties of a treaty violation.
• Humans Are Cthulhu:
  • He comes from a world where time flows unrestricted, soldiers can do combat operations during the night, and civilians exist. He also possesses knowledge of the concept of universal free will and post-medieval technology, as well as 21st century warfare. Rare few Erfworlders, such as Charlie and Ace, have grasped some of these concepts piece-by-piece, but nobody has shown to possess them all to the degree Parson does.
  • Parson manages to capitalise on this when being interrogated by Caesar. Since most erfworld units don't bleed, Parson manages to successfully bluff a slightly-drunk Caesar that his blood is poisonous.
• Humans Are Ugly: Not ugly, necessarily, since Parson looks pretty much just like a normal Erfworlder only bigger, but Marie described the way he bleeds when wounded as "gross".
• I Choose to Stay: Charlie provides Parson with a way back to his homeworld, but Parson later says that he has no interest in returning home, since his Munchkin talents are extremely useful in Erfworld, but he was never able to take advantage of them back home.
• I Control My Minions Through...: While the soldiers would obey him blindly for his Warlord rank, he has won the respect (and jealousy) of every prominent figure in Gobwin Knob by showing them how genius strategy really works. They worry not about what he would do, but what they would do without him.
  • Additionally, Parson's kindness and respect to his troopers earns him their genuine respect on top of the instinctive loyalty they feel to their superiors.
• I Surrender, Suckers: Uses a false parley to croak Ansom.
• It's Personal: While he and Charlie have been fighting on opposite sides from the beginning, Parson had long considered Charlie something of a Worthy Opponent. However, when Charlie sabotages Gobwin Knob, causes them massive casualties, tries to kill or otherwise get rid of Parson personally, and taunts him about it, Parson becomes determined to kill him.
• I Wish It Were Real: Shortly before he is summoned to Erfworld, he tells his friends that if he could, he literally escape from his boring life right into one of his games. Guess what happens immediately after...
• Killer Game Master: He designed his latest game to be unwinnable within the rules. Unlike most examples, the point was to get his players to surprise him by thinking outside the box.
• Knee Capping: On the receiving end of Charlescomm's bullets, effectively knee-capping him and leaving him in a world of hurt.
• Large and in Charge: In the words of Jack Snipe, he's a "bit smaller than a palace." This gets less pronounced as the story moves on; when he was first summoned the natives barely came up to his waist, as of book 3 he's only a head taller.
• The Leader: Whilst Stanley the Tool is Gobwin Knob's official leader, Parson's combination of his tactical acumen and his personal investment in and care for the people he is working with means that the rest of Gobwin Knob always looks to him for leadership in just about anything.
• Mary Tzu: invoked He was summoned to be the "Perfect Warlord." Subverted in that he doesn't win every time, but everyone expects a perfect warlord to, so he has to explain that such a thing is impossible.
  Parson: "Perfect strategy" does not mean one perfect, flawless, genius plan! It doesn't mean you never lose!
• Meaningful Name/Significant Anagram: "Parson A. Gotti"/"A Protagonist"
• Mind Rape: In-universe, Parson is disturbed by the implications of his command authority. His troops are incapable of understanding the meaning of choice or consent, which means that a simple proposition to one of his troops might as well be this. Parson was surprised by himself about this. (If you look at his favorites on his computer, which includes a link to a site devoted to, erhm, literature, of just that kind of scenario.) A few workarounds have been proposed in-universe (hooking up with someone not from his side or giving a unit who already wanted him his own consent), but he hasn't made any attempt to use them.
• Munchkin: More than anything else, this is what makes Parson so dangerous in an RPG Mechanicsverse. Through Loophole Abuse and oversights in the rules, Parson is able to develop Game-Breaker moves.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: Thanks to the rules of Erfworld, he doesn't have a choice.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: He believes that Jetstone will offer no earnest parley or agreement and he would have been right... If Charlie hadn't overplayed his hand and made Tramennis suspicious about his motives. If he had waited to hear what Tramennis had to say, he probably wouldn't have got stuck in a death trap.
• No Hero to His Valet: While the other casters admire and respect him as he gets more and more results, Sizemore, as an Actual Pacifist, hates the amount of killing Parson makes him do, and hates how Parson cost him his position in the Magic Kingdom by violating its neutrality.
• Oblivious to Love: Of the Selective Obliviousness variety towards Maggie's crush, hoping he was simply misinterpreting things. When Janis finally confirms it to him, he admits that he is very close to Maggie, but isn't attracted to her due to her Signamancy being between a child's and an old lady's. Having been through bad relationships pre-Erfworld also didn't help his perspective on romance.
• Oh, Crap!: When Lilith tells him that the best way out of a bad situation is for her to commit suicide, she sends him an image of using one of Charlie's guns to kill herself. Parson has to take a minute to digest the implications of that image.
• Poisonous Captive: Manages to be a pretty effective one when captured by Transylvito. He and Jack use Bluff the Eavesdropper to feed Transylvito false information about Jillian being a backstabber. Since most of Transylvito doesn't like her already, they buy it, and even Don King who did like Jillian starts buying it after Charlie meddles in his side with Jillian's unwitting help. Parson also invents a story framing Charlie as a fallen Titan to appeal to Don King's religious views. Between all this and Gobwin Knob's offers of money, new weapons, and releasing Bunny from her punishment by the Thinkamancers, Parson persuades Transylvito to ally with Gobwin Knob against Charlescomm.
• Pyrrhic Victory: The battle for Gobwin Knob, on a personal level, was this for him. He won the battle and saved his side, but only through performing a mass slaughter of the enemy that deeply affected him. In the wake of the battle he protests that this isn't what he wanted and Wanda tells him outright that he lost the fight.
• Screw Destiny: Parson decides that if Fate really exists, then its grip over the world should be broken.
• Shrouded in Myth: Nobody outside the top brass knows what's the big deal over a Level 2 Warlord.
• Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter: At the end of Book 1, he gives a big speech to "Erfworld", complaining about how its fine with killing people, and yet prohibits swearing, which pales in comparison. He refuses to be a game piece and insists he's a player. Erfworld's response is to lift the Boop filter.
• Stat-O-Vision: He has a magic item that enables him to see the stats of Erfworld units.
• Still the Leader: He is so necessary to the war, that Maggie used a Literal Genie gambit to reinstate him as Chief Warlord. He didn't see it coming.
• The Strategist: Quite probably the greatest tactician ever popped in history. He knows the plans, he knows the rules and most importantly, he knows the loopholes. So far he had Defeating the Undefeatable several times in the most epic way possible but as explained by himself, he is not invincible.
  • He also happens to be a history buff, citing knowledge of battlefield events such as Stalingrad. Though Erfworld is a planet of eternal conflict, its depth and variety pales before the complexity of Earth's endless warfare. Parson is undoubtedly intimate with the writings of great minds such as Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, which Erfworld has never known. Simply recycling tactics and strategies that are commonplace to human conflicts, but novel and uncomprehendable to Erfworlders, makes Parson deadly without truly originating the idea himself.
• Summon Everyman Hero: The Summon Perfect Warlord spell, which ends up bringing in Parson to serve as the brilliant tactician they need to defeat an overwhelming army. Played with in that he's not entirely an everyman; even in his home world he was so obsessed with strategy and this style of abstract turn-based combat in particular that it detracted from every other facet of his life.
• Take Me Instead: Gobwin Knob and Charlescomm sign a Magically-Binding Contract to form a truce with penalties for violations, such as transferring ownership of one side's units. After everything goes completely wrong, Parson parleys himself in place of any of Gobwin Knob's other units.
• 10-Minute Retirement: After about 3 months, he was forced to return. He was not amused.
  • Later he had this almost literally (it probably lasted a minute at most) when he was forced to briefly turn to Charlescomm due to a treaty violation.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: He used a volcanic eruption to wipe an army from the face of Erfworld. Needless to say, people started taking him seriously after that.
• The Unfettered: He places no value on honor or The Laws and Customs of War and is concerned only with winning and preserving his side. He has committed several war crimes over the course of the story by the standards of either world, which has destroyed his reputation. The only real moral scruples he's shown is refusing to rape his subordinates, even if they wouldn't consider it such, and he will not order anyone to do anything he wouldn't be willing to do himself.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Parson is mostly a strategist and has no skill in actual combat, but still manages to do an adequate job due to Erfworld classifying him as a heavy, meaning he is physically stronger and more than twice the size of your average Erfworlder.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: He attempts to avert and exploit this in the Erfworld system as often as possible, one of his most fearsome traits. He reveals quite a few Game-Breaker abilities were buried in things like the ways the mount system works, along with things like food harvesting and un-aimed weapons off-turn.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: It comes with the job territory.

Wanda

Lady Wanda Firebaugh, Croakamancer of Gobwin Knob

"Oh, for these I have wrecked and ruined more than you have."

The caster that summoned Parson. Wanda serves as Stanley's chief adviser, and frequently manipulates him into taking actions and risks that further her own goals. She heard several predictions in her youth that she has since striven to fulfill. When most of them come to pass, she becomes a strong believer in fate. She's a Croakamancer, but has skill with many magic disciplines.

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• The Ace: She's an excellent Croakamancer with extensive ability to use other forms of magic, though by her own admission she's rarely interested enough to learn about them.
  • Wanda's status as an Ace goes well beyond her talent with magic. She has considerable talent in both military command and close-range combat- both abilities normally eschewed by her caster peers in favor of their magical prowess- and after acquiring the Arkenpliers, she inarguably becomes the most powerful Croakamancer (and probably one of the most powerful casters, period) in Erfworld.
• Action Girl: A magical powerhouse who's also surprisingly handy in a close-range fight, as Ansom finds out the hard way.
• A Lesson Learned Too Well: As she learned in her youth, Fate is a very real Sentient Cosmic Force, and simply going Screw Destiny is not going to end well for you since Fate is a bigger force than any side. Having said that, it is usually possible to compromise with Fate by manipulating events to fulfill its prophecies in a way you can live with or even benefit from. Wanda, however, has stopped even trying to find better solutions and just goes down the most direct route possible.
• Ambiguous Innocence: When first popped, she was fairly cheerful, lacking in confidence and very unused to anything in the world. She also found it fun to make corpses dance after battle, watching their helpless movement as they crashed into things. She averts this trope after Tommy's death.
• Ambiguously Gay: The two people she's been attracted to were a hippiemancer named Olive and her current complex relationship with Jillian. The only intersection she and men have with romance is irritation that they may be competition for Jillian or simply ignoring them outright. She is quite willing to make use of her beauty to seduce others, and has used sex to manipulate Stanley on multiple occasions. However, she has outright said that she doesn't love him, which likely makes this an example of just how close to The Unfettered she really is.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Played With, in that her Start of Darkness was well underway even before she was captured and tortured (both physically and mentally) by Haffaton, but it certainly played its part in pushing her over the edge.
• Bondage Is Bad: Downplayed, but Wanda's blatantly BDSM relationship with Jillian, in which Wanda is the sadistic dominatrix, is initially set up as part of her apparently villainous nature, especially with The Reveal that she uses her sessions to weave subtle mind-controlling effects over her lover. Subverted when Jillian breaks up with her after learning of Wanda's mind-controlling magic, citing her attempt to magically erase Jillian's free will as being unacceptable and beyond the things they do in their bedchambers.
• Broken Bird: Her backstory, explored in the "Inner Peace (Through Superior Firepower)" stories, cements her as this. She lost her brother, her father, and her entire side, partially because of her own mistakes. Olive then forced her to turn to Haffaton using heroine buds, a Fantastic Drug, leaving her psyche permanently crippled. And then it's strongly hinted that Charlie and Faq's Healamancer inflicted some Mind Rape on her, for their own reasons.
• The Chosen One: Wanda is an agent of Fate and under its protection to complete a prophecy. That is, until Operation: Big Game, where her Fate bubble breaks and leaves her just as vulnerable as any other unit.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Her brother Tommy died suddenly while trying to come back to their capital, after Olive, whom he had admitted to feeling affection for, poisoned him during their last embrace. If Wanda had turned when the Predictamancer instructed her to, he'd never have met the Florist in the first place. After this she begins following what she believes is Fate religiously.
• Dance Battler: As a master-class Croakamancer, she can use dance-fighting to grant stat bonuses to both uncroaked and Decrypted units, and utilizes this strategy extensively during Gobwin Knob's (and, formerly, Haffaton's) military campaigns.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Croakamancy is at least as poorly regarded as Carnymancy, but at the very least Wanda was not born evil and used her abilities to defend her home and people from invasion. She later ended up an unwilling servant of the Hippiemancer Olive, who fights using peace, poison and false diplomacy. Olive is petty, ambitious and cruel, but because her own brand of magic has a good reputation and Wanda's a bad one, she nearly gets away with everything.
• Dark Messiah: She is one of the most important units to have ever been popped in Erfworld. The Titans created her to fulfill prophecies that will shatter the Erf. The Decrypted look up to her religiously, seeing her as an instrument of the Titans' will. She will pay any price to achieve her destiny, no matter how terrible or cruel, because she knows that a bigger one will be paid if she doesn't. Nothing will distract her from her cause. Except, perhaps, for Jillian.
• Death Seeker: She desperately wants to die, and struggles towards fulfilling her destiny so that Fate will finally allow her to perish. According to Roger of the Great Minds, her death wish actually generates a dark form of magical power that makes her all the more deadly.
• Decoy Protagonist: Of the prequel novel Inner Peace (Through Superior Firepower). She's actually the Deuteragonist, the true protagonist is Jillian.
• Destructive Romance: Her romantic relationship with Jillian is not healthy, for either individual. Wanda herself manipulates and controls Jillian like a puppet, going beyond the boundaries of their dom/sub sex-play to subject her to Mind Rape spells — which results in Jillian dissolving their relationship when she finds out. This sends Wanda into a spiral, causing her to become obsessed with "winning her back", to the point that she begins taking dangerous or foolish risks to try and get Jillian to either return... or be killed, so she can resurrect her as a near-mindlessly loyal Decrypted unit.
  • Her relationship with Olive Branch was ultimately just as bad for her. It led to her being subjected to heroine buds, a horrific mind-controlling Fantastic Drug, and the cure was almost worse than the disease.
• Deuteragonist: To Parson in the main Webcomic time frame and to Jillian in the prequel novel.
• The Ditherer: Of the Insecure/Submissive variety. As far as problems go, she has severe avoidance issues and does not like to think about what went wrong or what she should do about it. After being broken by her service to Haffaton under Olive Branch, she basically leaves most of her choices to whatever Fate seems to want, and leaves all responsibility for the outcome on Fate's shoulders as opposed to taking it on her own. This is the main reason she can be so ruthless.
• The Dreaded: Over the many turns, she has built up a very powerful reputation. Ansom and Jillian describe her as being like a force of nature. And after she discovers decryption, the rest of Erfworld begins to view her as a world ending threat.
• Dragon Lady: She comes across as this, particularly in Volume 1 (to the point where she may be a parody); she's one of the few characters with Asian features, she's mysterious, ambitious and sexually-aggressive, and at one point early on she even dresses in a kimono (briefly) while using her sexuality to manipulate Stanley. However, her later characterization is more complex, revealing that she's something of a Broken Bird inside.
• Dragon with an Agenda: Her backstory reveals that she's been this more than once.
• Everyone Has Standards
  • Wanda has ruined and destroyed countless lives in her ruthless quest to achieve her Fate. And even she sheds tears of horror when she sees Charlie Mind Rape Lilith.
  • The reason she hasn't created any uncroaked after attuning isn't because they're inferior, but because she considers it something akin to murder. A decrypted unit is truly alive whereas an uncroaked body is just a flesh golem, not a person.
• Evil Laugh: Wanda doesn't laugh. Until she does, having finally gotten her hands on the Arkenpliers.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Though in all other respects she is a faithful servant to Fate, at times she insists on trying to bend it to her will and causes disastrous consequences. Usually, this involves her absolute certainty that Jillian will work with her. She never does.
  • By the same token, her sheer dedication to Fate caused her to be utterly blind to Loophole Abuse and Prophecy Twist, as Marie had to correct her at length.
  • She tends to think she knows a lot more than she actually does about other disciplines, the workings of Fate, and the general underlying nature of the world.
• The Fashionista: Every other character has one, maybe two outfits. Wanda has a lot more, and she's pure fanservice in all of them.
• The Fatalist: Believes firmly in the absolution of one's Fate, and that any action a person can take to avoid their Fate will ultimately result in them getting shunted back into the same path. Marie has made efforts to cure her of this mentality, with limited success. A decision to turn against the obvious path ahead of her for once gets her temporarily croaked by the Dirtamancers.
• Geas: Courtesy of the Deal Of A Lifetime between Old Faq and Charlescomm, she's unable to share any details about Charlie's past, or that he's a Carnymancer.
• Glass Cannon: She appears to be fairly fragile, but still magically powerful.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: When in Thinkspace, which is even more a World of Symbolism than normal Erfworld, she is represented as a shoulder demon. She and angel Maggie proceed to give Lilith conflicting advice on whether to shoot Charlie.
• Green-Eyed Monster: When Parson suggests that Jillian might have arrived at the battle for Spacerock to meet Ansom instead of herself, she sends him off with the ground troops so that Jillian won't see him, even though his bonus would be more useful with the fliers and it is clear that Fate wants them reunited. This turns out to be a very big mistake. Wanda experiences a huge amount of cognitive dissonance trying to acknowledge what went wrong and reacts violently to Jack's pointed hints.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: The Arkenpliers have more powers than just Decryption, but she plays them very close to her vest. In particular, she refuses to share her ability to repatriate Decrypted at a distance, even though the evidence would have helped at her trial.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: When first popped, she tried to take off her clothes to get a better look at herself. In front of her brother.
• Irony: Wanda is a devout believer in the inevitable and unavoidable triumph of Fate, but she loves a woman who believes in fighting Fate with all her might at every opportunity.
• It's All About Me: She is repeatedly blindsided by the fact that she is not the most important person in Jillian's life. When Parson points out that it's just as likely Jillian is at Jetstone for Ansom instead of her, she ends the conversation and leaves Ansom behind, a significant tactical error.
• Keystone Army: She's the keystone in Gobwin Knob's. The side's heavy emphasis on Decrypted as their basis for troops leaves them heavily reliant on the magic of the Arkenpliers, and by extension Wanda herself. It's pointed out multiple times that Gobwin Knob's continued military success relies almost entirely on Wanda's continued survival.
• Lady of Black Magic: Her Signamancy expresses "power and grace, understanding, endurance, and above all else, unflinching competence".^note Signamancy refers to the appearance of a unit, especially in how said appearance reflects the deeper nature of said unit. Magic-wise, she has quite a reputation and is a strong part of why Haffaton and Gobwin Knob were the strongest sides of their time.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Her relationship with Jillian is rather abusive and very self-destructive to the point of completely crippling Wanda's psyche. Even after Jillian quite clearly picks Ansom over her, Wanda remains obsessed with coming up with rationalizations for how Jillian could still love her and seeks to bring her back under her control through decryption.
• Loyal Phlebotinum: The Arkenpliers were loyal to her before she even attuned them. While it wasn't obvious at the time, here, when Ansom tries to use them against her, the artifact bonus disappears. This is why he freaked out and fled the battle even though he had her at his mercy.
• Magic Knight: Aside from her immense magical talent, she's also surprisingly deadly in close combat, as an unfortunate Ansom discovers when she personally leads a cavalry charge against him.
• Magic Staff: The Arkenpliers, which are the power source behind her Decryption magic, can also be wielded as a conventional melee weapon.
• The Man Behind the Man: She's this to Stanley. Part of his character development is realizing she's gotten too powerful in that position.
• Ms. Fanservice: Out of all characters, she displays the largest variety of outfits- and they're almost always the most revealing out of the female cast.
• Necromancer: As a Croakamancer, she has the power to animate corpses into Uncroaked.
• Opposites Attract: Wanda is an elegant, logical, thoughtful caster. Her lover Jillian is a brash, impulsive and unpredictable warrior.
• Poor Communication Kills: Sometimes played straight, sometimes enforced (as is the case with her magical nondisclosure agreement with Charlie). Whatever the reason, Wanda is often unwilling or unable to elaborate on the reasons behind many of her convictions, forcing her allies to take her at her word. This has ended poorly a few times, leading some characters to be wary of heeding her advice.
• Psychic Link: She can see through the eyes and hear through the ears of Decrypted Archons, because they are capable of Thinkamancy.
• Punny Name: It's a pun on "Wand of Fireball".
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: The color scheme of her livery.
• The Red Mage: Although croakamancy is her true discipline, she has learned much about nearly every other casting discipline.
• Screw Destiny: When she was first popped, she refused to believe in Fate or that it could force her to do what it wants. But she ultimately learned the hard way that Fate is a very real Sentient Cosmic Force. However, she took this lesson a little too strongly to heart and has largely stopped even looking for better alternatives, which causes her to miss opportunities, fulfill her Fate in the worst way possible and alienate most of the people around her. It doesn't help that her idea of what Fate is is often critically flawed.
• Screw Your Ultimatum!: Charlie corners her with guns and offers to let her join his side. She replies by saying she wants to make him miserable and makes preconditions so severe Charlie could not possibly accept.
• Squishy Wizard: She is extremely dangerous in combat, but it doesn't take a lot to take her out if you can hit her first.
• Start of Darkness: Book 0 details her origin story- specifically, how the destruction of her side, murder of her father and brother, and her own capture and torture by Haffaton mutated her into the unfettered conqueror she is today.
• Stripperific: Some of her outfits reveal a lot of skin.
• Theory of Narrative Causality: Has been a firm believer in this ever since about halfway through IPTSF.
• The Unfettered: Fate thoroughly broke her into understanding that resisting it will only bring suffering for her and those she cares about. As a result, she is willing to do almost anything to achieve her Fate, and won't go against the Fate of others, even if that means she is effectively ignoring great opportunities (such as the time she prevented Lilith from killing Charlie). Just about the only fetter she has regarding this is Jillian, which is one of her worst flaws, approached only by overconfidence. After a talk with Marie, she realizes the flaws in her way of serving Fate, and has taken actions into becoming more active when the occasion rises. As a result, she becomes absolutely ruthless, leading her to decrypt free casters in the Magic Kingdom (an act that convinces the MK to capture her and rule in favor of her execution) and as a prisoner she doesn't think twice before betraying Janis by stabbing her with the Arkenpliers which were brought back to her in exchange for decrypting Marie.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: Rarely is Wanda ever seen in the same outfit twice; in fact, her raiments change more often than those of the rest of the cast combined. In Book 1 alone, she goes through more than half a dozen outfits. This is actually accountable for via in-universe lore; her signamancy is of a fashion plate therefore it may be that her "uniform" is a series of stunning outfits that automagically reconfigure to appropriately match the mood of the occasion (see automagically and instantly changing livery of characters that have changed sides). The alternative would be the dedicated expenditure of a dollamancer's casting capability, which would be an unthinkable waste of capacity which should be directed at the war effort.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: When she was first popped, she was a shy girl who loved her brother, her magic, and fighting for her Side. She didn't believe in the power of Fate, especially the Prediction that she would have to be traded to another Side. After Olive Branch tore apart her side, addicted her to Heroine Buds, and then destroyed her own Side trying to defy another prophecy, Wanda turned into a heartless Fatalist willing to do anything in service of Fate (except when it comes to Jillian).
• Villain Respect: She is disdainful of absolutely everyone, and makes no attempt to hide it. Even though she views her Decrypted as living people, she still treats them as disposable pawns. The only exception is Parson, after the volcano spell. She confides in him several secrets that she hasn't shared in thousands of turns, has unflinching faith in his plans, and consults with him at every opportunity. This isn't always a good thing; during the Battle for Portal Park, circumstances put her in charge instead of Parson, and she specifically doesn't tell him her plan because she is afraid he won't like it.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Since learning to decrypt units, it's been Wanda's go-to tactic for a wide variety of problems. Disloyal unit? Just decrypt them. Captured a prisoner? Decrypt them, do a debriefing instead of an interrogation. Unit is wounded? Healing scrolls are expensive, better to decrypt them.
• Woman Scorned: When Jillian chooses Ansom over herself and leaves her to croak, she starts to lose it. Several turns later, at the start of Book 3, Parson cautiously asks her if she would be willing to assassinate Jillian. After a moment of shock, Wanda enthusiastically agrees and makes it a goal to decrypt her.
• You Can't Fight Fate: She has a strong belief in Fate magic. Specifically, she believes you can fight Fate, but Fate will always win and you will suffer for the attempt.
• You Didn't Ask: She has a problem with this. Eventually Parson just starts asking her for any pertinent information she might have, just to be sure she's not holding something back.

Stanley

Lord Stanley the Tool

^{Click here to see him in his war paint} 

"I'm always cool!"

The leader of Gobwin Knob. Rose up from a simple pikeman to a Warlord. From there, he found the Arkenhammer, tamed dwagons, and (maybe) staged a coup to become Overlord of his side. The story begins with him in dire straits, leading Wanda to maneuver him into ordering the summoning of a perfect Warlord.

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• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: He rose from piker, to Warlord, to Chief Warlord, to Overlord on the strength of his combat prowess. The Arkenhammer didn't hurt, either.
• Book Dumb: Has all the strategic ability of a pancake. The Charlescomm official dossier even labels him "ineducable".
• Character Development: Up to a point. He's making an effort to remember people's names and to praise them for jobs well done, at least.
• Combo Platter Powers: On top of being a powerful melee weapon, the Arkenhammer allows him to fly, tame Dwagons, generate and control lightning, and rock out.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He's a bit of a dim bulb, but in battle he's also the single strongest unit in his entire side, perhaps even the world.
• Et Tu, Brute?: His reaction when Charlie coerces the Hobgobwins into betraying him.
• Fantastic Racism: Played for Laughs when he says he trusts his Chief Warlord and Chief Caster more than Jed because Jed is a building, and Jed protests, "Don't be structuralist."
• He's Back!: After the focus on diplomacy and intrigue in the Magic Kingdom for much of book 3 leads him out of the loop, he goes a little too far in his attempts to mellow out. After his post-Charlescomm advisors start sassing him for it (and straight-out call him stupid to boot) he snaps out of it, so that when things come to a head he's active and spoiling for a fight.
• Hidden Depths: He's more aware of some things than he lets on, and puts more thought into his actions than you might think at first; for instance, he was aware that Jillian was Wanda's girlfriend and that Wanda would want her to croak and bring back her corpse to bring Jillian back under Wanda's control as a Decrypted. He also turns out to be a very powerful fighter (probably the best in the world with the Arkenhammer) and a masterful tactician within his specialty (Blitz attacks with elite units on flying mounts); it's just in large-scale strategy that he has no idea what he's doing.
• In Vino Veritas: Inverted, oddly enough. In late Book 3, when he spends turns on end in a drunken haze while critical events unfold around him, his immediate advisors finally snap and start openly talking down to him. It forces him to confront the fact that he's completely lost control of his side and the situation, and gets him off his ass and active again.
• Jerkass: Quite spoiled and contentious, at least at first. He mellows out considerably later on, primarily thanks to Jed's influence.
• Jerkass Has a Point: At the end of book 1 he criticizes Parson for his dishonorable tactics even though they saved the side. Then in book 3 the reputation those tactics forged come back and bite them in the ass. Additionally, near the end of book 2, when Parson is asking him to move the capital to get an escape route, Stanley criticizes Parson for being there in the first place, which was an entirely reasonable thing to be pissed about — Parson put himself at risk for no really legitimate tactical reason ^note This is actually a long story. Parson had never even wanted to move to the battleground in the first place, and planned with Stanley to achieve the same goal (giving the Chief Warlord bonus to the Spacerock invasion force) with less risk to Parson. Unfortunately for everyone involved Maggie invoked Authority Equals Asskicking on Parson, sticking Parson with the Chief Warlord bonus and no way to move it to Spacerock without walking there himself. Parson chose to gamble his own life rather than the invasion forces' and was now asking Stanley to take a serious risk for the entire side just to save him.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: When Parson's life is on the line, Stanley has the epiphany that he actually does like Parson and takes a very big risk in an attempt to save him.
• The Load: His strategic and diplomatic abilities would rate negative on the scale if that were possible. This wouldn't be so bad on its own due to Parson shouldering the duties of Chief Warlord, but unfortunately he is also a relentless micromanager who regularly disregards or overturns his own Chief's strategic advice. He gets somewhat better with guidance from Jed.
• Manchild: One of his defining personality traits. He isn't a bad person per se, at least as far as Erfworld standards go. But he is highly immature and tends to lash out when his ego is threatened. Overcoming this is part of his Character Development. This trait does come in handy sometimes; it means he gets on famously with the Juggle Elves, which is one of the most massive "natural ally" factions and who happen to hate his enemies and be seeking a source of income at the time.
• Mission from God: Stanley considers "good" and "evil" meaningless labels, and doesn't actually claim moral superiority over Ansom and the Royals. As far as he's concerned, "There is Holy and unholy," and whoever an Arkentool attunes to qualifies as Holy.
• The Napoleon: Just to hammer it down, he's the shortest character of his side.
• Oh, Crap!: A belated one. He approached the Juggle Elves planning to rely on the thunder of the Arkenhammer and his lightning breathing blue dwagon to send them packing if there's trouble. Well after allying with them, he learns they have weapons that make them immune to shock attacks and thinks back with some alarm to how that first meeting came very close to violence.
• One-Man Army: Attuned to the Arkenhammer, he might be the most powerful unit in Erfworld in a straight fight. During the mountain pass ambush, Transylvito's plan was to control the battlefield enough to give their strongest force, Caesar and his personal doom bats, a shot at Stanley. The plan worked perfectly, and then Stanley took out the whole stack with a single swing of the 'hammer.
• Orcus on His Throne: In book 3, Stanley doesn't do much except hanging out with his Jed Eye Knights, relaxing in his bath tub and downing a lot of cocktails, while his whole side is in serious trouble due to numerous reasons acutely listed by Bonnie (Book 3, page 220). This trope is discussed between his very annoyed underlings and him, with Jed straight up telling him that he is too mellow and that he needs to do something.
• The Peter Principle: A textbook example. Stanley went from a simple Piker all the way to Chief Warlord because of his prowess, and King Saline liked Stanley so much he made him Heir-Designate. However, when put in charge of Gobwin Knob after Saline's death, he pretty much ran it into the ground before Parson came along. Granted the Noble sides do tend to gang up on uppity non-Noble sides, but Stanley didn't do himself any favors by cheesing off everyone in the near vicinity or promoting warlords based solely on their looks.
  • Though promoting units based on their looks actually makes more sense in Erfworld than other places.
• The Power of Rock: "Rocking out is not dance-fighting. Rocking out is better than dance-fighting."
• Shock and Awe: One of the Arkenhammer's affinities allows him to manipulate basic Shockmancy magic, which he uses for both combat and intimidation purposes.
• Small Name, Big Ego: He believes he's following a new Titanic mandate of attuned users of Arkentools, but his enemies see him as a despicable upstart.
• Smarter Than You Look: It would be hard for him not to be, but yes. After Book 2, people are repeatedly surprised at the rock-solid faith he has in Parson, but he just points out that basically everything he has right now is directly thanks to Parson. Likewise, he's not mad that Parson cut a deal to keep him from croaking Jillian, because no one would be happy if Wanda managed to decrypt her. Even Parson hadn't considered that.
• Strategy Versus Tactics: Stanley the Tool is a genius when it comes to battle. He is an expert fighter and rose from the rank of piker to the Overlord of his side. However, he is not a strategist and, though he had success in the short-term, he failed to have a definitive grand strategy and he was very close to being killed by his enemies. That is until Parson was summoned.
• Take Over the World: His main motivation.
• Too Dumb to Fool: Don King of Transylvito attempts to simultaneously gouge Stanley of schmuckers and humiliate him while negotiating a ransom for Parson, Maggie, and Jack, who had been taken prisoner. He intentionally prolongs the negotiation to make Stanley mad, then finally demands what he estimates to be Stanley's whole treasury, expecting Stanley to hang up and make a reasonably high counter offer later. But not only is his intelligence on Stanley's treasury badly out of date, but Stanley ends up humiliating Don King by completely missing the point of Don's game and suggesting he's just bad at getting to the point. In fact Stanley admits to an ally later that he would have traded the whole treasury for Parson and considered himself to have come out ahead; without Parson the side falls.
• Too Much Alike: One of the reasons that Jillian and Stanley hate each other so much is because they are so much alike. Both are selfish, both are blood knights, both hate Charlie, both are extremely direct, and they both obsessed with power in one form or another. In fact, it's been implied that Jillian was supposed to attune herself, but her Fate was broken when Charlie brainwashed her. Stanley may even be Fate's replacement for Jillian.

Sizemore

Sizemore Rockwell, Dirtamancer of Gobwin Knob

"When life gives you crap, make Crap Golems, right?"

The second member of Gobwin Knob's casters. Sizemore's talents at Dirtamancy went relatively unused before Parson because few others saw the potential for traps and so on. He hates violence with a passion and thus struggles internally with the fact that his new commander uses his abilities to their fullest extent. While a talented Dirtamancer, he studies other magic disciplines out of genuine interest. Despite this, he has little skill with spells of any discipline other than Dirtamancy.

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• Actual Pacifist: He hates the thought of violence and while he initially liked Parson, the rather brutal orders he's forced to follow have seemingly caused a severe hit to his Loyalty stat.
• Big Damn Heroes: Saves Duke Antium and his last few men from burning up in the inferno in Spacerock.
• Chekhov's Volcano: He uncroaks one, causing an eruption.
• Dishing Out Dirt: His magic revolves around animating earth into golems, manipulating terrain, and constructing buildings.
• Extreme Doormat: He has no leadership abilities to speak of and generally depends on others telling him what to do in order to function. This is becoming exemplified in his tenure as Gobwin Knob's Chief Caster, a position for which he expresses no vision and no aptitude beyond getting the previous Chief Caster back in position, a task for which he has no plan beyond hoping others can help.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Erfworld warlords are not terribly creative and see little to no use in his talents. Parson on the other hand figures out how to apply his magic well, such as by creating traps or even hitting the enemy with terrain based attacks. Moreover, it would appear that his powers over dirt also extend to substances commonly found in dirt: he uses this to synthesize CFCs out of thin air to put out fires.
• High Hopes, Zero Talent: In complete contrast to Wanda, he loves learning about other disciplines. Unfortunately, he has no aptitude for anything apart from Dirtamancy.
  • Though Sizemore seems fully aware of his ineptitude with other magics. He still tries to learn them anyways, but he doesn't seem to have unrealistic hopes with regards to his potential.
• Magic Wand: His shovel, which he has primarily used for Dirtamancy thus far.

• Mundane Utility: Sizemore's talent for construction and tilling have made him the filthy rich "Rock Star" of the Magic Kingdom specifically for performing so many mundane tasks.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Even if he hates war and croaking, he does so because of his Duty and Loyalty towards his side. However, this has been a source of great stress for him. While he likes Parson as a person, he is starting to hate Parson more and more for what Parson orders him to do, especially as Parson starts meddling in the Magic Kingdom.
• My God, What Have I Done?: As an Actual Pacifist, he becomes very upset when Parson orders him to croak enemy units. This is horribly exacerbated when he is made to uncroak a volcano.
• Trap Master: A Dirtamancer doesn't have much direct combat utility beyond the basic Shockamancy all casters have. He does get some use out of golems and is amazing when it comes to non combat functions, but if pressed his most useful abilities in a fight are numerous forms of traps, such as collapsing tunnels.
• Tunnel King: Sizemore epitomizes this trope. He can make braced, lighted, and reinforced tunnels as fast as he can walk.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Before Parson came along, nobody at Gobwin Knob really considered him useful beyond his latrine duties.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Gives one to Parson, pointing out that he effectively declared war on the Magic Kingdom, the one place in Erfworld that was peaceful.
• You Are in Command Now: Stanley makes him Chief Caster after Jack and Maggie get captured and Wanda goes missing after the battle in the Magic Kingdom.

Maggie

Maggie, Thinkamancer of Gobwin Knob

"We are called. We serve. Perhaps... we are never sure our cause is just. But we know the need is real. We know if we have done our duty."

Gobwin Knob's third caster, and Parson's closest confidante and advisor. She has a fairly reserved and pragmatic personality, though she shows hints of a good sense of humor. She has great personal belief in Parson's abilities, but this doesn't stop her from questioning some of his choices. As Gobwin Knob's Thinkamancer, she uses telepathy to oversee units and relay orders and information to/from Gobwin Knob.

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• Beware the Quiet Ones: Maggie's generally the most soft-spoken and respectful of Gobwin Knob's casters, but she'll still Mind Rape your ass if you don't watch yourself around her.
• Broken Pedestal: Roger Victor Clarence's betrayal was the last straw for her respect for the Great Minds, and now she barely even thinks of herself as a Thinkamancer.
• The Chosen One: Maggie is an agent of Fate and under its protection to complete a prophecy.
• Conflicting Loyalty: She has this between Gobwin Knob, the Great Minds (who are the leaders of her discipline), and most importantly, Parson himself. She ultimately settles this in favor of Parson, underneath the condition that he goes against Charlie.
• Darkest Hour: Her time when captured in Transylvito. Imprisoned, completely out of juice, and at the mercy of a creepy Dollamancer with a penchant for Voodoo Dolls. The degree to which she manages to fight back, and ultimately get her revenge, goes solidly in Moments Of Awesome.
• Defector from Decadence: She is willing to go against the wishes of the Great Minds if doing so means Parson can succeed. During the events in Transylvito, she begins turning away from pure Thinkamancy, as her inner monologue indicates she no longer champions Thinkamancy as the highest discipline, and has an epiphany that allows her to use Date-A-Mancy
• Exact Words: After offering Stanely a suggestion, which he accepts, she casts a suggestion spell.
• Girliness Upgrade: To go along with Progressively Prettier, Maggie's raiments (with the exception of the miner's outfit she sports in Book 2's prologue) progressively grow more and more feminine as time progresses, becoming looser and more similar to casual clothing.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: When in Thinkspace, which is even more a World of Symbolism than normal Erfworld, she is represented as a shoulder angel. She and bad angel Wanda proceed to give Lilith conflicting advice on whether to shoot Charlie. Notably, it's the ANGEL who's telling her to shoot.
• Iconic Item: Her Eyemancy pendant, which is a common adornment among all casters of her caste.
• Ignored Enamoured Underling: According to Janis she's desperately in love with Parson. It worries him because, while he likes her, he doesn't love her back.
• Leg Focus: During his conversation with Janis, Parson realizes that Maggie's legs caught his attention.
• Mental Fusion: She can form connections between herself and other casters to greatly boost their abilities, which is a common ability among all Thinkamancers.
• Mind Rape:
  • Deflecting the backlash from a broken link onto Jack and Misty causes this to them, mentally crippling Jack and killing Misty.
  • Bill created a doll Voodoo Doll Golem with a spell that connected it to both him and her, and then used it to attack her. When she learns enough about Date-a-Mancy she is able to use that connection to break Bill's mind, reducing him to an Empty Shell.
• Mission Control: Her usual function for Gobwin Knob- she relays messages between commanders and troops, keeps track of the side's assets, and provides communications via Thinkagram.
• My Greatest Failure: Come the end of Book 1, she's come to view her Accidental Murder of Misty as this, and insights into her thoughts far later in Book 3 shows that it's still haunting her.
• Mystical White Hair: Maggie's grayish-white hair goes along well with her complex and sometimes terrifying Psychic Powers. Keen-eyed forum-goers noticed that, after the Makaleka blows Bill's mind, her hair is visibly beginning to turn blonde at the front.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Bears a considerable resemblance to Margaret Thatcher, who is also presumably her namesake.
• Oh, Crap!: One of her biggest moments of this came when she was insisting that Parson be allowed to go through the portal into Spacerock so he could implement his brilliant battle plan, only for Parson to tell her bluntly that he didn't have a plan and only needed to go to Spacerock because the Gobwin Knob forces there need a Chief Warlord bonus, and Maggie had forced Stanley to promote Parson back to Chief Warlord instead of one of the Warlords who was already present at the battle. The Beat Panel following this brutal revelation provides her current page image, which is why she looks so shocked.
• The Power of Love: Jed is able to prevent Charlie from banishing Parson back to Earth by empowering Parson's connections to Erfworld, the strongest of which was Maggie's crush on him.
• Progressively Prettier: At the start of the story, Maggie looked, in Parson's words, like a "hatchet-faced gargoyle." However, her features continue to become more youthful and feminine, as her outer Signamancy changes to reflect the changes in her heart as she spends more time with Parson. Her white hair has even started to turn blonde.
• Psychic Powers: What her magic revolves around. She can communicate telepathically, incapacitate enemies, and even manipulate people with suggestions.
• Right Makes Might: Maggie decides that she doesn't want winning battles to be based on cold Mathamancy anymore and make them based on decency instead. This ties into her Good Angel role above, bringing out Parson's better qualities.
• Servile Snarker: She has the utmost respect for Parson. That does not deter her snark in the slightest.
• Silver Vixen: Has the face of a sweet old lady, but looks great in a miniskirt.
• The Stoic: Parson can only barely see through her poker face at times- this is an In-Universe thing, too, since mastery over facial expression is one of the common abilities among all Eyemancy disciplines and on top of it Thinkamancers have power over all channels of communication. This includes body language.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Parson's influence notably wears off on Maggie more than anyone else. As the comic progresses, she grows much kinder and more moral in her actions- most notably, she strongly advises him against assassinating Don King and Caesar in their sleep to pre-emptively end their negotiations with Translyvito.
• Undying Loyalty: Completely loyal to Parson, to the point that she is willing to lie to the Great Minds That Think Alike, the pseudo-ruling caste of Thinkamancers.
• Voodoo Doll: A creepy Transylvito Dollamancer named Bill binds her to one of his dolls, causing it to take her appearance and causing her to feel anything he does to the doll. He uses it to sexually assault her when she is a prisoner.

Jack Snipe

Jack Snipe, Foolamancer of Gobwin Knob

"I'm afraid I don't understand, Lord. And also afraid that I do."

Rounding off Gobwin Knob's group of casters is Jack Snipe. Popped in the kingdom of Faq, Jack was originally the reason for its status as a hidden kingdom. He is a master-class Foolamancer, though this was not fully evident until halfway through Book One. Since the Battle of Gobwin Knob, Jack has taken a much more active role in the story as one of Parson's greatest subordinates. Unlike most other Erfworld units, he loves riddles, philosophy, and "lateral thinking," making him one of the few characters to fully embrace Parson's position as Chief Warlord.

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• Back from the Dead: Is croaked and decrypted at the end of book 2.
• Batman Gambit: A master, and what his best illusions rely on. A fine example is a climactic scene in book three. Parson has been forced to turn to Charlescomm, with an appropriate change to his Signamancy, while on the other side Archons have been prepared to shoot him if he tries to come through to rescue Lilith. Parson is ordered by Charlie through the portal, but the Archons haven't gotten the message yet. So he makes Parson look like he's wearing his old Gobwin Knob clothes, causing the Archons to open fire.
• Bluff the Eavesdropper: He and Parson are taken prisoner by Transylvito. He communicates with Parson via ventriloquism and reading his throat, while simultaneously telling largely fictional stories depicting Jillian as a backstabber. Meanwhile, Don King and Bunny spy on them using telepathy on a bat. Don King doesn't buy it at first, but Caesar, who is already inclined to dislike her, takes it seriously, especially since Jack was once on the same side and Jillian is both impulsive and terrible at explaining herself.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Jillian has long considered him one of her best friends, but she rejected his attempts to form a relationship. Jillian for her part doesn't even remember because Charlie and Betsy tampered with her memories and fundamental personality, meaning she simply suspects he might have had a crush on her.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Subverted in that, while he ends up speaking in Koan most of the time, he is actually very observant and thoughtful.
• Deadpan Snarker: At war with Parson for the crown here, though Jack seems to be in the lead.
• Death by Irony: Mounted on a purple dwagon, he tried to collapse the walls of Jetstone's throne room onto Jetstone troops by sonic breath of dwagon then charge in, dies because said dwagon is half blind and has no depth perception so it walked into the wall itself when it collapsed. The irony is lampshaded with his last words.
• Establishing Character Moment: Within the first several seconds of regaining his sanity in Book 1 he gets Stanley to escape by leaving his dead dwagon mount using the Arkenhammer then veils them... or so it seems at first. Until the Transylvitans realize that the dead dwagon is an illusion, Stanley and Jack are still mounted, and they've veiled themselves to resemble the Transylvitan's own bats, allowing them to escape. Bear in mind Jack came up with all of this in a split second.
• The Gadfly: Enjoys yanking peoples' chains and borrows a great deal of his methodology from Socrates.
• Geas: Courtesy of the Deal Of A Lifetime between Old Faq and Charlescomm, he's unable to share any details about Charlie's past or that the latter is actually a Carnymancer- that is, until he's killed and decrypted during the Battle of Spacerock, the end of his (first) life also ending his participation in the Deal.
• Heroic BSoD: His brief insanity resulting from the Mind Rape mental backlash from breaking a caster link.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: He becomes this with Parson, the two almost immediately becoming great friends. Maggie describes an incident where Jack politely tells Parson he's wrong about something and Parson is willing to admit he might be but wants a second opinion as the fiercest disagreement between the two men she's seen. Jack's first death comes about because he insists on following Parson into battle despite not having any juice left to cast.
• Hyper-Awareness: A Required Secondary Power of a Master of Illusion. He has to be able to perfectly observe all the details of a given situation for his illusions to be accurate. Being this observant tends to drive Foolamancers slowly mad.
• I Fight for the Strongest Side!: Twice now, Jack has passed up opportunities to abandon Gobwin Knob. The second time, he implies that Parson's monstrous strategic abilities reduce his desire to rejoin Jillian.
• Love Hurts: Implied to be a major reason for why he hasn't bothered rejoining Jillian, in spite of having received several good opportunities to do so. While the two of them are good friends, his crush on her is unrequited and he is painfully aware of this.
• Master of Illusion: As a master-class Foolamancer, it's his specialty. His power is so great Faq's survival depended on him successfully masking an entire city at once, and this only failed when an enemy was led directly to Faq's doorstep.
• Mental Fusion: Formed one with Maggie and Misty, until said fusion was ended. The backlash created by the severed link made him temporarily insane. He eventually recovers.
• More than Mind Control: When decrypted, his adversarial relationship with Wanda becomes something like a Sibling Rivalry, and he starts thinking of her as a sister.
• Mundane Utility: He's used his powers for things like lighting up a room or making someone's tea taste like hot chocolate.
• Nice Guy: Probably among the nicest and most genuinely kind characters in the cast, though just like anyone else, his standards of morality can be a bit sketchy at times.
• Only Friend: Was this to Jillian back in the days of old Faq, at least until Wanda came along.
• Psychic Link: Aside from the Mental Fusion mentioned above, his Foolamancy allows him to share his field of vision to other people. He used this power to help Jillian fight after she was blinded by Orwell.
• Romantic Runner-Up: Jillian has always considered him one of her greatest and at times only friends, but when offered the chance to turn to her side he refuses. When questioned about it later by Wanda, he responds that of course he would love to be with her... but being third place in her affections^note Behind Ansom and Wanda just isn't enough. It would hurt too much to be around her.
• Straw Character: Used to play this role In-Universe. Back when he worked for old Faq, he would play the role of a metaphorical straw dummy, diffusing arguments by drawing their ire on him.
• The Philosopher: Not so prone to great speeches, but he has shown appreciation for complex philosophies, especially when it comes to their weak points.
• Speaks In Shoutouts: After suffering mental damage from the Mind Link with Maggie and Misty, he spoke only in quotes from King Lear.
• Waistcoat of Style: Once restored to...mostly normal, he always dresses in an elegant purple waistcoat.

Sylvia

Lady Sylvia Lazarus, formerly of Unaroyal

"Croaking is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well."

After the Battle for Gobwin Knob, Wanda decrypted nearly the entire first Royal Crown Coalition Army. In addition to Ansom, Gobwin Knob added Sylvia to its roster of high-level Warlords. She has taken to her new post with more alacrity than most, as she desires combat and destruction with little regard for "sides."

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• Ascended Extra: Originally she was just a nameless Unaroyal warlord, but her character design was popular with the readers, especially on the forums, earning her the nickname "Scarlet" until she was given an official name.
• Ax-Crazy: Part of her bizarre, fatalist ideology is that since she cannot croak, she has no qualms about leading a suicidal course. She's convinced she'll survive and simply doesn't care if anyone else does.
• Birds of a Feather: Non-romantic example, with Wanda. She's stated to actually like Sylvia for always being ready to destroy something.
• Blood Knight: She sees herself as being in a competition with Fate and revels in defeating the enemy. Which is actually quite normal for any infantry unit promoted to Warlord, since infantry units are popped with simple minds and an instinctive desire to defeat the enemy.
• Born Lucky: Justified; she was fated to die in a fire, but Jojo used his Carnymancy to add the stipulation that she must die by her own hand. Until a situation arises that fulfills both requirements, she continues to survive the most hazardous situations by means of ridiculous contrivances.
• Came Back Wrong: Decryption tends to magnify whatever personality traits would make a given unit most loyal to Wanda. She is said to have always had a smoldering anger, but she becomes particularly zealous in service to Gobwin Knob.
• Characterization Marches On: For someone who is later established to be inherently predisposed to engaging and attacking the enemy, Sylvia's first appearance has her express an interest in avoiding battle.
• Colonel Kilgore: See Ax-Crazy.
• Even Evil Has Standards: She rather likes that the deck is stacked in her favor, but after she's saved from Artemis's arrows twice through sheer dumb luck and sees her fellow warlord have a Despair Event Horizon at the sight, Sylvia is sobered up.
• Evil Redhead: Regardless of which side is right or wrong, there can be little doubt about Sylvia.
• Fiery Redhead: Jojo describes Sylvia as having had a smoldering anger that she was forced to restrain. He also says that she was only truly happy when fighting the enemy, since those were the few moments she could fully unleash it.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: She becomes very reckless when she figures out that she has Carnymancy charm protecting her from croaking.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: As she figures out that Fate has been protecting her, she becomes increasingly reckless. She tries to burn down the garrison to kill the last of the units holed up when she sets Ace Hardware aflame. Ace orders his heavies to burst the stomach of a green dwagon (Sylivia packed her units in too tight). The gases from its stomach burst out and was ignited, frying everything nearby. Unfortunately for her, her Fate specifically does not protect her from the consequences of her own actions. We see Sylvia Laughing Mad screaming that she won while she burns to death for the third and last time.
• Kill It with Fire: Each time she died, she died by fire. She is directly responsible for her final death, as described in the above example.
• Meaningful Name: Her name is a Shout-Out to the poet Sylvia Plath, who wrote the poem "Lady Lazarus," which is a Death Seeker who has been denied death multiple times; it also uses the Phoenix's death and rebirth by fire as a metaphor for her unwanted resuscitation.
• More than Mind Control: The Arkenpliers make adjustments to a unit's mind in order to make them loyal to Wanda, but the traits it magnifies had to have already been there. Sylvia was originally popped as a mere stabber, meaning she was inherently predisposed to link fighting with duty and fulfillment. As such, she enjoys working for Wanda and Parson due to the brutality of their methods.
• Psychotic Smirk: Whenever she hears about or takes part in a plan about killing people, especially many people.
• Pyromaniac: Downplayed trope. While Sylvia hasn't actually set any fires herself, she has an odd fascination with fire metaphors (e.g. "letting the world burn") and a willingness to embrace fire tactics. Her fascination is perhaps not surprising considering that she's burned to death twice in battlefields engulfed in fire.
• Warrior Poet: She's based on an actual poet, though the entire-poem reference only happens in her head.

Lilith

Lilith

An Archon formerly in Charlie's service. She was decrypted at the Battle for Gobwin Knob and later captured by Jetstone so that Charlie could learn more about Decryption.

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• Ascended Extra: Lilith starts off as just another Archon decrypted by Wanda. It isn't until toward the end of Book 2 she starts becoming important.
• Back from the Dead: She was croaked during the Battle for Gobwin Knob and resurrected as a decrypted by the Arkenpliers.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: When Charlie attempts to Mind Rape her, she fights back, symbolically as a well defended fortress against a swarm of crows.
• The Chosen One: Lilith is an agent of Fate and under its protection to complete a prophecy.
• Conflicting Loyalty: She finds herself facing this between Wanda and Gobwin Knob as a whole, and ends up informing Parson that Wanda did something he does not approve of.
• Consummate Professional: Charlie trains his Archons to be these, and Lilith is no exception. Even when a great deal of her mind has been picked to pieces, and she's surrounded in hostile territory, she remains utterly calm and professional in her report to Parson.
• Death Amnesia: According to scripture, a series of books created by the Titans themselves, deceased units go to an afterlife depending on their unit class and deeds. Archons go to a place called "Sky Club", but Lilith cannot remember visiting any sort of afterlife during the brief time she was dead.
• Defiant to the End:
  • When Charlie buys her as a prisoner, she realizes that he has no intention of keeping her alive. Unlike her sisters, who would have begged in vain to be let back into the company, she decides to fight back until the bitter end. She manipulates her own prisoner exchange to gouge Charlie out of many schmuckers. She fortifies her mind against Charlie's Mind Rape. Even as she makes her Last Stand against the destruction of her mind, she gives a Dying Declaration of Hate.
  • When the Magic Kingdom chains her to a post for a Public Execution, she insists on no blindfolds, wanting to see it coming, and makes faces at the audience.
• Diving Save: Charlie's Archons prepare an ambush in their portal room in anticipation of Parson coming through it. When Lilith learns of this and sees him come through, she tackles him down and back through the portal.
• Dying Declaration of Hate: Confronted with her impending demise, Lilith decides to give last words, saying that no one who sees Charlie for what he really is could love him, and that she hates him. It is later revealed that this did in fact leave Charlie a deep emotional wound
• Expy: Of the Little Red-Haired Girl from Peanuts, in that Charlie's love for his Archons is no longer requited by her.
• I Shall Taunt You: She tries to goad several of Charlie's Archons into attacking her to trigger a treaty's penalties. When she starts going into Charlie's secrets by describing what he looks like, it is enough to provoke Charlie into distracting her with psychic attacks.
• Meaningful Name: She is named after Lilith, a mythological demon. Unlike even the other decrypted Archons, she holds no lingering love for Charlie and she comes to pose a serious threat to him.
• Taking the Bullet: Immediatly plunges towards Parson to shield him from incoming Charlescomm's bullets when he comes through the portal disguised as a Gobwin Knob unit. While Parson still ends up being shot in the knees, she successfully manages to protect him from other bullets which may very well have been fatal to him, and is hit instead of him.
• Talking to the Dead: While contemplating her next action on a difficult mission, she speaks with the corpse of the Archon she has been carrying.
• Troll: Shows shades of this when she is taunting other Archons. This is a very deliberate move from her part, as she wants them to shoot her in order to trigger the penalty from the truce contract in favor of her side. She is persuaded that she has won, and that they are powerless to stop her. Unbeknownst to her, she triggered the penalty when she shut down Charlie's city, thus making her directly responsible for Parson's turning.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • Charlie used Loophole Abuse to experiment on her in spite of a truce between him and Gobwin Knob. Having not had any chance to learn about the truce, she goes about croaking several Charlescomm units when she breaks free, causing the truce's penalties to absolutely deplete Gobwin Knob's previously wealthy treasury and transfer it to Charlie.
  • The actions she takes in order to carry out Parson's orders to get an Archon corpse and the stolen guns to the Charlescomm portal result in a penalty that hits Gobwin Knob so severely that the only way Parson can see out is to offer HIMSELF to Charlie in compensation. The fallout from that results in Marie's croaking, Wanda losing the Arkenpliers, and an assault by Charlie's forces that shatters the neutrality of the Magic Kingdom. The good news is that she gave as good as she got: heavy structural damage to Charlescomm that left Charlie unable to spy on the outside world for three days, plus 40 million schmuckers straight out of Charlie's coffers to Gobwin Knob's.
• Xanatos Gambit: An inversion; she uses her own prisoner exchange as an opportunity to gouge Charlie for a whopping 150,000 schmuckers, split evenly between Jetstone and Gobwin Knob. If Charlie doesn't pay, she turns to Jetstone and is no longer a prisoner that can be exchanged. Either way, Charlie has to give up something he really wants.

Jed

Jed the Head

Formerly the Tower of Jenga in Jetstone, Jed was awakened by one of Parson's ideas, which involved mixing Dirtamancy, Thinkamancy and Dollamancy.

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• The Aloner: In conversation with Bonnie, he admits he's alone.
• The Bartender: Comes of having your own bar inside you. He tends to mix advice with drinks.
• Deadpan Snarker: Gobwin Knob is already full of these, but Jed can match wits with the best of them.
• Exact Words: Stanley was present when Sizemore, Maggie and Ace were creating him, and it seems some of his suggestions wound up getting brought into the mix.
• Genius Loci: He's a living, sapient tower. And even with his intelligence and powers, Erfworld's mechanics still treat Jed like a structure and not a unit; technically he could refuse any order given and there'd be no way to make him comply, he has no upkeep, and his stats are so fundamentally different or nonexistent that Parson can't read them.
• Nice Guy: He's incredibly mellow, not even reacting too much when Stanley smashes one of his talking heads (though he does insist Stanley get someone to fix it). And while he refuses to listen to Parson's orders because it's not his unit (technically it's under Stanley rather than Parson, and even then Jed implies it doesn't consider itself to belong to anyone's side at all), it complies with his polite requests just as well as if it had been an order.
• The Nicknamer: Mostly calls people by Hawaiian words. Stanley is Kahuna (shaman), Bonnie is Wahine (woman), Maggie is Makuahine (mother) and Parson is Kanakanui (powerful man, or in a more literal translation, big guy).
• Phlebotinum Battery: Juice is Erfworld's equivalent to Mana, and he has demonstrated the ability to refuel Maggie's.
• Ultimate Lifeform: Jed is said to "be", and its stats reference Plato's theory of forms, effectively making it a perfect tower.
• Wild Card: On paper, at least. Jed technically isn't a unit, and refuses orders in a way that implies he's part of the world rather than on anyone's side; as a living structure, he doesn't have to obey anyone going by Erfworld's rules. In practice, Jed's too nice to turn requests down and is thus part of Gobwin Knob because they're the ones who "have" him.
  Parson: Listen, this is an order. Tell W-
  Jed: No!
  Parson: ...'scuse me?
  Jed: I am not your unit, Kanakanui! Go give an order to a cloud. If the cloud obeys you, then I will.
  Parson: Right. I meant, "Jed, will you please tell Stanley to relay an order to Wanda, Ivan and Claud for me?"
  Jed: Oh. Sure thing.

The Arkenpliers

The Arkenpliers

One of the Arkentools, said to have been used by the Titans to build Erfworld. Wanda attuned to it, giving her the power to create Decrypted. It is eventually awakened as part of a desperate experiment by the Great Minds, in an attempt to preserve their lives.

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• Ancient Artifact: It is an ancient magic item belonging to a set of items known as the Arkentools. Erfworlders believe it to be one of the tools the Titans used to build Erfworld. The Arkenpliers presume this is true, but even it doesn't know for sure since it wasn't sapient at the time.
• Back from the Dead: It has the power to mend things, such as dead bodies.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • The Great Minds awaken it, but the birthing process accidentally croaks them. The response of the Arkenpliers, which are unable to transport themselves, is "*sigh* Inconvenient."
  • Upon coming across his own dead body, Isaac, who's mind had been transferred to a doll, breaks down crying, knowing that he only has until the next day before he dies completely. The Arkenpliers tell him not to cry, and Isaac cries harder out of spite. The Arkenpliers then sarcastically tells him not to do other things.
• Necromancer: Its abilities mostly revolve around Croakamancy.
• Talking Weapon: The Great Minds discover that much like towers, it has a primitive mind, and awaken it into sapience, also giving it the ability to speak.

Jetstone

Ansom

Prince Ansom of Jetstone

"By strength and by duty and by honour does Royalty lead all, in the Titans' path."

The most prominent antagonist of Book 1. Ansom is a Chief Warlord who leads the forces that threaten Gobwin Knob with complete annihilation. He is a competent strategist and, at level 10, a very powerful warrior. He holds that Royalty is a mandate from the Titans to rule for the entire first book.

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• Back from the Dead: He is the first unit to be Decrypted by Wanda, and it occurs at the end of Book 1. In fact, he's the first person to be Decrypted ever.
• Boring, but Practical: Ansom favors simple armies composed mostly of infantry with warlord boosts and some specialist mixed in. They can be countered by more specialized forces stacking bonus onto bonus in the form of combat they're dedicated to, but the sheer numbers advantage by generalists makes up a enough of the difference for his allies to bridge the gap. In book 2 he gets a lot sneakier, but pretends he's still doing this as a feint.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Before his decryption, he refused to believe royals were anything less than the best. Afterwards, not so much.
• Break the Badass: While he remains a capable leader and fighter, Book 3 reveals his death - not unreasonably - has left him with some deep-rooted trauma.
• Evil Costume Switch: A natural side effect of being Decrypted means his livery goes from the previous white and blue of Jetstone to Wanda's black and red.
• Four-Star Badass: Ansom was Chief Warlord of Jetstone and became Chief Warlord of Gobwin Knob after his decryption.
• Heel–Face Turn: From Gobwin Knob's perspective. For everyone else, definitely the other way around.
• The Hero: Or so he'd like to think.
• Honor Before Reason: His major weakness. Parson pushing this button is what ends up getting him killed in the end.
• I Just Want My Beloved to Be Happy: After getting captured by Faq and discovering that Vinny and Jillian are sleeping together, he is briefly annoyed and wonders if it started before he even croaked. He soon settles down and decides that he is happy that two of his closest friends found a relationship in each other, and offers Vinny some comfort when that relationship is ruined by Caesar ordering Vinny to turn on Faq.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Revealed to have a big one while he's reflecting on himself in comparison to Albert while imprisoned at Faq.
  No burden had ever been so worrisome as that of his own unmet potential. No opposing horde of infantry on the battlefield had ever crushed and mangled him as badly as his father' expectations. He'd known he was no paragon at Level 1, whatever everyone had said of him. He imagined himself a fraud, a mistake. In desperation not to be "a unit of zero measure," he had made terrible blunders.
• Knight in Shining Armor: Something of a parody of the concept, at least initially. Later developments show him to be somewhat of a Deconstruction.
• Knight Templar: Reacts with frothing-at-the-mouth rage to any suggestion that royalty isn't better than everyone else. However, deep down he actually felt that Parson had a point, a trait that the Arkenpliers magnify upon his decryption. As it turns out, he never believed that he was a "unit of measure", a unit that all others should try to measure up to and find wanting. As a prince, he is supposed to be the paragon, but he made many mistakes trying to live up to those impossible standards. In hindsight, it's clear that Parson's claim that royalty is obsolete ticked Ansom off because he was mad at his own failures as a prince.
• Loving a Shadow: He thought his relationship with Jillian was fun and believed he loved her. However, after decryption not only does he no longer love her, but looks back and feels that he never loved her to begin with. Jillian can't accept this.
• Magic Carpet: His flying mount. He normally rolls it up and rides it like a motorcycle.
• Monster Progenitor: According to a Prediction made before the Battle of Gobwin Knob, Ansom was always Fated to become the first of the Decrypted, "something glorious". Further following the spirit of the trope, as a level 10 warlord he is also still the most powerful unit Wanda has ever raised.
• One-Man Army: As a Level 10 Royal Chief Warlord, he is fully capable of bringing down hordes of infantry by himself. Armed with Arkenpliers, he creates the weak point in Gobwin Knob's uncroaked lines single-handedly. It's also noted at multiple points that he could take a city single handed. Once when flying over a poorly defended city once taken from Gobwin Knob and once as a hypothetical regarding whether he could take Faq by himself if he escaped. He lies and says he couldn't and then considers doing it for real that evening.
• Royal Blood: As a Royal, he is this and took a great deal of pride in it up until his decryption.
• Save the Princess: As part of being a pastiche of a traditional fantasy hero, he has a history of this with Jillian, both to her chagrin and despite not knowing her to be of Royal Pop. One of his best moves in Book One is doing this when he decides to Take a Third Option against the dwagon-hex twap, I mean trap. It later gets completely inverted when he becomes Jillian's prisoner/she tries to save him. Technically, she's a queen at that point, but whatevs.
• Soulless Shell: What Jillian believes him to have become, and something he himself fears.
• The Strategist: For the Royal Coalition in Book 1. Something of an Informed Ability, but he might just look bad compared to Parson.
• That Man Is Dead: A variant, with Jillian refusing to see him as the man she knew after his decryption. He insists otherwise, but through Book 3 he starts wondering if it's true or not.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Tramennis makes him read the speech himself, in the form of a list of the names of every unit Ansom got killed at the battle for Gobwin Knob.
• Undying Loyalty: To Wanda, after his Decryption.
• Victory Is Boring: Not boring per se, but he is mildly thrown off when his side conquers several cities without a single problem, as so much of his warfare career has been devoted to planning for when things go wrong. When things eventually go pear shaped, he's not happy about it but he is ready.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Ansom's only desire is to follow the will of the Titans.
• What the Hell, Hero?: When Jillian captures him they start flying around as she captures a few poorly defended cities from Gobwin Knob. She captures what soldiers she can and mercilessly executes any Decrypted. Ansom is appalled at her behavior and also calls her out on her hypocrisy, noting that if she wants to turn him to her side she's doing a really bad job of convincing him.

Ossomer

Prince Ossomer, Warlord of Jetstone

"But I am what I am. And so here I stand. I will make you and the Titans prove your claim."

Slately ordered a prince popped in Dhrystone as another heir to the Jetstone Royal Side. Jetstone's most spartan and militant Level Five City produced a suitably hardened and imposing warrior. The youngest of the three sons of Jetstone, Ossomer holds to the ideals of honor and Nobility even more than his elder, Ansom. He cares little for diplomacy, preferring instead to let his sword sue for "peace." At 9th level, it makes a very convincing argument.

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• Authority Equals Asskicking: Like most Royal characters, Ossomer has improved stats for his level, even though he didn't get to show them off.
• Back from the Dead: Shortly after his capture, he is croaked by Sylvia and Decrypted by Wanda.
• The Big Guy: The tallest and most muscular of his brothers, despite being the youngest.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Subverted. Ossomer was clearly not swayed by the Toolist ideal, nor is he as devoted to Wanda, as much as Ansom was. He continued to desire ideals for honor and protocol even after his Decryption.
• Despair Event Horizon/Heroic BSoD: After getting Decrypted and bearing witness to the atrocities committed by his new side upon his home, Ossomer begins to collapse inwardly.
• Face–Heel Turn: His Decryption, with the requisite costume switch. And yet...He's the first character to turn back to his original side.
• Heroic Resolve: Once Wanda left the hex, he was able to break free of her control.
• Knight in Shining Armor: Huge on honor and justice. This serves as the focus point for him turning back to Jetstone, as in his mind Gobwin Knob is too dishonorable and cruel to be serving the Titans' will, Arkentools or no.
• Meaningful Name: Awesomer.
• Redemption Equals Death: After turning back to Jetstone post-decryption, a team of Archons literally pull the rug out from under him, causing him to plummet to his final death.
  Ossomer: Going... home.
• Royal Blood: He is part of a Royal line and takes great pride in it.
• Shout-Out/Captain Ersatz: He's Superman.

• The Stoic: His body is quite stiff and tends to give only small displays of his emotions.
• The Worf Effect: Taken down in a couple of panels to show how powerful Gobwin Knob's new side is.

Tramennis

Prince Tramennis, Chief Warlord of Jetstone

The Jetstone Prince popped after Ansom and before Ossomer. He is weaker than both in fighting ability, but his mental faculties may be the greatest of the three. His strategy appears to be on par with or greater than Ansom's, but he also has a much greater understanding of psychology and diplomacy. He was never made heir because he doesn't live up to King Slately's Royal ideals.

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• Ambadassador: Very unusually for an Erfworld ruler, and even more unusually he's very good at it. While he's a good strategist, and certainly willing to fight, he's even more willing to avoid a war if he can get a good deal out of it. And unlike Parson he understands the entirely practical value of honorable conduct, vis. if you are known for keeping your word people will be willing to do business with you.
  • Early in his life King Slately sent him off on a mission believing him to be weak, and expecting him to croak. He was surprised when Tramennis came back with a favorable alliance plus peace offerings.
  • In pages 45-46 of book 3, he stood up to Charlie in negotiations concerning their captive Archon, attempting to get the captive to turn to Jetstone.
• Ambiguously Gay:
  • Charlie takes the form of rainbows to talk to him. Enough said.
  • Ansom doesn't seem to be too surprised to find Tramennis in the closet. Word of God confirms that while Ansom doesn't notice the deeper meaning to his own sentence, it is indeed an example of Signamancy.
  • And then when he has his Dittomancer duplicate him as an experiment, there's a double rainbow outside. If signamancy is anything to go by this is more or less confirmed. Leading to an implied Screw Yourself.
• Establishing Character Moment: After being introduced as something of a fop at the bridge negotiations, the next thing he does is almost immediately see through one of Parson's tactics, which had completely taken in his chief warlord brother. A comment from Ossomer indicates that this is nothing new.
• The Gadfly: He often says things to get a rise out of people. He upsets one of his warlords by saying he hopes "to be half the Queen" that Jillian is. He messes with Ansom's head during the parley. He keeps calling the decrypted Ossomer "Ossomer thing" or something like that and yet he seems to still care about his brother a little bit. This helps push Ossomer to break his decryption.
• Guile Hero: Not physically suited to combat, he relies on wits and superior tactics instead.
• Hypocrite: He calls Gobwin Knob out on their deeply dishonorable conduct, but has eagerly taken advantage of it when his allies have done the same.

• Royal Blood: He is part of a Royal line and takes pride in it.
  • As he expounds to Ansom, his belief in what it means to be royal isn't about a sense of entitlement, but a dedication to its ideals of honour and nobility. He isn't intent on maintaining royal hegemony at any cost, but he will act with honour, even if his enemies do not.
• Royal Rapier: His weapon of choice.
• The Strategist: Out of the 3 brothers seen thus far, he seems to be the smartest. Appointed Chief Warlord following Ossomer's decryption and has so far proved to be a skilled tactician. On top of that, he figures out the strategies of others rather quickly and is good in a pinch. It takes him a mere moment to realize what's happening when when dwagons not hit by arrows start falling out of the sky for no apparent reason. He's also one the few where follows Sun Tzu's advice that you don't have to fight to win as long as you get something good out of a deal.
• Tempting Fate: See main page.
• The Un-Favourite: Not only among Ansom and Ossomer, but also among his other twenty one brothers and sisters simply because he was born without the "proper" Signamancy to be a good Royal. Even after they've all been croaked (or turned, as was the case with Ansom and Ossomer), he's still regarded by his father with scorn.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Hearing his father approving of him brings a tear to his eye. Subverted in that King Slately had lied and believed that Tramennis was a weakling. It was later double-subverted when the King realized that Tramennis was not only an excellent warlord, but also a far more able ruler than himself, leading to his decision to designate him as his heir.
• The Wise Prince: Notably more insightful than his brothers. The signamancy for Jetstone's new capital is Rome for goodness sake.

Slately

King Slately of Jetstone

"My son is more of a man than I am. All my sons have been."

The Ruler of Jetstone for over three thousand turns. During his reign, Jetstone has remained the strongest side in Erfworld, mostly thanks to the competence of his sons and daughters. Slately holds to Royal tenets even more than Ansom, yet privately acknowledges that he doesn't live up to them in reality. He has only seen combat once.

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• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Slately is well aware of what the Signamancy of his appearance implies and is more than a little bitter about it. Fortunately, he receives...
• Character Development: The attack on Jetstone prompts a massive dose of it. Slately goes from a bad-tempered king who'd never seen a day of actual combat in his life, prone to mistreating his children and subjects alike, and whom even his closest friend was willing to call a "dry turd" to someone willing to admit he was wrong about how he treated them, and fights to defend his own side.
• Cloning Gambit: Used to survive an attack from an Archon, with the help of Lloyd the Dittomancer. Turns out, according to this comic, it is stated that it was the real Slately that was croaked.
• Dare to Be Badass: Despite having almost no combat experience and being unfit to lead troops from the front, when Slately recognizes the absolute threat that Parson's strategy poses to his capital, he suits up and joins his remaining forces in a heroic last stand that actually succeeds in saving his entire side, at the cost of his own life.
• Dead All Along: Lloyd the Dittomancer made a duplicate of Slately to save his life. Some time later, we find out it didn't work; the Slately who's been fighting since that moment was the duplicate, and the real one croaked.
• Expendable Clone: Subverted; when the Slately clone dies, he refers to him as "it", while also saying they were exactly the same, and praising him for laying down his life for Jetstone. Then we find out from Don King it was the original Slately who died.
• Go Out with a Smile: A quasi-villainous version. He faces death smiling because he believes that Parson's death has been guaranteed after trapping him in the capital (which was in the process of being razed), thereby getting revenge for turning Ansom and Ossomer. In a slightly less villainous context, he's also managed to buy time for Jetstone forces to evacuate, as well as acquire enough funds to designate Tramennis as his heir.
• Heroic Sacrifice: His Last Stand to kill Parson would be this, at least from Jetstone's perspective.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: He likes to brag about how Royals are the Titans' chosen people and how vastly superior they are to everyone else, but he is privately all too aware of how badly he lives up to his own ideals.
• Jerkass: Even his good friend Don describes him as a "dry turd".
• Killed Off for Real: The real King Slately dies while fighting Gobwin Knob's Archons, his body incinerated to ensure he isn't decrypted. The Ditto gets killed by Parson throwing him into a red dwagon's mouth.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: When things get dire, he has his casters lay as many enchantments they can think of on his clothing, crown and scepter, so that he can help fight back.
• The Napoleon: He's pushy, arrogant, contentious, and quite short.
• Not Afraid of You Anymore: "There's the Lord of Hamsters himself. Large and terrible. Yet I do not fear him."
• Properly Paranoid: Watching Jillian talk with Wanda, he's convinced they're talking about how to divide his kingdom. Sure enough, Jillian is trying to talk Wanda around to taking Jetstone then and there.
• Redemption Equals Death: While not strictly evil, he was not the best sort of man. Arrogant and snubbish, Jillian stated "that every word out of his mouth could fill a chamber pot". He didn't abide by the rules of nobility and honor that he clung to and, in his own words, "no unipegataur-riding warrior king was he, no towering leader and orator". From his death, he become the sort of man that he always wanted to be but it was too little late in some senses because he took risks he shouldn't (one of which got his original body killed), was too low level to be the deciding factor, and was easily manipulated by Charlie. From the point of view of his son, Tramennis, the other nobles, and courtiers, though, his sacrifice was the ultimate honor he could have had and he is believed by them to have taken his place in the Erfworld equivalent of Valhalla, The City of Heroes.
• Requisite Royal Regalia: He wears a full set including a Cool Crown, a Pimped-Out Cape, and a Royal Scepter.
• Royal Blood: He is part of a Royal line and is overwhelmingly snobby about how much better this makes him than everyone else.
• Tempting Fate: "Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances". Doubles as Hypocritical Humor as this takes place mere minutes after he chided Tramennis for the same thing.
  Tramennis: What's the worst that could happen?
  Slately: The worst? The Titans could hear you ask such a question.
• Took a Level in Badass: After Tramennis is incapacitated, he has his casters put as many enchantments as possible on his crown, scepter and clothes so that he can help fight back. Ace the Dollamancer also gave him a jetpack.
• Tomato in the Mirror: The double wasn't aware until he was told.
• Unwitting Pawn: For Charlie. To drive the point home, during his last thinkagram, Slately's image transforms into a chess piece, first a king piece and then into a pawn, as Charlie takes control of the conversation.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
  • Averted quite strictly. When the real Slately croaks and his Dittomancy clone inherits the throne, everyone treats the clone as if he's the real Slately, all the way up to his sons treating him as their father.
  • Played with by him. He refers to the original as 'it' because he didn't realize he was the double, but he also praises "the double's" sacrifice.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Dittomancy clones, such as Slately's, vanish at the start of the next turn.

Ace

Ace Hardware, Dollamancer of Jetstone

The Dollamancer of Jetstone. He has a lot of friction with the other casters and warlords of the kingdom, as they wanted a plush Dollamancer, but he's focused more on accessories.

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• Back from the Dead: Croaked and decrypted at the end of Book 2.
• The Big Guy: Just a head shorter than Parson, despite being a native Erfworlder.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Unlike most Dollamancers, he doesn't like working with fashion, dolls, or cloth golems. His talents lie in accessories (magic items to make a unit stronger) and action figures.
• Less Embarrassing Term: His talents are a play on the old "they're not dolls, they're action figures!" routine.
• Meaningful Name: And he is consciously aware of it too.
• One-Liner: Has an appreciation for these.
• The Resenter: Towards his greatly beloved predecessor, Holly. Jetstone only sees Dollamancy as being useful for creating cloth golems and raiment as she did. Ace's passion is for creating accessories, but Jetstone wouldn't let him because of her legacy.
• Sucksessor: Ace popped shortly after Jetsone's original Dollamancer, Holly Shortcake croaked. The people of Jetstone were very fond of Holly and her penchant for making cloth golems and raiment. By contrast, King Slately saw Ace Hardware as a punishment from the Titans for being careless with Holly's life.
• The Unfavorite: Out of all Jetstone, only Ossomer and Cubbins liked him. Though Slately does eventually start seeing his value during his Character Development.
• Worthy Opponent: After the battle of Spacerock, he remarks that Parson was "a scrapper".

Adam Antium

Duke Adam Antium, Warlord of Jetstone

"Improve on the Titan's work? Sire... We ARE the Titan's work."

Second-in-command of Jetstone's field units, he has a minor discussion with his superior about philosophy. He's a scorist, meaning he believes units simply accumulate points that earn them placement in the afterlife, with no need to defend their actions before the Titans.

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• And That's Terrible: A rare positive example of the trope. When Ossomer is killed, he makes the report that the process was "vile". You can see Tramennis' pained expression and a warlord crying in the background.
• A Father to His Men: Or at least he cares more about their safety. Then it's proven when he holds the last two survivors of his fight as they start to cower in fear.
• Back from the Dead: In the course of Book 2, he is croaked by friendly fire and Decrypted by Wanda.
• Bling of War: Downplayed. All of Jetstone's warlords wear a cape which serves no purpose besides making them stick out.
• Blue Blood: He was popped as a duke. He is pretty serious about it too at least before he was turned. He dislikes Jillian's unorthodox mannerisms and will put up with Duke Lacrosse who he, for reasons he can't even place, finds annoying since he technically has the same title if not the same rank.
• Determinator: In one strip, he is hit by acidic yellow dwagon scat and he loses an arm and a chunk of his side. A few strips later, it is shown that his arm CONTINUED TO DISSOLVE, yet he still charges into the fight.
• Double Meaning: As Duke Lacrosse was talking about a possible plot to keep him out of the action, Antium thinks, "The tactical position was secure". Duke Lacrosse just then happens to ask, "But it's not, is it?" but he was still referring to a possible plot.
• Karma Meter: Antium believes in "Scorism" which is a belief where a unit is given a score based on their actions and that the afterlife you deserve is assigned to you without you having to stand before, and be judged, by the Titans.
• Madness Mantra: This.
  Duke Antium: Oh... Not twice, demoness. [sneaks up behind them] Not twice! [gets hit by an arrow] Not... [collapses dead]
• Meaningful Name/Shout-Out: His name is a reference to Adamantium which is a fictional super strong alloy in Marvel Comics. He may also be a reference to Adam Ant of the band Adam & the Ants and Atom Ant of the 1965 Hanna-Barbera cartoon superhero.
• Mook Horror Show: Though not exactly a normal mook, we do get this:
  The lump struck among a stack of pikers—Duke Lacrosse's units—and sent them flying. Their tiny shouts from across this vast interior space arrived like the echoes in a nightmare.
• Nerves of Steel: Even after losing an arm, he is in control.
  Duke Lacrosse: Evacuate the Atrium? Duke?
  Duke Antium: Not until we have orders! Stand firm! Croak any fallen riders!
• Performance Anxiety: When the king is "livid", his subjects tend to get nervous to the point that you can see the "cowering" in their writing. Lampshaped by Adam and Tramennis.
  Tramennis: Father's livid. If you look closely at this handwriting, you can actually see the poor scribe cowering.
  Antium: Ha. I've stood in those boots.
  Tramennis: Oh, we all have.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: He was one of the highest leveled and most respected warlords of Jetstone before he was decrypted. Lacrosse was a little jealous of this.
• Tempting Fate: "The tactical position was secure." Moments later, they are attacked.
  Duke Lacrosse: But it's not, is it?

Artemis

Artemis, Archer of Jetstone

An Archer warlord in service to Jetstone, who was exiled to a distant city due to her inability to play politics. She was brought back to the capital when Gobwin Knob attacked.

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• Back from the Dead: At the conclusion of Book 2, her body is smuggled into the Magic Kingdom and decrypted.
• Blue Blood: As a noble, she is this, and Bonnie describes as being full of Jetstonian noble arrogance.
• Double Meaning: As a city-managing warlord, she chafes under her Duty, finding no glory in such tasks as walking to the slaughterhouse.^note Erfworld warlords can inspect city buildings to make the related tasks happen more efficiently — in this case, popping extra meat rations. When Artemis makes her kamikaze attack, she compares the attack to a metaphorical walk to a slaughterhouse and asks the Titans if such a move declares glory for her.
• Heroic Sacrifice: She makes what she knows to be a suicidal charge to save the King.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: She defeats most of Gobwin Knob's siege, buying the King enough time to enact another plan. All of this takes place in the text updates and is only briefly mentioned in the comic.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives one to Parson, stating that due to his (forced) betrayal, he is no longer Chief Warlord, he is of low Character Level, and his poor leadership resulted in the loss of an infantry unit, meaning she ought to take command.
• War Is Glorious: She used to fight for this alongside her loving Prince. But after some political complications resulting from his death, she was blamed and ended up having to "administer" a city, a task Jetstone uses as punishment which basically just involves walking from building to building, something she found dull. When she finally gets to fight again, she is unable to find any glory, even in her victories. This gets exacerbated when every arrow she aims at Sylvia is miraculously deflected, and she finds herself questioning her motives before she dies.

Transylvito

Vinny

Count Vinny Doombats of Transylvito

Ansom's best friend and most trusted strategic advisor, though they hail from different sides. He is a powerful Warlord and a cunning and caring person. He is capable of independent flight and using Doombats for surveillance.

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• Blue Blood: As a Noble, he has this.
• Broken Pedestal: Albert takes a shine to Vinny. So his turning against Faq on Caesar's orders severely incenses Albert.
• Combat Pragmatist: In his words, Transylvitian warlords prefer a sure thing over a fair fight.
• Comforting the Widow: Jillian, after Ansom's death.
• Flight: Possesses the flight special, which along with drain life is standard for Transylvito units.
• Foil: He serves as Ansom's foil, balancing out his zeal with caution and serious demeanor with humor.
• Good Is Not Nice: He's a pretty friendly sort, but Transylvitans are tough customers and Vinny is no exception.
• Life Drain: Can drain the blood from other units, which presumably restores his health. They don't have to be human or even speaking units, nor does he need to drain them until they die.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Vinny is very close to Jillian and would feel very bad about it if Transylvito were to ever order him to double cross her, but he would obey such orders nevertheless and ultimately does, even after there is a change in Transylvito's rulership.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Transylvito units appear to be vampires, though the life drain ability is very rarely mentioned. They can also fly.
• Out of Focus: Since his side is only peripherally involved in the fight at hand, Vinny nearly disappears completely for the second book, despite being a major supporting character in book one. He does return in Book three, but since he's been reassigned as ambassador to Faq, he's still not as prominent as in book one.
• Parental Substitute: A weird example. In any world but Erfworld, it would be blatantly obvious that he was Albert's father. Not only does Albert look like a cross between Vinny and Jillian, he acts like it too. Jillian even has an inexplicable compulsion for Vinny to tell her how Albert is doing, in a very parental way. But since it's impossible for units to have two parents in this world, everyone just finds it a bit odd but otherwise ignores it. Ultimately subverted when Ansom notes Albert's signamancy and tells Vinny that, in the Titan' eyes, he is Albert's father.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Subverted; he's powerful, but a genuinely trustworthy and caring individual.
• The Smart Guy: Ansom would have been slaughtered early in the engagement if not for Vinny's warnings.
• What the Hell, Hero?
  • During the Book One epilogue, Jillian randomly stabs the pet fish of a minor noble with the excuse that she's going to use it as provisions. Unimpressed, Vinny soon calls her out on her Chaotic Stupid attitude because there's a very real chance that she'll do something incredibly stupid and rude for no reason when meeting with Don King.
  • He's less aggressive in doing so than Jill was, presumably since he doesn't care about the death of a random Faq unit, but he is concerned that Albert does not follow orders and then lied badly about it. It's not that Albert is completely without empathy, either, he just doesn't bother to reserve it for fellow speaking units rather than random rodents.
• You Are in Command Now: Following Caesar's rise to Overlord for Transylvito, and to his own surprise, he gets promoted to Chief Warlord just before he's ordered to break alliance with Faq and conquer the city. Fortunately Ansom is available to give him a few pointers on how to carry his new Duty.

Don King

Don King of Transylvito

"Wolves, they made stronger than mice. Mice do not hunt wolves. That is not how the Titans created them."

The King of Transylvito. Hasn't left the capital since his inauguration tour, but can see through the eyes of bats with the help of his Thinkamancer.

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• Adipose Rex: And getting fatter, the more his side declines.
• Deader than Dead: Wanting to make absolute sure he is gone, Charlie forces Transylvito to sign a contract to destroy his corpse, putting him beyond Decryption's power to resurrect.
• Flight: Averted, unlike most Transylvito units, Don King is completely incapable of flying, even without his larger bulk taken into account.
• The Fundamentalist: He's fond of quoting scripture and likes it that his warlords can recite passages back to him when he asks. The main way Parson and Charlie each try to get him on their side is to frame the conflict as a holy war. This backfires on both of them, since he decides both are abominations and plans to destroy both of them.
• Horrible Judge of Character: He's normally pretty perceptive when it comes to people, but for some reason he's convinced Caesar is planning to betray him. A conversation from Caesar's perspective shows him trying very hard to work with Don to save their side; Don later thinks back to the conversation and thinks Caesar was trying to justify an impending treachery.
• Ignored Epiphany:
  • Don King starts to ponder his increasing mistreatment of Caesar and enmity with Gobwin Knob, wondering whether Royalty really is the be all and end all. But then, just as he is about to reconsider, Charlie and Jillian provide him with a new resource to redouble down his current path.
  • He's fully aware Vanna is treacherous and unreliable, but falls in love with her anyway and tries to keep her close to him.
• Killed Off for Real: Don King gets manipulated by Charlie into trying to send Parson back to his home world, against the very determined protests of his Chief Warlord Caesar. Eventually this culminates in Don attempting to disband Caesar in front of Parson, Bunny, and Vanna. Unfortunately for him, Bunny intervenes by using a heretofore unseen Thinkamancer ability which cuts his primary threads, instantly erasing him (and herself) from the game.
• Like a Son to Me: He admits he sees Caesar this way, before mentioning how things had gone with his actual son.
• Manipulative Bastard: Caesar considers Don a master of negotiation and admires how easily he gets Stanley the Tool dancing to his tune. It turns out later that he had massively underestimated his leverage, and Stanley had agreed so quickly because it was a genuinely good deal. Parson notes his talent at playing multiple angles in his favor, but also keeps in mind that compared to Charlie, Don is strictly minor league.
• Mysterious Backer: To Jillian, even though he's the more public of Jillian's two backers.
• Mysterious Employer: To Jillian.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: He's a skilled manipulator, but he's also completely unaware that when caught between Parson and Charlie, he's out of his league. Right at his moment of maximum smugness, he gets outmaneuvered by his own closest confidante, who assassinates him because she has a much better grasp of the situation.
• Offing the Offspring: His son, Prince Ponzie, decided to croak him. Bunny warned Don about it, causing the attempt to fail, and Don disbanded his son.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: He's a man of routine, so much so that not sticking to his routine is a sign to him that he needs to take a step back and think about what's happening in his life.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Like all Transylvitans.
• Playing Both Sides: Troubled by the apparently Titanic conflict, realizing that Gobwin Knob and Charlescomm both pose a serious threat to his side, and that he has nowhere near enough power to deal with both of them, he decides to carefully manipulate them, build up power, and eliminate his enemies one by one.
• Pride: More than Don wanted an heir or Vanna's love, he just wanted to be right about backing Jillian. When Jillian proves to be in fact loyal, he decides that he wants Caesar gone for opposing him on this point.
• Royal Blood: He is "descended" from one of the original units the Titans chose to rule. He did not originally make a big deal of it, and in fact started de-emphasizing it in favor of a merit based system after his son betrayed him. But after Queen Bea committed suicide out of Royal pride, he has started to adopt the same snobby, derisive attitude that is all too common among Royals. This has raised tensions greatly between him and his commanders, especially with Caesar.
• Uriah Gambit: He's not above performing these, should the need arise. Case in point, after becoming king, he sent what few courtiers he had off on diplomatic outings. Most of them were dead in short order (the rest just turned).

Caesar

Caesar Borgata, Chief Warlord of Transylvito

Vinny's superior in the court of Transylvito, and appointed heir to the throne.

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• Badass Longcoat: After Caesar becomes the ruler of Transylvito after Bunny's desperate assassination of Don King, he gets instantly upgraded to wearing a wicked black and red one.
• Blue Blood: He is a Noble, though just barely, and unlike many nobles did not pop knowing noble etiquette. Don King did not originally care about that and took great pride in Caesar's skill. But after converting to the "Royalist religion", Don has started using Caesar's lowly status to hold him in contempt.
• Curbstomp Battle: On the receiving end of one with his 1 on 1 fight against Stanley. One hammer smash, and he's sent flying.
• Deader than Dead: He dies even harder than Bunny did. While her life strings are ripped to useless shreds, Caesar was disbanded (not even dust or ash was left of him) from going through his portal. Bunny at least left a corpse...
• Despair Event Horizon: Crosses it after Charlie completely crushes him.
• Driven to Suicide: After losing everything that mattered to him and getting completely crushed by Charlie's schemes, he loses all hope and, in a final act of spite against Charlie, commits suicide by going through his city's portal, which can only be safely entered by casters.
• Dying Curse: He dies, wishing for Transylvito to matter and for Charlie to not get what he wants. The power of his despair and death generates a form of Croakamancy, twisting Fate into wanting to grant his wish.
• Everyone Has Standards: Normal Transylvitan interrogation is rather notoriously brutal and even includes feeding off prisoners. However, when he hears about how Bill has been interrogating Maggie and what that actually means from Bunny, he's suspiciously quick to guarantee her safety to Parson from any kind of further interrogation. He's also pretty disturbed to hear about how Prince Ponzie 'punished' Bill for assaulting his girlfriend, especially since Bill and Bunny both make it clear that he was getting some kind of sick sexual thrill out of it rather than just trying to protect Bunny or her honor.
• Expy: Of Spike.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Subverted. Bunny says that there's only one thing that makes him mad—danger to Transylvito. But since Transylvito is always in danger, this makes everyone, even him, think he's an angry person in general.
• Jerkass Has a Point: His constant hatred of Jillian stems mostly from her trying to stab him for telling her that Ansom was croaked in addition to general lack of trust and how expensive she is. It all seems pretty over the top except it's not. Caesar massively distrusts Charlie because of how secretive and squirrely he is. Though he doesn't know it, Jillian has suffered Mind Rape from Charlie and has been his agent for hundreds, if not thousands of turns.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: As heartless as he can seem around Jillian, he does seem to have his side's best interests at heart, and may be acting a little less kindly than normal because he's concerned with signs that Don might be trying to dispose of him.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Caesar used to be Don's favorite warlord and Designated Heir (based on merit) until Don got the Royalist "religion" and decided to try to pop another Royal heir. Now, the in-fighting between the two threatens to poison their side. Subverted in the end in the sense that Caesar never even considers betraying Don, but the conflict still drives Don to try to disband him anyway, leading to his death and Caesar's promotion.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Everything he does is firmly in support of the continued existence of Transylvito as a side - his primary conflict with Don King is the fact that being non-Royal makes all of his motives suspect in Don's eyes. He also becomes Parson's main advocate as soon as he realizes their interests are aligned against Charlie and Jillian, and negotiates in good faith.
• Sarcastic Devotee: To Don.
• Second Love: Long after the death of Bunny's first love interest, and she had forgotten not to fall in love, he became this to Bunny.
• Secret Relationship: He's in a relationship with Transylvito's Thinkamancer, Bunny, but all signs of it are hidden when in public. They ignore each other and simply converse at the end of the turn with what juice she has remaining. She's grown very cautious about protecting her secrets after she was ostracized by the Great Minds of Thinkamancy. And fortunately for Caesar, she has the complete trust of Don as a result, allowing her access to a meeting between Don and Benny containing some critical information about his plans for Caesar.
• Sergeant Rock: Not a particularly nice guy but definitely a lead-from-the-front type who is respected enough by the troops and the rest of the court that Don can't risk outright disbanding him over their public disagreements.
• Undying Loyalty: Even after he comes to suspect Don King is trying to get him killed, Caesar still tries pretty hard to work with his king for the sake of the side.
• Uriah Gambit: Caesar suspects that Don wants him dead after their falling out regarding building up Faq and replacing him as heir. He's sent to attack Chocula and is the only speaking unit to return, nearly ending up croaked at several points in the fight. Don does privately expect Caesar to croak on one of his increasingly dangerous missions, however, Benny muses that his continued success might mean he's a unit with some Fate in store and thus can't be croaked until he fulfills his role, such as gaining the throne of Transylvito before the new royal heir pops.
• Would Hit a Girl: Hands Vanna a savage beating for her treachery.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
  • Narrowly averted, at least directly. Don King can't simply disband his chief warlord, especially one as successful and popular as Caesar. Were he to do so, the Loyalty of all units under his control would take a massive hit. Instead, he's been trying to kill him off by sending him on suicide missions, but Benny suspects that his continued survival hints that he may have a role to play in Fate.
  • Subverted in that Don King has told Caesar he was planning on having him mentor the new heir because Caesar's experience and skill were valuable despite the personal disagreements between Don and himself. While he does see Caesar as a symbol of the previous, non-royal way of doing things, and originally planned to disband him outright the next time they had a serious disagreement, he cannot bring himself to do so and instead orders him locked up.
  • After having his Royalist beliefs seemingly confirmed, it gets played straight when Don King gives him a choice between Blind Obedience or execution, with the king strongly preferring the latter. When Don actually attempts to disband Caesar, however, Bunny saves him... by killing Don.

Bunny

Countess Bunny Velvetino, Thinkamancer of Transylvito

"That'll get your lip split in our neighborhood, mister."

Transylvito's Thinkamancer, Caesar's love interest, and King Don's closest confidant.

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• Blue Blood: She is a Noble unit.
• Conflicting Loyalty:
  • As with all non-barbarian Thinkamancers, she is often subject to this between her side and her fellow Thinkamancers.
  • She is implied to have suffered one between King Don and his son, but ultimately chose Don. She is now experiencing a hauntingly similar case between Don and Caesar. This time, she chooses Caesar.
• The Confidant: Don King implicitly trusts her with all things, courtesy of when Bunny saved his life during Ponzie's attempted coup. She's uncomfortable with this status, but isn't afraid to exploit it for the betterment of the side.
• Deader than Dead: The Great Minds' Geas rips her mind apart so thoroughly that there is nothing left to save, and Huehue states that she died so hard that she was put beyond even Decryption's power to repair. Just to be absolutely sure, Charlie makes Transylvito sign a contract that gets her corpse eaten by bats.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The reason she was made a Baddie? She tried telling her lover what Bill had been doing to her. And while she was at it, she decided there should be no more secrets between them and told him more than the Great Minds could forgive. In response, she was immediately cast out by the Great Minds, and rendered unable to speak. Small wonder then, she hates them so much.
• Domestic Abuse: Prince Ponzie was violently abusive to her. Eventually she realised that she feared him more than she loved him.
• The Exile: She betrayed an oath to the Great Minds for reasons of love. As a result, she was declared "Bad", was cut off from all other Thinkamancers except when ordered to by her ruler and had certain channels of Thinkamancy banned entirely, one of which appears to be speech.
• Geas: When Bunny first broke the rules of the Great Minds, they put her under probation with a spellbinding. The spellbinding was designed to activate if she broke the Great Minds' terms and spilled any more secrets. When she had little choice but to spill some to protect herself from Transylvito's mentally disturbed Dollamancer, Bill, she also exposed more secrets than the Great Minds could forgive while she was at it, activating the spellbinding. The spellbinding stripped her of the ability to speak, crippled much of her spellcasting ability, and magically prevented her from communicating with other Thinkamancers except in the course of her duties. A severe violation would croak her completely. When she uses forbidden Thinkamancy to croak the king, it ultimately does.
• Graceful Ladies Like Purple: She is technically a countess, and most of her outfits involve purple in some way.
• Heroic Sacrifice: She croaks Don King both to stop him from disbanding Caesar and to make Caesar the new ruler of Transylvito, thus ensuring that Transylvito will oppose CharlesComm. Unfortunately, the Badness spell on her kills her for using Thinkamancy to croak Don.
• Iconic Item: Like Maggie, she sports an Eyemancy pendant. Unlike Maggie, the eye on said pendant is closed, signifying Bunny's status as a Baddie.
• Insecure Love Interest: After Caesar learns her sordid past, she's surprised to see he still loves her and isn't sure why.
• Loophole Abuse: As a Baddie, an excommunicated Thinkamancer, she is magically bound to be unable to communicate with other Thinkamancers except in the course of her duties or with the permission of the Great Minds. But she is not forbidden from speaking with dolls. When Transylvito's Dollamancer binds Maggie to a Voodoo Doll Golem, Bunny is able to communicate with Maggie through it.
• Psychic Powers: Her power as a Thinkamancer.
• The Reliable One: She serves as King Don's closest confidant and holds his absolute trust, which is a rare luxury in Erfworld. She cannot speak and rarely communicates at all, but she is always there in the background by his side.
• Secret Relationship: She's in a relationship with Caesar, which they both hide because she's learned to keep secrets better after her last mistake.
• The Speechless: She is unable to speak and has to communicate telepathically. This is the result of being declared a "Baddie" by the other Thinkamancers.

Benny

Chief Caster Benjamin "Benny" Franchise

Transylvito's Chief Caster and Moneymancer, as well as one of King Don's oldest friends. He spends much of his time glowering in the background about the money being spent.

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• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Even by Erfworld standards, he's pretty blatant. Parson takes one look at him and correctly identifies his name, class, and most of his personality.
• Conflicting Loyalty: Subverted. After Don croaks and Parson's lies are exposed, Caesar worries that he made a mistake, and that maybe Benny is going to turn on him. Benny assures him that Don was the one making the mistakes, from backing Jillian to trusting Charlie.
• Gut Feeling: Like Caesar, he has a natural and visceral distrust of Jillian. Given her mental conditioning, she's essentially an agent of Charlie who Benjamin also doesn't trust worth a spit.
• Know When to Fold Them: He very quickly gives up Parson's bracer when prodded to ask it if keeping it puts his life into danger. Though he has an excellent poker face, how long he stares at it and how easily he gives it up indicates that he really didn't like the answer it gave him.
• Punny Name: A Moneymancer named after the slang term for hundred dollar bills. Of course, hundreds are only called "bennies" because Benjamin Franklin is on them because he was such an important part of building America's early economy, making this something of a circular example.
• Shout-Out: Benjamin Franklin, of course.
• The Smart Guy: Beyond his abilities as a caster, he has a clever mind that even Parson finds impressive. He comes up with several tests of the Mathamancy bracer that no one else thought of, and uses it to excellent effect in the short time he has it.

Skyy

Viscountess Skyy Appletini

Transylvito's newest warlord, popped only a few turns before book 4.

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• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: She uses a gun to fight off an invasion, allowing her to level much faster than normal and quickly making her the most powerful warlord in the city. That also makes her the highest ranking unit in the city, short of the Ruler.
• Blue Blood: She is a Noble unit.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: Her Royal raiment includes eyes on her knees and elbows.
• In-Series Nickname: Huehue calls her "Tlahuelpuchi," which is a type of vampire from Central Mexico.
• Pragmatic Hero: When Cheri is fighting with her over the gun and the crown, Skyy insists on keeping the gun. This leads to her leveling and outranking Cheri.
• You Are in Command Now:
  • Her quick leveling (and the lack of warlords in the city) means that she's the highest level warlord in the capital ten turns after she is popped. It's remarked several times that this means she's in charge, even though she has absolutely no idea what she's doing. She has good instincts though, and Benny is still in charge of the magic stuff, which helps.
  • When Caesar commits suicide, Huehue is able to use Caesar's last wishes as leverage to steal enough power to promote Skyy to heir at the last second, leaving her as the new Ruler of Transylvito.

Bill

Transylvito's Dollamancer.

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• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: There is clearly something wrong with his head, but Transylvito tolerates his existence because they desperately need his talent for Dollamancy.
• Empty Shell: What he's reduced to after Maggie and the doll he made of her are done with him.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: His skills as a Dollamancer are undeniably valuable to Transylvito, but nobody at the Court seems to actually like him.
• Serial Rapist: He raped Bunny through the Voodoo Doll he made of her, and (nearly) did the same to Maggie. He only got as far as sexual assault before Don locked him up for unrelated reasons (telling Vanna, a spy, that Maggie was in TV).
• Voodoo Doll: He can make these with a combination of Dollamancy and Thinkamancy. He made at least two, one of Bunny and one of Maggie.

Prince Ponzie

Don King's heir, who was disbanded before the start of the story.

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• Dirty Coward: He planned to croak his father by decapitating him in his sleep. Bunny realised after hearing this that Ponzie, a level 4 Warlord, was terrified of his father, who was only level 1.
• Domestic Abuse: He horribly abused Bunny.
• The Dog Bites Back: Bunny turned on him, leading to Don disbanding him, after she realised she was more afraid of him than she loved him.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Despite being the son and heir of Don King, he wasn't part of the Bat Pack and was told he'd have to earn the respect of the members to get in. He really didn't like that.
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch: After Bunny broke down and told him about what Bill had done to her, Ponzie spent nights beating and abusing Bill. But it's made clear that it was less about revenge and more about him getting his kicks off of hitting someone who wouldn't fight back- Bunny was just an excuse.
• Posthumous Character: Don King disbanded him after Ponzie failed to croak him.
• Prison Rape: He acts like a stereotypical prison inmate despite not being imprisoned. It's heavily implied that his abuse of Bill involved rape. Bunny outright says that if she hadn't spilled her secrets to him, he would have done the same to her instead.
• Self-Made Orphan: He fully intended to croak his father, but Bunny warned Don, who disbanded Ponzie.

Huehue

The former tower of Transylvito, awakened as a Tutelary by the Great Minds. Like all Tutelaries, he is fanatically dedicated to the preservation of his side, but due to the circumstances he's awakened into, he finds himself tested harder than any of the others.

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• The Atoner: Subverted; after Caesar's suicide, Huehue realises he'd made a terrible, terrible mistake my making the deal with Shirley on Caesar's behalf and, rather than trying to make amends, resolves to do whatever it takes, no matter how forbidden and sinful to try and correct it, since in his mind he's Beyond Redemption.
• Beyond Redemption: His mistake in making a deal with Shirley to preserve Transylvito, requiring him to effectively forge Caesar's signature, only to realise after that this wasn't what Caesar had wanted at all makes Huehue realise that, as Shirley had told him, he IS the bad guy, regardless of how good his intentions were. This only convinces him that things can't get any worse, so he might as well go all-out.
  He was beyond penance. Past redemption. He had nothing worthy to sacrifice, least of all himself.
  So he did the crime again.
• Mayincatec: His entire theme, much as Jed's is Hawaiian; specifically Aztec. His architecture resembles theirs, he uses a lot of Central American words in his speech and thought, such as Tlaotani (Caesar) and Tlahuelpuchi (Skyy), and when he promotes Skyy to Ruler, her garb changes to something akin to that of an Aztec ruler or priestess.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: From his perspective at least, the deal he cuts with Shirley to save Caesar from being executed by Charlescomm and preserve the side was well-intentioned, since he thought he was doing what Caesar would have wanted, but Caesar's subsequent despair-driven suicide proves him wrong, and since he'd effectively forged Caesar's signature on the contract, Huehue felt as if he'd committed an unforgivable sin, especially since the contract rendered Caesar's sacrifice meaningless.
• Taking You with Me: One of the first things Huehue does after incarnating is threaten to collapse himself on Bill and the subverted dolls who had taken Caesar prisoner.
• Walking Spoiler: Huehue ain't walking anywhere, but he's one of the last major characters introduced in the story and his actions have big repercussions.
• The Unfettered: After realising the enormity of his mistake in making the deal with Shirley without Caesar's consent, Huehue decides that his crime has put him Beyond Redemption and is willing to commit any sin, break any law, and violate any taboo to make it right again. So he simply reaches down into the Source and outright steals the power necessary to promote Skyy Appletini to the new Ruler of Transylvito on the spot, then seizes the contract he'd made with Shirley back from her and simply tears it up.

The Kingdom of Faq

Jillian

Jillian Zamussels Banhammer, Barbarian Warlord, later Queen of Faq

"Wanda, I think you're completely capable of wiping out every unit in this battlespace. Which is hot. But any time you talk about croaking me, you're full of crap."

The former Princess of Faq, Jillian was never the heir her father had hoped to pop, and in many ways prefers life as a barbarian. This doesn't stop her from detesting Stanley, her... interesting... relationship with his second-in-command notwithstanding.

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• Action Girl: As a level 10 Warlord with years of combat experience, she's definitely this.
• Aggressive Submissive: She likes to fight and fly free, but in her relationship with Wanda she was definitely the sub, embracing both submission and masochism wholeheartedly. She even says it's boring at one point to do it any other way, at least when it comes to Wanda. However, eventually she learns that Wanda wants to really control her, using their sex games as a chance to apply subtle Mind Rape spells to Jillian. This is where Jillian draws the line and breaks off the relationship, saying that while Ansom could be pompous and irritating, he at least respected her decisions and let her do what she wanted. Not that that relationship goes any better.
• Alpha Strike: Jillian's favorite strategy is gathering the best group of gwiffons and soldiers she can muster and flying straight into the enemy's capital. She has done it three times across various stories.
• BFS: "I love a problem I can solve with my sword."
• Blood Knight: She has a strong love for violence and killing people, which is the main reason she and her Actual Pacifist father and his court didn't see eye to eye. They assumed she was a psychopath when she's actually just doing her job and has perfectly functional morals.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Her seemingly contradictory behaviors under Wild Card make a lot more sense when you learn that she's been Mind Raped by Charlie and Betsy.
• Broken Bird: Inner Peace reveals just how far back her problems go, and how deep they run.
• The Cameo: Appears briefly during the Lord Crush side-story, at some point during her mercenary days.
• Catch a Falling Star: When Stanley's Hobgobwin allies are coerced by Charlie into betraying him to Jillian, Stanley orders their flying dwagon mounts, which remain loyal, to knock them off. Jillian successfully guides her air units to catch all of them.
• Chaotic Stupid: Her actions often have no sound reasoning behind them so far as anyone else can tell. At one point, she kills someone's pet fish and excuses it by saying she was taking on provisions. Her unpredictability also makes Caesar really hate her, especially given that his Ruler decided it would be a great idea to sink a bunch of money into raising her to Queen. Money that their side doesn't really have to spare. Further, whenever anything involving Fate comes up, she will instantly try her best to go against whatever it seems to have planned for her out of pure contrariness, no matter how difficult this makes things for her. Quite interesting given implications that she's one of the Erfworld units most bound up by Fate in the first place.
  Vinny: You are about to have an audience with my king. You know what I'm sayin'? I know that don't mean anything to you. But it would be nice if you could pretend to be a person instead of an animal when you meet him. [...] I'm about ta come home from a mission that completely failed, and say, 'Heyyy, King! Meet my new friend here!' And you're gonna walk right inta the royal court and blow yer nose on the drapes.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: "Backstabbing" might be exaggerating, but Jillian's unpredictable, contrary and chaotic behaviour means actually relying on her in a fight is not necessarily a good bet. During Book 3, Parson and Jack try to convince Translyvito that she has a serious case of this by just casually discussing Jillian while imprisoned.
• Combat Pragmatist:
  • In Book 2, she lulls Wanda into a false sense of security and violates a parley to ensnare Gobwin Knob in a massive trap.
  • In Book 3, she starts figuring out that Charlie got Gobwin Knob to sign a contract that prevents Gobwin Knob from hurting her, making her battles delightfully easy as Gobwin Knob units are literally left with no choice but to let her croak them.
• Cutting the Knot: She really prefers cutting through the political crap, through the roundabout strategies, and doing something refreshingly straightforward. Usually in an awesome and hilarious way.
• Deliberately Distressed Damsel: She had a habit of doing this for both of her lovers during Ansom's crusade to defeat Gobwin Knob. She would repeatedly let herself get captured by Gobwin Knob in order to have fun in Wanda's torture chamber. Then, Ansom would come in to defeat Gobwin Knob and save her.
• Destructive Romance: Jilian's relationship with Wanda was not healthy for either individual. What began as a casual fling was turned into a deep and subtly abusive relationship, where she was manipulated by magic into repeatedly betraying the people she was fighting for. Jillian ended it when she realized Wanda was not merely seeking to be her sexual mistress, but to control her like a tool, at which point Wanda became dangerously obsessed with taking her back.
• Disability Immunity: It is implied that Charlie's Mind Rape made Fate unable to influence her mentally, at the price of her sanity.
• The Ditherer: In the past, whenever Jillian had trouble motivating herself or deciding anything, her warlord nature, which was symbolically represented as a Jester, would urge her to action. But ever since Charlie and Betsy destroyed it while Mind Raping her, she has had a particularly difficult time making decisions or committing to anything. The only thing she feels strongly enough about to dedicate herself towards is Ansom.
• Dumbass Has a Point: Her refusal to take the easy way when it comes to Fate can come across as rather foolish when it just makes things harder for her most of the time, but when you compare her to Wanda or the Predictmancers, it's clear who is actually happier with their life. Or at least more satisfied. And taking the hard way sometimes has made things work out better than they otherwise would, such as with her refusal to croak Judy Gale, allowing her to eventually escape and fulfill the prophecy in another way.
• Explaining Your Power to the Enemy: In one of her Inner Peace (Through Superior Firepower) chapters, Jillian kept explaining to Olive how she was going to escape her, who made her unable to attack or engage an enemy thanks to her powers. First, she points out that despite her inability to attack Olive, she can still fly away as soon as her turn starts. Olive, knowing full-well that Jillian doesn't see her as a true menace and having already considered this possibility, managed to imprison her and her dwagon with a tree she animated, thanks to her hippiemancy. Then, Jillian figures out a way to destroy her prison as soon as her turn begins (namely by making her dwagon poop on the tree, which isn't considered as an attack, thus allowing her to bypass the effects of Olive's spell), and explains it to her captor. Olive, this time, admits that it was a good idea that she did not foresee... So Olive decides to use a flower as a Mind Control device on Jillian, forcing her to fell into an ambush the next turn, and thus allowing Haffaton's forces to capture her again. Smart move, Jillian.
• Fatal Flaw: Her impulsiveness, unpredictability, secretiveness, and refusal to play by the rules of royal etiquette work together to convince first Caesar and later Don King himself that she's betrayed them. Transylvito ends up launching a first strike on Faq, taking the capital and the two production cities. The side only survives because she had actually been preparing for a strike on Gobwin Knob.
• Fate Worse than Death: In the finale of Inner Peace through Superior Firepower Part II, Charlie and Betsy work together to remake her mind in their image and Mind Rape her. In her final moment as herself, she realizes the magnitude of her defeat, considering it worse than croaking or even losing her side.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Aside from a very small handful of people, originally only Ansom and Wanda, pretty much nobody likes Jillian, due to her chaotic ways and obvious indifference to anyone but herself. As early as The Battle for Gobwin Knob, one of her allies in the Jetstone troops actively suspects she's a traitor. During the events of the 2nd book ("Love Is A Battlefield"), she alienates herself from Transylvito by betraying their alliance with Jetstone in order to avoid having to fight Wanda, to the point she is described as "somebody nobody liked" in the 18th epilogue page for that book. This ultimately leads to Transylvito turning on her and trying to destroy her kingdom again, leaving her alone and friendless in a world where nobody wants anything to do with her.
• Gendered Insult: Calls her son "princess" after he refuses to acknowledge his impulsive mistake.
• Happiness in Slavery/More than Mind Control: Zigzagged. She genuinely loves Wanda and their BDSM-based "interrogation sessions", even admitting that it's impossible for her to see her relationship with Wanda in any other way. However, when she learns that Wanda has been magically controlling her mind and influencing her behavior, she rejects Wanda, ultimately giving up on her completely when she realizes Wanda will never respect Jillian's desire to be free and uncontrolled outside of the bedroom.
• Hands-Off Parenting: Downplayed. Vinny seems to interact with and mentor Albert more often than Jillian does, despite Albert being the heir to FAQ, not Transylvito. Albert does have some rules to follow, and Jillian will punish him when he does something wrong. The only instance the audience has seen of her style of punishments, however, involved yelling at him and then locking him in a room with a dying unit. Albert only began to understand what lesson Jillian was (probably) trying to teach after Vinny discussed the matter with him. Overall, Jillian seems to keep her distance from her son.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Vinny invokes the trope, stating that while she acts like a brat and bully half the time, there is something deeper to her that he will never be able to understand.
  • Duncan also invokes the trope, contemplating how he formerly believed she was impulsive and petty, but now realizes that she is in fact strong and wise.
• I Call It "Vera": Three-Edged, her BFS.
• Improvised Weapon/Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard:
  • Averted, but Wanda specifically does not give Jillian chopsticks for her sushi because she is convinced Jillian could croak a small army with them. And Gobwin Knob only has a small army.
  • Played straight with her escape in "Inner Peace (Through Superior Firepower)", using a porcelain fragment to break out of the box Wanda kept her in.
• Irony: Jillian's very existence seems to be wrapped up in this:
  • She's a Blood Knight Action Girl born to The Philosopher King, who was an Actual Pacifist.
  • She's incredibly aggressive and free-spirited in her daily life, but is a masochist and a submissive in the bedroom.
  • She acts like a crude, vulgar barbarian, but when she meets Don King of Transylvito, he proves she still has some underlying Royal nature by shocking her with his own display of crude vulgarity.
  • She despises the notion of meekly submitting to Fate's demands, but Wanda, the woman she loves, is happy to defer to the notion of Fate's inevitability in order to refuse accepting personal responsibility for her actions.
  • She hates Stanley for destroying her home kingdom of Faq and part of the reason she loves Wanda is because she's a fellow survivor, but Wanda was the one who betrayed Faq to Stanley and helped him to conquer it.
• It's All About Me: Her Wild Card nature results in this, with her shifting loyalties matching what's in her best interests. At the battle for Spacerock, a critical battle for both her backers, Jillain's actions consist of grabbing her lover and leaving.
• Kick the Dog: She has all her Decrypted prisoners lined up and has Duncan give each of them a perfunctory offer to turn to her side. When they inevitably refuse, they are immediately executed and the offer is repeated to the next prisoner, all while their commander is forced to watch. Duncan later describes the process as a "grim and cruel display of power."
• Loophole Abuse: After conquering the city of Gobwin Knob, Jillian muses to her Chief Warlord about how none of the city's units attacked her directly. From this and other clues, she deduces the existence of the contract between Gobwin Knob and Charlescomm that prevents any hostilities against her. She then decides she wants to take advantage of this by moving against Stanley directly.
• Love Dodecahedron: Well. First, apart from some flings, first Jack was in love with her, then she had something with Wanda while rejecting Jack. Later, she fell in love with Ansom and was in a relationship with him instead, but he later realized he never really loved her to begin with. While mourning Ansom she started sleeping with Vinny with their relationship being in a very vague area between Friends with Benefits and a genuine relationship. Then she met Ansom again and tried to force him to love her. When he rejected her, she decided he couldn't possibly be the real Ansom and is now in a very gray area now in terms of relationships.
• Maternally Challenged: She doesn't know how to treat Albert, leaving him feeling increasingly alienated because all he ever sees is her being critical or neglectful.
• Mind Rape: Inner Peace revealed that Charlie and Betsy 'healed' her addiction to heroine buds, but made some other adjustments. Charlie killed off a hallucination in the form of a jester which he called a 'tool of the enemy', and Betsy couldn't resist messing with Jillian's memories to try and 'heal' her warrior nature.
• Opposites Attract: Twice-over. Jillian is a brash, impulsive and unpredictable warrior who loathes her royal status and shuns the idea of Fate. Her female lover Wanda is an elegant, logical, thoughtful caster who proudly considers herself a tool of fate. Her male lover Ansom is a refined and traditional noble who fully believes in the divinely chosen status and obligations of royalty.
• Parental Neglect: Thanks to his refusal to acknowledge his impulsive mistake, Jillian immediately starts off on bad terms with her son, Albert. She does feel a strong urge to check on him and know how he is doing, but never does so directly, only getting it second hand from Vinny. Albert feels neglected and unwanted as a result.
• Poor Communication Kills: Her secrecy around Vinny and Transylvito in general has strained their alliance greatly, especially when Transylvito discovers FAQ allied with Charlescomm behind Transylvito's back.
• Rebellious Princess: Her father wanted a philosopher prince. What he got was a violent princess. In addition, she acts rude and unrefined on purpose to spite her background (though as King Don states, she is still a Royal through and through subconsciously).
• Rebellious Spirit: Even if she knows it'll make her miserable, she'll defy whatever "rules" are in the way of her getting what she feels is right, even fate itself. She and Wanda note this as her always wanting to do things "the hard way".
  Jillian: I'm Fated to take Lady Firebaugh to 'the next phase of her journey.' And I'm Fated to croak the ruler of Haffaton! And probably a whole lot more crap like that, too. [...] I don't care. I hate this stuff! But maybe I'm gonna have to, though. [...] Maybe I have to give you all my friends and my family and my comrades, to escape here at all. [...] Well, too bad. I'm not gonna. I'll take it the hard way! Always!
• Revenge: One of her main motives. Stanley was manipulated into destroying her side. And though she doesn't particularly care about her side, she still considered it hers.
• Revenge Before Reason: This is certainly one interpretation of Jillian. She has dedicated her entire life to taking out Stanley for revenge. She, however, ignored that many of her former friends and colleagues work directly with Stanley. At first she thought they were under some kind of mind control, but when they proved otherwise, she still chases Stanley down even though he doesn't have any real desire to fight her. If she just stopped attacking him, Stanley probably would just let Faq be.
• Royal Blood: She is "descended" from one of the original units the Titans chose to rule. Consciously, she is indifferent to or even contemptuous of Royalty. However, what has been described as a "Royal" part of her mind occasionally asserts itself in spite of herself.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: This is the norm for Erfworld, but a Queen who goes directly into battle is still considered unusual. Tramennis hopes he could be half the queen she is.
• Sadistic Choice: Gives Gobwin Knob warlord Georgia Power a choice between turning to Faq herself or watching her Chief Warlord, Duncan, execute all Gobwin Knob prisoners one by one.
• Screw Destiny: Has nothing but contempt for Fate and will always fight stubbornly against it, even if taking Fate into account would make the path easier.
• Shoot the Messenger: Caesar delivers the news that Ansom, the man she loved, was croaked in battle. This causes her to go berserk and make a failed attempt at stabbing him.
• A Taste of the Lash: Wanda uses a whip on Jillian, nominally for information, but with clear kinky overtones.
• Temporary Blindness: Inflicted by Orwell, former Lookamancer of Faq, while she was trying to slay Olive. She then had to fight completly blind against a heavy armored unit. Thankfully, Jack cast a spell on her, enabling her to share his field of vision.
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: Before ascending to Queen of Faq, she hated being referred to by her title. But afterwards, she insists on being called Queen, even to Ansom, and snaps when referred to as anything else. She gets particularly snobby and derisive when Stanley fails to refer to her by her title.
• Too Dumb to Live: Just narrowly averted. She suggests to Wanda that they turn against Jetstone, and ignore her backers' plans. Said backers include Charlie, who she's confident she could take in a fight, apparently forgetting, ignoring or just plain not caring about how dangerous Charlie can get.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Not originally, but by the time of Faq's fall, she had a kinky fondness for the torture chamber.
• Unwitting Pawn: Like so many other characters, for Charlie, who has gone to some lengths to keep her around.
• What the Hell, Hero?
  • When she captures Ansom they start flying around as she captures a few poorly defended cities from Gobwin Knob. She captures what soldiers she can and mercilessly executes any Decrypted. Ansom is appalled at her behavior and also calls her out on her hypocrisy, noting that if she wants to turn him to her side she's doing a really bad job of convincing him.
  • When Albert croaks a Faq unit during a training exercise right in front of Jillian and then tries to pretend he was aiming at the dummy next to him, she refuses to even let him fight, let alone lead her army, despite Albert's attempts to improve himself after the incident.
• Wild Card: She has some of the most complicated connections and motivations in the entire setting, some of which seem mutually exclusive on the surface. As several characters have learned, this has made her difficult to predict, much less direct, as even she doesn't know what she wants.

King Banhammer

King Loj Banhammer of Faq

Jillian's father and the ruler of Faq before her. He was ultimately betrayed and croaked by Wanda in order to fulfill her destiny.

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• Actual Pacifist: He was highly devoted to peace and philosophy. This was the main reason he had such a bad relationship with his Blood Knight daughter, Jillian.
• Beware the Nice Ones: King Banhammer believed that when you yelled, that means you lost the argument. Indeed, he almost never yelled or burst with a fit of rage, but when he did, it scared even his daughter.
• The Good King: While a little misguided, he gives Olive an incredibly fair trial for her crimes and rules in her favor on account of a lack of concrete evidence. He has a very strong sense of justice. Had Charlie not intervened, he most likely would have sought out additional evidence that could help solve the case.
• Head-in-the-Sand Management: Refuses to allow Jillian to engage the encroaching forces of Haffaton even when they are literally at Faq's doorstep, until they are so cornered that migrating the Court is the only way for the side to survive. When they arrive in Haffaton's capital airspace, he forbids Jillian (who is standing in chains on the tower and has been obviously abused) from speaking so that her 'bias' won't poison the parley, then delays action long enough for Olive to cast her spell, forbidding combat. And he still refuses to address Olive as a threat when she is actively subverting his trial by negotiating openly with her father Charlie.
• Honor Before Reason: He was highly dedicated to his goal of Peace on Erf, even under circumstances where it just wasn't realistic. When Faq holds Olive on trial, he gets enraged when Jillian knocks Olive over, even though Olive had been openly in the middle of conspiring and negotiating with Charlie while Faq lies in a vulnerable position.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Olive is quite manipulative and had done a good job of showing King Banhammer the benefits of merging with Haffaton. But even when she put her treacherous nature on obvious display with her ruler, King Banhammer failed to notice it and was merely confused.
• Hypocrite: For all the court's talk of spiritual and intellectual strength, he's incredibly easy to fool and outright threatens to disband his own daughter for trying to do her Duty and execute Olive. He doesn't have the strength of character to actually accept a challenge to his preconceptions. Jack has to propose a compromise to put Olive on trial, working through his moral code in order to make him act.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Large Banhammer. He regularly holds court discussions with himself as a moderator of debate. Anyone who doesn't subscribe to his rules of decorum or agree with his philosophical points of view (such as Jillian), will find themselves rapidly and forcefully ejected from the proceedings.
  • Lojban is a constructed language designed to be as logical as possible.
• Pet the Dog: Despite his disagreements with how Jillain behaves, he refuses to order her into agreeing with Charlie's offer, even though she needs to for it to have any meaning, because he won't use force to influence how she lives and eventually rules.
• The Philosopher: He was highly dedicated to puzzling out answers to the Frequently Asked Questions and the nature of the world. His casters were easily the most important units on the side, due to their unique insights into the nature of the universe. This trait was part of why Jillian hated him, since she viewed the court's debates as dry and pointless while she was out in the field earning money for Faq's upkeep.
• The Philosopher King: And unfortunately for his kingdom, Erfworld is not the optimal place for that kind. It doesn't help that he's a terrible philosopher; he lacks the strength of will to challenge his own preconceptions or examine his own ideas too closely, simply accepting them as self-evident and moving on. His Meaningful Name refers to his tendency to ban everyone from his court discussions who doesn't agree with him, making the whole thing an echo chamber. Jack once mentioned he used to amuse himself at these meetings by waiting until the court had built up some philosophical edifice and then ask a "harmless question" for "clarification" that revealed the foundation ideas as unfounded, just so he could watch the whole house of cards collapse.
• Plot-Triggering Death: His death led to Stanley's capture of Wanda and quest to search for the Tools. It also led to Jillian's desire to claim vengeance against Stanley which led to her being enthroned. Etc etc.
• Posthumous Character: In the main story, he has been dead for some time. He does show up in person in the prequel however.
• Royal Blood: He is descended from one of the original units the Titans chose to rule.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: The one true thing that he and his daughter agreed on was that they aren't mindless tools of Fate. Banhammer refuses to execute Olive on the grounds that doing so would be against his morals. He ignores the prophecy that his daughter must kill her and instead puts Olive on trial. The trial is actually incredibly fair. If Charlie hadn't stepped in, Olive may have lived to see another turn.
• Stupid Good: He is firmly entrenched in the belief that wisdom and enlightenment can bring peace, and that war is completely unnecessary. Unfortunately, he is clinging to these ideals in a world where war is not only natural, it's necessary for survival. He goes so far in the name of peace that he actively frustrates his Chief Warlord's efforts to preserve the side against destruction, especially in their conflict with Haffaton.
• Unwitting Pawn: He very nearly became one of these to Olive Branch. By emulating his love of peace and philosophy, she was able to show him the advantages of combining their sides and how they could work together to bring peace to Erfworld. But due to her poisonous, sociopathic, backstabbing nature, it only could have lead to the doom of himself and many others.
• The Wise Prince: He makes the mistake of calling himself wise and he often fails to recognize faults in others and in himself, but he tries. His ideas were very forward thinking for the setting, but he didn't quite live up to them. It fits with the theme that no one in the setting is truly good or truly evil... except Olive.

Duncan

Duncan Scone, Warlord of Faq

The warlord of Jillian's renewed Faq.

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• Mauve Shirt: Duncan features intermittently through Books 2 and 3, only occasionally getting focus but is generally shown to be competent and loyal, as well as able to survive around Jillian without earning her ire in any way. And then he gets shot dead by a decrypted Marie.
• Number Two: Serves as Jillian's main underling through Book 2 and Book 3.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: A Decrypted Marie shoots him dead in a fire-fight. Jillian is actually outraged about that.

Albert

Prince Albert Zamussels, Heir of Faq

Jillian's heir, popped at the request of Don King of Transylvito.

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• The Atoner: He has been trying to get on his mom's "good side," since the incident under "unfriendly fire" below.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Jillian tells Don she will be happy as long as her heir is a flyer. King Don muses that she still wants yet another sword and warns her to be careful about the trope. Boy does Fate ever deliver. Not only does her son pop with two powerful specials, including flight, he also pops with an attitude even stronger than hers. Naturally, this makes him a nightmare to manage.
• Blade Enthusiast: Was granted an archery specialization with knives at popping. Seconds after he pops, "he knew he could put a knife in an enemy's eye socket from across a courtyard, and he itched to do it soon." His personal crest is three knives arranged into an anarchy A.
• Blatant Lies: He claims his killing of a friendly unit was an accident, anyone can critical miss. Vinny points out the sheer odds of that particular critical miss are 50,000 to one, or worse.
• Broken Pedestal: Both TV and Vinny lose his respect when they betray Faq. He calls TV just as messed up as Faq and Vinny a liar.
• Catchphrase: "I'll allow it."
• Chaotic Stupid: Albert has shades of it, like his mother, as shown when he ultimately croaked a friendly unit.
• Dhampyr: He has some Transylvitan Signamancy, such as the gray skin. If Erfworld units actually had two parents, he'd be Vinny's kid. However, he lacks other vampiric traits such as the eyes, ears and most especially teeth. While he does have the flying special, he does not have the drain life ability.
• Disproportionate Retribution: He takes a hit during training because he wouldn't follow orders. He responds by croaking the unit that hit him. In front of his ruler. When he's supposed to be showing off leadership ability.
• Establishing Character Moment: His popping, naturally enough. He thinks he'll "allow" himself to be a prince, arrogantly assumes Vanna and Duncan will have sex with and stand aside for him respectively, likes the look of Vinny, and feels like his mother doesn't like him.
• Flight: He was popped with an inherent magical ability to fly.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: He croaks a fellow unit of Faq out of anger at being hit during an exercise.
• I Hate You, Vampire Dad: Inverted. Albert gets along with Vinny, his very vampire-like father figure, far better than he does with his human mom.
  • That is until TV betrays Faq. While Albert may not realize it, Vinny IS his dad in the eyes of the Titans, but that ruined their relationship.
• It Runs in the Family: As Don pointed out, Jillian wanted someone similar to herself. She got such a person.
• Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: When Transylvito betrays Faq and prepares to conquer its capital, Albert attempts to goad Vinny out of the city hex by calling him a coward.
• Pet the Dog: About a page after he critically wounds one of his units out of impulsive rage, he shows sympathy for an animal Vinny eats live in front of him.
• Punny Name: Par for the course, but fun to note that it's two different puns depending on how you say his name; Either as "Albert" ("Prince Albert") or "Al" (i.e. "all the muscles").
• The Quincy Punk: Sums up his overall character.
• Royal Brat: From his appearance and his inner monologues on his debut, he seems even more unrefined and possibly prone to anger than Jillian if that's possible. He is trying to better himself, however, if only to get his mom's approval.
• Sore Loser: He doesn't take getting hit during a training exercise very well at all.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Despite Erfworld units supposedly popping as needed and regardless of sexual intercourse, he looks an awful lot like Vinny, only dressed as a punk. He also has the common vampire flight special on top of his archery special giving him control over knives. And his eyes are purple, the color between his mother's blue eyes and Vinny's red eyes.
• Unfriendly Fire: Croaks a unit on his own side during a war exercise then badly lies about it to Jillian. She's so annoyed that she refuses to even use him in combat let alone make him chief warlord.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Deconstructed. The difficulty in attaining Jillian's approval has led Albert to consider switching sides and basically getting a new parent. Given how Albert is the heir to his side, him turning could possibly destroy FAQ.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: He kills a fellow Faq unit in a fit of rage, yet winces when a rodent is killed in front of him. Vinny points out his sympathies are a bit misplaced. This talk seems to have impacted the young prince.

Charlescomm

Charlie

Charlie

A face you know you can trust.

^{Click here to see his true face} 

"We prefer to play games that don't even contain a losing outcome."

The ruler of a mysterious, mercenary side called Charlescomm. Charlie is one of the attuned wielders of an Arkentool. He displays extreme cunning in both tactics and diplomacy, and his services generally come at a steep price. He plays both sides of a conflict to give himself the best possible outcome.

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• Affably Evil: Polite, friendly, and has anything but your interests at heart, as is much befitting of a Carnymancer. Furthermore, he does the "You Have No Chance to Survive" bit to scare Parson, but he seems to legitimately not want Parson to die and just wants him to use the spell he made him to send him home. He had no obvious reason to not let Parson just burn to death or suspect that his plan would fail, but he tells Parson that he can, in fact, use that spell. Later, he even tells the Archons that they have a (slight) priority in capturing him alive over killing him.
• Arch-Enemy: To Parson. He is just about the only person who fully recognizes and fears Parson. Moreover, the spell that summoned Parson was the result of a gambit by the Thinkamancers to find a way to stop Charlie. By the end of book 2, the feeling's mutual - Parson has made "kill Charlie" his top priority.
• Bad Samaritan: He gives Slately the chance to save his side from Gobwin Knob, but only to serve as a puppet to kill Parson.
• Bald of Evil: When a tiny glimpse of him is given, the top of his head is revealed to be bald, which is likely one side effect of his poor health.
• Big Bad: Defeating him was one of the four reasons Parson was summoned to Erfworld, and Charlie knows this. He is absolutely determined to kill Parson and has made this his main goal.
• Black Eyes of Evil: When talking with King Slately about killing Parson, his avatars' eyes are completely in shadow.
• Broken Pedestal: To Lilith. His Archons literally worship him, largely due to a psychic link that compels them to love him. When Lilith belonged to Charlescomm, she shared her sisters' whispered fantasies of feeling Charlie's touch. But when she was decrypted, her link to him was severed. When she finally meets him in person, she knows he has every intention of destroying her and she mentally scoffs at feeling his touch at last due to his having been reduced to a Dark Lord on Life Support.
• The Chessmaster: He regularly manipulates all sides of a conflict for maximum self gain.
• Control Freak: As we see when Parson reflects on his brief time as a Charlescomm unit he micromanages his followers to a ludicrous degree.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: His faction can be more accurately described as a corporation than a nation like the others, and his MO is to obtain maximum profit from any conflicts that occur, even if it means making deals with both sides, manipulating the one he's currently on, or double-crossing it entirely.
• Cosmic Plaything: Fate, the Genius Loci of Erfworld, conspires against him and aims to make him croak through subtle manipulation of events. His efforts are exclusively devoted to holding it at bay for as long as he can.
• Creepy Crows: During his Mind Rape of Lilith, he symbolically manifests his invasion as these.
• Crippling Overspecialization: He's entirely reliant on the Arkendish and his amped up connection to it. Without full access to its abilities, he's an unstable drug addict that finds it difficult to even function and is swiftly driven into a corner.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: His treacherous daughter, Olive Branch, tried to control him with Heroine Buds and tried to murder him with poison when that failed. In the present era, most of his body is completely limp and he is hooked up to machinery. He requires the aid of his closest Archons to even move his hands.
• Deal with the Devil:
  • Even in the best of times, Charlie's Archons are out to screw the client as much as possible without harming Charlie's reputation in order to create more business. As Charlie's fears about Parson become increasingly realized, Charlie's deals start to show visible malevolence.
  • He himself essentially made one of these with Fate. He was nearly croaked by an assassination attempt. Using Carnymancy allowed him to survive, but at a terrible price. It is heavily implied that this made him Fated to croak at a later time thanks to Equivalent Exchange. Charlie has had to go to desperate lengths to Screw Destiny.
  • He offers one to Don King, promising to give him a lot of money and make his heir pop immediately in return for giving him Parson Gotti and his equipment.
  • He offers one to Wanda, offering to have her and her decrypted turn to Charlescomm in return for the ability to simulate the Fantastic Drug she was permanently addicted to.
• Didn't See That Coming: His tower is so heavily fortified and rigged, that Charlie assumes Lilith will be unable to get through and that even Fate won't be able to protect Parson when he comes to attack. Then Lilith finds a weak point after all, rendering Parson's arrival unnecessary.
• Dirty Coward: Absolutely terrified of dying, and he's willing to screw over everything and everyone else to avoid it.
• The Dreaded: In Wanda's words, no one gets close to Charlie. Dove Barstool, a Carnymancer in his occasional employ, says that no side or army is ever going to take him down and he never loses.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: In quite a surprising turn, a text update delving deeply into Charlie's thoughts revealed that he truly cares for his Archons and mourns their loss. He even describes the Fox Force Three as "his dearest and only friends".
• Even Evil Has Standards: One of his Archons claims that unlike his daughter, he wouldn't get someone hooked on the Fantastic Drug that are Heroine Buds to control them. He isn't above tempting someone who is already addicted to them though.
• Evil Gloating: "I gave you a way out, Parson. You should have taken it."
• Expy:
  • Like Charlie from Charlie's Angels, he keeps everything about himself a deep secret and commands a bunch of beautiful Action Girls.
  • In his past, he literally called himself the Wizard and lived a life very similar to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Like the Wizard of Oz, he is a conman and Erfworld's equivelant to a circus performer, a Carniemancer.
  • Like Charlies Xavier from The X-Men, he possesses tremendous Psychic Powers with the aid of an Amplifier Artifact. He is also a cripple that is unable to use his legs.
  • Surprisingly enough, he is ultimately one for Charlie Brown from Peanuts. Like Charlie Brown, he is a Cosmic Plaything with the universe itself opposing him. All of his plans are ultimately and literally fated to fail, yet he is a Determinator that will never give up. His physical appearance also resembles an adult Charlie Brown turned into a Dark Lord on Life Support.
  • His position in relation to Erfworld as a turn-based strategy game has parallels to Von-Bolt, fellow bald Dark Lord on Life Support who also seeks immortality through any means necessary. Worth noting is that the architecture of his territory resembles Black Hole, which becomes all the more meaningful when it is revealed he possesses modern firearms in his arsenal.
• Fallen Angel: One of the many rumors about him claims that he is a fallen Titan. In an attempt to scare everyone into ceasing their wars against Gobwin Knob and joining them against Charlie, Parson plays this rumor up, claiming that he stole the Arkendish and fled to Erfworld to hide, build up resources, and overthrow the other Titans. While Parson himself doesn't actually credit this story (he's deliberately and blatantly ripping off Satan), a number of characters have mentioned that there actually is scripture to support it, giving himself to have a credible motive while distancing himself from Toolism.
• Fat Bastard: Charlie is ultimately revealed to be rather obese.
• Fiction 500: One of the reasons he has no speaking units besides Archons is that casters and commanders have an innate sense of their Side's treasury, and he wants to keep his secret. Most Sides have an average of three hundred thousand Schmuckers, and three million is considered very rich. Bonnie estimates Charlie's treasury at thirty million. He actually has over a hundred and sixty million Schmuckers in his treasury, in addition to over five hundred and thirty million in his gem hoard.
• Frameup: He attacks the Great Minds and pins the blame on Parson Gotti.
• Gag Penis: His Archons like to speculate that his "tool of manliness" is so big that it occupies two whole floors of his tower.
• Gallows Humor: Tondelayo hates Charlie's jokes, because his jokes are always about something hilariously awful when things go wrong.
• The Ghost: In the prequel. In the current timeline, he at least contacts people indirectly with Thinkamancy, but in the Book 0 prequel, he only appears briefly for a couple chapters, despite ultimately being central to the story.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen:
  • It is part of his policy to keep himself as mysterious as possible. He never reveals his true face in negotiations, instead using a variety of imagery or Expies to represent himself. No one knows where he came from, and his closest, most important Archons, are the only units still around that have ever seen him in person.
  • And we finally see a part of him in this comic. We see the whole thing here.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: His end goal, or if he even has one, is completely unknown. What is known about his desires is that he wants "Money. More money, more reach, more security, more information". And he has been dedicating all of his resources to growing an ever expanding army of Archons. It is eventually revealed that Charlie used Carnymancy to survive an assassination attempt. As the comic goes on, it is increasingly implied that the terrible price he had to pay was to become an enemy of Fate thanks to Equivalent Exchange. The bizarre strategy of his side is to prevent Fate from croaking him by ordinary means.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • The Summon Perfect Warlord spell was Charlie's invention and the weapon he used to summon Judy Gale to destroy his two greatest foes. A conspiracy involving the Thinkamancers eventually casts the same spell to summon Parson Gotti, in part to defeat him.
  • A lot of his actions also inadvertently give his greatest enemy access to information he couldn't possibly have acquired otherwise. For example, he accidentally lets Parson know his bracer can accurately answer theoretical questions across a broad range of subjects rather than just calculate odds.
  • Charlie creates a large stockpile of firearms in preparation for an inevitable future time in which he will need to significantly increase his fire power. Then Lilith manages to steal samples for Gobwin Knob to reverse engineer, which is the very side he unveiled them to use against.
  • Charlie has a Properly Paranoid dedication to absolute secrecy and behind the scenes manipulations. But when Transylvito figures out that their strings are being pulled, they then become extremely suspicious of his motives and start moving against his agents.
  • Charlie does not trust any type of unit other than Archons and golems, and refuses to retain any other kind of unit in Charlescomm, even casters whose disciplines are essential to running his enterprise. When he runs into problems that only such casters can solve, it's much more of an obstacle for him to overcome than if he'd simply let them stay on as permanent units.
  • Bombing the Great Minds does get rid of a serious threat to Charlie, but then a still-alive Isaac goes completely insane, and uses his Thinkamancy powers to kill a squad of Charlie's Archons, including Tondelayo, in revenge.
• Immortality Seeker: One of his main motives. It enters Immortality Immorality when you see just how far he is willing to go to preserve his life.
• Ironic Echo: "... as you say, GG".
• Kick the Dog: He Mind Rapes Jillian, causing her a Fate Worse than Death.
• Large and in Charge: Charlie is obese and quite big for an Erfworlder, especially when contrasted with his slim, photomodel-built Archons.
• Limited Social Circle: The Archons in Fox Force Five are his only friends in a world that literally hates him, and the only ones he trusts enough to see in person. They are the only ones he shows genuine signs of sympathy and affection for.
• The Man Behind the Man: From Gobwin Knob's perspective, this is the role he plays in chapter 2. He is terrified of Parson and refuses to fight him directly or even let Parson know he is working against him, likely to avoid the possible devastation Parson could unleash if things escalate too much. Instead, he has been attacking Gobwin Knob's forces by manipulating all of the other players.
• Manipulative Bastard: Charlie is quick to make deals, generally polite, rarely emotional, and shows few signs of empathy. He can be very charming and can build quick rapport with those who speak to him, but Jillian assumes that everything he does is all an act. He has been known to offer False Reassurance to people he has every intention of destroying, and will often coerce people into doing what he wants by threatening their closest interests.
• Mind Rape:
  • He worked together with Betsy to remake Jillian's mind in their image.
  • And though not nearly as severe, he has Vanna launch psychic attacks against the leader of Gobwin Knob's Hobgobwins to weaken his will in order to coerce him into betraying Stanley.
  • Maggie describes what he does to Lilith via Thinkamancy as obscene. It is apparently so monstrous that even the observing Wanda is paralyzed with horror and she has seen and done a lot. He breaks Lilith's mind piece by piece and converts the pieces into manifestations of himself. He comes to the brink of destroying her mind entirely until Wanda and Maggie intervene. While Wanda is able to restore some of Lilith's mind, much remains lost.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Judging by his VERY generous terms to cut a deal to stop them, basically agreeing to every single concession Parson thinks up, and paying over two hundred thousand shmuckers on top of that for the damage she caused, it's pretty safe to say Jillian getting her fleet pounded and herself on the brink of croaking by Gobwin Knob and Stanley caused this for Charlie.
  • He gives a stoic "Oh. That's not good." when Wanda interferes with his Mind Rape of Lilith, turning the tables on him.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Ever since Parson manifested, Charlie has been expending vast resources to get rid of him, in the process revealing capabilities he'd kept secret for hundreds of thousands of turns.
• Outside-Context Problem:
  • He is hinted to be from another, more sophisticated universe, just like Parson. He was once The Wizard of El-Efbaum, a reference to the Wizard of Oz, who was himself a conman from the mundane world. His behaviour is bizarre and utterly impenetrable to anyone, but especially for Erfworlders, since he is familiar with concepts and ways of thinking that would baffle them.
  • In truth, he is a Carnymancer, which would give him a pretty unique set of insights into Erfworld to begin with, and also a former user and possibly co-creator of the spell that summoned Judy (and later Parson). For him, this trope is subverted where Parson is concerned. He knows exactly what he's up against.
  • For all of Erfworld's history, every side has used medieval style armies with fantasy elements mixed in. Charlie himself has been no exception, out of a desire to keep his cards hidden. But in the final epilogue of chapter 2, as Charlie prepares for a desperate war with Gobwin Knob, he starts unveiling an army with very modern capabilities, including rifles and gun turrets.
• Properly Paranoid: Charlie is largely considered to be useful, but very strange. The only units he keeps on his side are Archons and golems. He is absolutely obsessed with acquiring more money and security. He maintains as much secrecy as possible, to the point that almost no one even knows what he is or looks like. But there is in fact a good reason for this. Erfworld is heavily implied to be a Genius Loci. In his efforts to preserve his life, Charlie has cheated Fate for so long and so hard that he has thrown it completely out of balance. As a result, the world itself wants him dead.
• Psychic Link: Charlie uses one to great effect in Book 2, turning an expected Curb-Stomp Battle into near-catastrophe for Gobwin Knob. Even more terrifyingly, he is even capable of using the Archons as relays to cast spells remotely.
• Rage Breaking Point: Things are already tense while Lilith is flying around the inner bowels of Charlescomm Tower without any restraint, but at least it means more chances to invoke treaty penalties against GK - and it does. Ultimately Parson is forced to sacrifice his allegiance to GK to protect the side from even more catastrophic losses. However, Charlie's apparent win gets fouled up by Jack Snipe, who dupes the Archons waiting on the far side of the portal into firing on Parson and Lilith both, which restores GK's treasury by a huge amount, and allows Parson to immediately switch back to being a GK unit. This enrages Charlie so much that he effectively crosses the Godzilla Threshold and sends his Archons into the Magic Kingdom en force to completely wipe Parson's party out, despite his earlier reservations for doing so since it would effectively declare war on all free casters.
• Screw Destiny: His main motive. He tampered with his Fate via Carnymancy, which preserved him from immediate death, but also directly ensured it in the future by effectively making him an enemy of the world itself. But as a Carnymancer, he has access to the magic of Screw Destiny, which he has been using in an attempt to delay his Fate indefinitely.
• Sense Loss Sadness: The Arkendish enhances everything about his abilities and senses to such an extent that he barely considers himself able to run the side when not hooked up to it.
• Shrouded in Myth: Charlie maintains a tight grip on his secrets, and it is clear that he has many. Even his own Archons know very little about him. Rumors about him range from him being the Arkendish itself to even a fallen Titan.
• Surveillance as the Plot Demands: He's able to tap into Gobwin Knob's eyebooks at will. And thanks to his command of the Dish, he can listen in on pretty much any thinkagram he wants.
• Tears of Fear: In the aftermath of Operation: Big Game, he weeps, overwhelmed by just how much has gone wrong, how much closer his fate to die has come, and the implications of losing his beloved Archons to the Arkenpliers's ability to make them Come Back Wrong.
• Troll: During Book 3 he sends Parson a complicated-looking proposal which is actually just a means of scamming Parson of his schmuckers. That, and testing Parson's gullibility (so Charlie claims).
• Used to Be More Social: He used to attempt to conquer all opposition, and rule the world as one side, who suddenly went in the complete opposite direction after attuning to the Arkendish. He has one city, and seems to allow no one to see him. Probably because Fate itself wants him dead after he cheated death with Carnymancy. He's doing everything he can to minimize danger to himself.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Charlie is normally calm and collected. But then, Gobwin Knob manages to rescue Lilith and steal several of Charlescomm's guns. Charlie almost acquires Parson, but thanks to Fate's intervention and a bad case of Poor Communication Kills, Parson is given the chance to turn back. Losing control over Parson so enrages Charlie that he effectively declares war on the Magic Kingdom. By the time the battle is over, everything has gone wrong, and he is reduced to tears.
  • After two casters he desperately needed to repair his devices are croaked remotely via forbidden Thinkamancy, he cannot figure out anything to do other than panic.
  • After losing Tondelayo, his closest and most loyal Archon, he collapses into "Gardening" on a Fantastic Drug.
• The Voice: He was this for all of Book 1 and 2, and most of Book 3, until the story finally took a look at the inner workings of Charlescomm. Even then, he was only seen from the back for a few strips before eventually being revealed.
• Wild Card: No one knows what his true agenda is beyond profit. And while he claims he will not actually switch sides in the middle of a conflict to avoid harming his reputation, he is willing to offer other bargains to the other side, which can make him seem unreliable, and is perfectly willing to screw his own "allies" over if he needs to manipulate them. And on at least one occasion, he has switched sides and betrayed a client. As a Carnymancer, this is practically part of the job description.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: After Jillian only partially implements his plan to critically weaken Gobwin Knob, leaving the bulk of Gobwin Knob's power intact, he is quick to come up with new strategies to antagonize them.
• You Monster!: Gets called one by Marie over Jillian's Mind Rape.

Charlie's Archons

Charlie's Archons

Powerful and dangerous natural caster units in service to Charlie. Only a handful of other sides can pop Archons, and none of them as fast as Charlie. They are utterly devoted to Charlie and his ideals, engaging in the mercenary wheeling and dealing he so loves. In the first book and second books, they are allied with Jetstone and the Coalition, but play a more directly antagonistic role against Gobwin Knob in the third.

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• Action Girl: The Archons are quite a formidable, flying knight-class unit.
• Alpha Bitch: Most Archons are basically what would happen if you took a bunch of smug sorority girls and gave them magical powers and quasi-military responsibilities. Parson even compares their quarters at Gobwin Knob's capital to a sorority house.
• Badass Army: Charlie runs his whole side on Archons, along with the Arkendish.
• Blind Obedience: None of the Archons under his service even consider the possibility of Charlie being wrong. Even (most of) the decrypted Archons have trouble thinking anything negative of him.
• Bioluminescence Is Cool: Adding to their vaguely-angelic general motif, all Archons radiate a soft blue glow. Decrypted Archons glow red instead.
• Combo Platter Powers: Archons gain various natural magic disciplines as they level, and can also gain the Leadership special. As a result, high-level examples of their class can have quite the varied skillset.
• Dying Alone: Phoebe is the last of her set to fall, trying to hide from King Slately by disguising herself as a chimney. It doesn't work.
• Elite Mooks: Elite, Knight-class flying units with a random special chosen from Leadership, Shockamancy, Foolamancy and Thinkamancy.
• Fantastic Slur: They don't like being called "knights", since knights are seen as cheap and disposable Mooks.
• Finger Gun: They cast their Shockamancy spells in this fashion. The pose doubles as yet another Shout-Out to Charlie's Angels.
• Fragile Speedster: Archons have the flight special, and between their Foolamancy abilities and being much more intelligent than the average unit they can be very hard to hit, but at the same time a single good hit can usually take an Archon down, as plays to Gobwin Knob's advantage during the Battle of the Magic Kingdom.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Subverted for the ones with a Shockamancy special, though, as there's nothing innocent about that.
• Kung-Fu Wizard: Archons have natural talent in numerous disciplines, both martial and magical, and as such they're perfectly capable of hand-to-hand combat on top of their formidable natural magic abilities. And then Charlie gives them guns...
• Light Is Not Good: It's not exactly evil either, but despite being called Archons (Dungeons and Dragons speak for Angels) and taking the form of beautiful, glowing women, they are just as ruthless as any other unit in Erfworld.
• Master of Illusion: Foolamancy (particularly veiling) is one of the natural magic specials they can acquire. Most sides who go up against Archons prioritize taking their Foolamancy-wielding units down second, Archons with Leadership being the first priority.
• Ms. Fanservice: Their fighting style partially revolves around panty shots to distract enemy soldiers. Some of their Shockamancy abilities also revolve around exposure. And when in need of manipulation, they aren't above using seduction.
• Not in My Contract: They're not supposed to do anything unless it's specified in the contract (so if a veilied Twoll is about to attack you, if you didn't pay for the right security, most won't say anything). Though there are (very expensive) contracts that they will do literally anything that is within their power to accomplish, even attack Charlescomm (though good luck getting new Archons), and they'll die trying. Decrypted Archons view themselves as being on this sort of contract to Wanda.
• Our Angels Are Different: They are named after the Archons of Dungeons & Dragons, which in turn was a rename for angels to avoid religious controversy.
• Sarcastic Devotee: Fox Force Five are the highest ranking Archons in Charlie's employ and the only ones he trusts enough to see him in person. They are as utterly devoted to him as any of his Archons are, but these ones also like to give him quite a bit of lip. He seems to appreciate this, treating them as rare honest advisers.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: One of the Archons from Book One named Jaclyn showed a constant willingness to aid the Royal Colition leaders beyond the degree of service they were willing to pay, citing one of Charlie's rule corollaries that she was within her rights when her team mates protested her helping Jillian break a suggestion spell or trying to warn her of Wanda's loyalties. Other Archons look down on her for her bleeding heart, as shown when those same teammates mock her memory when they consider that she would probably have saved Ansom from Bogroll's trap had she been still with them.
• Stating the Simple Solution: A specialty of Jaclyn's, to the point where the other two lampshade it when she's not there.
  Farrah: You know... Jaclyn probably would have warned him that was a Twoll with a veil on it.
  Kate: They're not. Paying. For spell security!
• Theme Naming: Each "team" of Archons has their own theme.
  • Ginger and Maryann.
  • Monica, Rachel, and Phoebe.
  • Miley, Paris, Avril, Brittany, Hilary, and Lindsay.
  • Patty, Maxene, and Laverne.
  • Emily, Anne and Charlotte.
  • Goodbye, Norma Jeane.
  • And of course, our introductory group, named after the actors who played the original Charlie's Angels. However, Kate and Farrah's names were never given in-story, and are speculative.
• Undying Loyalty: To Charlie. One Decrypted Archon's last words are "Help me, Charlie..."

Tondelayo

Tondelayo

A Fox Forcer and Charlie's highest ranking Archon.

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• Character Focus: Tondelayo is one of the few of Charlie's Archons to get any focus.
• Handy Helper: Charlie is physically crippled, but she is more than happy to take care of him.
• Mama Bear: She views Charlie the same way a mother hen would view her eggs and feels rage when Lilith, a traitor sister, threatens his life.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Early in her life, she was punished for talking back to her superiors by being assigned to manage a farm.
• Reassignment Backfire: While at the farm she was assigned to she starts tinkering with the chicken mechanics, which brings her to Charlie's attention and leads to her rapid promotion.
• Sarcastic Devotee: She had a habit of talking back to her superiors, which got her Reassigned to Antarctica (a farm to be precise). She eventually climbed her way up the ranks and became one of Charlie's personal attendants. She is utterly devoted to him, but continues to talk back to him.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: As a result of a unrestrained Isaac cutting her strings.

Bonnie

Bonnie

One of Charlie's highest-ranking Archons, she was designated AAA and was in charge of important aspects of Operation: Big Game. She was croaked and decrypted soon after she was introduced.

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• Broken Ace: Implied to be one. She has level 4 leadership, but Charlie regards her as a mistake for some reason.
• Conflicting Loyalty: Subverted. She actually handles the switch in loyalty from Charlie to Wanda without too much trouble. She has a bigger problem with not being in charge (because her leadership bonus isn't impressive when there are actual warlords around) and Gobwin Knob just being unorganized in general.
• Consummate Professional: Her biggest problem with Gobwin Knob. The Ruler is an idiot, the leadership corp is a mess, and the most important unit is some low-level "genius" warlord who got them in a war with the Magic Kingdom. She begins to calm down some after Jed gives her some drinks, but she still repeatedly makes it clear that she hates the lack of organization.
• Fiery Redhead: The description Parson is given of her is "leader of Archons" and "short red hair, large mouth". Though as an Archon of Charlescomm, she always tries to maintain the dignity of the Consummate Professional, that she has quite a temper bottled up has become increasingly clear as she tries to deal with the very unprofessional environment of her new side. Stanley, Ace, and Sizemore have all felt her wrath.
• Hope Spot: When she finally meets Parson and he displays basic competence by asking her an intelligent question about Charlescomm, Bonnie feels hope for the first time since having been Decrypted. Sadly it's immediately interrupted by a stunning display of incompetence elsewhere on her new side.
• The Leader: Not only is she one of the highest-level Archons in existence at level 9, she also has one of the highest leadership specials, giving her a bonus of 4. However, she is annoyed to find that in a side with more warlords, her bonus isn't very impressive, and she is quickly supplanted first by Artemis, then Antium.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Not directly, but Jed initially contacts her because she looks lonely. In the next panel, she's in the hot tub with one of his drinks, talking about her problems.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Delivers a really scathing one-liner to Stanley when he idly asks what's the difference between him and Charlie.
  Bonnie: Since you asked, I would say there are only two things separating you from Charlie: he knows what he is doing, and he takes it seriously!
• Sarcastic Devotee: She is really unimpressed with Stanley the Tool, and talks down to him every chance she gets. She also didn't understand why everyone thinks Parson is such a big deal, but then she hadn't met him yet.
• Spanner in the Works: Her decryption made a huge mess of Charlie's already messed-up plan. Not only did she get the Arkenpliers and a single gun to Gobwin Knob (which might have saved the Side right then and there), but she has a large amount of information on Charlie that will be useful in the fight against him. She managed to negotiate with the Great Minds to exchange this knowledge for their help in getting their prisoners out of the Magic Kingdom, but unfortunately the Great Minds changed their Minds.

Shirley

Shirley

Formerly Comm Tower of Charlescomm, she was awakened into sapience by the Great Minds in a caster link. She refers to herself as a temple, however, not a tower. She treats Charlescomm units as her children.

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• Genius Loci: She is the second tower to be awakened into sapience.
• Genre Savvy: She sees the world as a soap opera with Charlie, of all people, as the hero. This sometimes leads to her having a distorted view of events (even Charlie's reaction was to question whether she'd actually read all the tower logs), but it sometimes gives her surprising insights into events.
• Morality Chain: Shirley sees her little Charlie as the hero of a story. She would prefer to see him as a Knight in Shining Armor rather than an Anti-Hero, and nudges him into preserving Bill and Vanna instead of sacrificing them to cause Gobwin Knob major losses. And since he doesn't know the true nature of towers and is fully aware that she could squash him like a bug if she wanted, he would prefer to keep her happy.
• Moral Myopia: Charlie is the hero, and therefore anyone who opposes him is the villain. In particular, she insists that the Transylvitans are obviously evil without bothering to consider the actual situation at all.
• My Beloved Smother: She acts this way to Charlie, treating him like a child who needs to do his chores before he can "go play." She is still very helpful, however, and is capable of doing things with the tower channels that even he couldn't do at his best.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Some of what she's doing to Charlie is genuinely beneficial like pulling him out of the Gardening Channel and making him get to work. Unfortunately, what she's making him get to work on is normal Ruler responsibilities, leaving him unable to even address the issues of Parson and Wanda.
• Punny Name: Shirley the Temple.
• Thinks Like a Romance Novel: Well, more like a soap opera but it's the same principle. She translates everything into very arch dramatic tropes, with Charlie cast as the dashing hero. When it first comes up she has to ask if he has a code against killing to get an idea of what kind of hero he is. This actually translates into a good deal of Genre Savvy (like cottoning on that Vanna is the 'mother' of Transylvito's unpopped heir the first time she hears her speak). Charlie (with his much more methodical approach) isn't quite sure how to deal with her.
• Tough Love: She is on Charlescomm's side, but that doesn't mean she's the slightest bit gentle with its ruler's addiction to a Fantastic Drug and pushes Charlie around into doing his duties.

Other - Royals/Warlords

Judy

Judy Gale, Overlady of Haffaton

The Overlady of Haffaton, which was the strongest side of its time.

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• Cosmic Retcon: She is a subject of Retconjuration. When her character was first introduced, her first name was Dorothy. But the chapter was later edited with her name rewritten, because the author felt she was a more complex character.
• Expy: Of Dorothy Gale from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and of Judy Garland, the actress who played her in one of the film adaptations.
• Precision F-Strike: Sort of. "I've had enough of this rainbow boop."
• Puppet King: Her Chief Caster, Olive Branch, drugged her with Heroine Buds, reducing Judy to a drug addicted wreck and giving Olive the freedom to control the side herself.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: A big contrast to most rulers. Jillian said that she's nice and the only member of the Haffaton side she doesn't want to croak.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Chooses to go home to Kansas, but not before telling everyone present to forget about her completely. She takes the Arkenshoes with her in the process.
• Spanner in the Works: Allows Wanda to turn to Faq before she goes home.
• Sparing the Aces: She was supposed to kill Charlie when she conquered the side he once ruled, Efbaum, but chose to spare him due to her appreciation of his charm.
• Summon Everyman Hero: She's an Expy of Dorothy in more ways than one. She knows words foreign to Erfworld like "kill" and "years," and in the end, she uses the Arkenshoes to wish herself back to Kansas. She was in fact summoned by the same Summon Perfect Warlord spell that brought Parson to Erf.
• You Can't Fight Fate: According to Wanda, she tried to fight her Fate, and this is the reason for all of her suffering.

King Dickie

King Dickie of Haggar

The king of Haggar, who allies with Jetstone while planning to claim the kingdom once it falls to Stanley.

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• Meaningful Name: "Tricky Dickie" was a derogatory nickname for Richard Nixon, who King Dickie heavily resembles in both appearance and personality.
• Royal Blood: He is descended from one of the original units that the Titans chose to rule. Not that he really cares about that sort of nonsense. He only echoes Slately's talk about Royal Ideals as a means of manipulating him.

Crush

Crush, Chief Warlord of Firstpost

A warlord of Firstpost, imprisoned by Squashcourt while on a diplomatic mission

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• Badass Bookworm: He's more of a reader than a warrior, and doesn't generally enjoy fighting.
• Fling a Light into the Future: How he feels about the book he publishes. The Titans will guide it to where it will do the most good.
• Modest Royalty: He's more properly referred to as Prince Crush, though his lack of respect for Royalism causes him to take Lord for a title instead.
• Replacement Goldfish: King Scrofula tries to recruit him as a replacement for the late Prince Racket, and refuses to take "no" for an answer.
• Take a Third Option: He represents a balance between the two Faq rulers, seeing Banhammer's book as mainly useless sophistry and Jillain's sword-based problem solving approach as her being Dumb Muscle.

King Scrofula

King Scrofula of Squashcourt

The King of Squashcourt, a supposedly childish king with a fondness for outlandish proclamations

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• Fatal Flaw: His pride, not to mention his stubbornness. He's fond of coming up with ideas, but doesn't like being called out for being an idiot when it's clear they're pretty stupid. According to Dunkin McClown, he'll often double-down on those ideas afterward just to prove people wrong. He comes up with the idea of Squashcourt siding with the then-neutral Bullyclub, and refuses to accept Crush's proof that they will inevitably betray him.
• Meaningful Name: Scrofula used to be known as "the King's Evil", and one of the symptoms is neck-pain. Scrofula is literally a royal pain in the neck.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Zigzagged. When Crush first sees him, he throws a lavish feats where he yells out completely ludicrous ideas. He soon turns out to be slightly more intelligent than that, but not by much.
• Offing the Offspring: Prince Racket was one of the few people he talked with, and one of the few people who'd actually point out his ideas were idiotic. As Dunkin points out, his death was pretty suspect - getting ambushed in the wild by feral enemies who were never seen again, with only Scrofula's word on it.

Axe Bodyspray

Prince Axe Bodyspray, Chief Warlord of Squashcourt

An apparently taciturn and violent heir to the throne of Squashcourt.

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• Blood Knight: He really likes fighting.
• Genius Bruiser: He's a towering brute of a guy who rarely speaks and mostly enjoys beating his problems up. But he's also smart enough to deduce the rules to Sudoku puzzles and solve them for fun or to evaluate complicated military strategy at a glance.
• Hidden Depths: He gives off the presence of a silent, taciturn guy more suited to violence than actually being an heir. And he is. He's just also smart enough to work out a Sudoku puzzle and the hidden plan inside it.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: He inflicts one of his father so severe Crush can barely recognise him, in order to "convince" his highness to release Crush and agree to his plan. Crush even notes he's seen troops die from lesser injuries.

Queen Bea

Queen Bea of Unaroyal

The queen of Unaroyal, a respected side.

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• Better to Die than Be Killed: She killed herself and most of her side rather than either ally with Stanley or fight, lose and be croaked and Decrypted.
• Despair Event Horizon: She hit hers hard after talking to her daughter, Cruz, who was croaked and Decrypted.
• Driven to Suicide: Killed herself by entering her portal to the Magic Kingdom.
• Dying Curse: Roger Victor Clarence believes that her suicide powered a form of fate magic that has effectively been haunting Gobwin Knob ever since. Given the disproportionately massive amount of damage her legacy has caused them, he's probably right.
• Inspirational Martyr: What she became after her death.
• Offing the Offspring: She had her Chief Warlord kill her Decrypted daughter.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Was this with Don King.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Unaroyal was mentioned a few times, but the queen's sole appearance on-screen was the one in which she died. Her death was a rallying cry for the Royalists, and she became a martyr.

Other - Casters

Janis

Janis Atlantis, Grand Abbie Hippiemancer of the Magic Kingdom

"'Striving for the impossible' doesn't mean 'toiling in vain.' It means growth."

Janis is one of the most influential Casters in the Magic Kingdom. Her origin is unknown, but her main motive is clear: to bring peace to Erfworld. She has revealed little about her scheming in that direction, but current information indicates that she may be running a conspiracy or two to that end. As her title implies, she's a practiced Hippiemancer, though she seems to specialize in Flower Power in particular.

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• Actual Pacifist: As a firm believer in the tenets of Flower Power, she refuses to harm any other living thing. Using her magic to prevent them from harming other people, on the other hand, is perfectly fair game.
• A Wizard Did It: She says that not all information can be broken down into its components and that people should accept that oftentimes, magic is magical. Parson replies with the trope, word for word.
• Big Beautiful Woman: She's much more heavyset than the average female character on Erf, but she's nonetheless rather pretty, and Parson comments that he finds her attractive from an objective standpoint.
• Combo Platter Powers: As a Grand Abbey, she has access to all three branches of Hippiemancy: Flower Power, Signamancy, and Date-a-mancy.
• The Empath: Hippiemancy is the magic of people and relationships, and as a Date-a-mancer, she can sense the connections between people and how good they are at forming them.
• Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: One of her direct spells works like this, preventing a unit from engaging in violence for one turn.
• Good Is Not Soft: She's a pacifist at heart, but she will not stand idle while her fellow casters engage in an all-out brawl. Also the first time we see her actually angry:
  Janis: Time! OUT!!
• Granola Girl: Hippiemancers in general (and Florists in particular) are this by default, Janis herself being no exception. As noted below in Unreliable Expositor, her legitimate magical knowledge also contains a hefty sprinkling of straight-up hippy beliefs.
• Green Thumb: The lesser-seen part of her Flower Power magic. She's seen growing and tending to plants in a few strips, and her very first scene is talking with Sizemore under an enormous blossom that she probably grew herself.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Blonde and a total sweetheart, even if the methods she's willing to use to achieve her goals can be a bit sketchy.
• Nightmare Fetishist: But only such because Humans Are Cthulhu. Most Erfworlders that Parson has spoken to about his universe's "mechanics" are typically horrified by the sheer complexity of it, and Janis is no exception. However, while Janis and Parson are discussing the nature of love, the topic of reproduction is brought up. She finds the ideas of "two units pair-bonding into their own little side" and "people popping people" to be delightful.
• No-Sell: In Book 3, Wanda stabs Janis with the Arkenpliers. It doesn't do anything to Janis except annoy her.
• Romanticism Versus Enlightenment: Solidly on the Romantic side, exaggerated to the point that she seems half convinced the underlying rules of Erfworld don't really exist. When Sizemore and Parson ask her about things like the actual mechanisms Signamancy operates under (and more specifically what the source of the writing on Parson's happy meals were in book 1 which gave him crucial information he wouldn't have learned otherwise but with other crucial info missing) she rather arrogantly states that it's only their materialistic viewpoints that make them think the question even means anything. How much of this real and how much is strategically withholding information is unclear. Much later the mechanisms of Signamancy become better defined and it turns out she was more-or-less right in principle and they were asking the wrong question, although the workings remain a complete Black Box. ^note It's actually a fairly crude translation of a concept or what was meant (the Towers speak this in a "pure" form that doesn't translate well) into Language that the reader can understand (which explains the jokes being in Parson's style), which has the advantage of not allowing any Exact Words or Ambiguous Syntax tricks. One of the meal boxes itself said that the messages (and "toys") were part of the summoning spell.
• Start X to Stop X: Her main plan to stop war is to introduce a general so powerful that he breaks the game. Sounds unfortunately like nuclear weapons in the modern world, doesn't it.
• Time Stands Still: She has the ability to temporarily stop a fight by freezing it in time.
• Unreliable Expositor: She's a great source of magical knowledge, but also a font of a grab bag of New Age ideas that don't seem to be based on anything but mystical beliefs. Parson notes the problem is telling the difference; for all he knows it's all true in principle, but some of her specific examples are things he knows to be false. She definitely lies occasionally; she told Parson that he got through the portal alive because of the power of his belief (this is the part he knows is untrue since he fully expected to die), but she claimed he was a Hippymancer to the other free casters when he was unconscious and he has several other caster abilities.

Marie

Marie Lavraie, Predictamnacer of the Magic Kingdom

She just thought of something funny that happened tomorrow.

"Tsk. You wah supposed to be the smot one. Hate to see a dumb one."

A powerful Predictamancer with a founy accent. She was originally from Faq, but went to the Magic Kingdom after her side fell. So far, she has accurately predicted the fall of Faq and Wanda's attunement to an Arkentool, among other things. She's also the one who provided Wanda with the scroll needed to summon Parson. She is the de-facto leader of a conspiracy in the Magical Kingdom to bring peace to Erfworld and fulfil the Titans' great plan.

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• Accent Relapse: Inverted. When Parson switchs sides to join Charlie, she briefly drops her Creole accent and speaks in perfect English while threatening him.
• Ambiguously Brown: At least, from a real-life perpective. Erfworlders don't have ethnicities, but Marie's skin color is vaguely African and/or Caribbean.
• Back from the Dead: She's shot and killed by a Shockamancy spell during the Battle of the Magic Kingdom. Wanda later decrypts her at Janis's request.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Marie is friendly and adorable outside of an immediate emergency. She's also utterly ruthless in her devotion to Fate, threatening to croak Parson if he tries to walk through the Charlescomm portal after briefly turning to Charlescomm, and later actually croaks an allied warlord, Georgia Power, after she outlives her usefulness.
• Deadpan Snarker: Well, look at her page quote up there. She's full of snarky one-liners.
• Fortune Teller: Like all Predictamancers.
• I'll Kill You!: A very pissed Marie threatens to shoot Parson after he switchs sides to join Charlie, pointing out that she isn't concerned by the peace treaty, that GK won't suffer any penalty from her actions, and that Wanda will be able to decrypt him afterwards.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: A combat application of Predictamancy, though Marie herself hates using it, until Wanda convinces her to fight with Gobwin Knob during the Archons' assault on the Magic Kingdom.
• Loophole Abuse: Like all casters of her class, Marie's first loyalty is to Fate itself, but she's aware that the path to one's Fate is malleable and can be changed in subtle and powerful ways for your own benefit. Most notably, she agrees with Maggie and Parson's plan to use a thought-link with a renegade Lilith to croak Charlie, despite it being Parson's Fate to defeat him, justifying that they could simply Decrypt Charlie and have Parson croak him that way.
• Man Behind the Man: She was the original person to devise the "summon perfect warlord to stop war" plot and eventually convinced Janis to take an active role in it. Janis herself is a little concerned by how she suspects Marie is using it to settle unfinished business with Wanda.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Her name, appearance, and Creole accent are a reference to Marie Laveau.
• Prophet Eyes: As befitting someone whose specialty is seeing the future.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: The one caster of Faq that Jack seems to have actually respected. When Jillian, Wanda, and Jack went to her to explain what a danger Olive was, she actually listens and tries to help convince her Ruler not to be so hasty in believing everything Olive has to say.
• Sassy Black Woman: One of the very few characters in the comic with dark skin, and she's got quite the acerbic wit to match.
• Seers: Part of the job description for a Predictamancer.
• Sixth Ranger: As Gobwin Knob's unofficial ally in the Magic Kingdom, she often plays this role, especially during the climaxes of Books 2 and 3.
• Stealth Pun: Her name is "Lavraie", a French name which could be roughly translated as "The true one". Pretty fitting for a Predictamancer...
• Still Wearing the Old Colors: In the present day, she still sports her robes from old Faq's court despite the side not having existed for many turns. After being decrypted, not so much.
• Thanatos Gambit: Part of her plans involved her getting croaked and then decrypted. Charlie admits that's pretty impressive even by his standards.
• Undying Loyalty: To Fate itself. This persists even after being Decrypted, where her loyalty to Fate outweighs the typical Decrypted devotion to Wanda, enough so that she offers to change sides to Faq.
• What the Hell, Hero?: When Banhammer threatens to disband Jillian she calls him out for it, saying it would be a crime for which he could never answer for. However, she's not just talking about the crime of croaking his own daughter but also the massive repercussions this would have with Fate. She calls him out on his intellectual cowardice in the process.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: It's probably supposed to be Creole, since her character owes a lot to Marie Laveau and Miss Cleo.
• Worthy Opponent:
  • The way Jack talks about the arguments among casters in Faq makes it clear that his primary joy in them was to be found in destroying other peoples arguments like someone kicking down sand castles. Unlike the rest of the casters, this rarely worked on Marie, earning some of his respect.
  • Charlie names her his enemy, but admits that planning past her own croaking and decryption is pretty impressive.

Jojo

Prince Jojo Jeftichew, Carnymancer of the Magic Kingdom

"Oh, truly you do wound me."

A Carnymancer formerly of Unaroyal, Jeftichew was made to pledge only to work for royal sides before being sent into the Magic Kingdom, after which Queen Bea ended Unaroyal. Little else is known about him, but he knows Janis and is the reason for Sylvia's Plot Armor. He also seems to be doing Charlie's bidding.

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• Enigmatic Minion:
  • He offers Parson a scroll that he claims will let him return to Earth. It might even do that. Or it might destroy him; either way it was something Charlie had crafted for him, and he's a former caster of Unaroyal, a side whose beloved queen committed suicide rather than surrender to Stanley and to whom he had pledged to only work for royal sides. It turns out he's not just a former caster of Unaroyal, but also a disgraced prince of the side, which explains a lot about his motives.
  • He also immediately changed his tune regarding letting Parson through the portal the moment Charlie finalized his trap. It later turns out, to no-one's surprise, that Charlie is his backer, and while Jojo isn't directly on Charlie's side, he does do work for the man.
• False Friend: He tricks Roger Victor Clarence into believing they are both on the same Royalist side and that he is willing to work with him against both Gobwin Knob and Charlescomm. He even refers to his dupe as his cherished friend. But in the end, he turns out to be completely loyal to Charlescomm and manipulates Roger into thinking Gobwin Knob was responsible for wiping out his fellow Thinkamancers, despite knowing that it was probably Charlescomm. His manipulations are completely successful in persuading Roger to sacrifice himself to eliminate Parson Gotti.
• Malicious Slander: After bullets from Charlescomm croak several free casters in the Magic Kingdom and Wanda chooses to decrypt them, Jojo is quick to take advantage of the crowd's confusion and Wanda's extremely unpopular action to portray Gobwin Knob as solely responsible and declaring war on them.
• Manipulative Bastard: Part of his shtick as a Carnymancer. The fact that everyone knows he's untrustworthy is only a limited defense against his trickery.
• The Reveal: We get one of our biggest hints as to Jojo's motivations the first time Roger Victor Clarence uses his full name: Prince Jefftichew the Disgraced.
• Revenge: One of his major motives is to avenge his side, which Queen Bea self-destructed rather than surrender to Gobwin Knob.
• Royal Blood: He is a disgraced prince of Unaroyal.
• Screw Destiny:
  • Carnymancy is technically Fate magic, but as Parson put it, it's probably actually "The magic of rigging the game". He's the first character from Erfworld to argue for the existence of Free Will, though it's hard to tell if this is something he has a unique perspective on due to his discipline or if he was pulling a con-job. This could make him very dangerous, considering Parson was summoned by Fate magic in the first place, and he seems to have made it his goal to stop Parson from achieving his destiny.
  • He also granted some form of Plot Armor/Contractual Immortality to Sylvia back when she was just a minor level 1 stabber. It's hinted that some form of Equivalent Exchange was involved, and their sides' ruler was very upset how much resources he spent on such a minor unit.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Roger views Queen Bea's suicidal self destruction of their side as a noble act and privately believes it to have created a Croakamancy Curse against Gobwin Knob. Prince Jojo angrily views his mother's final actions as a pointless gesture that didn't work.
• Shout-Out:
  • Both of his names are references to famous 19th century carnival side-show performer, Fedor Jeftichew, aka Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Man.
  • Sgt. Pepper's Shout-Out: In addition to his outfit, the nickname Jojo is also a shout-out to the song "Get Back."
• Spell My Name With An S: Most sources spell his name "Jeftichew," like the performer he's named after, but the one time his name was used in the comic, it was spelled "Jefftichew."
• There Are No Coincidences: Runs afoul of the trope when Charlie arranges for him to deliver Transylvito's Moneymancer, Benjamin, information about a bounty to manipulate Transylvito in a way meant to look like a coincidence. Benjamin quickly realizes that this was far too convenient.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His bargain for Sylvia's continued survival has not been good for her long-term sanity or the survival of her allied units.
• Wild Card: Self-declared, but when a predictamancer says not to trust somebody...

Vanna

Duchess Vanna, Turnamancer of the Magic Kingdom

"You show me your Motion, and I'll show you mine?"

A Turnamancer formerly in service to Unaroyal, she now does work for Faq and serves as an agent of Charlescomm to avenge her former side against Gobwin Knob.

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• Blue Blood: She is a noble, and holds even her favorite bedding partner, Duncan, in contempt due to him being a commoner.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: On the surface, Vanna is sweet, friendly, and personable. Beneath that veil, though, she's a thoroughly unpleasant person who will do anything to achieve her goals.
• The Empath: As a Turnamancer, she has a magical sense that allows her to detect other peoples' drives and motives. For obvious reasons, the Turnamancer community obfuscates this ability and keeps the true details as one of their secrets.
• Femme Fatale Spy: She enjoys seduction and espionage, and freely uses sex to manipulate people.
• More than Mind Control: Her descriptions of Turnamancy style it more as seduction and manipulation than mind control.
• Ms. Fanservice: And fully aware of it, too. Vanna's sex appeal is just as dangerous a weapon as her magic, if not more so.
• Revenge: Her main motive is to destroy Gobwin Knob in order to avenge Queen Bea, who committed suicide rather than ally or surrender to them.
• Semantic Superpower: As addressed on the main page, Turnamancy can do basically anything so long as the word "turn" is involved in it in some way. Vanna's magical capabilities range from turning units to controlling turns to creating self-powered vehicles and mills. She herself even lampshades it.
• Time Master: One of her abilities as a Turnamancer is screwing around with Erfworld's turn system for her side's benefit. Primarily, this ability is used for unit production, but while linked up with Charlie she can manage a spell powerful enough to involuntarily end Gobwin Knob's turn preemptively during their siege of Spacerock.
• Too Much Alike: The reason she and Roger of the Great Minds are on poor terms with one another. Both keep many secrets and are good at reading them, keeping one another on their toes.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: It's probably not a coincidence that she's a weeping mess after being put in Transylvito's dungeon.

Olive

Dame Olive Branch, Florist of Haffaton

A Florist working for Haffaton, a side that existed long before the events of the main story. She serves as the Big Bad of the "Inner Peace (Through Superior Firepower)" prequels and seems to wield enormous personal authority within Haffaton.

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• Abomination Accusation Attack: She does this to Wanda, a Croakamancer, in an effort to distract everyone from her own flaws and discredit Wanda's accusations.
• Big Bad: Of the "Peace through Superior Firepower" prequel arc.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
  • She is beautiful, sweet and charming on the surface, but utterly ruthless beneath the façade, sees people as objects to advance her goals, and she does not take it well when things don't go her way. She's arguably the scariest villain yet introduced in the series. Her schtick is forced pacifism, poison and drugs, all of which are indirect means of killing her enemies.
  • Olive provides a counterpoint to Janis, showing the martial applications of Hippiemancy.
• Cain and Abel: She committed at least ten counts of fratricide.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: She pretends to be charming on the surface, but only as a tool to manipulate people. She inevitably poisons and destroys everyone around her, even when it would serve no practical purpose. She was originally in service to a side called el-Efbaum and is in fact Charlie's daughter. She successfully murdered at least 10 of her siblings, attempted to murder her father, and ultimately betrayed the side to Haffaton. While in service to Haffaton, she used false parleys to destroy many of her enemies. She also betrayed Haffaton itself by murdering Lex Doothis, attempting to murder his heir, reducing its final ruler to a drug addicted Puppet King, and killing off all of its casters with her heroine buds.
• Control Freak: If she can't control someone, she kills them. If someone doesn't acknowledge the inherent superiority of Flower Power, then she'll deal with them the same way. Her obsession with controlling the people around her has left Haffaton badly overextended and undermanned, leaving it so weak that a tiny neutral side like Faq could have probably crushed it if they'd known how to go about it and what traps to avoid.
• Crocodile Tears: When on trial in the court of Faq, she used fake tears in an attempt to garner sympathy.
• Dead Guy on Display: Her ultimate fate.
• Dragon-in-Chief: For the longest time, all we knew of Haffaton's leadership was her, and the troops followed her orders and not those of a Chief Warlord. Later, we meet Judy Gale, the puppet Overlady of Haffaton, who is a skeletal wreck, drugging herself in the same garden Olive keeps her prisoners in, in a Shout-Out to the poppy fields of The Wizard of Oz.
• Evil Is Petty: To "prove" the superiority of her magic, she slowly poisons all the other casters of Haffaton to death. In the process, she destroys one of the greatest assets of her side out of nothing but foolish pride.
• Fantastic Drug: The most sinister application of Hippiemancy she has at her disposal.
• Faux Affably Evil: She is capable of being quite charming, but it's all an act. She doesn't really like anyone except herself.
• Femme Fatale: She masterfully plays Love as a tool.
  • Honey Trap: She hints to Tommy that she might be willing to defect for him. That's an outright lie; her real intent is to delay him and to split him from reinforcements so that she can capture Wanda for her side.
  • Femme Fatale Spy: She also manages to loosen Tommy's lips about the Prediction surrounding Wanda.
• Good Powers, Bad People: Specifically demolishes the preconceptions people were likely to have had about Hippiemancy being only a tool for good. She uses her powers to force other people into overt peace, so that she can take them out in a more underhanded fashion. She also tries to evoke Beauty Equals Goodness in others as part of her façade.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Jillian drops a portcullis on her. The wound stays when Wanda uncroaks her.
• Karmic Transformation: Wanda makes a point of uncroaking her and displaying her reanimated body, both to get a measure of vengeance for turns upon turns of humiliation and for the Fantastic Racism towards other casting disciplines, primarily Croakamancers and Wanda specifically.
• Kiss of Death: One of the ability of Florists is that they control all kinds of poisons. She asks Tommy to kiss her and then politely sends him on his way as Goodminton literally could not attack thanks to a forced peace spell. Hours later, he dies after all his internal organs completely shut down.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • She pinky promises not to use poison on the group from Goodminton. When it becomes clear that they will neither turn to her side nor hand over Wanda, she says she makes no promises about the future to negate the earlier pinky promise and then asks Tommy to kiss her. He dies not long after thanks to her poisoned lips.
  • Later again, Jillian tells her how she plans to escape her trap without fighting by having her dwagon drop battlecrap on it. She realizes this will work, and then she turns it right around by using the same exact loophole to drop a mind-control flower on Jillian.
• Magic Music: Her songs can prevent people from fighting in any overt fashion.
• Manipulative Bastard: She doesn't truly care about anyone but herself, but she uses charm and false empathy to manipulate everyone about her. When confronted by Faq, she emulates King Banhammer's love of peace and philosophy to befriend him and convinces him to turn to her side by showing him how mutually beneficial such a partnership could be. But in actuality, she would inevitably destroy him through treachery.
• Master Poisoner: One of the specialties of Flower Power is the production of poisons. She uses the Kiss of Death to kill Tommy during a forced peace, having tricked him into believing that she loved him.
• Mind Control: She prefers to use the method listed just below, but she is not above using direct mind control, just like she did with Jillian.
• More than Mind Control: Hippiemancy lets her outright block units from attacking; persuasion allows her to turn said still-hostile enemies into allies... or hapless dupes.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: She's a Hippiemancer, the pacifist class. That doesn't mean she's not dangerous.
• Outside-Context Problem: Not as much as Parson, but most of her enemies have no idea how to defeat an opponent who fights with peace (and a hefty helping of treachery).
• Patricide: She attempted this against her father, Charlie.
• Pyrrhic Victory:
  • Part of what made Haffaton so powerful were its casters. Olive chose to let most of them die from the Fantastic Drug she used to control them just to "prove" the superiority of her own type of magic. Between that and the sheer degree to which she both literally and metaphorically poisoned her side caused Haffaton to fall apart.
  • Olive destroyed quite a large number of other sides with false parleys to the extent of making Haffaton the largest side in Erfworld. However, the more cities a side captures, the less income each additional city produces, causing the side to become overextended as it can afford fewer and fewer additional soldiers. By the time Haffaton came into conflict with Faq, Haffaton was impoverished, with only several hundred living units to their name, despite the fact that a typical successful side should have several thousand.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Attempts to give one to Wanda about how much more important Life is than Motion.^note Hippiemancy is Life + Matter magic, and Naughtymancy is Motion + Matter magic. Wanda stands her ground, and it shakes her out of awe for her.
• The Sociopath: According to Wanda, the only one she cares about is herself. She's also only superficially charming and those who don't fall for it tend to end up dead. Her impulsiveness also keeps her from being as effective as she could be: She destroyed all her own casters out of spite, acts irrationally and is outright petulant when she doesn't get her way. Even if she had succeeded during the prologue, she would have been doomed anyway: Wanda was only a few turns from death due to the heroine buds and uncroaked units were the only thing that truly kept Haffaton running.
• The Star Scream: The only reason she doesn't croak her ruler personally is because Duty prevents it. But it apparently isn't enough to stop her from turning her ruler into a flower addicted puppet and leaving someone else who might close by.
• Technical Pacifist: Subverted. Olive shows just how absolutely dangerous Hippiemancy and power over Peace and Love can be as part of a world that exists solely for constant war and turns both into tools for killing her side's foes.
• The Undead: Is uncroaked as a Faq soldier by Wanda, after her death to the portcullis.
• Unequal Rites: She's quite smug in her belief that casters who use the "Life" element as part of their discipline are superior to those that don't. It is implied that she even chose to let a large number of Haffaton's valuable casters die to "prove" its superiority.
• The Vamp: She seduces and murders Tommy using her wiles when it becomes clear that she can't control him. Later, Jack fears she may be getting "intimate" with King Loj Banhammer one way or another. When trying to dissuade Faq from executing her, she even goes so far as to claim that she loves him.
• Villainous Breakdown: She loses her composure and enters a rage when she realizes that her ruler, Judy Gale, has managed to recover the Arkenshoes she took from her. She starts panicking when Jack turns out to have replaced her chillaxe with a tangible illusion and Jillian smashes the real one, preventing her from casting a mass ward to protect herself from hostile Faq units. When Faq manages to capture her and starts discussing her execution, she breaks down crying.
• You Monster!: Wanda describes her as one.

The Great Minds

The Great Minds That Think Alike

A club in the Magic Kingdom of the most powerful Thinkamancers in the world, who lead the other members of their discipline.

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• Ancient Tradition: They view themselves as custodians and caretakers of magic and were tasked by the Titans with keeping the true power of Thinkamancy a strict secret.
• Appeal to Flattery: Roger attempts to manipulate Bill into helping him take out Parson Gotti by feeding him a large number of lies claiming that the Great Minds admire his brilliance and that if Bill helps get rid of Parson, Roger will be happy to help him continue his glorious work.
• The Assimilator: Charlie's attack forces many of them to combine themselves into one. They later coerce Ivan Poe into joining them.
• Big Brother Is Watching: Provided there is at least one Lookamancer in their link-up, they can observe anyone in the Magic Kingdom, and thanks to Loophole Abuse, can get around the Magically-Binding Contract that is meant to prohibit spying.
• Broken Pedestal: Maggie once looked up to them as the leaders of her discipline and the thinkers of deep thoughts. While she disapproved of them keeping Parson in the dark on various secrets, she quietly broke their rules partially on their own behalf. When the Great Minds renege on a deal with Gobwin Knob, Maggie finds herself starting to doubt them, and when Roger double crosses Gobwin Knob to banish Parson Gotti, she scorns them as narrowminded jerks and ceases to even self-identify as a Thinkamancer.
• Conflicting Loyalty: All Thinkamancers who still have a side are subject to this between their side, which often needs their valuable skills, and the Great Minds, who fear the abuse Thinkamancy would be subject to if everyone knew its true power. Additionally, some of the Great Minds themselves are subject to this.
  • Jintao is technically barbarian, but is still closely associated with his former side.
  • Roger Victor Clarence was popped to a Royal side, strongly believes in Royal ideals, and has been close to the Royal Crown Coalition. As such, while he like all Thinkamancers opposes Charlie, he also seeks to sabotage Gobwin Knob, the very side the Great Minds have sponsored to help them against Charlie.
• Deal with the Devil: They form a Magically-Binding Contract with Ivan Poe, promising not to harm Wanda if he willingly joins their Hive Mind.
• Democracy Is Flawed:
  • Because they only act upon reaching consensus, they can be pretty inflexible and inefficient. Although trance-fusion allows them to discuss matters much faster than would be possible with mere talking, it still is sometimes not fast enough. For example, during the battle in the Magic Kingdom there are several instances of the observing Minds discussing whether or not to act on something, only for the discussion to be rendered moot by changing circumstances.
  • When Charlie blows up the Temple and croaks most of them, most of them manage to survive in Isaac's mind. It doesn't take them long to vote him out.
  • Subverted in one sense, though it may be an accident. Due to the nature of their forced fusion, all of their G-string were heavily damaged (except Isaac's) due to them having to flee their bodies and shelter in Isaac's. Their strings were basically cut in half before they made the journey. They vote Isaac out very specifically because he was the only one with the chance to be decrypted (and because they had a mission for him). It pays off in the end when they bring the Arkenpliers to life. The Pliers accidentally kills them with the force of its birth, leaving the isolated Isaac (now trapped in a Doll's body) to find the Pliers and get himself revived.
• Disproportionate Retribution: What they did to Bunnie. Stripped her of her ability to speak, and declared her a Baddie, simply for spilling secrets to defend herself from prolonged sexual assault, without even bothering to check why she was doing it.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: More or less the way Roger feels about Parson Gotti, believing the weapon they are using to defeat Charlie may very well be their own undoing.
• Eye Motifs: Their symbol is the Eye of Providence. All Thinkamancers carry an Eyemancy pendant with this symbol on it.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Isaac has managed to build several special devices to aid a thinkamancer's focus (which just happen to look entirely like the sort of things found in a children's playground).
• Gone Horribly Wrong: The majority of the Great Minds spend their final moments attempting to awaken the Arkenpliers. They succeed, but its birthing process accidentally finishes them off, ripping what is left of their minds into shreds.
• He Knows Too Much: Like all the disciplines, but even more so, the Great Minds are deeply obsessed with keeping the true power of their discipline a secret. They directly reference the trope when they hold a simulated trial to determine whether or not they consider Parson guilty of knowing too much (they find him to be innocent). They attempt to contain or eliminate anyone that risks exposing too many of their secrets, and this is their entire motive for waging war against Charlescomm.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Discussed. The main reason they want Charlie taken out is to help protect their secrets. To do this their agent (Parson) needs to be pretty smart in his own right or else he'd simply fail. But a highly intelligent person with plenty of access to high level Thinkamancers will eventually start to discover those secrets on his own. Roger eventually decides that they've given him too much and betray Gobwin Knob. As for the Minds in general, they betray Wanda specifically in fear of a cascading decryption event in the Magic Kingdom.
  • They make a deal with the other casters of the Magic Kingdom that involves executing Wanda and barring both Charlescomm and Gobwin Knob from the Magic Kingdom. One of the compromises they make is to sign a contract that will close the loopholes they have been using to spy on the Magic Kingdom, figuring they will eventually figure out new and better loopholes later. As a result, they are blindsided when Charlie sneaks explosives under their temple and destroys it, eliminating their base of operations, killing a good number of them, and incapacitating the survivors.
  • They Decide that barring Gobwin Knob from the Magic Kingdom was fine because Parson could still take down Charlie without access to the Portal system. If Sizemore had been hanging around the Thinkamancer Temple during the attack, he could have warned them or saved them.
• I Reject Your Reality: Roger, repeatedly. When Jojo convinces him that Parson killed the Great Minds, Charlie is worried that he'll discover the truth the second he talks to Parson. Jojo tells him that without the Great Minds to offer alternatives, Roger is going to stay dead-set on what he's already Decided. Indeed, when talking to Roger Parson says and does plenty of things that would make absolutely no sense if Parson had killed the Great Minds, but it clearly doesn't even occur to Roger that Parson might be innocent.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: All of the magical disciplines deliberately hide their full capabilities. The Thinkamancers keep the most secrets of them all, as mandated by the Titans themselves. This will often force Thinkamancers to withhold crucial information from even their own sides. Failing to do so results in punishment by the Great Minds.
• Lonely at the Top: Isaac is one of the most powerful and intelligent thinkamancers alive. This means when he's thinking, others tend to leave him alone, even if he doesn't necessarily want to be alone.
• Manchurian Agent: Roger Victor Clarence, despite being its second most esteemed member, is a traitor to the Great Minds. To bypass the means by which the Great Minds prevent treachery, he used a caster link with Jojo, combining his Thinkamancy with Carnymancy to partition his treasonous thoughts away from his otherwise completely loyal self. He is thus able to sabotage the Great Minds with Jojo underneath the table without his conscious mind normally even realizing it.
• Mental Fusion: They perform a secret, stronger variation of a caster link called "trance-fusion" on a regular basis. By linking together, they can perform subjective hours of conversation in minutes and cast incredibly broken Eyemancy spells on a massive scale.
• Mind Hive: After Charlie strikes their Temple and kills a good number of them, they combine themselves into one of the survivors, Isaac.
• Mind Manipulation: Normal Thinkamancy only allows for suggestions, making people more likely to do things they would be willing to do anyways. But when they combine into one, they are able to force Ivan Poe to take actions against his will.
• Mind Rape: When a Thinkamancer is put under probation with a spellbinding, a Geas, and said Thinkamancer breaks its terms badly enough, it will grab their reasons for making that decision and rip apart their mind while it's at it.
• Mystery Cult: They are based on secret societies such as the freemasons, and practice similar rituals.
• Playing Both Sides: Roger's true loyalties are to the ideology of Royalty. He has been pretending to ally with Gobwin Knob and Charlescomm, but in truth has been attempting to get them to weaken one another with the ultimate aim of having Charlie and Gobwin Knob's Arkentools transferred to royal ownership. Charlie and Jojo are fully aware of this and have been playing him like a fiddle.
• Revenge: Roger is more loyal to Royalty than the Great Minds, but he does consider them his close friends. When Charlie tricks him into believing Parson responsible for slaughtering them, he decides to assassinate Parson Gotti and Maggie with forbidden Thinkamancy. Likewise, the other Great Minds, who know who was actually responsible, seek a measure of vengeance against Charlie.
• Unreliable Expositor: Like all magic disciplines, they are absolutely convinced that their discipline is superior. Therefore they have have made quite a few deductions and assumptions about the other disciplines, based on that foundation, that may or may not be correct. They believe, for example, that Fate is simply an expression of non-physical golems that Predictamancers create whenever they cast a spell, which any Predictamancer would insist is hilariously wrong. It also turns out that Thinkagrams involve quite a bit of Date-A-Mancy through the transfer of feelings, which they were completely unaware of.
• Unwitting Pawn: Roger thinks that Jojo is his ally in maintaining Royal supremacy and defeating Charlie and Gobwin Knob both. But Jojo is actually Charlie's loyal agent and is only using him to take down Gobwin Knob. He eventually manipulates Roger into rationalizing the murder of his fellow Great Minds as being Parson's fault and sends him out to eliminate him.
• We ARE Struggling Together: They do not, in fact, all Think Alike. All of them share a mutual interest in defeating Charlie, but several of them have their own conflicting agendas.
  • Empress Saltina's side was destroyed long ago. She would like to recreate it someday, but this is heavily discouraged by the Magic Kingdom. It is implied that Empress Saltina supports the Great Minds' scheme primarily to disrupt the status quo enough to make this possible.
  • Though technically released by his side to the Magic Kingdom, Jintao is still loyal to them. In fact, he primarily serves as their spy on sides they wish to "study", by offering them contract work. It is implied that Jintao dislikes the Great Minds' scheme due to fearing the possible impact on his own former side.
  • But in particular, Roger Victor Clarence is a supporter of Royalism and by extension an enemy of Gobwin Knob, the very side the Great Minds are sponsoring to further their agenda. He has taken advantage of his position to quietly sabotage their efforts.
• You Didn't Ask: As part of protecting their secrets, they use this when dealing with Parson. Specifically, some of those secrets are classified as Need To Ask. They don't want to tell Parson them, but it's likely that he will need to know eventually. So they wait for him to ask them and try to discourage him from digging deeper.

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